Vyksa is an industrial town in Russian province with 56 000 population. The town is growing and modern enterprises on the territory of the city need qualified specialists with technical knowledge.

However, younger generations tend to leave the town. People’s outflow leads to a population decrease and “city age hardening”.

The directorship of the city-forming plant UMC (OMK) decided to implement a social project dedicated to the town development and youth attraction. International new culture festival was the tool. In 2013 “Art-Ovrag” invited famous European and US artists to take part: Rob Mulholland, Eve Bailey, Philippe Baudelocque, STOMP!, etc.

Goals:

• To make Vyksa an interesting city for young people to work and live in. We wanted to engage the youth and make it participate in the festival by suggesting their ideas of territory improvement;

• PR task was to raise the awareness level and convince people living in Vyksa that their own town is unique.

Strategy:

• The main communication idea was to present Vyksa as a unique culture venue, the city that lives and breathes in the rhythm of modern culture life, sets trends in contemporary art and territory development.

• The strategic idea of the festival was engagement of city population and festival’s visitors in the process. One of the tasks was to show that modern art can become a tool for solving infrastructure problems.

Key PR-elements:

• Building strong media relations

• Involving international artists into the PR campaign

• Engage population into the communication process

Preparation (February 2013)

• Thorough preparation of festival programme

• Creation of media relations structure and SMM content plan

• Communication with regional authorities and local population

Before/During the festival (March, 2013-July,2013)

• Communities were created in social networks to tell people about the festival and to compare it with the international ones;

• Cycle of lectures of international artists were held in Moscow

• 10 media partners were supporting the festival

• In frames of “Art-Ovrag” the “Balancing pavilion” contest for designers and architects from all over the world took place. 600 projects from 12 countries were received and only one of them was brought to life at the festival;

• Workshops for the locals were held in Vyksa

• 50 journalists went to Vyksa for the festival

• More than 150 volunteers were involved into the organization of “Art-Ovrag”

Tangible results:

• Free bike rent has become a popular venue

• “Art-Ovrag” appeared on “Accessibility map” that shows objects available for physically handicapped people

• Acknowledgement by the leading street-art and advertising portal as “The best street-art 2013”

• “Art-Ovrag” was presented at Russian forum “City of the future”

• The growing number of local volunteers – 150 people

• Citizens taking active part in the discussions on the online city-forum

Quantifiable results:

• 5000 people took part in Vyksa art workshops

• More than 15 000 visitors in three festival days

• Grand press-tour for 50 journalists including 5 TV channels

• Over 200 publications

• More than 300 contest participants from different countries: Spain, France, UK, etc.

• Media Outreach – 22 247 215 people

• In comparison with 2012 the number of press-materials increased almost 3 times