Marriage guidance for the arts

Too often on the subject of touring I hear: “If only they would send us decent copy on time” or “We send them leaflets but they never use them.” Venues complain that touring companies don’t ‘get’ the audience. Companies complain the venue doesn’t ‘get’ the production.

Red Riding Hood, Horse + Bamboo Theatre,
Photo:Boyd Challenger,
Baboro International Children’s Arts Festival 

Marketers understand the best results come when they know in depth both their audience and their production, so can find the perfect way to introduce one to the other. But in touring different elements of that knowledge are held by the different sides. And to hear them, you would think they never, ever talked. So in my course for the Independent Theatre Council, I try to mediate.

Why hook up?

The answers range from the sublime (“it fits our programming strategy for a particular audience”; “we like how the venue uses our education work”) to the not-so-much (“someone else dropped out”; “it was a good place to break our journey”). It’s much more productive to know exactly why you are approaching a venue to take your show – and so present convincing arguments why it is likely to succeed there. Or to give full consideration to the show on offer – if possible going to see it – before deciding if it matched your venue and audience.

A match made in heaven

It ought not surprise, but success looks similar for both: good audience numbers, returning audiences, repeat booking of a company into a venue, good press and artistic reviews, high audience satisfaction, meeting financial targets. Given the shared goals, isn’t it logical to view the touring company-venue relationship as a partnership, each having an agreed part to play in achieving this success? Acknowledging this would help you decide how to balance the marketing resources.

Keep talking

The best way of persuading someone to do something is ‘personalised’ recommendation – someone who knows the person’s interests, enthusiasms and barriers can give a tailored message with great effect. Marketing’s goal is to achieve that immediacy of communication in a more manageable, affordable ‘mass’ way. But for that, you need to know the audience and the product really well – and that’s all about research. Here are a few topics:

-       What kind of people and how many have come to the venue before? Or seen this production or company anywhere before? How satisfied (inspired, uplifted, challenged) were they? How often do they return? What do they spend?

-       How far and from where will people come? What type of people live or work in the catchment area? How much interest do they have in arts? What disposable income do they have? What are the transport corridors? What are you competing against for their time and attention?

-       What makes the production stand out from all others? What additions, such as education, does it offer? What themes may appeal to different interests?

-       Does the venue have a programming style or policy? Are they working to attract certain types of people? Does this show compete with or complement others in this season?

-       What networks does each partner already tap into? What other groups might be interested in the themes explored in the production?

Sharing household chores

Some of this information is held by one or other partner but c(sh)ould be shared. Other aspects may need researching, but the workload could be divided between the partners and the results shared.

The venue may already use its box office data for Mosaic or Acorn analyses of past audiences. It may have commissioned profiles of the catchment area¹. Or it might do these as a basis for all its future marketing decisions. It may have conducted qualitative audience surveys in the past. Similarly, the touring company may be allowed to profile postcode or other data from its audiences in a number venues, to get a rounded picture of them – and then supplement this by post-show surveys in collaboration with venues. Both partners will have mailing lists of people with whom they could get into conversation – and both have access to the Internet’s research sources, from newspaper online archives to local authority websites, competitors’ publicity to attitude surveys by MORI, newspapers or the Government. Plus a wealth of research and advice from arts organisations².

The pre-nup

Best practice is to agree (in writing if possible) what each partner will provide towards the overall picture, and when; and then agree an effective communications campaign that takes into account shared and individual objectives and the time, skill, contacts and finances each can put in.

And there’s the rub – the conversations that lead to any touring contract happen well before most marketers get involved. By the time they are told what they have to get an audience for, the moment for agreeing essential groundwork in relation to the audience match has passed. To create a stronger, more successful touring experience, artistic directors, tour bookers and venue programmers need to also understand the importance of this partnership approach to audience development – so they can have that conversation right at the start.

This article was first published in Arts Professional Issue 249, 27 February 2012

I'm currently drawing up guidelines for touring companies and venues to collaborate more closely to share audience insights and audiences development actions - for Audiences London on an Arts Council England-funded project. I'll let you know when they're ready.

And if you're looking for help with applications to ACE's Touring Strategic Funds or a place on the upcoming surgery, contact Audiences London Plus at touring@audienceslondon.org

Other people’s insights

(c) James Irvine Foundation / WolfBrown

Following my 6 February posting about audience/ visitor participation, I’ve been following the topic in other blogs and articles. In case you missed them, here are some interesting perspectives:

Simon Trevethick’s final article of his series unpicking aspects of the new UK Arts Index for the Guardian Culture Professionals network, looked specifically at the subject of public engagement.  As he says “Art relies on audiences – if satisfaction and attendance fall then there's no argument about funding to be had.”

Piotr Bienkowski, as project director of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation initiative Our Museum: Communities and Museums as Active Partners (which I mentioned in my blog) discussed in the Museums Journal the need for evolution in audience participation to be long-term and at the level of whole-organisation change to reach “deep into the heart of everything you do and affect every member of staff”.

Meanwhile, a report Getting In On the Act: How Arts Groups are Creating Opportunities for Active Participation from the James Irvine Foundation took insights from over 100 non-profit arts organisations in the US, UK and Australia to develop its model for understanding engagement – including the rather groovy graphic explanation of the Audience Involvement Spectrum shown here.

Enjoy.

