Engaging your internal teams around a concept or a project should be the first step in any audience engagement plan. If we expect our staff to represent our organization or institution they need to be aligned with the vision and mission, and, importantly, understand why we are programming the work we are programming and who we are serving with our work.

For arts marketers, our traditional objectives or KPIs have been tied to visitation or to ‘butts on seats’, and all of the related metrics such as frequency, recency and value. When our venues are shuttered this season and possibly next, what can we measure and what objectives can we set for ourselves with this data?

While recently working on a project with Cory Garfin from Slover Linett Audience Research, we connected on our shared perspective that the arts and culture fields could use more social work knowledge and perspective.

For those of us who work in the arts, I’d guess that a large percentage of us hold our work as a large part of our identity. When it comes to our audience members, regardless of how often they come, their participation is likely a considerable part of theirs.

Our entire world is in the midst of a profound traumatic experience. A return to any semblance of normalcy (and relevance) for the arts and culture fields will require facing and integrating that trauma head-on.