Under-developed audiences?
Yesterday I had the privilege of sitting on the Royal Philharmonic Society’s judging panel for their audience development award. Held annually, it’s always a very genial affair, with a panel made up of interesting people working in this area from around the UK who spend several hours cogitating, debating and ruminating over the shortlist and eventual winner, and then retire to a local restaurant for a very gossipy lunch. Pretty much my idea of a perfect working day!
I can’t tell you anything about the projects on the shortlist – not least as I had to sign something akin to the Official Secrets Act to say that I wouldn’t – but I can offer some general thoughts on the state of audience development in the UK classical music sector. And before anyone thinks that these comments are confined to classical music, I can assure you that they are just as relevant to other areas of the arts and cultural sectors.
Firstly, we need a better definition of what audience development actually is. The current term being used by Arts Council England, amongst others, is actually ‘Audience Engagement’ which is more encompassing as it includes opportunities for people to become involve in an active way, rather than the more passive sitting in a concert hall listening to music between 7.30 and 9.30 on a wet Wednesday during the winter months. And audience development, or engagement, isn’t just about finding new converts to our artistic endeavours; it’s also about ensuring that the existing audiences remain excited and passionate about what we do, and quite possibly developing their knowledge or depth of involvement in the process.
Secondly, we desperately need organisations breaking out of their departmental silos and working together to place their audiences at the centre of everything they do. As a first step, programming, marketing and outreach/education/engagement colleagues should either sit in a darkened room or go and get uproariously drunk (* delete as applicable to your organisation) and figure out that they have to work together to maximise their impact. Too many of the projects I looked at yesterday were not joined-up across organisations which led to situations such as great marketing schemes with no relevance to the organisation’s core objectives, or fantastic events with tiny audiences because the marketers either didn’t understand what the organisation was trying to achieve, or – worse still – got the information too late to do anything meaningful with it. Thankfully, the advent of social media will help provide a remedy for the latter, but I do fear that it will simply encourage some programmers to continue their existing ‘just in time’ working practices.
Finally – and this is possibly the most important of them all – arts organisations really REALLY need to monitor and evaluate what they produce and who comes to see it. Some of the comments around the table yesterday when we’d seen yet another evaluation that cited “We exceeded our targets” as evidence of success are probably best not repeated. Come on, we’ve all played the target game: set ‘em low to manage expectations and then gaining anything approaching a decent size of audience looks like you’re a marketing guru. Hmmm.
Guys and gals, we need numbers. We need to know how many people were new, how many were coming for their second visit. We need to know how you plan to convert casual listeners that happened across your performance in a shopping mall/community centre/music festival into die-hard fans. I’m not talking here about committed 30-concerts a season subscribers; I’m talking people who are ambassadors for your cause. It’s not rocket science. It’s about taking email addresses or mobile numbers, and then starting a dialogue through SMS or Facebook or Twitter or something equally exciting that isn’t yet invented. We also need to know what your audiences felt like at the end. Call me new-fangled but a four-star review in a national paper doesn’t cut the ice any longer, whereas Mavis from Handsworth telling me that this has changed her life really does.
Is that really too much to ask? Based on the evidence of yesterday, it seems that, for for too many, it is.
Why bankers should take their bonuses
So, another day, another bonus waived by a bank chief executive.
Eric Daniels of Lloyds Banking Group has let it be known that he won’t take his bonus, despite his board feeling that the payment was deserved.
In the current climate, this tiny club of well-paid bankers in the upper echelons of their sector are probably well advised to make this kind of grand gesture. And yes, they got the news headlines this evening so perhaps there are congratulatory toasts being had in the city of London tonight.
And yet I can’t help thinking that there would be more mileage – and news coverage – if a CEO was to take their bonus, but then announce that he was giving it all away to charity. Think of the impact £2.3m could make to a range of his pet causes, and also think of the amount of Gift Aid that could be claimed on top.
So rather than the knee-jerk reaction to bankers that prevails in the media, let’s encourage them to take the bonuses and, literally, make good with it.
A little Friday fun
Who hasn’t thought of doing something like this? Particularly like the reference to maths teachers who thought you were stupid…there’s a few of them I’d like to meet again now.
A cautionary tale of why this fundraiser won’t be donating money to this cause – yet.
There’s been huge excitement in the West Midlands region about the Staffordshire Hoard, and quite right too. Now on view in London, the extraordinarily beautiful Saxon gold artefacts show that that the region’s illustrious history in making jewellery in precious metals did not just start with Matthew Boulton when he founded the Birmingham Assay Office in 1773. There’s been much discussion about whether the 7th century golden haul should and/or could stay in the region, given it was discovered here and received its first public outing in Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG).
