Arts Audiences is happy to announce that 8 mentoring relationships are now underway on the New Media Mentoring Scheme. In this scheme, individuals from a range of arts organisations from across the county will receive expert mentoring in the area of new media and audience development. On completion of mentoring, these individuals will produce reports for online publishing and discussion, in order to share their learnings with the wider arts community.
The mentoring relationships
With the most welcome late addition of a team of mentors from Google Ireland, the mentoring relationships are as follows;
Sharing the learning
Each mentoring relationship is structured around a specific piece of work in the area of new media, and each mentee will produce a short report on completion of their mentoring. This report will be published on this website, and on the Arts Ireland group on LinkedIn, where members of the arts community will be able to address questions to the mentees specific to what they have learnt during their mentoring.
Areas covered in mentoring
Over the coming couple of weeks, a description of the areas being covered by each mentoring relationship will be published here. For the moment, suffice to say that there will be a wide range of areas covered, from the use of Facebook and twitter, to website optimisation, the use of Google analytics and Google ads, to website design and the development of a digital marketing strategy.
timeframe
Publication of mentoring reports will begin in early April, with the final reports being published by the end of May.
Finally to say…
Many applications were submitted from across the country last December, and it is regrettable that we were unable to provide mentors for all applicants. Fully aware of the widespread appetite for arts-specific knowledge in this area, the evaluation panel endeavored to assemble a shortlist of organisations from a wide range of sectors and backgrounds, so that the learnings, when published, would be of value to the broadest range of readers from across the spectrum of the arts in Ireland.
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Are you looking to bring your organisation’s online performance to a new level?
Looking to harness the power applications such as Facebook, YouTube, Google Analytics, WordPress & Twitter to better engage with your audiences?
Would you like expert guidance to assist you along the way?
Arts Audiences is pleased to announce details of the New Media Mentoring Scheme, in which experts from a variety of organisations offer their time, for free, to mentor arts organisations seeking to build relationships with new and existing audiences online.
Individuals from 6 organisations will be mentored in this scheme (RTÉ Publishing kindly offering to provide mentoring to three), and participating organisations will produce case studies at the end of the mentoring, to share lessons learnt with the wider arts community.
For more information about the mentors, suitable projects, the workings of the scheme, how to apply etc., please click here!
In case you don’t already know, Take Your Seat is the name of the nationwide, weeklong arts and performance promotion.
We’ve been delighted with the take up on this, and readers should know that the promotion ends on the 14th of November, so at the time of writing, there are only 3 days left to get your hands on some great deals!
To avail of Ticket Discounts, Special Offers and Free Tickets to Surprise Events register with Take Your Seat and go visit your local theatre, arts centre, or music venue.
Arts Audiences’ Customer Service Project is now half-way through its work programme for 2009. The teams from Temple Bar Cultural Trust (TBCT) and Project Arts Centre (PAC) have completed the first two phases of their work:
Phase 1 involved mapping out ‘customer journeys’ for every part of their business where staff interacted with audiences. These journeys were agreed with key members of staff in each organisations, and then plotted out on simple diagrams created using MS Excel. (This phase lasted c.3 weeks in June)
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‘Culture Night ‘ – photo courtesy of Ros Kavanagh
Phase 2 involved an external consultant, Knowledgeworks, using these customer journeys as a road map on which to base a series of mystery shopping exercises.
Mystery shopping took place in July for both organisations. Staff in both organisations knew this was happening, but didn’t know when they would be ‘mystery shopped’. Both organisations chose a particularly busy business time in July for this exercise.
Mystery shopping involved the consultant posing as a range of customers who wanted to either FIND information, ASK questions, SURF websites about the organisation, or GO to an event hosted or organised by TBCT or PAC. Each interaction was then graded from 1-7 according to agreed parameters for assessing quality customer experiences.
The results the Mystery Shopping conducted on both organisations was presented to both teams at PAC and TBCT in September.
The next phase, currently underway, involves staff of both organisations absorbing the results from the Mystery Shopping reports, and deciding what steps to take next to improve the customer experience of their organisation.
Arts Audiences is delighted to announce the successful applicants for the Build Your Audience pilot project, which will provide free expert tuition on arts marketing and audience development.
The high level of interest in the project and the quality of applications received will prove extremely useful to the Arts Audience Initiative in identifying future strands of work which may benefit arts organisations and those working in the arts.
The three organisations were selected on the basis that their projects would have a wide application across artforms and disciplines and that the outcomes would be clear and useful to others. They are:
Coisceim Dance Theatre, Dublin, whose audience project is focused on developing a marketing strategy for a national tour.
The Ark, Dublin, in association with Irish Museum of Modern Art, whose project will focus on developing programmes which meet the practical needs of schools.
The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, whose project will focus on retaining and building on the audience base through profiling and increasing visibility
Case studies of all three consultancies will be published online at on this site in the new year to make learning outcomes available to the arts community.
With thanks to Declan Doherty for the current banner photograph, of 'Walk the Plank' pyrotechnics company at Cosán Glas, Machaire Raghartaigh, presented by Saothar Ealaíne as part of Earagail Arts Festival 2007
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