NextGen Spotlight: Adlais

How did the NextGen Fund help you bring your vision for Adlais to life, especially in reaching audiences outside Cardiff?

The NextGun Fund was pivotal in allowing us to branch outside of Cardiff and South Wales. Due to financial and accessibility constraints, when we started it was simply unfeasible for us to put a gig on outside of South Wales. However, we always wanted to bring the Adlais brand to North Wales and were ecstatic when we were successful with the NextGen Fund grant, allowing us to realise this dream. The event was held in Wrexham which was the perfect location for its great transport links. 

Also, Wrexham already has a rich music history with the brilliant Focus Wales festival being held there every year.

We understand too why it’s for events to often be held in rural areas in Wales, these locations often struggle reaching Cardiff (where most gigs happen in Wales) and yet have vibrant and exciting gig going communities that deserve to be tapped into.

Furthermore, we want to always ensure low ticket prices, again, to ensure as many people as possible can engage with their local music scene and get to experience some of the most exciting musicians in the country without having to travel far or pay out a small fortune for.

We’re incredibly thankful for the opportunity to put on a showcase in North Wales and provide income and opportunities to many wonderful artists and creatives and of course for the venue Tŷ Pawb.

What challenges did you face organising an event of this scale, and how did you overcome them?

We expected challenges along the road as we were planning our largest and most expensive gig to date but it proved more difficult than we initially expected. We wanted to secure a suitable space, incredibly talented artists (in both the English and Welsh languages) and wanted ample time to promote the event. With an incredible support network that I’ve formed in my professional life and through Adlais allowed me to reach out to like-minded creatives to offer suggestions for venues, help with promotion etc.

Those outside of Wales often view the country as one, and in some respects we are one country, but there are cultural differences and similarities in every region of Wales. We wanted to understand our target audience before we began marketing the event, ensuring audiences in North Wales felt that Adlais reflected them and was an event they wanted to attend. Utilising the Welsh language in our event idea and marketing plan was essential and more needs to be done to represent the ever-growing Welsh language.

So, the moral of this story is that I think it’s paramount to have people who can help you along the journey. Thankfully, I work closely with another creative who too embodies the goal and identity of Adlais. Additionally, using Youth Music and our Grant Support Officer to our advantage was hugely advantageous, it could have simply been a running past of an idea of a date or something else but having a second person to run ideas past is beyond helpful!

This event was the first time Adlais hosted a bilingual lineup with four acts. How did that impact the event's atmosphere and audience engagement?

It was incredible! We had four magnificent artists who could not have been a better fit for the event. They deserve a mention: Dafydd Hedd, (Youth Music NextGen Fund artist) Lila Zing, Baby Brave and CHROMA all have such unique, individual sounds. We’ve been wanting to work with them for a while now, so we were over the moon that they agreed to perform.

Although previous lineups for Adlais have all been English language acts, the intention was always to continue towards a bilingual lineup. We also wanted to build a bilingual brand at large as well, with all our captions, posts and playlists all featuring accurate Welsh translations.. This does mean a little extra work, but we feel it’s the right way to do things. We’re aiming to be a brand that represents all of Wales, so creative projects should take those extra steps to ensure their work is as accessible as it can be, ultimately benefiting the artist and the audience. 

What were some of the promotional strategies you used for Adlais, like the new TikTok account and paid ads on Instagram? What did you find most effective?

I’ve started a TikTok recently and used it to try and promote the event. Unlike Instagram, I’m still very new to TikTok but appreciate its incredible potential for reach. I don’t know if there is an exact science to making a popular video, but I’m very keen to continue experimenting and finding what does and doesn’t work. Funding from Youth Music has enabled us to learn more about marketing by trying new techniques, it's a tool that we’ll continue to use in the future.

Paid Instagram ads were hugely successful too. As a new music promoter, naturally the Adlais brand finds itself aligning closer to a younger audience, and Instagram is the perfect tool to target that audience. From managing the budget this time around, we learnt that promoting a gig isn’t cheap. There’s constant articles about the struggles live music faces today, from artists unable to find time to create and venues dealing with post-pandemic audience shortfalls, but there’s also so many charities and people wanting and willing to support grass roots events and it makes all the effort worth it.

What we found effective this time around, unlike with our other events, having a ticket sales link (we used Skiddle for the first time) you naturally receive a lot of promotion through Google indexing your event, gig listing websites finding and putting your gig up on their page etc. And for a small brand with two people behind it, this took a small load off our shoulders. 

However, as with any grass roots effort, all shares, likes, comments and so on go such a long way. So thank you to everyone that did just that, Adlais is your brand as much as it is ours.

Since Adlais 3, what have you learned about promoting Welsh music in both Welsh and English, and why do you think bilingual promotion is essential?

