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Chicago Humanities Festival
Creative Consortium, Ltd. Case Study

The Chicago Humanities Festival (Festival) began in 1989 as a dream shared by a determined group of Chicago cultural leaders eager to extend the riches of the humanities to all who might benefit – that is, everyone. It started as a one-day event and has grown, in almost 20 years, to a festival spanning three weeks, multiple venues and hundreds of speakers and artistic presentations.

Although as individuals we have attended many of the Festival’s offerings over the years, Creative Consortium (CC) became involved professionally in 2006 when we were asked to announce the appointment of Lawrence Weschler as Artistic Director for the Festival. What on the surface seemed like a simple task, that of announcing a renowned intellectual to a new position created for him, the process was fraught with issues stemming from some sticky personnel issues of recent years. We developed crisis plans and communicated Weschler's appointment in a seamless, non-controversial way.

In 2007, the year following Weschler’s appointment, Stuart Flack was chosen as the new Executive Director for the Festival and we were once again tapped to spread the word. Shortly thereafter we were chosen to publicize the upcoming Festival and Women’s Board Gala. This task was both exciting and given the complex nature of the topic for last year, very challenging.

In 2007, the Festival explored the compelling and timely issue of global warming. "Climate of Concern", as it was called, explored climate disruption, sustainability, and humankind’s relationship to the natural world we all share. In light of the evidence for global warming and the strong resurgence of the green movement, this was and is an especially important time to explore these ideas – especially in the very "green" confines of Chicago.

Because this Festival was, perhaps more than most, a Festival of interconnectivity, unexpected consequences and convergences around a critically important idea – the fate of our planet – we believed that the more familiar the press was with the program, the speakers, how the events were chosen/constructed, the more able they would be to interpret the big ideas and the issues that knitted this spectacular series of events together. We were asked to focus on several major events, however we believed, and were proven correct, that there were many others that warranted attention and should be presented to the press as newsworthy. The special events we were asked to focus on, seeking national exposure, included:

• Acts of Concern (Six one-act plays)
• The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef (with previews at the Hull House Museum and an extended exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center). CC coordinated PR efforts with the other organizations involved
• Series about the End of the World
• Arctic Installation – coordinated with other PR efforts
• Cape Farewell (with David Buckland, Max Easterley and others) – coordinated with Millennium Park PR efforts

CC was further asked to focus our attention on securing interviews for the Artistic Director (and later the Executive Director) with the editorial boards of the major daily newspapers and the executive producers for the public television station and National Public Radio in Chicago to better explain the interconnectiveness of the program events/presenters as well as the compelling message of the Festival so that they would be better interpreters to their reading/listening/viewing publics. This was accomplished most notably by a meeting at the Chicago Tribune attended by 12 editors and reporters (including the editors of the Tempo section and the Sunday magazine) that resulted in multiple stories and listings for the entire Festival and Gala. Radio and TV followed suit by extensive interviews on WTTW's Chicago Tonight, WBEZ's 848 and Hello Beautiful, ABC7's Chicagoing and other TV and radio outlets.

Because of the complexity of the Festival, the scope of our work extended to every program and every venue, resulting in our working with all the Festival partners, their PR firms, and in many cases, the speakers and performers and their PR representatives.

One of the acknowledged challenges the Festival faced was how to extend their audience from one that was decidedly white, liberal and middle-aged to one that was multicultural, multiracial and younger. We looked carefully at all channels of communication and successfully reached those new audiences through blogs and community media as well through traditional channels.

The scope of work also included the production of Festival and Gala calendar announcements, media alerts and general news releases, targeted individual pitches on highlighted programs, a Festival Fact Sheet and post Gala releases to social media.