Light night

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Light night meeting presented by James Hill at the carriage works for the 2010 Leeds Light Night.
The meeting was around a hour and a half long. There were many influential people from the art scene in Leeds there and useful contacts to no for example Eleanor Barrett who runs Bradford Playhouse. The talk was quite informal but in a formal location as James pointed out but said it would be a waste of the space if we didn't use it. The talk was very informative about Light Night for this year giving a break down of the budget they have and how much people may get to help put there pieces on. Also he informed us all that they are trying to make Light Night smaller as it has gotten too big for the public to get to see everything. But he seemed unsure how he could do this as he also said they don't like to turn any ideas down whether they are polished final ideas or works in progress. He said the only way they could do it is just to not put everything in the program and to create walks that people can follow to get a range of what it happening during the night. James was very nervous and he admitted that which I completely understood as I am a nervous speaker too, but this made the meeting run slightly late. To try and get some of there £10,000 budget you apply and then if they like your idea you go to show them your pitch then they go through a strict marking criteria which depending on how many points you get determines how much money they give you. I am thinking of applying in a collaboration with The Skeleton Project we work well together and will be able to be more ambitious with our ideas. Overall James Hill's talk was very well put together in a good location, but the time of it was not suitable for all as it was at 2pm when allot of people still have work. But there still was a large turn out of about 50-100 people.