National Endowment for the Arts's survey of public participation in the arts Every six years the NEA surveys arts audiences across America and compiles a report on public participation in the arts. This is the complete 2002 survey.

What do young audiences want from their art events? This study details trends and behaviors of young patrons' behavior in attending arts events.

For example: Young patrons attend arts and cultural events for reasons beyond the art itself. Specifically, young patrons want experiences that foster learning, connecting, and sensing. Organizations, including the Children’s Museum, Red {an orchestra}, and others are profiled within the report to offer detailed examples of how to design programming that meets the demands of the next generation. By understanding these motivators and employing these sought after experiences arts managers may increase participation by millenials.

A study that finds that demographics and education alone are not predictors enough of attendance to shows. This study finds that to increase attendance, at least for theater and symphony, concentration on children and limited life-style segments of adults may be most fruitful. The specific implications discussed illustrate some of the ways in which these strategies might be pursued.

If you don’t have staff explicitly assigned to marketing as a function to fill seats and promoting your activity marketing can seem one of the most basic (i.e. easiest) operational functions to accomplish.  But marketing isn’t that simple and it shouldn’t seem so.  But who has the budget for a devoted marketing lead, let alone team? 

Here, within 12 pages Kathryn Roy sets out a marketing primer from which arts managers to glean basic orientation to arts marketing and even some nifty ideas for going about marketing talent, organizations, products or productions.   Enjoy :-)

Non-Profit Finance Fund's latest report on their role of capital in building vibrant and viable cultural organizations.