Two weeks ago Market Place, MAP, Jukebox Roulette, ADEC, and Suffolk Cinema Network went on a two-day Culture Hive residential with the Arts Marketing Association in Cambridge. During these days we went through a ‘boot camp’ of learning how to develop a marketing and audience development strategy for our organisations. Culture Hive is a useful resource to keep an eye on!
Here’s what the participants thought about the programme:
Laurie Jarmain, Suffolk Cinema Network
We joined the AMA training as Suffolk Cinema Network is currently at a crucial point in planning for the future. We’re a membership organisation that needs to become more sustainable, so we wanted some ideas about how to approach new audiences and generate interest and income. We realised through the AMA course that although we’re a film organisation that supports local film screenings, one of the core outcomes is the social element - bringing communities together for a social event, which happens to be through film. It really helped us focus on what we communicate and how we communicate it, and with new audiences in mind, it’s helped to shape our outreach strategy.
Kevin Chilvers, Director, Jukebox Roulette
My decision to join this course was based on wanting to pinpoint what my business actually did best and to rewrite my mission statement and vision to make the offer from Jukebox Roulette a lot clearer to not only my participants, but to me. This course was amazing and helped me to develop my thoughts to carve out a future that works for everyone who comes into contact with Jukebox Roulette. The most useful part of the course was the strengthening of my knowledge and ability to shape what I’m thinking and to get that down correctly.
Kate Hall, Project Director for Market Place
It is important to take time out to reflect on the messages a project sends out, and to whom. But it can be difficult to know where to start. This course takes you through the process with group tuition, structured working sessions and support by industry peers on the same journey. This was a highly valuable process which will stand us in good stead for the next two years. I would recommend this to anyone running a small arts organisation which has ambitions to do more and do it better, and wants to be able to tell audiences and funders about these ambitions.