I had the pleasure of meeting in person one of my twitter friends, Misha Penton, during her visit to Boulder, CO this week. Misha is a mezzo soprano from Houston, TX that formed her own “Opera, Classical Vocal Music & Multidisciplinary Performance Arts” ensemble company. This mouthful became Divergence Vocal Theater. After many tweeted conversations…
I finally want to take the time to chime in again about Michael Kaiser’s tour, Arts in Crisis. The media continues to give us reports on each of his stops around the country. The latest article had the most interesting sound bytes by far: Arts groups get advice from Kennedy Center president Be bold. Be…
It’s Friday, and it’s time to announce the winners for all the categories of The 2009 Audience Development Specialists Tweets Awards! Most Interesting Venues The nominees are: Keeping artists in the Loop Creative Showcase | Pop-Up Art program turns vacant buildings into galleries http://bit.ly/4DVbs8 The Chicago Loop Alliance plays matchmaker with artists and landlords to…
So, the Tweeples Choice Awards didn’t work out so well. I only had two votes on last weeks polls, not worth it. For the rest of the categories, I’m simply going to pick the Audience Development Specialists Awards since we are all busy people. The last two categories were: Best Use of Mainstream 2009 ‘Star…
I had a great discussion yesterday with a local grant writer. We were discussing the nature of the arts in today’s world. We both came to the same conclusion that a majority of artists and arts organizations these days might actually be getting in their own way for success. “Why is that? I don’t get…
I have lightly touched upon this subject before, but I felt it was good timing for me to approach it again. I was recently contacted by an organization that is in need of filling their seats, “we need butts in seats!” They needed someone who could guarantee butts in seats in order to make…
Collaboration for the arts! I have been seeing more interesting collaborations in our arts world, so I thought I would do a quick top 10 list for ways to collaborate in the arts! Programming collaborations – pretty self explanatory, but I challenge you to come up with new mixtures. Marketing collaborations – this could mean…
Dear Arts Community, I am straying from my regularly scheduled format to let you know about a great audience development resource. It’s an audience development resource that has been around for almost 2 years, has been in the arts management business for over a decade, and has been in the non-profit trenches for over 15…
Last night I did an hour consultation meeting with the Colorado Wind Ensemble. I quickly explained about the 4 C’s of audience development: community, collaborations, connections, and caring. While speaking to them, a 5th C came up: Courage. Audience development takes courage for many reasons. For one, you need the courage to be able to…
This morning my thoughts are on the symphony orchestra, the musicians and the audience. I recently went to a CMF concert where the musicians were mainly GenX’ers (27-43), but the audience was still mainly Baby Boomer and Silent generation (44+). Why is it that orchestra’s seem to have no problems with refilling the performer seats,…
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