Kirkland Productions is an agency within the campus market that really understands that sometimes college activities programming should be about more than just entertainment. Sure, booking acts that are truly entertaining is a top priority for the company’s founder and owner Gina Kirkland, but more often than not you’ll also get a dose of culture, education and heck, maybe even a little bit of enlightenment.

Gina initially got into the business as a planner for a community college in the helium capital of the world. “I started as an event planner in 1993 for my school, Amarillo College. I ended up going into teaching with my literature degree, but I put myself through college as a planner not only for my campus, but also for a few corporations and hotels.”

Eventually Gina realized the teacher’s life wasn’t for her and found she liked working in entertainment. “When I decided teaching wasn’t for me, I went back to corporate event planning and happened to find a couple of local artists who were looking for help getting into the college market. They asked if I knew anything about it and of course I did since I had been a student activities coordinator on my campus. I started out just helping, I didn’t intend to start a company at all.”

This was in 1999 and since 2000, Gina has focused the majority of her energy into providing great artists for America’s campuses. She enjoys focusing specifically on entertainers and acts with a cultural or academic appeal. The market is already flooded with standard contemporary music and comedy acts, so the agency enjoys offering something different, though Kirkland Productions has an interesting dichotomy. “We focus a little bit less on entertainment and a little bit more on the academic side of things, although we do have a novelty division, which completely strays from everything else we do (laughs). It’s funny, because a lot of artists can be really touchy about what agency they want to work with based on that agency’s full roster and the company they will be in. Some people bristled at first, but what my artists have found is that the novelty division has been a really nice way to establish good relationships with campuses. Once we have those relationships, they begin to look at more extensive offerings and live acts that take a little bit more programming time. It has actually worked out really well.”

A wide variety of topics fall under the culturally aware and educational headings that Kirkland provides, with matters including women’s issues, culture, race and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues among others. And unlike many issue-based agencies, Kirkland Productions is far from a lecture-only agency. “What we have found is that lecture is not always the best way to get the message across. So, although we do have a couple of speakers that I would consider as presenting a traditional lecture, most of our academic pieces approach things from a different angle. For example, Kimberly Dark is a lecturer (in fact she is actually a sociology professor focused on women’s issues), but she is also a slam poet and a theater performer. Her program incorporates storytelling, poetry and lecture into one big piece that delivers that message. I think that style is indicative of a lot of the innovative approaches our acts take toward entertaining while educating.”

With such an intense focus on the quality of her acts, one might imagine finding such a diverse and qualified roster would be difficult. Gina says the opposite has been the case to date. “I am extremely selective when it comes to who we take on, but I have also never really had to look for anyone. I haven’t gone out and recruited someone, not once. It has always been a matter of the artists finding me or the other artists on my roster and saying ‘That’s where I fit.’ We have taken it that way and been lucky, but there has always been a conscious choice to remain small as well, allowing the agency itself to devote the time and attention to each client we have, both artists and schools.”

Every act that Kirkland Productions books for the college market is exclusive and you won’t find them anywhere else. Dr. John Corvino presents an engaging presentation on homosexuality and morality, among other interesting topics. And An Dóchas and the Haran Irish Dancers is a unique group that brings some arts-style entertainment to campuses as a ten-member ensemble, a five-person band and a five person dance group that presents a mixture of traditional and contemporary original and classical Irish dance with song.

Kirkland Productions is a company that cares about this market and the clients they work with, as a direct result of Gina’s presence here. “I think working with colleges is the most rewarding aspect in the field of booking, especially coming from a corporate event planning background, where the money is good, but it isn’t exceptionally rewarding. This really is, in the sense that a lot of times we may be working with a student who is planning an event for the first time and learning the ropes. It is fun to have the opportunity to brainstorm with them and become a part of their education in this industry. It keeps me young. I have to be on my toes all the time, especially at conferences with a bunch of 18 and 19 year-olds (laughs). Serving the colleges is definitely where my heart is and it’s not something I could give up.”

BOOK IT! Contact Gina Kirkland at Kirkland Productions at (866) 769-9037 today to see what exciting and potentially educational acts they have to offer your students.