About UnderbellyEstablished in 2001 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Underbelly is a UK based live entertainment company specialising in the creation, management and programming of large-scale cultural events and festivals. We currently run 6 major events/festivals in the UK.

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Underbelly at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Underbelly at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is one of the largest venue operations at the largest arts festi-val in the world. We manage 15 per-formance venues, employ 370 staff, programme 141 shows per day and sell 260,000 tickets in 3.5 weeks every August.

Udderbelly Festival at Southbank Centre, London. We launched Udderbelly Festival with our temporary performance venue in the shape of an upside down cow in 2009. Now in its 5th year, Udderbel-ly Festival has become an iconic part of London’s cultural summer calendar with a 12 weeks season of music, cir-cus, comedy and family shows on the banks of the Thames. The festival was named ‘Best London Festival’ at the 2012 London Lifestyle Awards.

London Wonderground at Southbank Centre, London. In 2012 we launched a new festival in conjunction with Southbank Centre based around a programme of circus, cabaret and sideshow. London Won-derground runs for 5 months from May to September with a beautiful 1920s original Spiegeltent as perfor-mance venue. The festival was na-med ‘Best Newcomer’ at the London Cabaret Awards in 2012.

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Comedy Hullabaloo, Stratford upon Avon. We partnered with the Royal Shake-speare Company in 2013 to create a four days comedy festival in May in Stratford upon Avon. We program-med 30 comedians over 4 venues and created a fantastic riverside bar and outdoor festival terrace.

West End Live, Trafalgar Square, London. In 2013, we were awarded the con-tract to produce a weekend concert in Trafalgar Square by Westminster City Council and the Society of Lon-don Theatre for the next three years. West End Live invites all of the ma-jor London musicals to perform on a stage in front of 500,000 people over the course of a June weekend.

Edinburgh’s Christmas & Hogmanay. In 2013, we were awarded the con-tract to run all of the Edinburgh’s of-ficial Christmas celebrations for the next three years. The contract invol-ves producing civic events and attrac-tions such as Christmas markets, an ice rink, live shows and performan-ce, funfair attractions and the offi-cial turning on of the Christmas lights around the city when 30,000 people gather on Edinburgh’s George Street to celebrate the start of the Christmas season. We are also co-producers of Edinburgh’s world famous Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve) celebrations.

We estimate that by the end of 2013 we will have sold over 500,000 tickets to our events and festivals and that over 3.5 million visitors will have passed through the events that we have operated during the year.

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In addition to our festival and events arms, Underbelly also produces and co-produces shows for UK and in-ternational touring through our Underbelly Productions department. Past and current productions include: Limbo • Circa: Wunderkammer • Cantina • Five Guys Named Moe (in association with Cameron Mackintosh) • The Magnets • Free Run • Brazil! Brazil! • The Vocal Orchestra • Havana Rumba • Tom Tom Crew

8 May - 30 SEPTEMBER

HHHHCanTina iS ThE MoST divinEly dECadEnT and diSConCERTing

EnTERTainMEnT in Town

Charles Spencer, daily Telegraph

HHHH CanTina iS

ClEaRly ThE hoTTEST TiCkET

in Town.Bruce dessau,

Evening Standard

A5 flyer 2.indd 1 04/07/2012 13:53

5.00PM (6.00PM)31 JULY - 26 AUGUST 2013

EDIN_Wunderkammer_A5.indd 1 26/07/2013 10:02

EFFERVESCENT, ENERGETIC

AUDIENCE GRABBINGThe Times

LIMITED SEASON9 APRIL - 27 MAY

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Who we´ve worked withOrganisations & Partners

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Who we´ve worked withSponsors

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Udderbelly Festival named Best London Festival at the London Lifestyle Awards 2012

London Wonderground named Best New-comer at the UK Cabaret Awards 2012

London Wonderground nominated for Best New Festival and Best Metropolitan Fe-stival at the UK Festival Awards 2012

Underbelly nominated for Promoter of the Year at the UK Festival Awards 2012

Underbelly directors, Ed Bartlam and Char-lie Wood, named for the last three years in the Stage Newspaper’s Top 100 Peo-ple in British Theatre

Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood named in the Time Out Culture 100 List of the most in-fluential people in London in 2012.

Recent Awards a

nd Nominations

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WHAT IS UDDERBELLY FESTIVAL?

“Udderbelly Festival has made a significant impact on Londoners thanks to its excellent programme and distinctive venue – performances are held in a huge, partially inflated upside down purple cow. “

Daily Telegraph

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In 2006, we built a 410 capacity theatre tent called Udderbelly for the Edinburgh Fringe. Full raked, with a hor-seshoe seating configuration and an intimate feel, Udderbelly was like most normal theatres… except for what it looked like. Because Udderbelly is a very large, upside down purple cow! Measuring 24.5m in length, 15m in width and over 15m in height, Udderbelly is a visually arresting structure.

