We made it to 2010! 2009 has been a very up and down year, especially for the arts. We have been dealing with the aftermath of a bad economy (and some of us still are), but since we are creative people, there have been some fabulous new ideas to get us headed in a better direction. Audience Development has been expanding around the world. Over the past year, as you know if you are my twitter friend, I have been scanning the news to find articles about audience development. I thought it would be fun to do a top 10 of audience development ideas for 2009 blog, but I was in for a big surprise when I started this project. There were over 70 choices listed on my page, and all of the ideas were good ones. So, instead of making this project daunting in task, I decided to have a series of blogs that celebrates these ideas broken up by category. Imagine reading in your best academy awards voice.
And the categories for Audience Development Tweets for 2009 are:
- Most Interesting New Venues
- Best Use of Mainstream
- Best Arts Advocates
- Best Use of Technology and Social Media
- Best Audience Participation
- Best Fusions
- Best Collaborations
- Best Festivals
- Best Use of Going Informal
- Best New Programs
- Best Discussions
- Best “Arts Make a Difference”
- Best Audience Development Quotes
- Best Audience Development Studies
I will be attempting to contact the “nominees” in order to get the background stories. Until then, let’s start with the first category!
Most Interesting Venues of 2009
Venues will be defined in broader terms as a place where art can be displayed or performed. Over the year, I am seeing us become more creative in where and how we can present our art. Please pardon if a few of these ideas have been used in past years, but they were new and interesting to me, and they had a positive energy behind them.
The nominees for Most Interesting Venues of 2009 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 beautify the vacant spaces with art.
- Worth a repeat mention…Chiara String Quartet to Hit the Bar This Thursday http://bit.ly/8zvB3A
The Chiara String Quartet performs in bars.
- Audience development genius of the day…I think…Vending machine that dispenses art unveiled in Chandler http://bit.ly/582hG5
Vision Gallery in Chandler (Arizona) unveils its newest installation, the Art-O-Mat, a vending machine that dispenses original art.
- RT @ChicagoOpera In the cosmetics section of this Michigan Ave dept. store-with a red star in their logo– #popupopera
http://bit.ly/7a0n1U
Chicago Opera Theater during National Opera Week – free short performances of opera “favorites” in unexpected places in Chicago.
- Cool idea…See your art on the side of an Asheville bus http://bit.ly/6RORxe
The City of Asheville Parks, Recreation and Cultural Arts Department announces a juried public art competition for the first Art on Transit Bus Graphics Program.
- Audience development genius of the day! Been a while since we had one!…Changing the World of Classical Music http://bit.ly/Wco7w
“Music Director/Conductor John Stubbs of California Ballet has created an extraordinary multi-media performance experience where live classical music, dance, and film converge for one special evening in San Diego’s most exciting music and dining venue — Anthology supper club in Little Italy.”
I wouldn’t be a very good audience development advocate if I didn’t invite my audience to vote on their choice.
Here is the twitter poll – hurry polls will close tomorrow so I can post the winner: http://twtpoll.com/dj54ku
Stay tuned for results as well as the nominees for our next categories: Best Use of Mainstream and Best Arts Advocates. Until then…
Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana
Shoshana Fanizza
Audience Development Specialists
http://www.buildmyaudience.com
Facebook/twitter /E-mazing Newsletter /Blog
“Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners.”
~James Stewart
Audience Development Specialists Blog! 
As part of National Opera Week Chicago Opera Theater presented “Pop-Up Opera” performances all over Chicago. For these performances members of Chicago Opera Theater’s Young Artists Program would go around Chicago and present surprise performances at venues that included the United Center, Macy’s (Water Tower Place), Whole Foods, the Aon Center and more!
To let people know where to look for the performances we sent out hints via our twitter @chicagoopera and on our website http://www.chicagooperatheater.org/operaweek/
It certainly created a buzz and people were checking our tweets and our website to find out where the next “Pop-Up Opera” performance would be. For people who were at the “Pop-Up Opera” performances we distributed flyers encouraging them to tweet about the performance that they just witnessed. The flyer asked them to include “#popupopera” in their tweet to be automatically entered into a contest sponsored by Chicago Opera Theater. The flyer also contained information about other National Opera Week events as well as discount code to subscribe to Chicago Opera Theater’s upcoming 2010 Spring Festival Season.
The “Pop-Up Opera” performances were a great opportunity to surprise people with opera and it was warmly received by people throughout the city!
Thank you, Daniel, for sharing your background story. Did you happen to see an increase in your audience for your regular performances too?