{"id":646,"date":"2012-10-11T20:25:54","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T20:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/?p=646"},"modified":"2012-10-11T20:30:31","modified_gmt":"2012-10-11T20:30:31","slug":"after-the-oxjam-pop-up-some-reflections-from-the-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/?p=646","title":{"rendered":"After the Oxjam Pop Up – some reflections from Clare Sullivan."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Oxjam Bedford<\/a> team really enjoyed our Empty Shop experience.\u00a0 The opportunity to reach out to a whole new section of the community in such an accessible and engaging way was invaluable, as well as being a lot of fun!\u00a0 The walk-ins we got with people leaving reflecting on an enjoyable experience and seeming interested in what we are trying to do has been a real boost to our team in the run-up to the Takeover.\u00a0 It was particularly great, especially during our second week, to meet so many people who already knew what we were doing – it’s so nice to know when your marketing is working!\u00a0 This opportunity to talk to people face-to-face about the Takeover and gauge their reaction, and see the genuine interest from many of those we spoke to was priceless for us.<\/p>\n

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Staffing the shop was at times a challenge.\u00a0 The team have given a huge amount of time in the last six months and to ask people to give up a whole Saturday (or two in some cases) was difficult.\u00a0 Whilst we managed this in the end, having a bigger team to take care of this would have been helpful – maybe next year! Setting up the shop itself in a single day as well was also a mammoth undertaking.\u00a0 In the event it came together and looked fantastic, but it was a physically and mentally exhausting 12 hours of effort to get us there.<\/p>\n

What did we learn?\u00a0 That we should have listened to you more!\u00a0 Keeping it simple is definitely a hugely valuable lesson.\u00a0 The simpler a concept is, the easier it is to communicate, and therefore the more likely people are to buy into it.\u00a0 I thought that we needed a lot going on to get people into the shop when actually, the concept of the shop itself as a temporary home for something arty seemed to be enough to get people through the door.\u00a0 Catering to families proved to be very important too.\u00a0 The ‘Design a Superhero’ competition from Reaction Visual Media went down a treat (with all ages actually).\u00a0 It would have been good if we’d had something similarly child-friendly for people to engage with at all times.<\/p>\n

395 people visited the shop and we raised\u00a0 \u00a3378.03 in total for Oxfam.<\/p>\n

Some visitor comments:
\n“I luvd it, Milo”
\n“Great unexpected find, great theme and really well put together, thank-you”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What did we learn? … Keeping it simple is definitely a hugely valuable lesson. The simpler a concept is, the easier it is to communicate, and therefore the more likely people are to buy into it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-we-are-bedford-bursary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wearebedford.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}