The Short Guide to GigSwapping
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The (sort of) Short Guide to Gig Swapping
Welcome traveller! Here's a wee small introduction to our project...
Below you can read a bit in best practices, the basic options and possibilities of GigSwapping through couchsurfing. It would be easy to believe everything is pretty obvious and it is. And that is exactly where it becomes complicated. Stick to this one idea: What you put in will come back. Meaning to say... Read these pages to the end, to make a first investment to establish a succesfull collaboration with fellow musicians worldwide. Now, in order to make things easy, we've cut up the tale to a uniform division system, of steps and slices. Like walking for pizza, capiche?
What GigSwapping is basicaly about
Well, basicaly, GigSwapping is not something copletely new. But through CouchSurfing it now does get a new global dimension!
A 'Gig' goes for any kind of stage performance, be it accoustic music, a full blown rock band or dance act: VJ´s, poets, dancers, actors, living statues and stand up comedians, you name it. 'Swapping' means 'trading, exchanging'. It is all about a free exchange and than about much, much more.
So, whether you want to busk about the globe, if you are a solo artist or band, a DJ or a dancer, a visual or performance artist: Through this group you may find stages to perform, parties to particpate and tours to join up with; by working directly with fellow artists from all over the world.
What started off as an idea for singer songwriters looking for open stages in eachothers cities and music scenes, by now has become something far beyond that, moving more toward an open international collaborating artists collective. Or rather...
GigSwap Concepts
Gigswaps
At the core of CS GigSwapping are two basic idea's: So called 'Relay tours' involving a string of bands touring eachothers cities, and also, the basic simple 'GigSwaps'. A simple 'GigSwap' means any exchange of a concert or performance that two artists arrange for eachother in eachothers local music scenes.
Relay tours
'Relay tours' are in fact collaborations by an entire group of artists and acts, organising the tour together, visiting their hometowns mostly, though guests from all over the world are welcome.
City swaps
Another option is to set up is an 'two city exchange' through two friendly CS communities from cities in you country or region. Keep it feasable though!
Couch Concerts
Another concept we are working on is called 'Couch Concerts' - these are free concerts that take place at Couchsurfers homes. During one day we'll have accoustic 'living room' concerts with five or more musicians taking turns playing five 'couches'. At the end of the day, there will be a central event at a proper venue, with a 'paid for' concert and afterparty. Such a concept could work very well at any existing CS event. That way you will also have a certain audience.
Getting you started
Step #1: Introduce yourself
You can make your first step By posting a message in the main group, in wich you add links to external sites for your music or artwork, like on a MySpace profile.
Step #2: Check out other member profiles
Check out the member profiles of your fellow CS Gigswap-group members as extensively as possible. This is to your own benefit - to see if they can host you, work with you, advise you and more. Off course the group is growing and growing, and there's more to do. Should you find the time, to orientate yourself will help you get on your way a lot! An overview of the individual members profiles and their contributions can be found here: http://www.couchsurfing.org/group.html?gid=7334&show_members=Y
Step #3: Propose a project
The best next move will be posting in the group on your plans. The best way to get somewhere is to work together. So, check out whether you can support other people's plans and match it to yours. GigSwapping a two way deal, other members are very likely to be able to help set up your touring plans. Travelling together can cut costs even further. Feel free to contact fellow group members and ask them all you want to know about their local art or music scene - don't be shy: it's what they signed up for!
Step #4: Starting a CS Event or meeting
This point deserves some special attention. With over a million members worldwide and a growing number of organised local CS communities, besides couches, CouchSufing may also offer you an internationaly oriented local audience. Moreover, organising meetign sand events otogether are pretty much what CouchSurfing is getting about more and more.
CouchSurfing communities are lively, and members do also organise lots of events and meetings together already. On the CS page you will find a tab called 'community'. The menu ity shows gives you links and options to do with Evvents and meetings. A complete list of this can be found here: http://www.couchsurfing.com/meetings.html
You can adjust the listing to meet your personal preferences by locality and date, to see whether there are any regular or speical events in you country or region applicable.
Feel free to contact the organisers of existing events, and ask them if you may perform on their event. Also, if they would want to help you organise a local event.
