Conviviality – the heart of arts engagement?

I recently had the pleasure of working with The Shape of Things, a wonderful crafts project that aimed to bring the work of new and emerging makers from diverse backgrounds to a mainstream audience.

It was a wonderful experience for me as the project was developed in such a way that artists, promoters, venues all worked together to develop the exhibtions and activities, and all participated in the audience development work.

In late summer last year we all took part in a one day discussion on the future for audience development in the crafts. The conversation took place in the beautiful Touchstones Gallery in Rochdale and included artists, writers, administrators, funders and audxience development specialists like me. The conclusion of the day, shouldn;t be surprising, but somehow it was. For those of us who work in tje arts sector it can be so easy to forget the experience of the arts when we are developing our funding  proposals, project outlines etc etc. This discussion, invigorated by the mixed group participating, celebrated the conviviality of participationa nd neoyment of the crafts – the way that the process of making or enjoying objects brings us together as inividuals.

I wrote a paper summarising the day and musing on this idea, it has been published on The Shape of Things website. Please let me know what you think!

http://theshapeofthings.org.uk/?id=107

 

Learning to share

Arts organisations feel vulnerable. This is no surprise for a sector that is used to living on thin and unreliable resources, and being valued for our instrumental impacts rather than the intrinsic value of what we do. One of the ways the sector has countered this impression is by developing extremely high levels of professionalism. We’ve developed ourselves as viable businesses, our plans, policies and procedures providing evidence that we take ourselves seriously, and that we expect to be taken seriously by others.

While I applaud organisations that are run properly and efficiently and which are effective at advocacy and meeting targets, I do wonder whether we should re-appraise how this approach can affect our relationships with audiences. Recently it seems that the brands that are doing well are those that allow their audiences to take some ownership of the values, activity and approach of the organisation. This is antithetical to traditional brand theory which has regarded fierce protection of every aspect of the brand to be crucial.

Led by new technologies which have enabled all of us to be able to have choice over aspects of our lives that we wouldn’t have dreamed about a few years ago – audiences want to be involved. And if they like you, there’s a chance that they will want to use your brand, share your video or comment on your work. This raises a challenge to arts organsiations, stuck in the rut of providing a glossy, untouchable outward face, a professional veneer to disguise our fear that others will see our vulnerability. That our audiences might know that we are not perfect, that we are struggling, that we sometimes get things wrong.

It’s a major shift, to let our audiences share our brand, admit their ideas into our planning, in effect, to see them as much a part of our organisation as our buildings, our staff, our brand. the world is changing quickly though, and it seems likley that those organisations that are prepared to let down their guard, and enjoy our audiences desire to share and be part of what we do, will be the ones thriving in the future.

 

Artistic accounting

In the last year or so there has been an increased focus amongst policy makers on the need to value the arts for their own sake. Yet, while many people agree that it would be great to be able to make a case for the arts on the base of it’s ‘intrinsic’ benefits (the way it makes us feel or the importance of it in itself), it is still difficult to articulate these things. Often we fall back on describing the benefits of our work in more ‘instrumental’ terms, such sad the social impact or the role of the arts in education. (See John Holden’s Capturing Cultural Value for detailed discussion of these ideas.)

I feel torn between excitement at the idea of developing a framework that can genuinely assess the value of the arts, and reluctance to further formalise an area of life I value for its creativity, spontaneity and compulsion to innovate. However, recently I was working on social accounting frameworks and wondered whether there was a mechanism there that could be adjusted to our needs.

Has anyone got experience of monitoring and evaluating the arts for it’s intrinsic values? I’d love to hear.

 

Training opportunity – Digital Accessibility & The Arts

I noticed that there are still places available on this free half-day seminar on Digital Accessibility and the Arts. I’m sorry that I can’t make it but think it sounds like a really interesting and useful event.

“This FREE half-day seminar, brought to you by AmbITion and DaDa – Disability & Deaf Arts [formerly North West Disability Arts Forum], will look at how arts organisations can use digital technology to ensure that their online activities are accessible for all.

Using the trailblazing new DaDaHello website as an interactive case study, the event will explore some of the key issues for consideration when developing accessible websites, alongside some of the unique solutions that have been applied to the new site.

The event will be chaired by accessibility specialist David Kreps with presentations from Ruth Gould (DaDa), Adrian Slatcher (AmbITion) and Beth Aplin (Henderson Aplin Partnership).

 

Training update

Over the next few months I am running several training sessions on marketing strategy. Those taking place in February, on behalf of Cultivate, are aimed at those of you who have little or no experience of marketing but find yourself needing to write a marketing plan. In June I am undertaking a speaker tour for the Arts Marketing Association which is experienced marketers who are looking for inspiration and new ideas to help them when freshening and reviewing existing marketing plans.

 

Introduction to Marketing Planning

9th February at the Level Centre, Derbyshire, 1pm-5pm, £50

NEW DATE 19th February Toll Gate Hill, Nottingham, 1pm-5pm, £50

 

The Building Blocks of Marketing Planning

26th February The Terrace, Lincoln, 10am-4pm, £50

 

Action Plan: Reviewing and Refreshing Your Marketing Strategy

All courses run form 10am-5pm. Places cost £129+VAT (AMA members) and £185+VAT (non-members)

2^nd June, City Halls, Glasgow

4^th June, The Women’s Library, London

16^th June, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

18^th June, St David’s Hall, Cardiff

 

All courses can be booked directly with the promoter through the links above.

Please contact me (caroline@carolinegriffin.com) if you are interested in presenting similar training courses. I also develop these courses bespoke to your requirements, and can deliver them 1-2-1 and with small teams is required.

