Ardross’s Epic Stage Story

Juliette Lowe is a Herbalist and yoga teacher by trade, with six years under her belt as a promoter for the Entertainments Committee at Ardross Community Hall. Read on to hear about her, her community and her #EPICSTAGESTORY.

This blog was published in July 2018.

I live in Ardross by Alness and am involved with Ardross Community Hall. Ardross Hall has been a member of the Touring Network for many years, probably about 16 years.

I have lived here for 21 years. We moved up to bring our children up in the countryside and to go hill walking , cycling and enjoy the hills and countryside.

I started promoting here in 2012, so have be doing this for six years.

I work with one other volunteer, Petria Brooke-Carr, but we do get some other help from local friends for very busy nights.

I am the promoter, I do all the leasing with the performers, advertising, marketing, organising etc. I apply for the grants and I also do the door on the night and sort out the finances. Outside of promoting for Ardross Hall I am an Acupuncturist, Herbalist and yoga teacher.

We hope that performers leave Ardross having had a good experience of us as promoters and a positive audience feedback. Everyone asks to come back to Ardross Hall, especially those that Petria feeds with her wonderful cooking, so we must be doing something right!

Selection

We rebook good performers and ones who have been previously popular. For new performers we listen to their music or watch their performance online first and decide whether it would work at Ardross Hall. Mainly we go for things that we like!

Traditional music, anything that involves the Highlands, Islands or has a local connection tend to work best here.

Challenges

Audience numbers and getting local people to come, plus lack of local support can be a challenge.

We try to overcome this through advertising. Most of my audience comes from my extensive mailing list which I have built up over the years. We also post on Facebook and Twitter, put up posters and contact all the local papers and online advertising places and magazines.

Juliette’s #epicstagestory

On Friday 29 January 2016 we had the Dance company Plan B with “And Now” booked for late January. I was worried about the event as the previous time we had booked them we had a very poor audience and made a big loss. As the date neared I got more anxious as the night of their performance was the same night as “Storm Gertrude”, who was going to come with howling wind and lashing rain!

On the night people poured into the hall in their droves, we had limited seating as the dance company needed much of the floor space for their dance production, we had to squeeze people in up the sides of the hall and on the floor just next to the dancing, we got to the point that Frank McConnell of Plan B said we simply could not get anybody else in, but we could not turn people away on such a dreadful night. It was a fabulous show and much enjoyed by everyone.