Friday, March 22 2024
The day begins with session 4: Adapting Projects to Reach Out to New Audiences. Lab leader Ola Starmarch (Kino Pod Baranami) presentsKino Pod Baranami’s New Young Cinema Ambassadors program. This initiative is designed to attract high school students, who are carefully chosen and hopefully will become cinema enthusiasts. The aim is for these young individuals to independently promote the cinema-going process and expand the audience. Several strategies have been introduced to draw this audience to the project, including giving them their own social media platforms, event posters, film festival tickets, and exclusive club member benefits such as special merchandise and a formal school certificate.
Hester Simons-Terpstra (Filmhuis Slieker) introduces the Noorderlijk Film Festival, a festival that focusses on minority languages and also develops a program to encourage the production of films with the same focus. Last year, they welcomed 23,000 visitors, many of whom were students due to the educational program. Their goal is to attract a new audience who will also visit Slieker in the future. Despite acknowledging that a large portion of their audience comes from privileged backgrounds, they are committed to promoting diversity, inclusiveness, and sustainability.
Enhancing the Cinema Experience through Services and Eventisation is the focus of session 5. Tom de Bont (Heerenstraat Theater) shares how his cinema is committed to transforming young employees into exceptional hosts. Their unique selling point is the warm welcome they extend to their audience. Employees are given the responsibility to ensure customer satisfaction and are encouraged to think of their own methods to achieve this. They are allowed to learn from their mistakes and grow. Social skills and top-quality service are the cornerstones of their cinema.
Rebranding your cinema’s side offerings to meet expectations is what Dan Kratky (Cinema Svět) did at their cinema. The old supermarket-style concept of cheap snacks, big brands, and non-sustainability was slowly phased out. They found local alternatives, offering a range of prices and a seasonal selection. This resulted in a fourfold increase in bar revenue over a few years.
Patrycja Blindow (Kino Żeglarz) runs a seasonal cinema with her mother and grandmother and shares their story of turning a con into a pro. Running a cinema in their town is difficult, because there is lots of competition when it’s nice weather. For instance, there are a lot of kite surfers and outdoor activities. Their idea was to get these people into the cinema by partnering up with surf brands and hosting a festival together. It wasn’t a success overnight, they started in 2014 with a few visitors, nowadays it’s always sold out.
Züleyha Azman (KINO Rotterdam) has an example of an event in their cinema, that doesn’t include watching movies. Since the opening they host club nights in their cinema during IFFR. The screening rooms and foter turn into a club with different areas, such as a speakeasy bar, a karaoke room and visuals on the screen. The first edition was free and open to all, after they worked with ticketsales and other partners to ensure a sold-out venue. Nowadays prices have gone up even more and organize it themselves. They see it as marketing, it’s a way to build your brand.
Session 6 was all about optimizing Human Resources and Madeleine Probst from The Watershed joins via Zoom to share their impressive strategies for fostering a more inclusive work culture. They believe that the more effort you put in your employees, the greater the return. Their HR department, like many cinemas, used to be quite basic, but now they have a dedicated employee in this role. She emphasizes the importance of management experience in our sector, which is not common. She explains how they achieved this through staff surveys, coaching of underrepresented groups, and creating a clear framework for job descriptions to evaluate performance.
Following this, the participants regrouped for a mini-workshop where they were asked to identify a challenge they face in their cinemas and propose solutions. Topics discussed included how to motivate employees, how to retain visitors in the cinema after screenings through hospitality, engaging office workers by involving them in the marketing strategy, how to find passionate people, and the difficulty of finding people with diverse backgrounds when working with a small team and many volunteers. Time is a common constraint.
After lunch it’s time to start session 7 on Talent Management: How to Boost Your Staff Commitment. Despina Miron (Cine Gold) tells that they identified that excessive phone use by staff was negatively impacting the customer experience and appearing unprofessional. The challenge was to reduce this. Since bans were ineffective, they implemented rewards, offering free daily coffee if phones were not used. The staff member who best adheres to this rule receives a free gym membership for a month. This approach was well received by the employees and creating a sense of belonging.
Margaux Dewigne recently joined the HR department at Cinemas Galeries and has already implemented several changes. The employees are a dynamic and dedicated team, and she has found a way to enhance their performance through regular team moments.The objective was to organize monthly HR meetings in an engaging manner. One effective method has been a quiz about the cinema’s goals, coupled with a SWOT analysis involving all team members. However, maintaining everyone’s attention and scheduling these meetings can be challenging.
Ulla Pedersen Estberg (Tollereds biograf – Folkets bio) shared the strategy of their small cinema to recruit volunteers by hosting unique events, such as a knitting cinema. Here, visitors can watch a film with the lights on, allowing them to knit simultaneously. This cinema operates solely on the efforts of volunteers, and they have had no difficulty in finding them.
Following these presentations, there was an open slot session. Oana Furdea (Union, Bucharest) and Dominika Lövenhöfer (Kino Světozor) faced the same kind of challenges with the cinema staff who were resistant to adopting new work methods. Both being new to the team and younger than the average employee it can be difficult to get people on board, regarding to changes. The suggestions from other participants: assign a new role to the senior staff, such as programming the senior screenings, attract volunteers to share the workload, and bring in interns for them to learn and potentially join the workforce later on.
Session 8 starts with Nadia Wolf (Europa Cinemas) highlighting the Europa Cinemas Collaborate to Innovate scheme and provided insights into potential projects. Following her presentation, participants shared their success stories.
Gaile Janulevičė (Kaunas Cinema Centre Romuva) discussed their Collab to Innovate project, a collaboration between three cinemas. The aim was to cultivate new cinema audiences through games. The project involved screening eight classic films and creating a game to facilitate deeper understanding of these films. This included educational cards with film-related questions to spark discussions. They also developed a board game for individuals aged 12 and above, where players manage a cinema and learn about various tasks through gameplay. The ultimate goal is to foster a love for film through these games.
Lara Stojanović (Kino Mediteran) introduced their project aimed at developing new audiences, specifically targeting young children (0-7 years). They host screenings of short films for these children, with a significant portion of the budget allocated for dubbing these films. Post-screening workshops are organized for further engagement, such as discussions and poster art creation based on the films they’ve watched.
Margaux Dewigne (Cinema Galeries) spoke about the popular Cineville concept from the Netherlands, which was launched in Belgium in 2022. It began with four cinemas in Brussels, and now eight cinemas have joined. In 2022, they had 4000 members after seven months, and by February 2024, this number had grown to 8000 subscribers, with an average age of 25.
Sara Horžen from Kinodvor kicks off session 9 on Strengthening Your Brand through Cross-Border Partnerships, and explained their Cinemini Europe project, which introduces children aged 3 to 8 to the world of film. The project aims to create a catalogue of 26 short films, activities, and materials. They collaborated with kindergartens and teachers for this project. The children were encouraged to explore the cinema space and use their senses.
Mence Hadji-Kosta Milevska (Centre of culture Bitola) shared their experience of collaborating with three different partners, each with different objectives, to organize a French film festival. This collaboration proved beneficial for their cinema as it helped to expand their audience.