As I alluded to a bit earlier, I think if Adlais is to really promote the best of contemporary Welsh music it needs to be in both the English and Welsh language so we can host events for a range of creative artists and audiences Adlais means Echo in Welsh, and echoing the best new sounds from Wales became our motto thereafter, so it seemed strange to not have had the opportunity to tap into Welsh language music before that.

Additionally, it means that when we put on gigs and events it means we can communicate with venue owners, agents and so on in whichever language they prefer which is essential when working in a culturally diverse country like Wales.

But most important to Adlais is the want to be as accommodating as possible and that meant being bilingual. There’s still more we can do to ensure that we better accommodate both languages, but I’m happy with our efforts so far. It would be remiss of me not to mention my friend, Osian Andrew who does an incredible job ensuring that we reach those Welsh language targets we set ourselves – diolch (thank you)!

What role did local partnerships, like with the venue Tŷ Pawb, play in the success of Adlais? How do you see these relationships evolving?

It was pivotal. When we do these events, we want to have a lasting positive relationship with everyone that comes into contact with the Adlais brand. From someone in the crowd, to the engineer and to the acts, having a consistently positive reputation is essential to the success of any brand or business. It’s been really promising to hear the positive feedback from those we’ve worked with in the past and we hope to work with them again in the future. 

Tŷ Pawb were incredible in attracting a local audience in Wrexham. We’re always mindful that although we’re keen to tap into all corners of Wales, we’re a new brand and some may not have heard of us or even some of our not-so-local acts. Our workaround is that we always ensure we’ve got at least one local act, while also working closely with venues and creatives in the area to make the event as appealing to local gig-goers.

I always want to ensure that Adlais is never just a personal development for myself, I want to bring other creative individuals on our journey and do everything in Adlais’ power to promote them as much as we promote ourselves.

How has running this event with the support of the NextGen Fund helped you develop new skills in budgeting, agent negotiation, and content creation?

It was pivotal. Prior to the support from the NextGen Fund we couldn’t have imagined of being able to deal with artists that have agents since we were operating on such small budgets and often digging deep into our own pockets. It must be said that the kindness of venues really does go a long way and that’s why I think it’s paramount to ensure a positive relationship with everyone we come into contact with in putting on our events. When you get funding from Youth Music, you’re representing the whole organisation, not just you and your brand. 

It was great having the opportunity to negotiate fees and working with our biggest budget to date for the first time. It must be said that something as simple as creating a spreadsheet with predicted and actual expenses really helped map out what we could do with the money we attained. We always ensure everyone is paid a fair and respectable amount for their work. I respect and deeply understand just how difficult it is to make any profit in the creative industries today, so earning a small stipend for our work and our artists from Youth Music has been incredibly rewarding and really helped elevate Adlais to the next stage.

Finally, our to content creation strategy become front and centre for us on this 3rd gig due to our knowledge of the fact that many of our followers and audience are still very South Wales heavy and we knew we had to create cut-through content and engage with as much as possible with the venue and Baby Brave who are based in Wrexham. Both of whom were incredibly supportive with online, in-person and social media promotion. For us, for the first time on this 3^rd event the priority of video content. The cut through of video content on social media sites cannot be understated. Reels & TikTok have such powerful distribution compared to picture only posts and this is something we’ve been navigating and understanding better every day. I use the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of tools to create all of our content, this includes popular applications like Photoshop & Premiere Pro.

Looking at Adlais’ future, what are your goals for the series, especially with the plans for Adlais 4? Do you see yourself expanding further across Wales?

We are so excited for the future of Adlais. We’re already brainstorming ideas for future gigs, more exciting content and bigger and better ideas, all while ensuring we hit our core values of a bilingual brand that will hopefully reach all corners of Wales. This is a big endeavour, yet the challenge excites us! We are already planning to reach a new corner of Wales that we’ve yet to reach and we’re incredibly excited by it. While we’re incredibly excited about this and all aspects of Adlais, we appreciate and understand just how important and critical creating an attractive and engaging product is and the amount of time and money that is required to push a grass roots brand from nothing to something.

Although, for everyone reading, we can’t under-state how beneficial Youth Music has been in the early chapters of our Adlais story, and I can’t encourage anyone enough to apply to any initiatives Youth Music is offering!

Lastly, what do you want the legacy of Adlais to be within the Welsh music scene?

The Welsh music scene really is expanding with so many promoters, artists and creatives all wanting and willing to chip in to our diverse creative pallet. Though I wish for Adlais to be a brand that inspires and excites those in all parts of Wales to support and engage in the Welsh music scene. I wish for Adlais to continue creating a boost in local economies in Welsh towns and inspire a buzz for music lovers in those communities too.

Since starting Adlais, I always wanted it to exist far removed from my own personal gain and for it to be a social enterprise and be a hub for Welsh music in both the English and Welsh language. It’s also a place for all Welsh identities, appealing to individuals and audiences across Wales in a way that represents everyone. It’s a big dream but a dream that we won’t stop trying to achieve for a very, very long time. Perhaps we’re already living it.