In fact, BMAG has already set up the Staffordshire Hoard Appeal. I was interested in giving to the appeal, but, given it has not yet been confirmed that the Hoard will stay in Birmingham, wondered what would happen to my money if, for instance, the British Museum, felt that the collection should stay in the capital. According to their website, my donation would be made to a restricted fund, the “City of Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery Development Trust’s Staffordshire Hoard Appeal (registered charity no. 701785)”.
I was interested to know how BMAG had set up a charity quite so quickly, as it is – quite rightly – a regulated process, so put the registered charity number into the Charity Commission website, a fairly standard practice for fundraisers – and indeed fund givers – to check on a charity’s credentials. What this showed me was that the charity, when I first looked pre-Christmas, was that it hadn’t filed its accounts with the Commission since 2005, and even today is 167 days late filing last year’s figures. What this means is that I have no way of knowing whether this is a well-run charity, what their funding situation is at present, how much they spend on overheads, etc.
Oh dear, not the best way to gain people’s trust, or money.
So the next time that you are struggling with your report and accounts, or your charity return, do remember the impact it has on potential donors. Until I can see these key performance indicators, I’m afraid that the Staffordshire Hoard won’t be getting any of my money.
Glass half-full or -empty?
I got talking to someone this week who told me that her New Year resolution was to be more positive about life. Her feeling was that Brits are forever looking for the downside to every situation, and she was/is determined to buck the trend.
To be honest, I dismissed her comment, saying that I’d not noticed the nation’s downbeat attitude. However, the news coverage in the last 24 hours has made me recant.
“Worst snow in 30 years” scream the headlines this morning. Really? Aside from the fact that the headline really means “lots of snow forecast for London”, is this really the ‘worst’ snow? Surely bad snow would be a few flakes – this is GOOD snow!
I know that it’s disrupting travel, closing schools, causing powercuts, and so on, so the effects of the snow can’t necessarily be considered as good, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the snow is bad.
Britain, get a grip!
Can the arts cope in a beta world?
Every so often you go to a conference and something said by a speaker becomes a worm in your head. It turns, challenges, probes and just won’t go away.
So it was for me at the Arts Marketing Association Conference this summer where Ed Sanders, Marketing Director for Google and YouTube, was talking about his experiences of working with arts organisations on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra project. He genuinely couldn’t understand the lead-in times required by many arts organisations to get a project off the ground, where schedules of work are booked years ahead, and each stage of a project’s process is mapped in minute detail, all leading to a wonderful performance at curtain up, or a faultless exhibition opening.
At the time I brushed the comment aside, thinking that it was simply a culture clash: perhaps Ed didn’t understand that the arts sector really excels at creating perfect moments first time, every time. “Always has, always will”, I thought, and yet that Ed’s throwaway thought has caused me to think very deeply about whether our model of working has a place in the new world order.
Let me explain: Google, along with many other technology companies, operates in a permanent beta mode; they release products and services to market as soon as they are able, encourage feedback from the users, and then tweak their offer to iron out initial glitches and make suggested improvements. The constantly evolving technological landscape doesn’t leave enough time to beta-test new approaches before innovation evolves again. The on-line futurology and trends experts trendwatching.com have identified this as ‘nowism’, which they describe as “Consumers’ ingrained lust for instant gratification”.
Trendwatching.com feels that this lust “is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.”
The internet marketing specialist Mike Moran calls this the “do it wrong quickly” approach. If you are an early adopter of technology, you’ll probably be conversant with this approach: the earliest iPods and iPhones were quickly outshone by the later models, and not just because of additional features.
This has always seemed inherently unfair to me: why should I part with £150 of my hard-earned money to receive an incomplete product? If the price was lower at the start and rose as modifications were made and things perfected, then I’d feel like I had a choice: go in early and get it cheaper in exchange for helping refine the offer, or buy later on and get it perfect. That’s really what theatres do with cheaper previews if you think about it.
But younger people – Generation Y born after 1980, with the Post-Millennium Children right on their heels – just don’t ‘get’ our way of working. The idea that an opera company will know not just its repertoire but often the names of the principle singers up to a decade ahead of time is genuinely laughable to a 22-year old. I know because I asked. Questions like “But won’t it be really out of date?” and “What happens if the singers die before then?” are valid, and perhaps just serve to reinforce some of the stereotypes that me and many of my friends have devoted a working career to breaking down. Try telling a twenty something that it won’t be out of date because it was written 150 years ago and watch a human hard-drive implode.