 

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Garden of Earthly Delights - Hieronymous Bosch

We’re beginning to see what can be achieved when arts organisations think creatively about integrating technology into the way they bring art to their audiences. Such initiatives are often developing not only the nature of the delivery of the artistic experience for audiences, or diversifying  who can connect with the arts, but significantly affects the natrue of the experience itself.

I am particularly excited by the new initiative from the Prado in Madrid which has photographed some of it’s finest works in a very high resolution and made the images available through Google Earth. Remarkably, you are not just getting closer to the works that you could in a book or a usual online reproduction, you are actually able to get closer to the works than you could even if you were in the Prado right in front of it.

It strikes me that technology is now allowing us to look at these works in a completely new way, and encouraging us to focus on the micro rather than the macro. Through this presentation style we become fascinated by brushwork and technique, the depth, luminosity and character of the colour, and the representation of detail. We are used to looking at the whole. Each image comes with the baggage of the painted wall, the images chosen to hang alongside, and a little white card that tells us about the artist’s life, his birth and death dates, his daily concerns and erudite opinions a bit the work. These are all elements of looking at art that I love, but this new way, allowing me to focus on just a few details, is also intriguing, shocking and moving – all the things that I want from art.

 

Marketing in a digital age

This month I will be leading several training sessions on Marketing Planning. The sessions are aimed at people who don’t have much experience of marketing, but who find themselves being asked to write a marketing strategy.  I try to cover all the basic building blocks of marketing planning, provide a few references to other resources and give delegates confidence in using some marketing terminology.

Sometimes in these session we get to discuss digital marketing techniques, but usually only on a tactical level and as part of a broader discussion. Yet it is clear that successful arts organisations need to engage with the potential of digital for not only communicating with audiences, but developing relationships with audiences – in other words – they need to take a strategic approach.

AmbITion is a ground-breaking national project that is helping arts organisations be strategic with their use of digital technology, planning it into every area of their activity. They recognised that people concerned with marketing and audience development needed some help with digitial development and ran a tailored training course, not only this but, being a digital organisation, they produced a film Successful Digital Marketing for the Arts which is available online.

If you visit the site, do also take a look at their Case Studies which include stories of how large and small arts organisations across the country have taken advantage of the new opportunities offered by digital technology.

 

The recession starts to bite

Browsing in a bookshop

Alongside the joy and over-indulgence of Christmas were daily reports of doom and gloom. One retailer after another being put into administration, jobs being lost in manufacturing and the news that housing prices are plummeting to 2004 levels. News from the arts sector is slow to emerge, but I am starting to notice bits of information that emerging in the press. As chair of Tindal Street Press I am particularly concerned about the impact of the recession of book sales, and sad to say, early evidence is that although January to July was a good period for book sales, they took a dive in the second half of the year, painting a gloomy picture for the year as a whole, and for 2009. Information on the sector can be found in The Bookseller who do useful year-on-year reviews.

In the Observer Robert McCrum does a good job of showing what great value a book represents (6-8 hours of entertainment for only £12.99) but in a subsequent article celebrates the even better value of the second hand book. I can’t argue with him, second hand books are wonderful. Not just because they’re cheap but because browsing in a second hand bookshop can lead to surprise discoveries, encouraging you to read things you might never have found in a high street bookshop. Notwithstanding their value, it still means that the book trade will be hit, and this means publishers and writers will suffer too. Even worse, there is a good chance that this will lead to less choice of new books, with blockbusters, celebrity biographies and big names dominating the market.

Other news shows that people are choosing to eat out less. This might be great for the main supermarkets who are looking like they are holding their own during this period, it might be bad news for arts organisations, many of whom rely on their cafes and restaurants to supply a slice of their income.

Overall it looks like a difficult time for the arts, and one where the organisations need to focus not just on their paying audience, but also the situation of their suppliers and partners who might be even more severely affected in the short term than the subsidised sector.

If you have seen other useful and relevant information about how the arts might be affected by the recession, please do comment below.

 

Reaching Out to New Audiences

VAN briefing sheet

Earlier this year I wrote a briefing sheet on Audience Development for the Voluntary Arts Network. It has just been published and you can find it on VAN’s website.  Do take a look and let me know what you think. There are lots of useful briefing sheets in this series, all aimed at voluntary sector organisations. They are written in jargon-free language and give lots of references to other places to go for help or more information. It’s a brilliant resource so do take a look.

I was commissioned to write the sheet by Audiences Northern Ireland who are committed to providing support to the arts sector in Northern Ireland, including the Voluntary Arts Sector. The library on their website is well worth looking at as they have gathered together a range of useful resources.

On a different subject . . . . ACE have recently launched a dance mapping project, it aims to pull together existing research and generate new research that will help us make the case for dance. There is already a useful bibliography on ACE’s website, and they are calling for people involved in dance to get involved in the online consultation. If you are interested in dance audiences I suggest reading new research done for the East Midlands by Heather Maitland and Rachel Gibson, which as some useful insights and is available on Deda‘s website.

 

Is your organisation ready to develop new audiences?

Do you know how well your organisation is set up to develop audiences? How customer-focused are you really? Is your organisation honest with itself about how open it is to new audiences?

If you are faced with writing an audience development plan, or have responsibility for championing audiences in your organisation, you might be interested in this quick Diagnostic Tool from Arts Market, an audience development consultancy based in Montana. It’s a quick and simple tool to give you some ideas about starting points for improvement, you couldtry using it with your board, or members of the staff team, to stimulate discussion about attitudes to audience development in your organisation.

Let me know if it works for you!