The Audience Agency to open for business
The Audience Agency is a new national organisation with a mission to inspire organisations to put audiences at the heart of their work.
Evolved from an alliance between All About Audiences, in Manchester, and Audiences London Plus, the new venture will provide advice, intelligence and ideas to any cultural organisation planning to grow and engage audiences. From this September, an expert team will be working with arts, museums, libraries, heritage and other cultural organisations across England, to offer practical support and an unrivalled body of audience intelligence.
Affordable services will be delivered to consistent national standards, with sensitivity to local needs. Tried and tested services, based on those most valued by current client organisations, will draw on specialist cultural sector market research. Audience insight will be combined with practical support on everything from community engagement, to marketing to organisational development. The Audience Agency will be a one-stop shop for audience development services.
"By joining forces to create this new agency, the team will be able to realise ambitions not possible alone, forming partnerships with national and international bodies, building a comprehensive national picture of audiences, and offering the benefits of many years of experience nationwide." Ivan Wadeson, CEO, All About Audiences
Central offices in London and Manchester will be supported by a team of Regional Directors and associates, working locally to build relationships, understand needs and deliver services.
Last year the two organisations worked with over 650 cultural organisations from Exeter and London to Kendal and Liverpool, from parks and artists' studios to museums and theatres, from arts centres and youth clubs to concert halls and international festivals.
Initially, The Audience Agency will be talking to cultural organisations across the country about changing needs, and to inform the Arts Council England funded Understanding Audiences Programme (see below for details). There will therefore be launch ‘Roadshows' in all English regions, from September to November 2012, followed up by further consultation opportunities with the sector. The first stop though will be the Arts Marketing Association Conference in Brighton (10 - 12 July). Here, The Audience Agency will be revealing its new brand to the arts marketing community and hosting a networking event for senior practitioners. Sarah Boiling, Deputy CEO of Audiences London Plus, is also leading a session on the National Visual Arts Visitor Benchmarking Project.
Endorsement for this new organisation comes in the form of two major commissions from Arts Council England under its Audience Focus Fund which aim to change the face of audience development practice in this country.
The first, Understanding Audiences, is to create a single framework for collecting, understanding and using audience information across the arts sector.
"The sheer scale of the programme and the breadth of new opportunities it will create are what The Audience Agency is all about. The Programme will also bear the hall-marks of our new way of working - developed with stakeholders, providing reliable, hassle-free insight swiftly translated into creative ways of engaging audiences." Anne Torreggiani, CEO Audiences London Plus
The second, Best Practice, is delivered in a major partnership with the Arts Marketing Association to provide a national service to collate, share, train, and implement best practice in arts marketing and audience development. This work includes developing an online bank of resources and embedding best practice through training and one to one support.
Contact:
The Audience Agency
T:
E:
www.theaudienceagency.org
Twitter: @AudienceAgents
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For further information please contact:
Beth Wells E: T: 0161 234 2970 OR
Lisette Knight E: T:
Website www.theaudienceagency.org