About this Webinar

Nonprofit arts organizations are facing an existential crisis stemming from skyrocketing expenses, rapidly changing demographics, and vastly altered social expectations. Community engagement is a critical tool for achieving, at a minimum, viability. This webinar will address the following content:

• Definitions: The conflation of audience development, audience engagement, and community engagement continues to be a significant roadblock to growth. They are all valuable but they are all substantially different from each other. It’s vital to understand how each can build an arts organization.
• Effective Engagement: Once you understand what community engagement is, it is necessary to adhere to basic principles of relationship building to maximize the work’s benefit both to the arts organization and the community.
• Engagement and Marketing: Community engagement should not be an add-on, optional afterthought for arts organizations. Instead, it provides insights that can (and, arguably, must) make the work of virtually all management functions significantly more productive. We will focus here–briefly given the time constraints–on marketing.

Learning Objectives

Participants will:

• Be able to articulate the differences among audience development, audience engagement, and community engagement.
• Be able to apply principles of effective community engagement to evaluate community engagement projects
• Be able to use understanding of the principles of effective community engagement to evaluate how community-focused (and therefore effective) arts marketing materials are.

Webinar Required Reading:  Community Engagement: What You Need to Know

Supplementary Reading:

• Engagement Essentials
• Community Engagement Training
• Fracking and Arts Marketing
• Trevor O’Donnell
  • Which of These Images Sells More Tickets?
  • American Orchestra Enjoys a 36% Increase in Classical Ticket Sales