Seminar information
A form will be emailed to you once you have booked a place at Greater Than, giving you the choice of which seminars and surgeries you would like to attend. We will do our best to accommodate your first choice. Please note, however, that there is an upper limit for each seminar, and places will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. The deadline for reply is 5pm Monday 23 October. If we haven’t heard from you we will allocate your places on the basis of those remaining. We will email in advance of the Forum to let you know in which seminars groups we’ve reserved you a place.
SURGERY REQUEST
If you feel it might be useful…
New – and a bonus – to the programme this year are a limited number of short, confidential one-to-one surgeries, hosted by each of the seminar leaders, and other senior arts professionals. We cannot guarantee a surgery place but the sooner you request one, the more likely you are to be successful.
These sessions will each last 10 minutes, and will take place over lunchtime (12.45-13.45pm). We will email in advance of the Forum to let you know if a place has been reserved for you and at what time.
While you may broach any relevant issue, we would advise that surgeries with seminar leaders are a good opportunity to discuss an issue relating to the particular seminar you’ve attended. If you have a more general query or point for discussion relating to your organisation or role, we suggest you request a surgery with either Ros Lamont, Julie Tait, Marcus Wilson, or Abigail Carney.
Get Digital? (E-Marketing and new technologies) |
Seminar and surgery leaders:
Roger Tomlinson - Consultant for ACT Consultant Services and producer of ticketing.org.uk
Hannah Rudman - Freelance IT and Digital Content Consultant - Rudman Consulting
Our audiences find themselves in a 21st century world where - because of new technologies - they can communicate with each other, shop, learn, find information and be creative in different ways. Our neighbouring sectors (leisure, media) have re-thought the ways they engage and interact with their audiences, and a level of expectation has been set. But the current pace of digital technology change is so rapid that arts organisations striving to ‘catch up’ can still find themselves left behind. The danger for the arts is that we just aren’t ‘seen’ amongst our competitive environment because we don’t effectively use digital channels. The opportunity is that we are seen as the most creative, meaningful, exciting and richly interactive live and online experience to have.
Roger and Hannah will consider whether we should be shifting assumptions about how we unthinkingly approach a marketing task/consider our audiences. Case studies will show arts organisations that have focused on the latest web developments in their marketing, education and programming functions, and used them effectively to leap frog into a new relationship with their audiences.
This session will explore the benefits of making the changes of practice that new technologies demand.
Managing your Customers for Profit
(How do I know my Audience Development is working?) |
Seminar and surgery leader:
Katy Raines, Director, DixonRaines
How much is a customer worth? How do you know when you’ve lost a potentially valuable customer? How can you maximize your marketing effort to see greater returns through the box office and fundraising income?
Using practical examples, Katy Raines will talk about how to build customer relationships that will be profitable and last a lifetime.
The Ethos Behind Re:Create
(How can Audience Development and Artistic Development work together?) |
Seminar leaders:
Jan McTaggart, Head of Communications DCA, and Re:Create Coordinator 2005-06
David Watt, Director Glasgow Sculpture Studios, and former Director of Edinburgh Printmakers
Kirsten Lloyd, Programme Manager, Stills
Surgery leader Jan McTaggart
Find out about the success of Re:Create, a pioneering, joint audience development project between Edinburgh Printmakers, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and Stills.
Imagine a stick of rock. Now imagine that that stick of rock is our audience development wand, look closer and you’ll find that written right through that boiled sugar and glucose in large pink letters is the word ‘ARTIST’.
Embedding creative processes at the core of audience development activities is the ethos behind Re:Create – an audience development project working between the partner organisations and their artistic communities. In our laboratories of creativity, we bring artists closer to their audiences by running specially devised pilot projects all centred around the idea of respect – respect for the art, the artists and respect for the audience.
Using Re:Create as a case study, this session will:
Define why organisations might wish to work together on developing audiences; explore how artist-led participative programmes can sustain audience development; explain how to bring artistic programming and audience development together; detail the range of benefits for artists; outline the rewards of working in partnership with different organisations
Mixed Messages?
(Planning Together) |
Seminar and Surgery Leader:
Sarah Gee, Managing Consultant DixonRaines
Organisations from any sector can run into trouble and incur enormous costs when they re-brand for the wrong reasons – remember Consignia?
And yet re-branding doesn’t need to cost the earth and can be extremely effective to signify a change of direction and customer focus. Sarah Gee presents her experiences of re-branding the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and aims to demystify some of the jargon and outline the basic rules of branding. No more mixed messages for a start.
The CBSO used the process strategically to galvanise the organisation around a single message, and became more effective in their communications to new and existing audiences. A particular highlight was when the Orchestra was able to use their new-found reputation to sell two performances of Bollywood hits to a 98% non-white audience, proving that a strong and consistent brand can influence new and diverse customers, as well as existing fans.
'Open Space', an exploratory session |
Seminar leader, morning:
Diane Ragsdale, Senior Associate for the Performing Arts at The Andrew W Mellon Foundation New York
Facilitator: Ros Lamont, Director, The Audience Business
Diane will lead a session of fluid, high level thinking, following on from her keynote presentation.
Seminar leader, afternoon:
Nadine Andrews, Clore Leadership Fellow 2005-06 (England’s Northwest), and consultant with audience development agency Arts About Manchester
Facilitator Julie Tait, Director, Glasgow Grows Audiences
Nadine will lead a session of fluid, high level thinking, following on from her keynote conversation with Greg Dyke.
Both Open Space sessions offer an opportunity to express ideas which could help inform future Scottish Arts Council policy on audience development.
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