If you are new to CS and GigSwapping, you could make a start by getting involved with your local CS communities and Events organisers for that. Got to the meetings and promote yourself as an artist, for instance by performing at a CS local weekly or monthly meetings. Once you are more connected, you can also create a CS meeting / event, for which you can send invitations to applicable groups.
To create a new event, click here:
http://www.couchsurfing.com/meetings.html?new=1
Step #5: The magic key! There's a little system called reciprocity
Like with most things in life it´s all up to you if this will work for you or not - 'put in the hours' and it will come back to you with interest. Expect free rides - chances are the result won´t be as good as expected. Promoting eachothers concerts, tours and events will enhance the succes of our group. Try to help out others where you can. Also, when you see possible links for fellow group members to work together, try and help to 'connect the dots' and introduce them to eachother.
Promotors and managers use this group too!
Aside from artists, also venue owners, events organisers, band managers and festival producers subscribe to this group. Some of them already actualy book through this group, and you can approach them through this group. You are all really most welcomed to make use of this group, well, as long as you work in accordance with the CouchSurfing / GigSwapping non profit principle. Which does explcitely not not mean, to exploit bands for free, 'mon frere'! <;0)
Promotion & Publicity
It can never be emphazised enough, that promotion and publicity are the brerad and butter of, the key to, any succesfull gig! Sure, you need to know how to play, but it does pay to have some people showing up too... There is a lot of information on this subject on the web, so... I will not get into it too very specificaly much, but I will some, and furthermore, just Google on the matter!
step #1: Join the local group!
Within CS, local CS groups and individual members will probably know their territory, and some musican members can often tell you where and howto promote localy. It is important to join the group of the place, town, city that you are goin to visit, way in advance, and let them know you're coming by. Post a message asking what places to play, and paste a link to your myspace. Ask also who to contact within the CS group for more information.
You'll also need mouth to mouth promotion, you need involvement of people to get the interested. This is why it is very important to keep the organisation of your events in close collaboration and communication with the local cs communities where you are organising your event or concert. Though it is common knowlegde, obviously 'real' publicity is extremely costly. Since we are a no-buget enterprise, we have to be creative and use our 'human capital'.
Looking up profiles, browsing the local groups of those with an interest in your art will help tremendously. Try to make your aproach as personal as possible. Get local contacts and cs community members involved, they are a mayor asset! You can ask us for assistance, ideas on aproaches to the publicity issue or help to do flyering.
step #2: Get a local act involved
If there are musicians among the members, another way to go about it is to get a decently local popular act involved, to play the gig along with you! This has many advantages. Try to find out through local insiders what friendly bands might be popular to join up with them. You could either play as a warm up gig, or even do double bill - that way you will be ensured of local attention. That will also add to the attraction and in getting the local CS community involved.
step #3: Plan ahead
If you are organising a gig someplace together, you'll have to proper communicate, prepare things well in advance, like six months perhaps, in order to get publicity, and to get an audience...
step #4: Use the free GigSwap Posters and Flyers templates
We also have poster templates and art work ready for you. Make use of it!
Check out the design here:
http://www.gigswap.org/Promotion/Edinburgh%20GigSwap%204xA5%20Poster.pdf
You may contact the group moderator for this!
The GigSwap.org website
Finaly, to facilitate you further, we've come up with this masterful seperate website called GigSwap.org.
These pages anounce dates of shows, showcases of member artists, it displays a calendar (GigLadder), offers a CD shop option, finaly it shows also some links to earlier media coverage.
Check it out here: http://www.GigSwap.org.
Here's the logo:
A little history... Some notable CS GigSwapping events!
So, this was all bout the recipe, now on to what already been achieved!
This initiative started in the Netherlands, where people are totally enhousiastic about the GigSwapping concept. Globaly, where ever it is mentioned and / or put to practice, more people get involved and join up with CouchSurfing and GigSwapping. There have been by now dozens of swap big and small, by groups and individuals, and more and more venues and acts are getting involved. A couple of major accomplishments are worth mentioning here below.
The 2008 'GigSwap Live' Relay tours
Members participating in our tours uptill now were from Mexico, England, Danmark, The Netherlands, Maleysia, Canada, Belgium, Ireland, Croatia, Scotland, Austria, the US, Germany, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.
