You play the part…

I was recently the Librarian (with a dark secret) in Coney’s production of  ‘A Small Town Anywhere’ at BAC – my first experience of participative theatre (as an adult)…  While I’m still digesting how we managed to oust the Mayor, not find out who the Raven was and hold back from a town hanging, overall I really enjoyed the set-up and filling in my back story, but was not so good personally at getting involved with the politics of the town.  So, the question is when you leave the participants to work things out for themselves, do you lose the sense of dramatic tension central to a theatrical experience? On the other hand, maybe you just can’t compare apples with oranges and I should just relish the experience for what it was!

Increase individual giving = know your audience!

Latest research commissioned by Arts and Business with City University is  a study into donor motivation – interesting reading offering evidence to help grow our donor and friend schemes.  This may not seem like news to those immersed in this area of course… but does advocate for development and marketing teams working closely together on understanding their existing audiences to identify potential donors.

This is a good starting point for us, as Audiences London has been invited to the next Membership Management Forum meeting on 21 September at the Photographer’s Gallery.  Hopefully a  great opportunity to talk about the sorts of audience information that would be might be useful for identifying potential friends and donors and where to find it.  Following on from The Good Agency’s presentation at the MMF conference earlier in the year.

Changing consumer behaviour in recessionary times

That great monitor of our spending behaviour – Experian (of credit checking and geo-demographic profiling Mosaic) has been investigating impacts of the recession on consumer behaviour:

Check out their report here.

The watchwords are value and customer service – if you don’t provide it then your lovely loyal consumers may shop elsewhere!

AMA – collaboration, collaboration, collaboration (aka digital)

As my colleagues have given you a marketing perspective, a research perspective and an organisational perspective, I’ve gone for the digital perspective. In the spirit of web 2.0 and Charles Leadbeater’s The Art of With (next event 25 November at Cornerhouse) for me this is all about the opportunities to collaborate and connect with each other, with audiences and with artists.

So, first of all on the ‘with each other’ – yes, I was one of those annoying twitterers (purely a personal experiment of course – my theory being if you’ve not experienced it how do you know what impact it might have). Armed with my trusty iphone I was multi-tasking – listening, tweeting and reading.  My findings – I was not so interested in where people are as what they thought.  My conclusions – I made some connections with interesting people at the conference who I would not have necessarily met in person and useful references were sourced by active tweeters, but I was hoping for a bit more comment. Anyway – have a look at one of the various tags #ama2009, #amaconf2009 or #amaconference09 or see what I had to say at #audienceslondon. I think there are big implications for the future of conferencing too, which we at AL will have to take note of – we live in a world of immediacy… look out for the new ‘digitally interactive dialogue space’. And is anyone using the AMA wiki set up by #MarcusRomer (follow his Twitter too)? One request by twitter was to share social media case-studies… so should we do this using social media?

Tackling digital from an organisational point of view seems to present a number of challenges, some of which is discussed in the Silos to Shrek Ears research report which inspired Dave Moutrey to take Cornerhouse on the journey he described in the keynote. We are charged as marketers and organisations to manage complexity, as discussed in Graham Leicester’s inspiring work at the International Futures Forum. So, how do we live comfortably with all the new opportunities – maybe it’s something about using evidence and information. Who has used the YouTube Metrics as Ed of YouTube suggested? Or entered into the discussions on the impacts of social media as suggested by Marcus Romer (everyone’s new guru… or is he a geek?). For Cornerhouse this is working out how to work an ‘Adhocracy’ style organisation.  However, the top tip is: if you can change the way you work internally effectively,  your audiences will probably go with you… wherever you want to take them.

