Cowspiracy: Film // Talk

COWSPIRACY

Film & Talk

Key Role: Event Team

Location: The Poly, Falmouth

Date: March 2017

Background

Cowspiracy: Film & Talk was an assessed event in March 2017 for the Creative Events Management course. The brief was to produce, promote and run a community based event in Falmouth. We chose to focus on the environment and sustainability, and decided that a screening of Cowspiracy: The Sustainable Secret followed by an informative discussion with experts would be a good way to encourage members of the community to become more sustainable in their everyday lives. The film focuses on recent developments in climate change and contrary to popular belief, how agriculture is the leading contributing factor to the destruction of the planet.The event was held at The Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, a multipurpose venue that promotes innovation in the arts and sciences, with particular focus on the county of Cornwall. As a group of three, we worked together from start to finish to come up with the concept, put our ideas into practice and evaluate our performances. The film itself contained shocking facts and was extremely eye-opening. Attendees were engaged with the issue which was highlighted in the Q&A section of the event, as many people contributed thoughts and questions to the discussion and after speaking to some after the event, many of them felt they had gained valuable knowledge about climate change and were inspired to become vegan and help make a real difference to protect the planet.

Roles and Responsibilities

My main roles within the group were liaising with two/three of the panel members and Judith Hann, a representative from The Poly. I was also in charge of finding a graphic designer and then liaising with them to create the poster for the event. Working together we ended up with two posters, inspired by the Bosch painting 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' with one light and one dark, representing the destruction of the planet. I was the main promoter; sending the designs off to get printed and then distributing the posters all over Falmouth Town. In addition, I generated the budget and expenditure for the event, taking into account ticket sales, venue cost and licensing fees. We found out that the screening of Cowspiracy, as well as venue hire, could be reimbursed by a company called A Well-Fed World, so I was in charge of applying for this grant and I was successful. I also took over the leadership role as my other teammates had difficulty focusing and needed someone to step up and delegate tasks. Although leader is not my natural role I think I did a good job in engaging my teammates and motivating them to become more involved in the planning process.

Skills Acquired

Problem solving: originally we were going to show Before the Flood but faced licensing problems, so we made the decision to show Cowspiracy instead as it also focused on climate change and licensing was much easier to obtain
Communication: organising group meetings and liaising with the majority of the stakeholders via email
Financial management: generating a budget and successfully applying for a grant
Leadership: providing direction, motivation and support for my teammates
Marketing: promoting the event with the use of posters put up on campus and around Falmouth, as well as social media such as Facebook

Photo Credit: Emily Allen

Poster Credit: Nathan Moyles