Arts Marketing – Building houses on jelly
I’ve been looking to see what proactive steps I and the team I’m part of can take while the jelly beneath us solidifies over the coming weeks and months.
Arts Marketing – So What Do We Do Now?
So, I decided I’d write down some ponderings of where my head is at, what I think the direction of travel might be.
All my controversial thoughts about how to run theatre right. Not wrong. Like you might do it. Yeah you.
So, here it is, strap in, I’ve got some truth bombs to release, I’m going to let rip, welcome to the fast lane of opinions, the deep fat fryer of fact, I may even use CAPS LOCK, or maybe Randomly Capitalise Words for little or no apparent reason, underlining get ready, CRTL + U, prepare […]
Holidays, Ideas and Ponderings
I’m currently on holiday in Lisbon having a bit of a break with my other half. I brought the mini-laptop along with all sorts of high aspirations to write a play, create some art or learn a new skill. Suffice to say we’ve nailed a good chunk of Netflix late at night. Anyway, I thought […]
The Bigger Picture: Using Data In The Arts
****Please Note: This is unremittingly a blog about theatre marketing, data and being smarter**** How it all started About four months ago I was sat in a meeting at the theatre I work for as conversation bounced round the table. Every now and again a question would be asked or a statement stated – “how […]
The art of the season brochure
Today I signed off Unity Theatre’s season brochure – the last of my six year tenancy as Marketing Manager (I’m going to Theatre Clwyd and am dead excited as you will undoubtedly discover over the next 6 months!) – and I felt a wave of emotions briefly as I said “yes, print it”. The first […]
Rain, driving and hills
Today was an odd day with a smattering of driving pain, driving in rain, new dawns and sunrises. It was my first post interview visit to my new employers in North Wales, a pre visit before I start properly in Wales. I was at Unity in the morning sorting some brochure odds and ends before […]
Arts Marketing: Six things I wish I’d known…
I have been given two pieces of rock solid theatrical advice in the past 15 years and both I’ve used when directing shows. The first was from a now-acclaimed performer and creative who said the key to any show was to “get in quick, say what you have to say concisely and get out quick”. […]
The right (& fight) to experiment in arts organisations
The last couple of weeks have been tough for me professionally at work. It’s the classic story, too much happening all at the same time, a feeling of helplessness, being overwhelmed and needing to find some order, some way of making sense of what appears unexplainable and undecipherable chaos. I think this is a pretty […]
Cats, dogs and why we live.
Firstly, before you read any further, let me drop a couple of truths before you read any more (then you can decide whether I’m going to waste your time or not). This blog post is heavily related to arts marketing and theatre It is also related to the idea of owning a dog (even though […]
The Future Of Arts Marketing (and Theatre)
On Wednesday I attended the Spektrix Conference at the Lyric Hammersmith which was, at it invariably always is, incredibly thought provoking. One of the lightning talks took a fictional look at how theatre ticketing might be in 2020, looking back over the past 5 years of innovation that is yet to happen. It was funny, […]
Marketing DIY: Intermediate Heat Mapping (Genre)
In the last Marketing DIY post (here) we talked about how you can do a basic heat mapping of your auditorium. We took basic data contained within your database to look at how long prior to booking people actually booked their tickets, used this as a basic measure of demand and then mapped it using conditional […]
Marketing DIY: Heat mapping your auditorium
Heat mapping your venue has always been an incredibly good thing to do. It allows you to look at where you can place pricing bands, squeeze additional income and even develop accessibility. But can you do it yourself? I think so, and so, over the next 1,159 words I’ll be going through the process of […]
Gaffer – Opening soon
This June I’m directing a revival of a play called Gaffer. I’m finding it hard to articulate how I feel at this moment in time, 4 weeks before the show opens and 2 weeks before we start the next stage of intensive rehearsals. I was recommended the play by a friend of mine, Duncan Clarke, […]
Arts Marketing: Now What? (Part 1)
I’ve not written a post about arts marketing for a while so, as I find myself on box office in a quiet moment I thought I’d pop down some thoughts I’ve been having recently. If you work in marketing you may disagree with them – then again I could be about to provide a moment […]
Gig #15 – Vinyl, Liverpool (Compere)
Usually when I have a gig in the evening I spend the entire day worried, feel sick and have the urge to flee, extremely quickly. So it works to my benefit not to know about a gig until late so when Binty let me cover him as compere for the Pros and Coms gig down […]
Surviving a seeming arts apocalypse… (part 1)
It seems not a day passes without further signs in the decline of British Theatre in the regions, from the liquidation of the Byre Theatre in St Andrews to Taunton’s Brewhouse moving into administration it seems clear (in the media at least) that the arts are enduring a torrid time of uncertainty, fear and closure. […]
On The Edge
It’s a weird experience I’m going through this week. I’ve had an odd ‘career’ as a writer so far to date. Produced work includes a show in a restaurant about cous cous, and a studio show with a panda suit, necrophilia jokes and, quite naturally lots of eerie silences. In common with everything I’ve done […]