Now to the audiences bit – as you may know, my continual quest is for some more concrete information about which audiences engage digitally and if they do, how (or does ) it enhances their artistic experience…  As Diane Ragsdale said it is not enough to facebook them, it’s all the other stuff and how relevant you are to someone that influences them to engage. Andy Ryans reiterated this, in terms of encouraging us to remember the other tools, such as just talking to people face to face. We perhaps need to be clearer for ourselves about how we use the wonderful Web 2.0, and remember according to the 90-9-1 principle of social networking maybe only a small proportion of audiences are up for full online dialogue. So, how can we best serve the 90%? Maybe we can take some lessons from the Slow Food Campaign – combine enjoyment and responsibility on all sides. Hans de Kretser’s guide to social media should be good reading (wait for the conference report) – number 1 is ‘have a strategy’. You can already find Marcus Romer’s session about using digital media here? In terms of generating content to engage audiences – do we take Dan from Innocent’s advice of ‘keeping it mildly interesting’ – perhaps we’re putting too much pressure on ourselves to come up with super-duper content, when people actually want to know how many costume changes are involved or by what route a painting arrived from New York…

There were obviously some bits about artistic content online, with the much lauded YouTube orchestra (in collaboration with LSO) and many examples from Watershed of what they’ve let artists do.  But the heart of the matter seems to be about giving up control and allowing amateur/user generated content to work alongside the professional artists’ work. Most people do know how to edit and filter to find the good stuff. And on the other hand our brands are usually strong enough as arts organisations to survive re-shaping by our users or audiences. Finally, we should not fear failure, allow ourselves to experiment and as Ed of YouTube said just ‘read up, team up and mix up’.

And as Martin Reynolds of Festivals Edinburgh said “collaboration breeds collaboration”.

Keep reading about impacts of the recession…

Here’s the latest one from the International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies (with a prize for the longest title).  They’ve surveyed their membership and have come up with a report – “Global financial crisis and recession: Impact on the arts - Opinions vary on the impact and severity of the financial downturn. The general response indicates that the recession will last at least 2 years, negatively affect sponsorship, lead to staff layoffs and the commissioning of programmes with lower risk and higher mass appeal.” Read the full report here.

AmbITion Roadshow/Art of Digital: things to read

So, we went to the AmbITion Roadshow and Art of Digital Symposium and learnt some things… here’s the first installment – things to read! About digital, about the arts and how it could work for you…

To keep up to date join the ‘ning’ network for Art of Digital London and also to find out about the follow-up workshops and surgeries organised by IT4Arts and Mute – which Audiences London will also be contributing to.  Also see previous post in this blog to answer our burning question… how do our audiences engage with digital?

Some of the presentations:

• Ludus Dance – an AmbITion Funded Project
• Rohan Gunatillake – ex of Missions Models Money

Books and things:

• The Art of With by Charles Leadbeater… not to, but with…
• Digital Britain Report – essential reading if you need a steer on government ambitions.
• “Free” by Chris Anderson – as the name suggests he is a big fan of  the idea of ‘information wanting to be free’ and true to his word, the book is available free online.
• Arts Council Digital Research – recently published results from phase one – including some qualitiative research with arts audiences and digital users and an audit of all RFO’s online presences.

Sites to visit

• Henry Jenkins - digital geeks guru! Said things like “convergence culture – when old and new media collide”… and more…
• Christian Payne – or as his known in Twitter – @Documentally – if you want to know what’s what in social media and networking – he’s the man!
• Hide and Seek – champions of  ‘pervasive gaming’ – where you put the individual at the centre of a game or project, responding to our participatory culture resulting in the ultimate engagement.  All sorts of cool projects, and were inspired by the work of Punch Drunk.
• You Tube Symphony Orchestra - a global collaboration involving LSO and other orchestras to solicit auditions from musicians around the world, culminating in a performance at Cargegie Hall that was livestreamed on Youtube and reached 8million views.
• Britten Sinfonia – using digital technologies well to engage with their audiences
• Slideshare – an online storage place for all your Powerpoint presentations
• Social Innovation Camp - why not create one for the arts?! It’s a weekend where you get lots of technology geeks together with social activists and come up with new solutions to old problem using digital tools
• A Million Penguins - Publisher Penguin’s wiki novel

And there’s lots of good stuff at Missions Models Money about our changing society and how organisations should adapt and evolve.

Musings on the AmbITion Roadshow/Art of Digital Symposium

A full two days incarcerated within the lovely Sadler’s Wells, and all I’ve got to show for it is a rather annoying new addiction to Twitter! But only annoying to those around me – I’m loving it… and yes I know I’m a bit late to this party.

