Background

Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh oldest Cinema. We screen non-mainstream, art-house, foreign language and education films.

Recognising that new parents often have to suspend their cinema-going once baby arrives, we decided to provide special screenings aimed specifically at parents/carers who can bring their baby to the cinema without having to worry about a babysitter and without having to leave the cinema if baby cries or needs to feed.

Practicalities

The screening are scheduled to take place every second Thursday at 10.30am.  Entry is only available for a carer, plus one other adult accompanied by a baby under 12 months.  Price is £3.50 or £2.50 concession and includes free tea or coffee.

• Identify specific outcomes that you wanted to achieve

To build an audience for our “Big Scream” events, this being for us, a brand new audience, and to make them cost efficient to allow us to continue to run them.

• Describe the activities and resources that you used

The screenings don’t involve much more over and above our normal day-to-day running.  We do have to open a few hours earlier than usual and made sure we installed baby-changing facilities and provided bottle-warming facilities. We also would prefer to remain within our normal programming objectives, i.e. we do not screen “blockbuster” films. However we do hope to have feedback from future audiences and will respond to their suggestions on programming of the events.  Also, due to the legalities of film certification, we have found that we are limited to screening certificate PG, 12 and 12A only. This restricts us somewhat and means we will often have to bring in specific films rather than borrow films from our normal programme, resulting in a significant increase in running costs.

• Did you achieve these outcomes or were there other outcomes that were unanticipated?

Our first event took place on October 23 2003 and we were delighted with our first audience of 31.  We anticipated that the events would need word of mouth to build and felt this was a healthy enough beginning.

Marketing and Audience Development

• Who was your target audience and how did you reach them? How did you publicise your event/project? What worked and what didn’t?

Our target audience was specifically new parents or carers of young babies. 

We publicised the event in all our usual places, i.e. our own printed brochure, web site, email list and in-house publicity.  In addition, we sent flyers to a selection of nurseries and parent/baby groups.

We also had a good response from local and national press that resulted in a full page in the Herald, a half page in the Edinburgh Evening News, two radio interviews and good word of mouth.

• How do you measure/monitor the success or otherwise of your project? How did you collect evidence to show that your targets were achieved?

Simply on ticket sales.  We have to pay film distributors each time we screen their films so it is crucial that our audiences build to a level to cover these costs plus the extra staffing etc costs.

Lessons learned?

• Would you change if anything about your approach to your initiative or the initiative itself? Do you have any other tips/advice for others embarking on their projects?

For us, this was such a new initiative but we are part of a wider company, which includes several sites running similar schemes in England.  We therefore spoke at length to the other sites and identified any issues beforehand.  We also spoke to new parents in an effort to ascertain if the initiative would be welcomed.   Staff had to be well briefed, especially given the extra health & safety considerations and equally importantly, to make sure the visit was as welcoming and as simple for the parents/carers as possible. 

The Future

• Will your project continue? Do you have any other plans to introduce any other initiatives?

We hope to continue with the Big Scream screenings.  We also intend to set up a Saturday morning Kid’s Club for young children, screening specific children’s films and providing a party overseen by a dedicated member of staff before the start of each film.