Audiences Central Blog

At the latest Network conference, Jan my colleague and I presented a short breakout group on the wonders of Digitools, and their application. We primarily focused on Google maps and Google doc’s, podcasting, wordpress and how easy they are to use and apply to sites such as out cultural listings platform, Scene Central.

The main areas of discussions centred around how could this benefit an organisation. Well, they are all free and very easy to set up. Adding all of your events onto the Scene Central website will be an ideal platform to showcase all your events, and you can set up a profile that can have all of them in one place!

For those who are unaware, Scene Central is a free events listing site that any user or arts venue can upload information to. If you have a Facebook page, Twitter account, Flickr or even RSS feeds from your own website, they can all be added to your profile on Scene Central.

You can see how all of these Digitools work together on the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) page here … http://www.scenecentral.co.uk/PerformerListing.aspx?performer=6

Find out more by registering at Scene Central here, http://www.scenecentral.co.uk/Register.aspx, or contact one of the Scene Central team via: info@scenecentral.co.uk


- Danny Watkins

Entertainment within large retail spaces has traditionally focused on the simple selling of wares.

For example, a rising pop band have a new album out, an author has published a new tome or a celeb’ has a new DVD to push … so to publicise said product, they make a series of shop-based public appearances where they typically shake hands, sign product, and possibly read a few pages, strum a couple of tunes, and take some questions.

Squeezing in two or three personal appearances in a day alongside media interviews, it’s a well trodden promo circuit popular with such High Street chains as Waterstone’s, HMV and WH Smith, which, in the case of a band, may be followed later in the year by a fully fledged commercial concert tour.

The aims are clear: raise profile and shift units for a particular product.

But over the last few years, there’s been a shift in the relationship between the retail and entertainment sectors as shopping centres are increasingly providing rolling entertainment programmes and host specially programmed events – no longer is it just about drawing in the fans of one particular name to buy one particular product … it’s now about attracting wider audiences for shopping, food and entertainment. It’s a trip. A family day out. An adventure.

The Bullring offers a prime case study. The site of retail activity within Birmingham since the 12th century, replacement of the post-war concrete maze by the new, shiny mall in 2003 drew in a monster 36m visits in the first year, and it remains a huge pull.

And while stores such as Selfridges, Debenhams and others obviously remain the key draw, the Bullring also hosts many high-profile and popular events alongside those tried-and-trusted product-led appearances.

Since opening, the site has been home to a real beach, talent shows, computer game and radio roadshows, concerts and performances, top rated TV shows and even an artist-in-residence - activities previously associated only with arts centres and arts-based venues. And they have all been for free.

Elsewhere in the UK, retail centres have provided homes for local history exhibitions, public art programmes and theatre groups as well as sound, performance, technology, civic and religious festivals.

This shift in the role of these grand malls throws up many questions: are they competing with traditional venues for programming and audiences? If people can see major acts for free at their local shopping centre, why should they pay to see a show elsewhere? What kinds of opportunities exist for arts producers within shopping centres? How can artists and arts providers build and sustain new audiences through relationships with commercial retail outlets?

Explore these questions, and more, at Audiences Central’s Leadership Breakfast: Culture And Couture – are shopping centres the new arts centres? on 18 February

Never mind the Oscars, the BAFTAs or the MOBO’s. The Shortys are the latest desirable gong.

These brand new awards honour the best people and organizations on Twitter. They are for the Twitter community and by the Twitter community.

Online voting is public and democratic, culminating in an awards ceremony that recognizes the winners in 27 official categories as well as those in brand new crowd-sourced ones.

Official categories include art, nonprofit, design, culturalinstitution, advertising and weird. Some of the community created categories are literature, journalism and photography with slightly less serious categories such as bestdrinkingteam, selfdepricatinghumor, beingagreatgirlfriend and delightfulinappropriateness.

The RSC has been nominated for a Shorty Award in one of the official categories, culturalinstitution and is currently in first place.

The Twitpanto has also been nominated in the art category.

If you would like to vote you need to have a Twitter account. Visit http://shortyawards.com/about for more information.

If you would like to like to vote for the RSC, please make sure you vote for @theRSC NOT @RSC.

Here’s a few comments from voters for the RSC so far.

I nominate @thersc for a Shorty Award in #culturalinstitution because their tweets make me feel part of the RSC community

I nominate @TheRSC for a Shorty Award in #culturalinstitution because...they make innovative theatre accessible to all!

