Usually during and after a conference my brain gets all tingly, and then it lights up with new ideas and inspirations. Today, for some reason, it is happening before the conference. Perhaps I had too much coffee this morning. A likely assessment, yet my thoughts are fairly targeted towards what we might be discussing at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference, or NAMPC. Here is a list of thoughts, and if you are attending, I’d love to discuss any one of these with you further:
- Are the arts stuck? Lately I see so much talk, talk, and more talk about the issues, about the terms, about the challenges. Are we discussing enough about the solutions, ideas, positive case studies, and inspirations? I think not, and I know a few of my colleagues do agree. I am hoping to see more action oriented presentations so we can steer our energies to this mode of thinking. It is good to discuss the issues at times, but at least follow up with some points we can take home to try to get out of that issue.
- We know the issues, we have the research, now what can we do to use all that great information! Get to know the reasons and barriers of attending for your specific audiences as well. Then, get cracking to come up with creative solutions using this data!
- Data collecting – just do it! Maybe we need to talk more about the how to collect data and how to use the data instead of the why it is a good idea? I think we are at least heading in this direction.
- Social Media – get social again!
- Arts advocacy is not action oriented enough, and it is our fault! I point the finger at the collective WE since WE are not posting, talking, sharing, arts advocacy topics with our friends and family. It is rare when I see someone else use one of the arts advocacy hashtags or share a piece of action content with our followers. WE can do better.
- Feel the arts again – I did a post about this subject matter, and I do believe it could be at least “an answer” to our arts advocacy challenges. People need to feel the arts are a part of their every day lives again. Feel free to read the post to see where I am going with this thought.
- Other industries use us for creative marketing. Why are we not doing this for ourselves? It goes along the lines of allowing our inner arts geeks out to play when creating audience development and marketing programs. It is embarrassing to see other industries out art us in their creativity. It has nothing to do with money. We are better than this. We can stop coming from a place of lack and fear and start using our arts to create what will really attract the right audiences for us!
- And, of course, it would behoove us to use the new technologies and experiment without apologies. Many formats are FREE!
So let’s roll up our collective sleeves and get busy. We can have fun while we are doing all of this experimenting, action-oriented problem solving. I know I plan to.
Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana
Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder, ADS
If you happen to be going to NAMPC, I will be wearing my special book button. I hope you stop and say hello!
