Katherina Radeva, 26 January 2014

People attended, including Rebecca Atkinson-Lord, Gemma Paintin, Tom Spencer,

Brian Lobel, Irene Paganelli, Abby Galvin, Sally E. Dean, Dan Baker, Ira Brand, Jo

Mackie, Sheridan Humphreys, Alister Lownie, Kate O'Connor, Clara Giraud, Owen

Calvert-Lyons, Amy Letman, Faith Dodkins, Jack Lane, Loren O'Dair, Lyn Gardner,

Jasmine Woodcock-Stewart – facilitated by Katherina Radeva

A SUMMARY

We had a dialogue about better conversations between venues and artists and their

audiences.

SOME NOTES

There was discussion of inter-regional collaborations, including touring into and out

from London

Better networks for artists based in cities and how they approach regional networks

National rural touring network: ridiculously hard to get into, and hard for its volunteer

programmers to understand (and get to see) your work

Big uncertainty about touring in regions: who to talk to - are there audiences? Do

artists live there?

Audiences travel to the cities and big theatres as well as village halls - don't make an

assumption

Artists are programmers in some less developed rural areas - and these can be easy

to approach for other artists, who believe in their ability to reach audiences through

this, rather than venue-based programming

Exchange - of artists' networks, programming each other, => possibly more honestly

reaching each other's audiences; these can give really personal long-lasting

relationships; can be very flexible, well-organised events

Touring to regional venues: who gets the audience? Venues sometimes too reliant on

the company (unknown in their area) “bringing” their own audience; big gap between

venues believing they have marketing departments who work hard and companies

who arrive to find their flyer box has never been opened – important to have the

conversations with marketing and remember they haven't seen your show, didn't

program it and don't necessarily understand why it's in the program. Conversation

suggested 70-80% of responsibility for getting audience lies with venue.

Artists: know your audience! Provide information to marketing departments – make

clear what the target audiences are (and also as show gets audiences, find out who

they are and what attracted them).

Extra time to do interviews, marketing conversations, and workshops to build interest –

needs to be paid for

—-=====>>>>> all leads to journey to build audience for venue, artist, artform – can

take time!

Desire for sustainable relationships with strong dialogue on both sides (venue/artist) –

which requires sensible fees

Ask “is there anything else I can do?”

Building relationships can be starting small - from scratch showing can come plenty of

interest from various venues

Think how you make your one night at a venue feel like an event - with the excitement

around it!

Shared responsibility - when it doesn't work, talk about it and find out what can be

learned from both sides. If it's program timing, or venue still building experience and

audience for an artform, or that the artist wants to stick to bigger cities, that's fine: just

understanding each other is really vital

Interest in whether artists should be able to get hold of audience contact details – and

what kind of permission needs to be obtained for this. Discussion around getting

audience profile info from venues – which there's no problem sharing – but what are

artists going to do with it?

The meeting was a great conversation and a general feeling of the idea of talking to

each other better and not being afraid to raise any issues. Real sense of desire from

all parts to make it work.

Tags:

regions, contemporary, Theatre, Touring, Regions, rural, touring, THEATRE, theatre