No matter how long you’ve been in Dunedin’s music scene, it can still feel impossible to keep track of every gig that’s happening throughout the week. Luckily for you, a small team of local musos and fans have put together The Plan Gig Guide, a printed guide featuring a comprehensive list of the week's upcoming gigs and community events. Critic Te Ārohi caught up with two of The Plan’s contributors, Ben Botham and Sam Charlesworth, who are both hoping this new project can bring the local creative community closer together.
“I was trying to figure out when gigs are on and I was pretty bad at it,” said Ben, who arrived in Dunedin last year from the UK. This struggle had already sparked the idea, but meeting Spencer Hall, who runs the printed gig guide in Wellington (The Image), was what really got The Plan in motion.
After showing Ben the process for running the Image (which involves the famously high-tech Google Sheets), Spencer connected Ben to Gilbert May in Dunedin, who now prints 100 copies of The Plan every week. It was then time for Ben to put things into action, recruiting the help of people like Sam, (the singer and guitarist of the Beatniks) and Lily Jane (Radio One’s Promotion and Content Coordinator) to help collate the content of the guide.
The Plan features a striking visual aesthetic; a dense and detailed grid that outlines upcoming gigs at over 14 Dunedin venues, one whole row dedicated to Radio One shows, and a healthy dose of quirky illustrations scattered across the page. Sam thinks this visual style is part of what differentiates The Plan over existing gig guides, like Radio One’s Rad Times.
The sheer volume of information collected in the guide is also impressive, and Ben described the gathering process eloquently. “You literally just have to be an absolute gremlin at it, asking people and looking on Facebook, having like a hundred different tabs open and just looking everywhere [...] It’s not magic.”
The Plan currently has a small but dedicated team of contributors who help with finding gigs, printing, and doing poster runs every Tuesday (you may have already seen it around town). But moving forward, Ben and Sam want to open it up to the wider Dunedin community; “I feel like there’s a lot of very creative people in Dunedin,” says Sam. “We’re super keen to have people just send us things they’ve come up with or designed.”
While still in its early stages, The Plan has already landed some sponsorships from local shops like Static Age and Relics, and increasing support on The Plan’s Patreon page. Moving forward, the team has bigger ideas in the works, including a photography competition, a launch gig, and more overall involvement from the community to keep the Plan up to date and looking fresh every week.
“What I'm trying to do is just add as much as I can to Dunedin music,” says Ben. “I really just want to inspire other people to do as much as they can. The more people doing it, having ideas, making bands and getting together, the more the Dunedin scene can grow. As amazing as it is already, it can be even denser and cooler.” Sam adds, “It’s cool to kind of link everybody together, help everyone out and just engage everybody in a cool thing.”
Hit up The Plan on Instagram (@the.plan.otepoti) or via email (theplanotepoti@gmail.com) to submit your own gigs/artwork, stay up to date, and get involved!
