Venue: Newcastle City Library
Cost: free to ANE subscribers
The Artistic Urge Vs the Financial Imperative
How can cultural organisations balance the relationship between artistic vision and audience development? How can we package and sell culture in ways that will maximise potential audiences, particularly during these challenging economic times? How can a strategic approach help balance the scales?
One of ANE’s priorities for 2009-10 is to help subscribers meet the challenges of the economic downturn and thrive despite difficult conditions. This half-day workshop will provide practical guidance and inspiration for new ways of working between programming and marketing departments. Organisations will be encouraged to send both marketing and programming personnel to the workshops in order to facilitate an open and informed discussion that will cascade throughout the organisation following the workshop and have the potential for real impact.
Leading the workshop will be Jo Taylor, Head of Marketing for the Wales Millennium Centre, which celebrates its fifth birthday this year. The marketing team sits alongside programming with the arts and audience development portfolio, responsible for programming and delivering audiences for all spaces in the centre. Jo has worked in the field of arts marketing for fifteen years, previously as Head of Marketing at Welsh National Opera as well as for St George’s, Bristol, Bath Festivals Trust, The Custard Factory and National Youth Music Theatre. Jo is a member of the board of the Arts Marketing Association and Audiences Wales.
In this session, Jo will share her experience of the way that the restructure of the Centre, bringing its arts and progamming elements together, is working, particularly in terms of her relationship with the Artistic Programme Manager, Louise Miles-Crust. Over the past year they have explored ways of harnessing the synergy between the audiences and the art, creating positive working partnerships and shared responsibilities across the artistic and audience development divides.
Jo says: “The intention of this session is not that you go back to work and say that you want to restructure, but to share some lessons so that you can reach across existing silos of the organisation. This session shares a work in progress. It is not perfectly right but by sharing this with you, it will spark a lively debate.”
The topics of the session are:
• Wales Millennium Centre restructure – the benefits and challenges
• Share some examples in practice
• Attitudes for success
• Explore ways of increased collaboration
The workshop will be a mixture of presentation and participatory activity. It is strongly encouraged that both marketing and programming/artistic personnel attend, so that any discussion started in the workshop has the potential to be continued and acted upon.