We've had a very busy spring and now that it's drawn to a close and the summer is nearly here, we thought we would spend some time reflecting on some of the highlights from our tours and events.

We toured 5 very different productions who each brought a different dynamic to our spring offer and attracted very different audiences. Overall we're delighted by audience numbers over the season so we approached some of our tour venues to let us into their secrets about how they caught their audience's imagination. We also ran a successful Pitch-Up event at Cambridge Junction and caught up with a lot of the network to learn more about theatre programming and audience patterns at the venue meet-ups.

Here are some of our spring season highlights.

Unbroken

Rather than a tour, Nikki's one-woman incredible physical theatre piece was performed over 5 one-off performances starting at The Bay in Weymouth in January and finishing at Worthing Pavilion Theatre in April. We appreciate that it is tricky currently to find audiences for physical and dance-based performances but were especially delighted with the show at The Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury. The team at the theatre did some digging into their attendees and found that 72% of the audience had been to The Marlowe 4+ times before, proving that the Studio really benefits from their most loyal audience members. They put this down to their membership and multibuy schemes and retention activity such as segmented emails to drama, dance and studio bookers.

The next largest audience were first time attendees (19%) including one of the bookers who they met through running a freshers fair stall. Other acquisition activity included paid social ads using the trailer targeting fans of physical theatre, fringe theatre and circus theatre. The video content was integral to this and using both movement-based messaging and narrative/theatre messaging to draw in audiences.

Meet Me A Tree

We love touring baby-friendly theatre but baby-opera was new to us! Taking shows for infants really makes venues look at how family friendly their venues really are - is there adequate buggy parking? Do you have sufficient baby changing? Is there a quiet space free during the performance? It was great to bring different venues together to share learnings in the pre-tour meetings and we hope the good audience numbers for the tour is a first step for organisations making lasting relationships with local families.

The Alexander Centre in Faversham welcomed plenty of new families to see the show so we caught up with their Digital Marketing & Events Apprentice Ben Cave about their campaign.

To be honest, we didn't really do anything special to promote this event. We were quite active on social media, especially in the week leading up to the show, this would have given it an extra push.

Additionally, we were able to distribute leaflets directly to local parents as we host two weekly parenting groups and some children's dance classes.

We also had the trailer playing on our front-of-house TV, this was great because it would often catch people's attention as they passed by.

With regards to reaching new audiences, we are often successful at marketing to all age ranges, this is most likely due to the fact we are a high street venue, so a variety of people pass by throughout the day.

SOLD

SOLD was the biggest tour of the spring season with performances right across the network over March and April. It was an extremely powerful piece with Lola May giving such a wonderful performance as Mary Prince. Each performance also concluded with a Q&A led by the show's drummer Angie Amra Anderson which opened up some very emotional discussions about the continued injustice and racism in modern society.

The performance was particularly well received when venues were able to welcome in school and university groups to learn more about the history of slavery through this true account. The venues who perhaps did this best were South Street Arts in Reading & The Quarry Theatre in Bedford.

Stephanie Gunner-Lucas, South Street Arts:

I'm not sure I can give you anything novel for what worked with this show, I just focused on the history aspect and that it was a profile of a real person in the messaging. I think people respond well to life stories - they can easily understand what the product is that you're offering. I also focused on the drumming and music aspect of the production, as that made it sound vibrant and exciting rather than dry and historical.

The videos and marketing assets provided by the company helped sell that this was a story about a woman of colour, by and performed by women of colour, so there was authenticity behind it. The vox pops videos had opinions from a diverse range of audiences, helping potential customers see that the story had value whatever your background.

We were lucky to get a large school group booked in early on, and they were super engaged throughout the show and Q&A. I was also aware being in the audience that there were a lot of academics - I assume from University of Reading history, anthropology departments. So the subject matter seemed to resonate with academic types, and we are near a big university, so that obviously worked in our favour here.

