Cara-Lynn Bauer is a student on the University of Edinburgh’s MSc in Exhibition and Curation. Here, she writes about her experience attending our Your Festival Your Community event back in April, and the strategies she learned to reach and engage a local festival audience.
In addition to the group-panels I attended the workshop ‘Where are we now?’ and have therefore mostly been in touch with established festivals that are seeking to settle into the calendars of their audience permanently. This conclusion of my experience will mostly rely on what I heard there. Depending on whether they are aiming to reach a broader (maybe even international) audience or want to stick to their local communities, the festival’s strategies for audience development vary a lot in scale, but the fundamental ideas are the same.
The contact to audiences might happen on a very personal level if it‘s a close community or on a more anonymous level, which is mostly the case with larger festivals. Goals of audience development might be to broaden the audience or introduce them to films out of the usual local offering, binding them to the festival through cultural interest. Knowing the festival’s strengths is key to be able to communicate the festival to potential audiences and also to reccommend it to (financial or representational) supporters. Focusing on one or two ‘selling features’ helps build continuity in a marketing strategy, e.g. the unique place of film screening, a special strand developed for the community.
From my personal experience in festival work and also the discussions at the conference, giving the audience a sense of belonging/ownership is key to developing a festival further. This does not mean that you have to open up your whole process to the public, on the contrary it was mentioned that it is essential to know how open your enterprise is and how much influence/insight you’re willing to grant to your audience on major decisions such as programming or placement. Nevertheless offering contact points such as partnerships with local businesses, one-off-screenings in local facilities, a strand programmed by the youth, fully accessible screenings – to name just a few of the approaches mentioned, is what is going to attract audiences. When thinking about audience development strategies, the main points I’ve taken from the conference and my personal thinking about it are:
- Be clear about who your audience is and who are the audiences you want to reach out to? Is it about maintaining existing audiences, adding value to their experience, raising ticket sales, inclusion (social groups or disabled people, for example).
- Be realistic about your resources: how much staff, time, money do you need to realise your idea?
- Find the right tool to reach your goals, this could include: forming partnerships, communication improvement → Targeted marketing (what means do your desired audience use? Improve your presence there), alter the programming and find means to engage with your audience.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate with your audience through the whole process.
- Listen to and take care of your staff as they are the one representing and run the festival.
One could assume that these are all very obvious points, but actually forming a strategy is easily overlooked – especially when you are eager to change something. Measuring how you are doing and how your strategy is being taken on is an important part of audience development – certainly something I will have to take on.