Maybe I had the wrong hashtag.  If I did, I didn’t get alerted to the right one.  March 24-25 was National Arts Advocacy Day.  It came and went.  Although there were celebrations in D.C. among the arts folks, the rest of the nation seemed oddly quiet.

I attempted to tweet a few #artsadvoc and #artsadvocacyday tweets to get more people excited.  That didn’t go so well either.  Are we all too busy to help spread the word?

I have posted many times, and I have come to the conclusion, again, that we simply do not have the right campaign, yet, to spark an arts advocacy revolution.  We need something so clever, so wow, so relevant, so engaging, so “I want to share” that it doesn’t get ignored and unnoticed by not only the general public, but by our own arts people.

Arts folks, I know you are out there, and I am wondering what it is going to take to get other people to join in on the post/share/RT/tweet wagon.

I had a few further thoughts on this topic:

1. Maybe the information is not getting out there for people to share.  Let’s face it, if we are already starting to see that mass marketing is not working for getting people to come to our events, why is mass marketing only being used in arts advocacy campaigns?  The information might have been overlooked due to other mass marketing hitting our inboxes at the same time.

2. We are not connecting with the mavens of our crowd, the people that already love to share good information.  Have we been discovering these people and getting information into their hands?

3. There is not enough momentum being built.  If you want an event to succeed, you need this build-up.  It’s why movie trailers are put out there months in advance and kept out there for top-of-mind and to get us jazzed for the premiere.

4. We simply do not have something cool enough to get a majority of people to go “Wow!” “Neat!” “I have to do something!”

5. Do you even have non-arts friends (general public people)  to talk to?

I could go on, yet what is previously stated is the core of what I feel are the challenges/solutions we face.  There is not enough old fashioned, grassroots, talk to people, share and spread the joy offerings, etc. to get the ball rolling.

So, I ask these questions, what have you done today to advocate for the arts?  What have you done to share and spread the word about an arts event near you?  Without you, there will not be arts advocacy or audience building.  You are needed!

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder