Last month we were able to provide bursaries to cover places at the Arts Marketing Association Reaching New Audiences event. This enabled us to offer places to marketers working in smaller venues within the house network for the day focussed around taking steps to developing a new and loyal audience for the future. We had been looking forward to all getting together for the event in London but train strikes meant that this event took place online. Nonetheless, the day was expertly led by the excellent and inspiring audience development champions Mel Larsen and Jane Cordell providing ideas to challenge your audience development challenges into solutions and agree some quick wins to get the ball moving.

See below the thoughts from our delegates at the event and the steps they are going to take to apply their learnings in their organisation. Bursary applications are now open for the AMA Conference 2023 taking place on the 13-14 July at Leeds Playhouse. Find out how to apply here.

Mary George, Proteus Creation Space

What do you think are the top priorities/opportunities for audience development in your organisation?

• To deepen our loyalty and engagement with people who support us regularly and look for them to help us become ambassadors
• To increase and widen our family audience numbers within certain demographics and areas and offer accessible/affordable theatre for young people
• To welcome more audiences from the global majority to engage with us and forge links with different communities
• To ensure that we can raise our profile in new communities within Basingstoke ( a rapidly expanding town with many new housing developments bringing new people to the area.)

What would you say are the main blockers in reaching these groups? (both internal & external factors)

• Access to these groups, no existing relationships, so it will be a large body of work to begin forging meaningful relationships
• Resource (or lack thereof) with the best will in the world, it's very challenging to find the time and space to plan and develop audiences, we only just about manage the day to day with 1 member of staff who works 3 days a week on marketing with some support by an admin assistant for 1.5 days of the week. This is the marketing for both activity in our venue and our original nationally touring theatre productions.
• Locality of our venue and the wider cultural landscape in Basingstoke

What are the main learnings or ideas you have taken from the day?

I found it really empowering to be able to come away from the day with achievable, actionable ideas that I could implement straight away from both the miracle thinking exercises and the brilliant shared digital board activity we did after tacking tasks or problem in our breakout groups. Looking forward to trying out lots of these ideas!

What quick wins for reaching new audiences are you going to try?

We have already started! We are applying the 'quick win' and 'long term goal' thinking to a recent audit of our website and it has been so heartening to be able to make real improvements on the very same day.

What are you longer term audience development goals following the day?

We are completing the remainder of our audience development plan for the next 3 years in the next month but in terms of goals, we are looking to take one key piece of activity to one of the identified audiences each quarter. Alongside this, for each new season of work, looking at the events and programming and picking out which of our key audiences the activities might appeal to and referencing back to the 'quick wins' document to see if we can apply some of these consistently.

I think also keeping in mind the Ansoff matrix, we can be deepening our engagement with existing audiences, not constantly striving to bring new work to new audiences and to hope this will happen quickly.

What partnerships in and outside your organisation do you think you would need to make to reaching these goals?

I am always referencing back to our AD plan in all our team meetings (we are only in total 5 members of part time and 1 full time member or staff!) to try and cement that this is a shared vision, and its success is not down to just one person!

I think also reaching out to other members of the AMA community to share ideas and learnings, for a small organisation these peer to peer conversations are not something we can have internally so are really valuable.

Josie Lovick, Chipping Norton Theatre

What do you think are the top priorities/opportunities for audience development in your organisation?

Attracting customers who only visit for one kind of show ie, panto, opera, comedy etc to attend more often and for different events. There is also opportunity to hear from more groups, with a particular focus on young people.

What would you say are the main blockers in reaching these groups? (both internal & external factors)

Finding the right and most effective ways to reach and market to these groups. Our programming.

What are the main learnings or ideas you have taken from the day?

The use of community ambassadors. Creating a ladder of audience touch points.

What quick wins for reaching new audiences are you going to try?

Asking our audience how welcome they feel in post-show feedback. Map out potential customers in our catchment area.

What are you longer term audience development goals following the day?

Get the wider team more involved in programming.

Jenny Clarke, Phoenix Arts

What do you think are the top priorities/opportunities for audience development in your organisation?

To engage with new members of our community as a result of the developing town

What would you say are the main blockers in reaching these groups? (both internal & external factors)

• Knowing more about who they are, their lifestyles, how they socialise etc
• Resources: staff/money to focus specifically on engaging with these groups consistently and then building their wants and needs into our programming

What are the main learnings or ideas you have taken from the day?

• So many! To make audience development an organisation wide approach and encourage more discussions
• We still don’t think enough about what our community/audiences want. So much of what we do, and plan to do, is as a result of what we think would be good – more talking, engaging, researching
• Ambassadors – such an excellent idea
• Quick wins!

What quick wins for reaching new audiences are you going to try?

• Cultural calendar
• Finding more online community groups and engage through socials
• Go out to where the people are
• Share and present this ‘day’ with our team/trustees/vols
• Pop-ups on website, particularly in relation to accessibility
• Diversify our images
• Consider braille, large print and audio for our next brochure
• Incentives, competitions
• And more!!

What are you longer term audience development goals following the day?

• To create a 12 month – 3 year audience development plan
• New Visitor Journeys – create a system of plotting these journeys and engaging along the way
• Make our building more welcoming
• Identify and reach out to diverse groups in our community

What partnerships in and outside your organisation do you think you would need to make to reaching these goals?

• Young Persons Focus Group (new group at Phoenix Arts)
• Existing users of the theatre – survey/talk and find out what their thoughts are in relation to the above goals
• Build on our existing partners in the town with regular contact, sharing of ideas and asking for support
• Approach local businesses and new organisations about collaborative working
• Community members who can give time to help us out