Chalking Project, part 2
A continuation of Chalking Project, part 1.
Part of a series of posts on Glasgow 2024, a Worldcon for our Futures, which was this year's World Science Fiction Convention.
We made sure that the walking route was included on the site map which went out to our attendees. We ordered signage, indoors and out, including four weather-resistant boards, to deal with the frequent risk of wind and rain in Glasgow. And we involved the Programme team, scheduling daily chalking sessions (weather permitting) on that route.
The chalking sessions were the real pride and joy of the project. We envisioned a carpet of colourful, abstract shapes, over or by which our attendees could walk between venues. The chalking would provide the visual connection, making the route literally easier to notice and see. The daily sessions would mean that lots of people would have physically interacted with the route, and would viscerally know where it was. We recruited enthusiastic staff to oversee the project, and ordered in lots of chalk, plus watering cans in case "erasing" anything was necessary. (The highlight of ordering the chalk was the moment when one of the staff said "I know a guy who sells chalk by the metre.") The sessions were put into the programme schedule, to encourage attendees to show up for the fun of drawing on a large outdoor canvas.
But other things change. We had the venue's permission to do the chalking from months in advance of the convention, but by the time of our event, the security team had changed. Between a new team with new opinions, and the last-minute development of political rallies in the city centre during the convention weekend, we only ended up having a single chalking session. Our venue cancelled the rest of them.
By the next day, the rain had washed away the last of the chalking. (It didn't rain too much during the event, but it did rain.) We had withdrawn the daily sessions from the programme schedule so that they did not show up in ConClár, our programme guide.
Did our chalking project work? I think it helped relieve congestion in the corridor; we didn't get too many complaints about it. The viability of the side doors as a route depended on both venues keeping the side doors open, which they mostly did, but not entirely reliably. The mostly-good weather we had during the event certainly helped a great deal.
We did disappoint some excited chalk-artists who were looking forward to more daily drawing sessions, but hopefully they found outlet in one of the wide range of other ways to create at the convention, from crafting areas in Hall 4 to hands-on workshops in the art track.
At the time, it felt like the largest project which MSS ended up needing to cancel. Even trying to bring it about, however, created a lot of positive results in terms of awareness of the outside route and ensuring its presence on site maps. Any reduction in queues seemed worth having.
