Welcome to HI~Arts' Audience Development Bulletin for April 2008, featuring news and opportunities for all those seeking to develop their audience base.

This month, training opportunities and a few useful tools...
 

Argyll Audience Development Training event - This Sunday!

HI~Arts is pleased to announce the latest in its series of Audience Development training events.  The roadshows are designed to help cultural organisations, promoters or small businesses to plan their audience development and marketing strategy.  Over a dozen roadshows have taken place across the Highlands and Islands in the last year, working with nearly 100 cultural groups.
 

The training session will take place as part of the Promoters Arts Network's Argyll Forum on Sunday 20th April 2008 at Cairndow Village Hall.  Registration for the PAN session starts at 9.45am, and non-members of PAN are welcome to attend, although their may be a small charge for lunch.  However, those wishing to attend the Audience Development training alone should arrive at Cairndow Village Hall for 3pm.  There is no charge for this training session, which will end at around 6.30pm.

The audience development training session is aimed at any promoters, galleries, museums, festivals, artists, or other cultural groups interested in developing their audiences and marketing strategy.  The session will be hosted by Marcus Wilson from HI~Arts, and consultant Stuart Brownlee of SBWorks. 

If you are interested in taking part in this training session, please contact audiences@hi-arts.co.uk for more details.

Reaching the Media

Given the challenges achieving national media coverage for the arts and culture of the Highlands and Islands, HI~Arts recently commissioned some research into how best to achieve such coverage.

Skye-based arts marketing expert, Nicola Smith, spoke to a number of arts editors and writers from the Scottish national press to get the inside view on how best to get your story picked up.
 

Nicola's report, along with other useful media resources, is available for download at http://www.hi-arts.co.uk/media_relations.htm.

Promote your Stuff!

The HI~Arts Guide to events, venues and cultural organisations is here, and ready for you to promote your stuff!
 

The Guide is online at www.hi-arts.co.uk/guide, and welcomes thousands of users every day from around the globe.  HI~Arts also supplies information from the Guide to a range of third-party listings websites, including the websites of CalMac and HIE.

To start promoting, all you need to do is sign-up at www.hi-arts.co.uk/promote.  Once you have submitted your events, venue or organisation, you can login at any time to keep your pages up-to-date with text, images and downloads.

FREE Audience Database software

HI~Arts are pleased to introduce AudienceBase - the new tool for cultural promoters, which makes building your audience database easy!
 

AudienceBase has been developed by HI~Arts as a powerful but simple tool to help you:

• Record customer data quickly and easily
• Email your customers
• Research your audiences
• Record event bookings and financial information

The software is free to cultural organisation working in the Highlands and Islands.  It is easy to install, and comes with full instructions and handy tips.

Click here to find out more and get your copy of AudienceBase

Are you doing the Write Thing?

Wednesday 23 April 2008
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Clichéd or clever, concise or clumpy? Communicating or creating confused customers?

Back by popular demand Heather Maitland, consultant and author, is taking her practical copywriting workshop to Edinburgh. She will help you to explore how you can communicate more effectively with audiences, visitors and participants, using written words.

There will be loads of handy hints about the process of writing copy, plenty of opportunities to put them into practice. Focusing on the needs of marketers working for festivals and in performing arts and visual arts venues it will include an overview of research about how attenders and non-attenders respond to what we write.

Who is it for? If you write copy and would like to get out of a rut, communicate more effectively and feel more confident - this is the workshop for you.

Edinburgh: 23 April, Royal Lyceum Theatre
Time: 10am to 5pm
Cost: £129 + VAT Arts Marketing Association members or £185 + VAT non AMA members

BOOK NOW: e-mail anna@a-m-a.co.uk or go to http://www.a-m-a.org.uk/event_detail.asp?id=228 

For information, resources and training from
HI~Arts Audience Development, visit the website:

www.hi-arts.co.uk/audiences

If you have any questions, please contact us at:

audiences@hi-arts.co.uk