Planning and strategic thinking for audience development
We believe audience development should be embraced throughout an organisation if it is to be effective. But to achieve that you may want help getting all your colleagues on board or guidance aligning your audience development strategy with the finance or funders' objective.
We aren't limited to these roles - so get in touch to describe your query or the outcome you want to achieve and we'll work with you to reach a solution.
Our organisation is much more audience focused and the relationship between programming and marketing is very strong.
Emma Power, Head of Communications, Battersea Arts Centre
The London Borough of Sutton wanted to use an independent intermediary to make contact with the many voluntary sector organisations within its area. The aim was to discover their perceptions of and aspirations for the arts and how the voluntary sector might get involved to help the arts in the Borough thrive. Our interviews with the sector 'gatekeepers' produce research findings which were fed into the Borough's new Arts Strategy.
The London Borough of Haringey, together with Haringey-based voluntary organisations and the Friends of a public park, needed to work up a robust audience development plan to support their HLF application. We delivered a full-day of training for them, based on Not For the Like of You, and a follow-up recommendations report. As a result the Council recruited a short-term Audience Development and Community Liaison Officer. Our continuing involvment in Hargingey's development of its plan is as a critical friend.
Write to Ignite, Hackney?s Word Festival, aimed to increase involvement in literature events among people who usually face barriers, while promoting better understanding of different people, places and cultures, encouraging volunteering and bringing communities together. But how to prove whether this had been achieved? Festival producers Maya Productions commissioned us to evaluate the festival, which we did through qualitative and quantitative techniques. The organisers used our findings to develop their later festivals, and have come back to us to repeat the evaluation process.
Kali Theatre was thinking ahead about audience development, and wanted to use a future production to re-connect with London audiences. They allowed enough time to work with us to reflect on their aims and track record, analyse their audiences and assess the benefits and possible impacts of new audience approaches. With Kali?s senior management team we devised an action plan; and with the Board we facilitated a discussion to promote a unified message about audiences organisation-wide. We?re still working with Kali to monitor how they get on.
As part of the development of their new business plan, innovative children's theatre company Fevered Sleep were looking for some short and sharp assistance with the audience development section. We devised and facilitated a workshop for the whole staff team which helped them identify their current position, articulate a vision for the future and translate this into audience development objectives. They are now putting the business plan into practice, and have been successful in obtaining Paul Hamlyn Foundation funding to test out a new model of touring childrens theatre.