News

Bologna Audience Development & Innovation Lab will take place, this year again, during the inspiring Il Cinema Ritrovato Film Festival (24th June – 2nd July), in partnership with Cineteca di Bologna.

This edition, entitled « Reflect, create, adapt & connect: DIY ways to renew your offer » will be led by Madeleine Probst (Executive Producer, Watershed, UK) together with Bob van der Meer (General Manager, Filmhallen-The Movies- FilmKoepel, Netherlands).

This year, the Bologna Lab will focus on future-oriented strategies for audience development, collaboration & networking and programming, as well as how to deal with the fast evolving cinema landscape and new audience habits. The sessions will give participants the opportunity to share approaches to bringing (new) audiences (back) to the cinemas, finding new ways of engaging them, as well as rethinking our spaces. As we will be at a festival dedicated to the history of cinema, there will also be plenty of opportunities to discuss the role of films of the past in the future of cinema.

Practice-based insights, small group discussions, and panels will help participants find creative solutions to specific challenges as well as providing plenty of opportunities to share and pitch ideas with the wider group. Exhibitors can bring their issues to the Lab, spend time with peers to reflect on their own approaches, share expertise and find practical solutions through new fresh perspectives.

Headline topics will include:

• Curatorship and discovery: the role of films of the past in the future of cinema.
• Relevant and responsive programming/audience development: getting a balance between regular versus niche / event based programming
• Telling/selling your story & finding your voice: the role of communication and branding in (re)building an audience
• Marketing and communication : strategies that speak to new audiences ; from CRM tools and Letterboxd to more analogue solutions
• Developing a mind-set and organisational management strategies that have sustainability and inclusion at their heart
• Rethinking our cinema spaces and audiences’ perception and experience of those spaces
• Keeping it real: soaring utility costs, broken projectors, old interiors - what are some (out of the box) solutions we could implement?
• Collaborating at the local, national and international level to build new audiences and create new value (including a session on Collaborate to Innovate)

In response to this high level of interest in the Bologna Lab and in order to allow all European exhibitors and professionals not present in Bologna to attend the Lab online and follow the main sessions and case studies, we will live-stream the Lab in English. The live-streamed Lab will be available for free on Europa Cinemas YouTube channel from Sunday 25th June at 9.30am (CEST). The main sessions and case studies will remain accessible as recorded videos on our YouTube channel afterwards.

PROGRAMME

Have a look at the following documents : the Lab programme and the list of participants.

You can have as well a read through the final report of our Bologna Innovation Lab here.

LIVE STREAMING ON YOUTUBE

Follow live the Bologna Lab! In order to satisfy the great interest in the Sofia Lab and allow all the European exhibitors and professionals not present in Bologna to follow the main sessions and the case studies, we are proposing a live-stream of the Bologna lab during the 3 main days of the event. 

APPLICATION FOR MOBILE PHONES

Our Europa Cinemas App gives you access to the Bologna Lab programme, the participants’ presentation and additional information on each speaker of each session.

You can download the Europa Cinemas App via the following links:

Apple: http://apple.co/3i9rgxZ

Androïd: http://bit.ly/3EZB9Hl

If you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact:

Fatima Djoumer, COO:
Tel. +49 30 61 40 22 00, e-mail: fdjoumer@europa-cinemas.org
Mathilde Narros, Project Coordinator for Italy:
Tel. +33 1 42 71 83 64, email: mnarros@europa-cinemas.org
Nicolas Edmery, Market Analysis & Statistics, Co-Coordinator. Project Coordinator Denmark & Ireland :
Tel. +33 1 42 71 53 70, email: nedmery@europa-cinemas.org