I nominate @TheRSC for a Shorty Award in #culturalinstitution because they keep us updated with great backstage news!

If you know of any other cultural organisations in the West Midlands who have been nominated, please add to this blog.

Here’s to organisations engaging audiences digitally!

Email is used by most of us as a quick, cheap way of telling your audiences and supporters all your news.

However, when you’ve slaved away creating your fabulously interesting and beautiful email newsletter, the last thing you want to find is that your mail has been caught by spam filters and never reached some of your subscribers.

The good news is, as spam software works by looking out for certain words, phrases and formatting, there are things you can do to limit the chances of this happening.

Five top tips to avoid the spam filters:

1. Don’t write whole sentences in capital letters. Spam often contains passages of text in uppercase which get caught by filters, e.g. “DON’T MISS THIS FABULOUS OFFER”, so keep the capitals to a minimum.

2. Try not to use the phrase “only £”, especially near words like “special offer” or “free offer”. If you have a special offer for your readers, try experimenting with other ways of phrasing this instead.

3. When wanting to illustrate how much your audiences can save by booking a certain package, deal or offer, limit the amount to which you use the “£” sign near the word “save”. “Save £10” probably won’t cause you many problems, but “save £££!” is a ticket straight to the spam folder.

4. Some spam filters catch emails that use the phrase “Dear Friend”, “Dear Jenny”, “Dear Jon”… or any other capitalised name. To avoid this one, try experimenting with other greetings, for example “Hi” or “Hello”.

5. The phrases “click here” or “click below” are also caught by some spam software. Try avoiding the word “click” – experiment with other phrases that do the same job, like “visit here”, “visit this page” and “find out more”.

As a general rule, if you match a couple of these there’s no need to worry. Using just “Dear Friend” probably won’t get your email classed as spam; it’s the cumulative effect of using a few of these phrases that will cause problems.

The subject of Public Engagement is hotting up, not least with the news that nationally, the Arts Council is delivering a national campaign to encourage the broadest range of people across England to enjoy artistic experiences.

Engagement is already driving government policy, particularly through the NI10 and NI11 national performance indicators which will be very familiar to a number of local authorities, and also through the Digital Britain agenda, which aims to enable the nation to engage with public services online by 2012.

In our region, we are working with Arts Council England West Midlands to deliver a regionally-focussed engagement campaign alongside this. Key to developing the work is understanding fully what engagement means, both to the potential audiences we want to reach, and to the organisations who should shape the journey our audiences make through arts and cultural experiences.

The AMA’s annual conference this year explored artistic excellence and public engagement and Heather Maitland succinctly answered the question of ‘what is public engagement’ in her recent Arts Professional article (issue 204). The Arts Council defines a threefold explanation of Public Engagement:

1. Attending arts events
2. Participating in arts activities
3. Participating in decision making

It seems that whilst community arts organisations are actually ahead of the game here and are already including members of the public and sharing decision making, many traditional arts and cultural providers do not engage as fully as they might. And this is the crux of public engagement. Many organisations can happily say they’re achieving the first two, but the third shows a democratic approach, significantly closing that gap between artistic vision of organisations and its relevance to an audience. Some organisations already ensure the public can influence their programming, their funding and the way they are marketed. They achieve this through a range of formats from advisory panels and ambassadors, to online consultation and user-generated artistic content for exhibitions and projects. No longer is this simply about marketing, audience development and education, it’s about having a two-way conversation with the very people we want to enjoy arts and culture and actively seeking their influence on decisions.

But who is responsible for instigating this sea change? The balance between artistic freedom and business success has always been a difficult one to reconcile, historically creating a battleground between marketing and artistic objectives. In a recession we need to work hard to justify our relevance and value to the public, both socially and financially. Organisational change comes from the top down, but the influencers in making that change are the marketers, audience developers, educators and outreach workers. Engagement draws us together as we take a 180 degree turn and see the journeys audiences make and where they engage with arts and culture, and perhaps, more importantly, what they define as arts and culture.


In 2009 this is not just an academic argument; there is a real, live opportunity to work together across the West Midlands region to engage with people with an interest in the arts in the Black Country for a year-long regional campaign starting in April 2010. We are holding a meeting in two weeks’ time to find potential partners to work with on a large-scale campaign to increase the number of people in the Black Country taking part in arts and culture – so come along and play your part in public engagement.

Read about how you can be a partner in creating the Black Country public campaign, launching April 2010, in our News section.