Other parts of the creative industries are wising up to this. It must have taken a huge effort for the BBC to show a TV dramatization of The Last Days of Lehman Brothers just over a year after the real events. Inside the cultural industries, we know that the creative process takes time: that research has to be done, scripts written, locations sourced and permissions gained, actors and crews booked, costumes designed, and so on. But the BBC managed it, and in doing so told the story at a point when it still felt scarily current.
So can the arts not just survive but thrive in a beta-obsessed age?
Ultimately yes, but if we embrace this new way of existing, it may see a change in the pecking orders and a fundamental shift in the ways in which we work. Smaller, emerging companies who can be fleeter of foot, may genuinely rival the ‘big boys’ by appearing more current, and using ever-cheaper technologies to share their work and engage wider audiences. Organisations with lower fixed overheads, such as no buildings to run, could become kings. In a post National Lottery funding boom age, where massive investment took place in making buildings fit for purpose, the arts world could be turned upside down. There will indeed be chaos, realness and excitement.
As Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”.
Data for sale?
The news breaking this afternoon that T-Mobile staff sold customer information on the open market doesn’t surprise me in the least. It’s a sad fact of human nature that someone will exploit a security loophole for personal gain if it exists, particularly as the ‘going rate’ for selling such data is very high. In this case the data was purchased and used by a rival mobile phone firm in an attempt to secure new customers as their existing contracts came to an end, rather than the more usual situation of it being used to buy holidays, music or even Christmas presents, but nevertheless the potential for exploitation of personal data on every level is enormous.
Having spent the last few years working with arts venues all over the UK, I know that the same would be true of theatres up and down the country. Think about it: they have credit card details for most of their customers, plus name and address details – in other words, everything a criminal would need to make fraudulent online purchases. When I’ve asked venues about their data policies, most of the answers have been woolly, with some organisations giving every single employee open access to your data. No encryption, no privacy, no safeguards.
Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, would like to see custodial sentences for those who trade in personal data, saying “The existing paltry fines… are simply not enough to deter people from engaging in this lucrative criminal activity. The threat of jail, not fines, will prove a stronger deterrent.”
Let’s hope that these strong words will convince the arts sector that the potential for their staff to trade customer information is a real and present danger, and compel them to act now before we face such a scandal.
Scandinavian design
My father spent some of his formative years in Denmark and Sweden which left him with a great love of Scandic design. Our family home reflected that influence, with some wonderful 1960s teak furniture which seemed horribly old-fashioned by the 1980s, but is now back in style and highly-desirable.
I was fortunate to visit Denmark twice when I was playing in youth orchestras, often staying in family homes, and what struck me forcibly was that even the most ordinary domestic objects were carefully and thoughtfully designed. Never did the William Morris quote “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” seem to ring truer.
So for my first set of links, here are three UK retailers that offer a glimpse of what scandinavian design offers today:
- The very wonderful Danish Homestore in Nottingam regular imports Danish furniture. Nothing like IKEA, I promise!
- ScandiLiving does exactly what it says on the tin
- Celebrating its 10th birthday this year, Skandium offers a fabulous range of designers, including Finns like Alvar Aalto and Marimekko.
(For any Finns reading, yes, I do know that Finland isn’t actually part of Scandinavia). They get very touch about that, I’ve learnt!
An age old question of fairness?
The Government’s Equalities department has been running a consultation on age discrimination in services and public functions, which was brought to my attention by the Theatrical Management Association.
Although most theatres, in line with other arts organisations, tend to be pretty open and fair by nature, and very welcoming to older visitors, it set me wondering if our sector was being uninentionally discriminatory by offering concessions to those aged 60+?
Whilst it seems to me to be entirely appropriate and very desirable to offer events, concessions and benefits to some groups in society, there needs to be a justification. For example, it’s only right to offer an additional ticket to people with disabilities who need to be accompanied on a trip to the theatre; why should they be disadvantaged? There’s a clear moral, social and ethical reason for that offer, and one might also argue that there’s a business imperative too.
So, what is our justification in offering discounted tickets for people once they’ve passed their 60th birthday?
Well, received wisdom is that retired people are less well-off, and therefore custom-and-practice is that we subsidise their attendance. But aren’t we making a massive assumption here: that older people are poorer?
What about people who are in work but on low incomes? Or families, where the cost of parents/guardians and their offspring attending an event can be truly prohibitive? I know many older people who take advantage of every discount that’s going (fair enough, I probably would if I could!) but equally would be able to pay full price. Sure they may come less frequently, but I doubt that the bottom line would be all that different; many visits at minimal cost could well add up to less than one visit at full price.
Which makes me wonder if we’re actually measuring the right things here. Is it deemed more preferable by our board or funders to have higher visitor numbers, or money in our bank accounts?
I’d be really keen to hear your thoughts on this, pro or con.
Welcome to my world 