Bringing the Famous Spiegeltent to Melbourne

In my time working at Arts Centre Melbourne I spent the good part of 5 years working on presenting the Famous Spiegeltent on the Arts Centre forecourt. The Famous Spiegeltent is a wonderful travelling Belgian mirror tent with an impressive pedigree – most famously hosting a performance by Marlene Dietrich in the 1930’s.

To visitors, the Spiegeltent mysteriously appears for up to three months at a time in Melbourne, and then disappears again to another location on her touring circuit. The Spiegeltent arriving is an exciting time, but behind the scenes getting it to Melbourne each year is a highly complex project.

Over the years there have been a number of different models in place for managing the Spiegeltent in Melbourne, but in recent years Arts Centre Melbourne has taken on an active role in reinvigorating the atmosphere and programming on offer.

Some of the key challenges I faced in my time managing the Spiegeltent project included

·         Co-ordinating internal communications between different business units

·         Forming an appropriate programming strategy

·         Developing a cohesive cross-organisational budget

·         Creating responsive and adaptive staffing models

·         Ensuring the marketing strategy reflected the creative brief

Whilst bringing the Famous Spiegeltent to Melbourne requires a huge amount of work, there is always a great sense of achievement (and just a little bit of magic) when she’s up and open for business. Here’s a toast to all those involved!