I’m up in Edinburgh for this year’s Arts Marketing Association conference which is this year about relevance, or, as they’ve catchily titled it, On A Mission To Matter. I’m going to write up more extensively once the conference as ended but here’s a few bits and pieces I’ve thought about today.
- What is the role of theatre?
In the subsidised work is it acceptable for our mission to be purely art-form focused. Certainly many organisation have something that’s about giving (or inflicting) the arts upon people, like a harsh matron, forcing children to have their medicine. What if the art was more secondary – as a tool for social cohesion rather than social cohesion being a side effect of the arts. How would that effect process, roles and responsibility and how art is created? - Impact statements?
It seems we write endless statements – mission, aims & objectives, artistic – the impact one, what we want to do to the world around us seems like a more progressive version that places the greater good above organisational and individual need. - What does good look like?
How can we use data to monitor sales more effectively and use conditional formatting to help focus departmental attention – its one where I have a few reports that do this but one combined one would be great. - Audiences
Our main focus should be to identify what puts people off about our organisation and fix them. That sounds dead simple. I wonder if sometimes we forget that. - Marketing isn’t flyers, marketing is dead?
Lots of individual conversations about how marketing depts are changing the role of what it means to do marketing to enact organisational change and the barriers that come up (“it’s not your department”) – how do we use data to drive decisions and how do we manage organisational improvement in a practical way – there’s also a lot of talk about understaffing and unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved and also the quality level that can be achieved. Seems we need a chat about efficiency and using technology and IT systems to enable workflow rather than disrupt it. - Come in
How do we welcome people into the theatre. Interesting how in restaurants if we’re not doted upon and shown where to go we get pissy but often in theatre we leave people to their own devices and intuition. Should we have a maitre dee (sp?) role to meet, greet and seat people? - Tonica
Look like a really good company to get working on digital analysis. Do we spend too much on design and function while failing to pay for robust evaluation and analysis. How many theatres have someone who does solely analysis but across the entire organisation? Is it the missing link? - Dashboards
How do we create and use dashboards to monitor organisational performance and how do we make these easier and simpler to assemble? I did one for Unity Theatre while working there and am wondering if it’s time to look at one for Theatr Clwyd. - Audiences
Do we appeal to ego and the idea of aspirational living enough? How do we analyse space and function to find the best fit. For example if you’ve a stunning view is that where the tables for daytime food should live? - Food
Simple question – would people instagram their meals? If not then it’s possibly not good enough? - Rules
How do we identify the unmentioned rules that we abide by, challenge them and then, if necessary change them? Is it about personnel shift or is it about the way organisations operate in a less siloed way?