Art Groups: To Market, to Market
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Now under the guidance of director Julie Franz, the Arts Marketing Center will finally release its first report on the “state of the arts” next month. The report will focus on developing larger audiences for classical music, theater, the visual arts, and dance. It was written by Kellogg professor Bob Calder, who came on board when the center was still slated to open at Northwestern. Franz already has seen preliminary versions of the sections on classical music and theater and says the theater section is the more “encouraging” of the two. It suggests that smaller companies could attract new customers by targeting people who now attend theater only once or twice a year. The problem, says Franz, is that companies now direct their marketing efforts at their regular audiences instead of looking for ways to reach interested but infrequent theatergoers. The battle to attract new audiences for classical music may be much tougher, says Franz, because most young people aren’t fans of classical music and many classical groups haven’t found ways to appeal to young audiences.
Franz says the Arts Marketing Center will also actively help groups in their marketing campaigns. Its offices will house a library of case studies examining both successful and unsuccessful arts marketing initiatives nationally and internationally. The center also will organize monthly workshops. The first workshop–a roundtable discussion on the role of an arts group’s mission in formulating a marketing policy–is slated for March. Franz also says 25 arts organizations will be brought in to the center for intensive consultation. Six groups deemed to be at critical junctures in their development will be chosen from that pool to participate in marketing studies that center organizers hope will help similar organizations. “We will be working hand in hand with these six groups,” says Franz.
In April the Athenaeum Theatre will host a revival of the musical play Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill starring Eartha Kitt in the role of Billie Holiday. But the show, slated to run for at least nine weeks, has left the Splinter Group without a venue for its big spring event: the Beckett Festival, an ambitious mounting of 18 of the 19 plays penned by Samuel Beckett (the only work excluded will be Waiting for Godot, which the company presented last spring). Splinter Group member Matt O’Brien says they should know by the end of the month whether they can get another theater with a seating capacity of around 400. Splinter Group is looking for a large theater because the Beckett marathon will feature some big stars, including Piper Laurie and John Mahoney, in productions staged by such noted directors as Frank Galati and Sheldon Patinkin. If they can’t get a large venue, Splinter Group may try to expand a space inside the Theatre Building.
