Arts Intranet

Social media has become a bona fide and critical component of the customer path to purchase—and arts marketers are taking advantage, successfully using social media to make their organizations more relatable, promote upcoming shows or exhibits, and gain memberships with special announcements and behind-the-scenes content.

My recent foray into professional arts marketing shows me that there’s much we can learn from each other on ways to link historically overlooked and disenfranchised communities with the mainstream theater communities who want to invite them in.

Arts organizations often find a delicate balance in planning a season that generates necessary revenue and attendance, while still being driven by a meaningful purpose. The ultimate goal is to provide opportunities rooted in a place of purpose, guided by your mission, that have the ability to reach a largest possible range of individuals.

An honest, unreserved commitment to community collaboration brings healing and positive growth. If your arts organization feels like their outreach and engagement is not as successful as they had hoped, remember these four key approaches to bring you back to the root of meaningful arts programming. 

To communicate effectively, it really helps to know who you’re communicating with. As an arts marketer communicating on behalf of an organization, audience research is one of the most important tools we have to understand who our audiences are and what they want.

Comprehensive marketing planning will help you know your consumers better, which will help you maintain deeper connections and relationships with them. The process, while rigorous, provides the best way forward to understanding all the issues surrounding marketing efforts.

If you could attract neophyte audience members and get them to return by buying them a glass of wine, wouldn’t you do it? And if it was even easier to get them to the next step, becoming regulars—say, all it took was greeting them by name—wouldn’t you do that?

Try taking a youngster to a museum. It’s not easy. Where will you put the stroller? What about the crackers and the Cheerios? Such practical thoughts, and others like them, run through the minds of people who are interested in participating in the arts—but haven’t yet committed.

Every new season at a performing arts organization is like a road trip to a new destination. We’re experienced enough after taking these trips for years to know how to prepare and what to pack. But since the trip changes every year, there are still plenty of adventures (and challenges) to be had. 

The individuals who are in the room when decisions are made can make all the difference to the following weeks and months of labor to build brand, engage the community, and develop future audiences.  Here are a few helpful hints for you to make the case why marketing should be “in the room” to influence positive outcomes.

While the arts marketing landscape changes, and the methods are changing with them, some things will stay the same. This week, read tips, thought-provoking questions, and “lessons learned” from a broad range of professionals in our arts marketing blog salon. 

Impact. That is what every arts educator hopes for when they greet a new crop of students. To impact their lives through the art form they love. Whether a student develops an appreciation and love for the arts, decides to pursue it as a career, or just discovers something within themselves they may not have known without experiencing the arts, it all comes down to impact. A few weeks ago, we had an opportunity to see this impact on a national level as people all over the world told their stories during National Arts in Education Week. The #BecauseOfArtsEd hashtag gave us a chance to reflect on our story and how it was shaped by the arts. Like many of you, I was excited to post stories about the educators we work with and add to the tapestry of stories across the country. The response to our educators was overwhelming.

To improve the perceived public value of the arts, we must connect into the places where people find value. To get members of our community to stand up and say, “We want more,” we have to tell them why “more” matters. If we’re trying to create advocates for arts and culture among the members of communities, we need to increase the occasions where thinking about the arts makes sense. Because the truth is, the arts make more things possible, from better education to greater health outcomes to a more civically-engaged citizenry—it’s just that people don’t always see the connection to the arts when change happens. Knowing people prioritize core issue areas like education, job security, housing, public safety, and health and wellness, how do we show the important ways the arts intersect with their day-to-day lives? At Americans for the Arts, our answer is the Arts + Social Impact Explorer.

Happy National Arts and Humanities Month! Each October, millions of people across the country celebrate the transformative power of the arts in their communities. National Arts and Humanities Month is a “coast-to-coast collective recognition of the importance of culture in America,” with the goals of: FOCUSING on the arts at local, state, and national levels; ENCOURAGING individuals and organizations to participate in the arts; ALLOWING governments and businesses to show their support of the arts; and RAISING public awareness about the role the arts and humanities play in our communities and lives. During National Arts and Humanities Month, some truly amazing celebrations of arts and culture take place across the country. One of the big initiatives for the month is Creative Conversations, which gather community leaders to “discuss local arts, culture, and creativity to generate partnerships and increased energy around the grassroots movement to elevate the arts in America.” 

