Over the past few weekends, we have had 5 conferences related to the arts: AFTA, Chorus America, Dance USA, TCG, and Opera America. All of these conferences did talk about audience development with extra thoughts focusing on civic impact, how to engage an audience, how to diversify and be more inclusive, and how to connect with your community. How to be relevant came up in all of the conferences, as well as taking more risks. The phrase “building relationships” was mentioned many times.
What was interesting is that at most of these conferences, taking action was highlighted more than in the past. There were even some rather comical and clever tweets about this:
Diana B, @loladiana, tweeted:
I’m so tired of “Diversity” and “Inclusion” panels. For fucks sake, just do it already! #TCG14
NAMT, @NAMT, tweeted:
Arts advocacy should be as organized, active, and loud as the NRA. Make them hear you. #TCG14
Dance/USA, @DanceUSAorg, tweeted:
Get out there and go rogue, Cookie Austin, @BalletAustin, Culture of Innovation session #DUSAconfColleen Maybin, @cbmaybin,tweeted:
Thank you @OPERAAmerica for bringing in Alan Brown. I am taking the pack of matches back to Vancouver #operaconfjoy meads, @capnjoy, tweeted:
Karen Hartman to Emily, MFA candidate & notetaker: “you better not be taking notes on this same conversation in 15 years” #parityraid #tcg14
All of these tweets, related to the speeches they were inspired by, were calling for action.
This morning, I found a Huffington Post article by Michael Kaiser that was mentioning this same call to action regarding strategic planning. Basically he was saying, stop the wish lists and start the action lists!
I have once in a while posted about taking action , and I am happy to see more people wanting this type of action too. Conferences are fantastic for getting our blood, passion and ideas flowing again, yet if all we do is file our notes away from these meetings and let the experience we just had settle and wash away, the future of an arts for all will not come to fruition. Instead we will continue to be an arts for a few. It takes action to create more blood, passion and ideas flowing to create happy and loyal audiences.
So, if you were one of the lucky ones to have attended one of these conferences, please do take one idea that resonated with you and turn it into an action item to carry out during this coming season. We can continue to think about audience development, engagement, diversity, etc., but it takes action after the thinking to create the desired impact.
Thoughts? Action items?
Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana
Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder
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It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? It feels good to think about the next step, plot what it will take to get there, etc. And conferences are chock full of such feel good sentiment. Taking the plunge, though, can be scary and time consuming. Glad to see some folks are taking it all the same!
Hi Christian! You are right that taking action can be a scary step, especially if you are planning something new. The good news is, there are many examples of artists and organizations that have, as you said, taken the plunge. These examples can serve as an inspiration. Knowing that taking action can be done helps!