Galway Arts Festival VS Singapore Arts Festival PART 2

c) Inform your reader about these best practices

Although the product of both festivals is of International Maestros in Art, it is surprising to see that there is no Asian showcase in Galway Arts Festival. Unless I missed the programme (but I checked 3 times!!), I do not see any Asian exhibits/preformance for the Arts Festival in Galway. This was a real dissapointment, although the festival brief introduction says "Showcasing Irish and International Arts", but where is the ASIAN part of the INTERNATIONAL ARTS?!!?!!

Oh well....at least the Singapore Arts Festival do show exhibits across the global world. I did not see any pieces from Middle East though (none from Galway Arts Festival too).

Kudos to both festivals for spreading the programmes evenly throughout the island(for Singapore) and the city(for Galway). This would make it much easier for us(audiences) to gain access to the events at our doorstep. It gives us a tinge of the festival feel whenever we step out.

Although it may seem that Singapore did a better job by spreading the festival throughout the country, we should take into account that Galway is part of Ireland, which is a much larger country than Singapore. Having the Galway festival spread all over Ireland might be quite hectic.

Being a major festival in their respective country, the media coverage that the 2 festivals receive breaks national boundaries. With Singapore Arts Festival having Moove Media and Starhub to advertise nationally and then using Channel News Asia and Yahoo to pool International attention, Singapore Arts Festival has become an International promoted events.

Galway Arts Festival did not lose to this. Taking over the radio waves of Ireland using Galway Bay FM, then using the newspaper such as The Irish Time and many other national medias, Galways Arts Festival management team has covered the national market very well. Not satisfied with the national market, they went further by having BBC to capture their event. As we all know, BBC is a powerful International News Channel, having the festival captured in such well-known media channel is definitely going to capture the International market well.

Both festivals used similar internet network channels. Utilising popular social network website such as facebook which has over 200 million membership worldwide. Something good to learn by each festival is that the use of photo databases and blogs(Flickr) and video database website (MySpace). Both festivals had done well by having a mailing list, Galway Arts Festival did this by having people to join their mailing list, while Singapore Arts Festival did this by having people to sign up for free festival membership.

The most contrasting promotion element of the 2 festival might be the existence of many official blogs covering the Singapore's festival while none at all for Galway's.

Both festival had done well in the booking section such that both allows internet, phone and in-face booking. They might want to include what each other lacks but the other have though, a mail booking and international booking agents.

In terms of promotional activities, Singapore Arts Festival seem to have done more. For example, they reduced ticket price and attract educational insitutes by offering programmes while Galway's does not seem to be doing any of such. The games and promotion tactics used by Galway is few comparing to Singapore Arts Fest.

Galway Arts Festival tackles the crowd by using large prizes to be won, for example, cars and cash money. While Singapore Arts Festival used more realistic bonuses that can be spread over the crowd, for example, win a trip to the Edinburgh festival and early bird discounts. Galway Arts Festival goes one step further to provide for its International audiences by providing accomodation information on its website.

It would be good to pair with other festivals as how Singapore Arts Festival does by pairing with Edinburg festival as it will gain the interests of Art fans which the festival can tap its return customers on.

Although Singapore arts festival received mammoth amount of sponsorship from major corporations, Galway did better in terms of attracting the smaller corporations. Galway showed details on how to be a friend/sponsor of the festival and the benefits of it, attracting smaller companies to be involved in the festivals. Although it might be true that the large companies can give more benefits through sponsorhip than small companies, I do believe that tapping on both would be the best choice. After all, an extra sponsorship will not hurt.