This is the second year that I have taught a freshman course at Berklee College of Music about Neurodiversity. Over the 15-week semester, we examine topics and issues in neurodiversity and their relationship to the arts. We start by talking about the origin of the term “neurodiversity,” and we go on to consider issues of language, power, and representation as they relate to individuals with disabilities. We work with scholarly writings in disability studies and the arts to better understand and question the rhetorical frames at play in various cultural contexts when it comes to artists with disabilities. Every time I teach this course, I am struck by the openness with which these freshmen—brand new to Berklee, just getting to know each other, only recently living on their own—share their personal experiences and challenges. The respect and kindness that they show their classmates helps us all to create a safe space for learning and vulnerability for every student.

We’ve all seen the extraordinary figures released earlier this year by the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis: The arts and cultural sector contributed over $760 billion to the U.S. economy in 2015. Staggering statistics, to be sure; indisputable in their depth and breadth. But within and behind these statistics lie stories—stories about human capital and the limitless power of the arts to transform, to teach, and to trigger the brain to soar and to accelerate well beyond its own limits. What falls beyond these extraordinary figures—and here, I refer to music and music education in particular—is a piece of knowledge that is at once as simple as it is profound: Music matters.

In a society struggling to find equity and social justice, Americans believe the arts improve the quality of our communities. How do we know? We asked. Americans Speak Out About the Arts in 2018 is the second in a series of national public opinion surveys conducted by Ipsos on behalf of Americans for the Arts. One of the largest ever conducted, it gauges the public perspective on (1) personal engagement in the arts as audience and creator, (2) support for arts education and government arts funding, (3) opinions on the personal and well-being benefits that come from engaging in the arts, and (4) how those personal benefits extend to the community. Here are some findings of the survey. 

As an arts educator, it’s crucial to your students that you’re able to bring your artist self into the room as a living example of how they too can be artists. However, it can be difficult for individuals like myself who work as arts teachers and administrators. So how do you balance the two?  For me, the solution has been to let the two be one. It took me a while to do this intentionally, but I let my creativity influence my approach to administrative solutions and let my task-oriented thinking manage the flow of my class. The key is remaining aware and perceptive of when it’s time to let things be, and when it’s time to stay organized—or as I frequently say, “create structure for the chaos to happen in.”

While we all work to serve audiences that are growing in diversity, we cannot prescribe the art that might engage our audience without engaging in conversation. We must be ready to walk with them, to find out through relationship and exploration together what their expectations, needs, and wants are. And that’s how we truly build community through the arts.

For many artists, making art is a coping mechanism to find inner calm and some kind of understanding about a confusing, chaotic world. So how might art heal our world? How might the artist become the healer?

Fundamentally, as we celebrate National Arts and Humanities Month in October, we celebrate creativity and what it means to be human today. We celebrate everyday creative expression in all of its forms—from the amateur to the master artist and his/her craft. Burning Man celebrates that, too.

Public art matters to me because I see it as a platform for civic dialogue and as the most democratic of art forms. When done well, a public artwork engages citizens in conversation that can vary from understanding historical and cultural backgrounds, to driving attachment to place and social cohesion. In a world struggling with new ways to connect, public art can make public spaces more approachable. In June of this year, Americans for the Arts worked in collaboration with the 2018 Public Art Network (PAN) Advisory Council to launch “Why Public Art Matters” to provide the field with a tool to help educate community members, local decision makers, and other stakeholders on the value that public art can bring to cities and towns. The resource document provides talking points, reasons, data, and examples of how public art can positively impact a community in five specific areas.

Earlier this year, I was invited by the Utah Cultural Alliance and Utah Division of Arts and Museums in Salt Lake City for a professional development convening to present on the pARTnership Movement, a campaign by Americans for the Arts to teach business and cultural leaders alike how arts and culture can offer businesses, through pARTnership, a competitive edge. With over 50 executive directors and marketing staff in the room, my aim was to communicate that arts and business pARTnerships can look like so much more than a transactional relationship. I've often heard (and experienced as an arts fundraiser), “Why can’t they [the businesses] just give more cash? We need cash.” While the need for cash is real, our approach with the pARTnership Movement is broader.