On a more serious note, it was all very interesting although I had hoped there would be a bit more about audiences, which is only to be expected working for Audiences London. I’d like the input from the experts to move on from ‘there’s all this stuff you can use to communicate in different ways, and it’s all free, so use it’ (albeit with a bit of a caviat that they’re only tools – mode, not medium) to… ‘who is it we’re engaging with, and what kind of engagement does that result in, through using digital media’. It is clear at one end that it’s working for participative activities and at the other end results have been recorded in terms of global profile. However, there’s a whole world of ‘engagement’ between those two.

Some random quotes and thoughts were… ‘websites should be based around pull and shared content’ (Hannah Rudman). Hide and Seek’s Alex Fleetwood was living example of how you have to trade relinquishing control for greater visibility.  A strong theme emerging was that if you collaborate, consult or even just open the door to others it can help to develop and improve what you do. Rohan of Missions Models Money mentioned that you’re just helping people do what they already do – which begs the question, are we really reaching new or different audiences, or just deepening the engagement of existing audiences through all this digital activity.

Ekow Eshun of the ICA kicked off the Art of Digital Symposium with words of wisdom along the lines of…  the arts have a responsibility to respond to the world around us, so you can’t claim to be a  contemporary space and remain relevant if this does not include engagement with digital opportunities. He also made a very valid defence of his motivations for integrating ‘digital’ responsibilities across the organisation, rather than having a hived off separate department. Although he didn’t get a chance to answer a question about whether he’d consulted his audiences about the ICA and its digital engagement.

And Ed Baxter of Resonance FM – who I I think I want to adopt said… ‘If you learn something share it, if you make a mistake point it out’. Which seems to me very wise and should be at the heart of any thriving community.

My remaining questions are … who is the twitterer ’sealtree’, and would I really want to go to a ‘geek camp’… And please tell us what you’d like to know about how your audiences engage with digital media, or share examples of what’s worked, and what’s not…

Christian Payne… the guru of social media…

A highlight for me, as part of the AmbITion Roadshow event… and offered a brilliant one-stop-shop for  the inside track on all that social networking stuff… essentially follow his Twitter feed @Documentally or visit his site Our Man Inside to see how you can really use all the available wizardry… But mostly, he makes it sound easy, even if he does carry around a rucksack that looks like he’s equipping himself for some sort of assault on the BBC.

His online toolbox includes the following: twitter, wordpress, flickr, tokbox.com (for video), twitvid.com, 12seconds.tv, audioBoo, qik.com (livestreaming), YouTube, vimeo (for HD video), Phreadz (multi-media platform for conversation) etc. hopefully all of which are self explanatory. And the essential piece of equipment is the Kodak zi6 (but wait for the new version) as your recording equipment! He also recommends good ways of managing all this ie. by using tubemogul to manage distribution and tweetdeck to filter.

Identifying ‘amplifiers’ (or ‘initiators’ in our marketing terms) is where the power is ie. people who re-tweet or pass on information.

Although we still don’t really know which of our audiences are using which tool, so if you’ve got the expertise, time and will all of this is possible and will reach someone. However, I guess the challenge is that you need to be clear what it is you’re trying to do and why, who you’re aiming to engage, and ideally are able to assess the level of response somehow…  but maybe that’s all just a bit too futuristic! But these are the areas I’m interested in.

How do our audiences use digital media?

This is Audiences London’s burning question… we want to get to the bottom of what works and for whom.

We’re keen to develop our resources and help organisations decide where to put their investment, what tools/content engage audiences the most, and how to evaluate which digital media to use when… So, for starters we’ve thrown down the gauntlet for the AmbITion Roadshow and Art of Digital Events (16/17 July) delegates to let us know. But we’re open to all comers to comment and guide our investigations…

From recession… to recovery…

So, the rhetoric is shifting… it’s not about surviving the recession now, but planning for the recovery.  The top tips are probably the same… but here they are from that slightly different perspective!

http://blogs.bnet.com/bnet1/?p=1890&tag=nl.e713