In 2009, following seasons in both Edinburgh and Brighton, we brought Udderbelly to London’s Southbank Centre and launched Udderbelly Festival - a short season of the very best in affordable comedy, cabaret, circus and family shows. Now in its 5th year, Udderbelly Festival has grown from an initial 6 weeks season in 2009 to a 13 weeks season in 2013.

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“The eponymous inflatable upside down purple cow has become a firm favourite in the Southbank Centre’s cultural calendar.“ Evening Standard

The overriding ethos behind Udderbelly Festival is to create a popular and affordable cultural ‘destination’ for a wide-ranging audience. Underbelly is playful, accessible and cheeky. It seeks to encourage people to watch a show and enjoy a cultural night out by being different to people’s perceptions of what a cul-tural night out might be. We place very great empha-sis on creating an overall experience or ‘dwell time’. We want our audience to enjoy Udderbelly Festival as a destination in itself and not just a place to see a show. In London, we have created one of the largest outdoor bars in central London. This is a key compo-nent of Udderbelly Festival. A large percentage of our audience come to Udderbelly Festival simply to have a drink and something to eat. They use it as a social gathering place – a place to meet friends, family and work colleagues.

“This has become a fabulous quirky fixture; an upside down purple cow-shaped venue that sits on London’s Southbank for a few months before heading north of the border.“ The Times

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“You can bet on a stupendously good line up of comedy, circus and cabaret acts over three months.” The Independent

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Our programming and pricing model, based on our experience at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, has been a major re-ason for the success of Udderbelly Festival in London.

• We only programme shows that are between 50 mins and 85 mins long with no interval.

• We only programme shows that allow us to charge a reasonable and affordable ticket price. In London, our ave-rage ticket price is £15. Prices range from £10 to £20 depending on the show.

• We try and programme a very varied programme of shows that appeal to a wide demographic and taste.

• We programme multiple shows in one day. In London, we programme two shows per day (7pm and 9pm) during the week, an extra late show on Friday evenings (10.30pm) and 4-5 shows during the day and evening at the weekends. We programme extra daytime family shows during the week when we are open in school holidays.

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In 2012, we conducted major audience research at Udderbelly Festival:

• 87% of respondents aged 18-39 years old

• 49% were first time visitors

• 27% expected to stay 2 hours; 22% 3 hours; 11% more than 3 hours. (60% 2-3+ hours)

• 82% said that they would return

In 2013, Udderbelly received 350 mentions in over 50 publications. This had an estimated reach of 56.5 million people (based on paper and magazine circulation figures and unique visitors to websites).

Whether you like the look of the purple cow or not, there can be no doubt that the Udderbelly invokes a reaction from those that see it and grabs attention. And tens of thousands of people in Edinburgh and London have loved watching a show in Udderbelly and soaking up the unique Udderbelly Festival atmosphere.

UDDERBELLY FESTIVAL, HONG KONG

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Key Facts • We will bring a 2/3 weeks festival of music, circus, cabaret and family shows to Hong Kong.

• We will programme approximately 2 shows per day during the week and 3-5 shows per day at the weekends.

• We will programme a mixture of international shows (with a particular focus on UK productions) alongside shows from the local Hong Kong cultural scene.

• In keeping with our work in the UK, we will make Udderbelly Festival Hong Kong affordable and accessible for the local audience.

• We will work with local partners to create a fantastic F&B area around the Udderbelly – we like to call this area The Pasture. This is a crucial component to Udderbelly Festival. We want people to come and soak up the atmosphere, to meet with friends for a drink and something to eat and, of course, to then see a show. It is about creating an immersive and genuine festival experience. It’s about creating a genuine destination for socialising.

• We will employ a local workforce.

• We would like to incorporate some of the workshop and training schemes that we have successfully run in the UK into Udderbelly Festival Hong Kong.

Following the success of Udderbelly Festival in the UK we would now like to launch an Udderbelly Festival in Asia. We believe that there is an exciting opportunity to make Hong Kong the first de-stination for the festival in Asia and in doing so make Hong Kong the launch city for the festival in the southern hemisphere.

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Programming We will bring two headline shows to the festival that will share the main evening performance slot. These shows will be non-language based circus and/or music shows. They will be existing and critically acclaimed productions from either the UK or Europe/Australia but new to Hong Kong. Alongside the headline shows we will programme a combination of international family, comedy and music shows and local talent and acts. In London, we currently run a partnership with Time Out London whereby they curate specific nights for us and use their brand and extensive knowledge of the London music and cabaret scene to book exciting up and coming local acts. We would be keen to do something similar in Hong Kong. We would like to work with local programming partners. Unlike Udderbelly Fe-stival London, we do not envisage presenting a large comedy programme but we would like to bring a small collec-tion of reasonably high profile UK comedians to the festival to play to both the local and expat audience.