Who are we? - Lucian Freud Portraits

Many thoughts occurred as I viewed the about-to-open exhibition Lucian Freud Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery yesterday. Musings on the radical change in painting styles from dry, fine brushwork to thickly-wielded impasto.  The dalliance with surrealism. The distinction between painting texture and painting with texture.

But my final question was, “Are these portraits?”

A wall text refers to the artist’s ‘lifelong fascination with the portrait.’ The curator from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, where the exhibition goes after London, recalled Freud saying that he liked to paint nudes, as ‘naked’ was ‘the most complete portrait’.

Well, the emphasis on ‘portrait’ is obviously in the London gallery’s job description. But to my mind, a portrait is about a person’s character and psychology and, yes, the weight and place that person might take up in the world around them, as the NPG’s own collection testifies. As human beings, we look to a person’s eyes, mainly, to weigh them up. How they choose to present themselves to the world – their choice of clothes or ‘costume’ – is also significant, and their life experience might be etched on the way they hold themselves, the lines on their face.

Looking around this wealth of Lucian Freud paintings, I realised that beyond the early style, almost none of the sitters meet our gaze. They have their eyes closed, or turned away, or frankly hidden by an arm. Even in the early paintings, where the distended eyes eerily meet our gaze, there is a kind of dissimulation. Curator Sarah Howgate described how Freud would, at that time, sit knee-to-knee with his subject in an intensity of study to capture in fine detail their surface appearance. In such circumstances all of us would shroud our gaze, withdrawing our inner self for safe-keeping.

Indeed, the only portraits here where the life of the subject is met in the eyes are the self-portraits – only Freud can meet his own gaze authentically.

Freud is described in the exhibition notes as interested in bodies and in skin. The more skin the better. “When I paint clothes I am really painting naked people who are covered by clothes.” “I’m inclined to think of ‘humans’, … if they’re dressed, as animals dressed up.”

Rather than a lifelong fascination with portraiture I saw a lifelong study of the body. An array of truly amazing paintings of bodies.

It will be a success – the press view was heaving with reporters from a dozen countries and for once I’m looking forward to my ticket slot for a more civilised viewing. Because semantics aside, this is a great and comprehensive show, alive in a different way to the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition next door. Do go – and prepare your tactics for getting a long, considered look despite the undoubted crowds.

(PS. To follow the Times’ lead in agreeing to support the arts by acknowledging the role of sponsors bringing such events to us, three cheers for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Herbert Smith and the Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival.)

What price audience participation?

A Tardis-like box of questions opened up at the Visitor Studies Group conference yesterday. The questions around the value of audience participation in museums just got bigger and bigger as the day progressed.

Interesting points raised by the presenters – but for me the real unpacking of the topic came during informal conversations over lunch or coffee, and in the final open discussion sparked by two provocation points:

Can participation for the few give value for the many?

How do we avoid tokenism in participation?

By the end of the day, these were the themes that were lodged in my mind:

• What’s the philosophy of participation? What is it for? Is it just the new buzzword for the arts that will soon pass? Or can we find a way of making it meaningful and of value to the organisation as well as the participant?
• What and where are the sustainable business models for museums today and why and how does ‘participation’ fit into them? Who pays for the investment in participation?
• How can we properly and effectively use the ‘participation of the few’ models and ensure that we all learn from them and can adapt and replicate them for our own situations … when funding bodies place a constant emphasis on the ‘new’ and reports and evaluations rarely dare acknowledge the learning potential of knowing what went wrong as well as what went right?
• How can museums be supported to allow the extraordinary length of time it takes to really build up relationships of trust and collaboration with certain groups – and to get away from the short-termism of the project funds-driven model … a model that the communities thus ‘engaged’ are savvy enough to see through?
• Why should ‘community’ for participation or outreach efforts always be defined as the local estate, local families or the ‘hard to reach’? What is wrong with defining an organisation’s community and stakeholders as being the professional s and students it wants to influence and inspire. Why can’t participation project include participating with these people, to create a source of ideas for the organisation and a resource for professional development for the community?
• How do museums position the role and importance of the ‘object’ and the curators’ knowledge of it at a time when the sexy emphasis is on participation, visitor response and multiple voices? On the other hand, was the traditional action of going to a museum to stand and contemplate objects really any more valuable than the digital/ interactive/ participatory suggestions we had been hearing about? We (the people at the conference) may admit to preferring the space to stand and contemplate the object in an unmediated way, but we weren’t born with the ability or inclination to do that. It comes from accumulated education and exposure. What participation projects aim to do is offer others the chance to build these relationships to objects and one day they may also just choose to stand and contemplate.

Meantime, the excellent case studies we heard about both prompted and shed some light on these ideas, and recommendations for further reading: 

The USS Constitution Museum’s ‘A Sailor’s Life for Me’ exhibition - apparently all the visitor research has been published online.

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis’ Tree of Promise.

The Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s report ‘Whose cake is it anyway?’ which has led to follow-up funding for 7 museums to create more sustained engagement with communities.

The W K Kellogg Foundation General’s report 'Intentional Innovation'. 

The Science Museum’s ‘Who am I?’ display and their forthcoming Senseless exhibition.

'The One and the Many' by Grant H Kester.

South London Gallery’s 'Making Play' project 

The Museum of London’s involvement in the national Stories of the World programme and their inclusion of the youth Panel Junction in the planning for the museum’s new permanent Roman Galleries.

UCL’s Grant Museum of Zoology’s experimental digital project QRator.