SAMA Festival
Challenge
When asked to ‘turn heads and grab hearts’ for the UK’s biggest South Asian music and arts festival, we didn’t baulk at the challenge.
Staged in the North East and organised by GemArts, Kalapremi and Pakistan Cultural Society, the festival features performances by some of the best musicians, DJs, artists, and dancers from across the UK and South Asia. As well as performances, there are arts and crafts, exhibitions, workshops and a film and food festival.
Although a large event, the festival is only in its second year and so needs to convert casual interest into actual involvement across multiple audiences. These include the South Asian/ethnic community, local schools, universities and businesses, as well as the wider national mass market.
Idea
We created a distinctive visual style that conveyed all the colours, flavours, textures and sounds of South Asian culture. It worked with their existing logo and came to life across a wide variety of applications.
The core of our campaign was photographic and used vibrant and highly evocative images of musicians and dancers. This photography was supported by a series of graphic symbols taken from Pakistani textiles which neatly brought together the different threads of the festival and served as useful icons for our website, map and programme designs.
Our campaign successfully communicated the fun and excitement of the festival, but also emphasised its authentic and proud origins.
Response
From the best of Bollywood to Rajasthani folk musicians, the 2008 SAMA Festival had it all.
Our campaign gave the festival a consistent and confident visual language; an owned voice, a way of speaking. It was this seamless approach to their communications that helped stimulate sell out performances, a high media profile and attract over 10,000 people to the final event on the Gateshead riverside.