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When schools and recreational facilities were shut down earlier this year, the Town of Barrhead’s parks and recreation department began making online videos for Youtube and Facebook about arts and crafts activities and local facilities to help keep children entertained.
While schools are no longer (completely) shut down and you can go to the Barrhead Regional Aquatic Centre again, albeit with some restrictions, the Town of Barrhead sees a potential value in continuing to make those videos.
Chief administrative officer Edward LeBlanc detailed those plans in a report to town councillors during their Nov. 24 meeting where he asked if they had any input on the videos’ potential direction.
LeBlanc said the parks and recreation department deserves credit for learning video production and adapting to the lockdown, adding that they showed a lot of initiative.
In total, they published about 50 videos between one to seven minutes in length from May 6 to Oct. 30.
Most of the videos never accumulated more than a few dozen views, though some got several hundred; the most popular was a video on the dog park, which actually got over 2,000 views.
While they ranged in length, the more popular videos tended to be two to three minutes long.
As the year wore on and some of the severe COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, LeBlanc said administration saw a potential benefit in continuing to produce these videos, albeit with content re-focused on three strategic pillars: public service announcements (PSAs), economic development and Barrhead tourism.
LeBlanc said there will be a discussion with the parks and recreation department in the near future about this new direction. However, he first wanted council to give their input, particularly on the three strategic pillars.
“If council is happy with administration’s focus, then we really don’t need any further direction,” LeBlanc added.
When asked how long it took to produce these videos, communications co-ordinator Jennifer Pederson indicated the filming of one video on the dog park took perhaps an hour, while editing took a couple of hours. Storyboarding (ie. planning out the scenes of the video) also took some time.
In terms of actual expense, LeBlanc said that based on his discussions with parks and recreation director Shallon Touet, it cost about $800 in terms of time and resources for two staff members to make two videos a week.
LeBlanc also noted the 2021 draft operating budget includes $7,500 for video and camera production equipment upgrades.
Coun. Don Smith suggested the town should take a “less is more” approach to these videos to make them more meaningful, noting he would only like to see one a week.
While it was suggested that the focus of future videos be on the town of Barrhead — some of the videos were set outside of town, such as a tour of a local dairy farm — mayor Dave McKenzie said they didn’t want to “corral” the department too much.
He added that there would be a lot of cross-over and overlap between videos, such as a PSA that also posed some tourism benefit.
Coun. Ty Assaf added that because recreation is a shared service with the County of Barrhead, there would also be that overlap. He also suggested that there be more community involvement in the videos.
In the end, town council passed a motion to accept the Youtube/Facebook Viewership Report for information.