Mostly I think drip feeding the video content and assets provided meant that I always had some new content, something new to say, something that visually looked different whenever I posted - great for grabbing attention on busy social media platforms.

David Baxter, The Quarry Theatre at St Luke's

There’s no secret to it! We contacted all our regular local schools with which we have built up a good relationship over the years and explained the show and how it might fit in with their Drama studies. The offer of the workshops from Kuumba Nia was also a good hook (although sadly, no one took up the offer). We also tried engaging with the Bedford Afro-Caribbean community via a regular contact and were pushing the show (especially the excellent trailer!) regularly via our Socials.

The schools are the key, particularly if you can relate it to their studies and the syllabus. We have had a similar excellent response to Berkoff’s Dog/Actor by 3Dumb Theatre who are coming in September (if you can’t sell Berkoff to drama students you may as well give up!). I saw it up in Edinburgh last year and a personal recommendation is always a good selling point when talking about shows to the audience.

Nothing Happens (Twice)

Even though this was a shorter tour, audiences had such a great time with the absurdly funny Merce and Patricia. The story of 2 women stuck dressing-up as flamingos to perform a show in Westfield Shopping Centre to promote Andalucía really struck a note with audiences. It worked as a re-telling of Waiting for Godot which famously is stringently protected by the Beckett family estate, but also a story of our time in lockdown, during which the show was written. That sense of being in limbo waiting for life to return to normal definitely struck a note with audiences across the tour.

It was a classic 'you just had to be there' show with audiences loving it and wishing more people had taken a risk on seeing something a little out of their comfort zone. Still, we had an absolute blast!

Animals!

Animals from Dens & Signals toured in April throughout and after the Easter Holidays. Family shows can be quite stressful when waiting for audiences to book - they like to check their options and see what the weather is doing! The show gave children the chance to put themselves in the pawprints of their favourite animals and represent them at the AGM (Animal General Meeting). It got them to think about how they are being affected by the impact of climate change and what changes humans need to make to protect their species.

Many theatres had fun arranging wraparound activities for the show with live animal interactions in the foyer at Greenwich Theatre and The Alexander Centre. The Old Town Hall in Hemel Hempsted welcomed the local Wildlife Trust group to come to the performance and talk about their local family nature activities - an action that opened their space to a new partnership which will hopefully led to more exciting events in the future.

Pitch Up & Meet-ups

A huge thanks to the team for organising such an enjoyable day. It is a unique event with plenty of time and space for meaningful conversations - more Pitch Ups please!

Throughout the spring we've run training sessions on sustainability, anti-racism statements, managing online backlash and access & inclusion. The topics had been picked based on venue feedback from last year's annual survey but also we chose 2 sessions linked to our touring theatre programme to upskill the staff and help the venue messaging ahead of the show visiting. These were led by Director's Euton Daly from SOLD and Daryl Beeton from Look Mum, No Hands! which we are touring this summer and proved a useful addition to our training offer.

Following on from the popular Cluster meetings last Spring, we organised a series of regional venue meet-ups bringing together neighbouring venues of all sizes to share their concerns and opportunities and think strategically about great partnerships to attract audiences to their theatre programmes. A big thank you to South Street Arts, The Alexander Centre, Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, Worthing Pavilion Theatre and The Hat Factory Arts for hosting.

What's next?

house will be touring Look Mum, No Hands! by Daryl & Co and Mimbre this summer, taking it to outdoor festivals across the region. We will also be seeing plenty more outdoor work at festivals as well as taking our delegation of programmers up to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August. We are taking small organisation delegates from the network to 2 conferences this summer, UK Theatre Summit & the Arts Marketing Association conference.

Looking further ahead to the Autumn, our touring programme has been announced including The Rest of Our Lives, Fatherhood and A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings. This season will be supported by our new Take Your Seats ticket scheme which is aimed at driving back lapsed bookers and new cultural attenders to our theatres.

Pitch up returns in October when it visits Portsmouth (applications now open) and keep your eyes peeled for details of our network day coming very soon!