These members put it to the test and now we can boast about it. The concept works, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and it can be hard work but it is great fun too. Together we've organised a string of music parties in the form of CouchSurfing Events, so the audience mostly consisted of CouchSurfers living and breathing in the places we visited.
The Very first GigSwap tour - april 2008
The first Relay Tour took off april 2nd 2008 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It was only 'try out' tour, our ´test run´, so to speak. Still, it was a great experience, a 'hole in one' featuring with great bands, solo performers, art, dancers, visual artists, and a greatly supportive CouchSurfing audience.
In Utrecht hosted a live music night with a line up of 6 international acts and we had a full house! It was one great party... We moved on to Austria for a two night party in Vienna, april 4 and 5, and beyond there we went to visit the Czech Republic´s city of Pardubice, april 8.
Both the CS Music parties / GigSwap nights in Vienna and the one in Pardubice were a huge succes. We had great audience, and excellent media coverage too. For instance, we had an item on Czech National Television (check that here: http://www.gigswap.org/Videopage.html ) and some really sound news reviews in other media too!
CS Netherlands Midsummernight Weekend - june 2008
It doesn't come as a surprise after the succesfull introduction in the Netherlands, that the main CS meeting in the Netherlands in june, the MidSummer weekend, should have it's own 'GigSwapping' event hooked up with it. 4 groups were playing, totally unplugged in the park, guitars, djembé's, didgeridoo's, singing voices and other musical instruments were sounding till the deep dark of night...
The Ireland, England and Scotland RELAY TOUR - august/september 2008
One more for the books! We've had a grand tour of the Isles, Ireland, England and Scotland, and we had a really great time all together...
We visited Dublin in Ireland, played in Liverpool, Cirencester and Nottingham in England, and also performed in Inverness, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland. We made a lot of new friends, made great contacts with local CouchSurfers, artists and musicians, organisations and promotors, and some venues that will have us again.
We've done the groundwork, so should you want to follow suit, looking to do the same tour, just get in touch with us and we'll gladly share the information and contacts with you!
Dance Valley festival 2008 - july 2008
This huge Amsterdam open air festival was an aboslute unprecendented highlight in developments to date. The Dance Valley festival counts over 50.000 visitors and we had a big fat stage on top of a high hill there. It kept our feet dry – 'cos sadly it had been raining all morning and we even got some shower during the gigs.
Still, to our fortune, this made our little hill one of the dry hot spots where the arty party was at. It was a big chunk of work for the acts, but they gave all they had and made the sun break through eventualy. We totally entertained the Dance Festival audience, more used to House, Jungle, Techno, Electro, Trance and so on, but still - they took us in and we wheeled it home.
The NY Couch Crash festival 2008 - august 2008
Two of our groupmembers, 'Radio Free Carmela' and 'The Layers', also played very well atended gigs in New York. From Florida and the UK, which makes us all very proud, because it was the first time our project has been represented at the other side of the great Atlantic Ocean.
Frankfurt / Amsterdam City Swap
Went there with Channah, Skiff and David Stray Ney, and had a blast. A great trip, playing a great concert and got mutualy inspired.
The SongSwap series 2009
In The Netherlands, Utrecht to be precise, we have a steady venue now, where we program monthly CS GigSwap nights.
The first was a very well attended one, featuring some of us who toured together before through Europe with the CouchSurfing GigSwapping program, in 2007 and 2008. This 1st edition of 2009 became a special occasion...
To add some spice to the event, we came up with the concept for this night as a 'SongSwap Session'. This means the artists will perform their own work but also play one of eachothers songs. This turned the night into mutualy inspiring evening, from artists to artists, and to a very involved the audience....
Check the link here: http://www.gigswap.org/Songswap2009.html
Support of CouchSurfing ambassadors
Local CouchSurfing communities, admins and ambassadors, individual members, as well as the CS Communication and the Events and Outreach team, have all been extremely supportive of us and have been promoting the events really enthousiasticaly. As a result, we had a great turn out at the concerts. Over 25 ambassadors are actualy members of our GigSwapping group! We have been commended for having a truely positive influence back for the image of the CouchSurfing community.
