I’m very happy to report that Q2 2022 at Culturehead was one of our busiest periods since founding the company. We worked on 3 major festivals across music, technology and heritage. We took on a number of new clients, promoted a new music series, a piece of musical theatre and a new dance production.
Check out some of our Q2 highlights below:
PR for Cultural Festival: Culture Date with Dublin 8
Culturehead were honoured to work on the Culture Date with Dublin 8 Festival for a second time. The project, now in its 4th year, is a celebration of the district of Dublin 8 as one of Ireland’s top cultural destinations. During the event the area's top historical landmarks, including IMMA, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Kilmainham Gaol open their doors with specially curated events, workshops, talks and walking tours.
This year the event was anchored around a special tribute concert to the recently deceased Dublin city poet Thomas Kinsella, with a concert celebrating his work at Goldenbridge Cemetery featuring readings from actors Mary Murray, Una Crawford O’Brien, Emmet Kirwan and a recital from harpist Valerie Armstrong.
To launch the event we held a press photocall launch that was attended by The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Alison Gilliand.
The project picked up widespread national coverage with features on 98fm, The Irish Times, Dublin City Fm, Lovin Dublin, Dublin Live, Totally Dublin, The Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Nova Fm, Dublin people and The Gloss Magazine. The potential reach of the campaign was over 21,44420.
Big thank you to the events curator Grace McEvoy and the project sponsors Dublin City Council for choosing to partner with Culturehead on this.
Public relations and Marketing for Concert Series
We were delighted in early May to welcome a new client, The Séamus Ennis Arts Centre to the Culturehead roster.
Culturehead were tasked with creating a marketing campaign that would increase awareness and maximise ticket sales for the centre’s “Garden Party”. The Garden Party is a series of outdoor Summer concerts to be held under the shelter of the venue's purposely designed stretch tent and running throughout the summer months. This year’s lineup included performances from Bell X1, Jerry Fish, The Stunning, and The Rob Strong Band as well as comedy and film screening events.
To launch the event we held a press photocall at the centre featuring performer Foxy P. Cox from Jerry Fish’s Electric Sideshow.
The image and release picked up national coverage including features in The Irish Times, Entertainment.ie, The Irish Mail on Sunday, The Gloss magazine, The Irish Independent, Dublin Live, and regionally in the Drogheda independent and and Finagal Independent.
As part of the project Culturehead provided training and support to key members of the Séamus Ennis Arts Centre in digital marketing to run a social media campaign in tandem with the public relations activities.
The Garden Party series continues into August for further information see tseac.ie
Marketing for Contemporary Dance Feature
We previously had the opportunity to work with Ériu Dance on their production Walls Talk so we were delighted to get the chance to work with the team again on their latest production “The Village”.
The show follows the story of five strangers who assemble on a hill, overlooking the town they all grew up in. As the characters reveal their stories and exercise their personal demons, the audience is faced with a dissolving sense of reality.
The show had its world premiere at The Black Box Galway on May 20th as part of the marketing campaign we arranged to have an introduction trailer video to the piece shot.
PR & Influencer Marketing for Music Festival
Over the past two and a half years we have had the pleasure of working with The Wild Roots Festival. Wild Roots is a new music festival based in Sligo on the shores of Lough Gill. The festival was postponed on multiple occasions due the Covid-19 pandemic.
In May we worked on the final push for the festival in terms of brand awareness and maximising ticket sales. We syndicated a release of the final stage times for the event and worked on a number of stand alone features across radio, print and online.
We picked multiple media lands in the final weeks of the event including, Irish Times Image of Day, a long read interview piece in The Irish Examiner and a feature on NewsTalk106.
The festival itself took place on the June Bank Holiday. We arranged for a number of Ireland’s top influencers and key journalists to attend.
The event was a huge success, big congrats to the organisers and thanks to the marketing team for choosing to collaborate with us on this.
Marketing for Technology, Arts & Innovation: The UCD Festival
I founded Culturehead while studying the UCD Innovation Academy, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to return in May to work on a public relations campaign for The UCD Festival.
The UCD Festival is the university's annual flagship outreach event where students, researchers, educators and members of the public are invited to the campus for a major celebration of arts, science and technology.
This year's festival took place on Saturday, June 11th with over 130 events, including live performances, masterclasses, interactive science displays, creative workshops and a host of family-friendly activities. All of the events were free for the public to attend and this year’s flagship event was a talk featuring the legendary Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield in conversation with Dr Niamh Shaw.
The PR campaign was a major success with widespread features across the national media including features on 98fm, Dublin CityFM, The Irish times, Dublin Live, Irish Independent
Irish Examiner, Irish Daily Star, The Herald, Newstalk106, Sunday Independent, The Gloss Magazine, FM104 and The Dublin Gazette.
Amongst my personal media highlights Dr Niamh Shaw was interviewed by The Irish Independent, Astronaut Chris Hadfield was interviewed in The Irish Times and also went Live with Anton Savage in Newstalk106 on the morning of the event.
The campaign had a potential reach of 3,592,755 impressions across, print, radio and online.
Big thanks to the UCD festival team for giving us the opportunity to collaborate on the project.
PR for Musical Theatre
We were extremely excited in May to be approached by The Mill Theatre, Dundrum to develop a public relations campaign for a major new Irish musical.
Tír na nÓg and The Land of Eternal Youth is one of Ireland's most beloved tales, but the new musical written by Shauna Carrick and directed by Katie O’Halloran turns the ancient fable on its head (think Ireland’s version of Wicked). The piece which was 4 years in production opened to the public on the 14th of June.
As a starting point for the PR campaign we developed a concept for a photoshoot which took place on Killiney Beach. The stunning images received awesome coverage and were selected as the Irish Times Image of the weekend.
Highlights of the campaign included a news feature for TG4 that was shot on location in the theatre and a full page interview in the Irish Mail on Sunday.
John Kenny is the founder of CultureHead one of Ireland’s leading communications agencies specialising in Public Relations, Digital Marketing and Training across the arts, entertainment and technology sectors.