Creative Conversations were launched in 2004 in response to feedback for a need for dialogue from the Emerging Leaders Network. Since then, they have been used as a catalyst in communities across the nation to unify groups of people engaged in arts and culture by sparking dialogue, spurring advocacy efforts, and creating networking opportunities for participants. Most Creative Conversations take place in October as part of National Arts and Humanities Month; however, now they are popping up more frequently at other times of the year. Interested in learning more about these community engagement events, or hosting one in your area? Read on for information and inspiration to help get you started!

As young people around the country return to school, educators take the helm of their classrooms, and educational leaders build learning communities that inspire creative and innovative teaching and learning, the arts education community along with public and private sector leaders join together once again to celebrate National Arts in Education Week. As this school year begins, local school districts and state education leaders have more resources and policies under their supervision than ever before. Our job is to encourage, enable, and empower advocates to get to the negotiating table to strengthen arts education! They need to hear from us. Starting this week, we should get arts education leaders at every table for every decision impacting education and certainly arts education from here on out! 

In an age of unpaid internships, I have done my fair share of work for the “professional experience” it might bring. (I’ve also been asked to do arts-related events for free or at a very low cost—presumably because I am a young person and might want the “exposure.”) I have experienced some of these systemic barriers on my professional journey. It is my hope that arts education can begin to pull away from that linear mode of thinking and gravitate more toward the concept highlighted in our research—a cyclical leadership—that can foster authentic, diverse, and collaborative work environments. This year, as a candidate for the Arts in Education Ed.M Program at Harvard University, I seek to continue this discussion with my academic cohort of teaching artists, arts managers, curators, and nonprofit leaders. We each have a role to play in breaking down the barriers for emerging leaders. 

The High Museum of Art’s Teen Team is a dynamic group of rising high school juniors and seniors who help create and host public programs at the High, including our teen-only Teen Night and monthly free admission day, Second Sundays. The Teen Team program is a paid, year-round commitment, and the teens are considered museum employees. They explore the museum’s collection and special exhibitions, meet museum staff and local artists, and get the inside scoop on museum careers through hands-on experience. The following is a collaborative reflection from two recent Teen Team members, both rising seniors in Atlanta high schools.

I know we all wear a lot of hats, whether we do administrative work, or maybe as an educator and artist, or even in our daily lives as parents or partners. Managing those hats is the trick to our daily balancing act. Sometimes maybe we try to be bigger than we are, which is why collaboration is so vital to the success of a nonprofit. At my company, Teatro Milagro, we fostered a group of LatinX visual artists, and they formed their own small coalition under our nonprofit called LaxIdeal, and they manage many of the visual arts exhibitions and workshops that happen in our center and in other spaces around the city. Our efforts to collaborate with social service agencies and provide authentic arts experiences that highlight LatinX artists and performers is not just “a thing” that we do, but makes us a model of best practices.

A few weeks ago, Genesee County, Michigan voters approved a millage to support their arts and cultural assets. Words can’t express how proud I am of Genesee County voters for investing in one of their greatest assets; however, they can express this: their collective investment has the potential to be a real game changer for Genesee County, the people who live there, and their arts and cultural community. How do I know this? Because that’s what happened in Cleveland following passage of one of the largest local option taxes for arts and culture in the country. Here are a few insights drawn from the work we did to stabilize our arts and culture sector and position it for greater influence in our community. Think of these as tips for fertilizing the soil to ensure arts and culture can thrive and grow in your city.

It’s that time once again. Many of us across the performing arts realm are hanging on to the last remnants of summer, while also turning our attention to (and girding our loins for!) the new season ahead. For the University Musical Society, this officially begins on Sept. 21, a couple of weeks after the University of Michigan commences its fall semester. One of the things I value most about UMS and my new role here is the great care and attention we give to not just WHAT we present, but HOW we present it. This is an important lesson for all of us, each and every day, as we endeavor to grow the energy, focus, and evolution of our institutions. I’m proud to say we’re digging deep to answer many fundamental questions about who we are and what we want to be in the future.