Vanishing PointAmb:IT:ion Approach

www.vanishing-point.org

Vanishing Point is Scotland’s leading independent theatre company, internationally recognised and acclaimed for its innovative and experimental new work.

We create contemporary theatre, fusing text, design, music, sound and vision. Our perspective is international and multicultural. We collaborate with artists and producers from other countries and cultures, us travelling to them and them to us, thereby enriching life experiences, artistic experiences, the diversity of our respective cultures and the lives of our audiences.

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We did this with the aim of developing a strategic approach that would both improve operational efficiency and provide

audience engagement opportunities.

We recognised a need to become digitally ‘fitter’ and so through the support of AmbITion Scotland, we worked with specialist advisor, Adrian Lear to review the company’s current digital infrastructure.

We began by exploring the role of communication(both digital and non-digital) across all areas of the company.

We captured this on a communications canvas, showing our core organisational values, who we

connected with and how.

This revealed our strengths and our weaknesses - or areas for development.

Key areas for development included how we share our information internally, e.g. our contact database doesn’t

meet our requirements, we don’t share calendar's and we are yet to make use of online collaborative writing tools,

such as Google docs.

Another area we identified for development was in our external communication, so how we communicate about our work – about our unique creative process and our wider ethos - to our audiences, including the public, partners and funders.

We identified that by upgrading hardware and software, our internal communications could be vastly improved and we could operate more efficiently.

Collaboration tools enabling the sharing of shedules, calendars, contacts, files ect could enable us to operate more efficiently and would allow better remote working which is crucial to our work , especially given the amount of traveling we do.

We reviewed several options and identified that a bespoke cloud-based, CRM system would make our day-to-day operations more efficient – we are currently in the process of developing and implementing this.

One of the things that makes Vanishing Point unique, is our collaborative creative process. We identified that digital tools could help us communicate this process better.

We also identified that we could offer our partners, both existing and potential, with direct access to this information making our communication with them more efficient and effective.

We identified that by developing our website, we could provide alternative engagement opportunities for our audiences, offering access to information about our work and insight into our unique creative process.

During this process we learnt about how digital developments can support the company, and become integral to our work rather than being a distraction or an add-on.

We plan to develop our website to include an online platform with fully a comprehensive resource for each production, which will tell the story of that show from idea to production. This will be useful tool for teachers and students, emerging practitioners, and our audiences who are interested in understanding about our creative process.

We will also develop a strategy for creating the content for our online platform that isn’t intrusive to the creative process, but rather sits alongside it as another creative element in the rehearsal room. We are considering digital tools such as wearable technology in achieving this.

Through this process we have become more open to the opportunities that digital tools can provide, our awareness of digital developments has increased and we feel more able to incorporate these into our work.

Vanishing Pointwww.vanishing-point.org

AmbITion Approach