Ludow Fringe classes - the problems with virtual festivals

Human Super & The Hypnotic Idiot - today's comic produced with kids in my Comic Art Masterclass, arranged to coincide with Ludlow Fringe.

And, full disclosure, it was my smallest attendance ever, either in Zoom or real life. I only managed to attract three kids to the class, none of whom was from Ludlow. Demonstrating the vast difference between virtual events and real life. Had I been at the actual Ludlow Fringe, as planned, just my being there would have seen my two planned classes filled with about 60 kids. Because kids gotta go somewhere, and parents are glad to get them off their hands for a few hours (plus my classes are brilliant, obviously). The mere inclusion of my events in a festival programme usually does the trick. Nothing compares with a programme and a local crowd.

Now, with the entire planet as my potential audience, I've proved we really have to find some new means of reaching them, otherwise these virtual festivals are getting nowhere fast.

UPDATE: I just thought through the maths of this, and it really comes down to sales. When I do a class with a school - like the first couple of Zoom sessions I did with Red Maids and Edgeborough at the end of June - I get to work with 60 kids in the day, and all I've had to make are two sales. If I get through to one teacher, or one head, then that one sale equals a day of work. Ergo the 100 days of schools I did last year took just 100 successful sales. However to run my own Zoom classes, every single pupil is a sale. So to fill one day of classes I'd need to make 60 sales. And suddenly you see how mathematically improbable the whole thing is.

I email literally thousands of schools, at certain times across the year, from which I make 100 sales, meaning I end up working with (and drawing the caricatures of) over 5000 kids in a year. In order to achieve that end result through self-promoted Zoom classes, I'd need to make 5000 individual sales. Which, given that less than 1% of emails to schools results in a successful sale, would mean me somehow contacting an incalculable number of potential pupils, or their parents. It's infeasible when you see it put like that.

I'd better get emailing schools again, hadn't I?

Meanwhile, the next Comic Art Masterclasses, the last of the holidays, are Friday Aug 28th at 10am and 2pm, do please spread the word.

Aug 28 10am https://www.eventbrite.com/e/114528562012

Aug 28 2pm https://www.eventbrite.com/e/114529561000