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Affordability and Accessibility Udderbelly Festival has to be acces-sible and affordable. They are two of the overriding principles of the festi-val. By accessible we mean a multi genre programme that aims to have ‘something for everybody’ and encou-rages those that don’t see traditional theatre and the arts as something for them to rethink their expectations and ‘have a go’. By affordable we mean a programme that offers sensitive ti-cket pricing that attempts to give our audience a really good value evening out. Clearly, some shows need to be more expensive than others but the most important thing is that we work within a price bracket that generally errs on the side of value rather than being expensive.

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StaffingWe want to employ a great local team to work on the va-rious elements of the festival – front of house, box office, technical, security, crewing and bar. We will work with a lo-cal marketing agency and press agency to build the profile of the event. We will supplement this local team with some of our core UK production crew who we will need specifical-ly to build and take down the Udderbelly structure.

Training and Workshop Initiatives An important part of Udderbelly Festival in London has been the Training Academy. Underbelly and Southbank Centre take 20 young people from South London who have ne-ver had any exposure to live events and performance and give them a six weeks course in everything that there is to know about running a festival. They shadow our staff, they work on all aspects of the event and then at the end of the course they produce their own show in Udderbelly. They have to do everything – book the acts, market the show, sell the tickets, stage manage, work with lighting and sound designers and essentially deliver the show. It’s been an enormously successful and powerful initiative. A number of Training Academy members now have full time jobs in the arts and live events. We are very keen to launch a simi-lar initiative for Udderbelly Hong Kong. We would work with local partners and youth organisations to create an initiative that was specific to the Hong Kong event but with the same overarching ambition – to give young people a taste and some experience of live event / festival management.

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NEXT STEPS Two Routes to Udderbelly Festival Hong Kong

We have two options in how we progress our plans.

For option (1) we are looking for partners to support us with the operational and running costs of the festival.

For option (2) we are looking for partners to support us with the capital cost of the new tent construction as well as the operational costs of the festival.

(1) Use the existing Udderbelly tentThe current, 410 capacity, tent is needed in the UK between late March and the end of August for our seasons in London and Edinburgh. We therefore have a window between September and February in which to bring it to Hong Kong. We would need to allow 6-8 weeks for shipping each way.

(2) Build a new tent for AsiaWe have begun discussions with our tent manufacturer in Holland about building a larger, 30m x 20m Udder-belly tent for the southern hemisphere. This new and improved tent would seat 600+. It would live in the sou-thern hemisphere and would give us the opportunity to stage an Udderbelly Festival at anytime of the year rather than just the September to February time window.

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What do we need? • Financial support for the creation and operation of the

festival. This could be a combination of cultural organi-sations and festivals, government agencies, commer-cial partners and private individuals.

• A partner venue / site in a great location.

• Sponsorship support.

• F & B partners.

• Local production / event management partners.

• Local marketing / press agency partners.

• Local programming partners.

“What better way to spend the evening than watching the sun go down in one of London’s biggest outdoor bars, then heading inside a giant inflatable cow to laugh the night away.” Evening Standard

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SUMMARY We believe that Hong Kong needs an upside down purple cow! Just ask London and Edinburgh…

We believe that Udderbelly Festival can become a viable touring festival in Asia and we think that Hong Kong, as the leading city in Asia, should be the first city to present Udderbelly Festival in Asia.

Udderbelly Festival does not take itself too seriously. Udderbelly is about engaging with the local audience and encouraging that audience to come and see a live show in a relaxed, informal environment. However, Udderbelly is also about maintaining ex-tremely high production values. This is not just a tent with a few seats inside. This is a proper theatrical space with a full lighting and sound rig and fully raked seats. So many people have com-mented on how they feel as though they are in a permanent theatre when they are watching a show in Udderbelly.

We want to work with local partners to bring what we have done so successfully in the UK to Hong Kong and Asia. We belie-ve that we have a unique and proven festival concept that can become a very special part of Hong Kong’s cultural year.

One thing is for sure; a 15 metres high purple cow is definitely going to attract Hong Kong’s attention!

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For further enquiries and information:

Ed Bartlam Director ed@underbelly.co.uk Office +44 207 307 8480 Mobile +44 7884 445 184

Underbelly Ltd 5 Bywell PlaceLondon W1T 3DNUnited Kingdom www.underbelly.co.uk