Day: 27 November 2016

tour-finder.org is a free resource for companies and artists to post listings about their tour-ready productions, and for bookers to easily search for shows for their programme.

Launched on Thursday 4th November the site already features over 100 live tour listings available to book by users.

The new digital resource is delivered by Farnham Maltings, who are also responsible for the management of house (the south east touring and audience development initiative) and caravan (an initiative to encourage England-based theatre makers to think and work internationally).

Given the numerous challenges facing the touring sector, tour-finder.org is one way in which Farnham Maltings hope to make touring and booking productions more efficient and contribute to ensuring a sustainable, vibrant touring sector across England.

The site aims to improve touring in England and make it easier for programmers to find work for their seasons. Prorgammers can search by genre, dates and region to find the latest relevant touring work in seconds. And artists will be able to add their listing simply through an online portal in minutes.

Intended to help artists book further reaching tours and programmers to fill the last few slots in their season, tour-finder.org operates like a shop window, featuring listings of current tours available to book. To encourage best practice, each listing will feature content on target audiences, accessibility and technical specifications, alongside other common content such as press and film footage. Every listing will have a shelf-life of eight weeks and can be renewed three times, meaning that content will be kept fresh and current.

Gavin Stride, Director of Farnham Maltings said about the launch “tour-finder.org is not a replacement for the sheer graft of booking a tour. Our hope is that tour-finder will make it slightly easier for programmers to find what work is touring when and for companies to add to their existing dates, perhaps finding extra dates to make a tour more viable or to introduce venues new to their work”

The site has already been visited by 100’s of arts professionals. The platform is supported by Arts Council England and it will continue to develop as more users utilise the resource.