Convener:
Jules Munns
Participants:
We didn’t take a full list, sorry
Summary of
discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:
Creating a home for artists
Being located in a good place
How to find/make the motherhood in the apple pie
Senior staff who say hello to everyone
What is the differnce between the artists and the
audience?
A place where you want to be, even when there is not a
show to see.
A café full of interesting and creative people
A place to get a coffee and sit all day
Cosiness, not feeling too exposed to the outside world
Engaging everyone who works in the building, a place
where even the cleaners are asking about the work
‘Basic stuff’ like someone greeting you properly
A paint party to open, creating the community/ies who
exist within the building
The outside of the space, the banner that welcomes you
in
Recognise that people are scared to go to some
theatres
What is the language? Box office/tickets?
The box office as an airlock between the outside world
and the theatre
The discounts/membership schemes that define an
‘in-crowd’ Is this good?
Avoiding the feeling that the staff are doing you a
favour by letting you in
Cheap
Free water that you don’t have to ask for
Being brilliantly surprised by something – the
threshold is easy to cross and the welcome warm and easy
Ars Nova as a model – brilliant marketing, trailers
before the shows without it feeling intrusive. Tells the story of the venue.
The emails follow up: come to see the next show for only $5
Avoid the ‘please book’ email when you already have
Reinforement: tell someone they’ve made the right
decision and they will believe you. Build on your trust of them
Keeping up communication so that all stakeholders feel
invested. Everybody can be an ambssador
It’s not only the show that makes you go ‘wow’
There is trust in the venue, and the nightmare is to
your audience losing that.
Hoe do you have failure without the venue being
damaged?
Marketing: hoe to usefully remind without irritating
Trust: expectation management, you see what you were
told you would see
What are the cheap/free things which can make people
feel invested without costing too much money
Practicalities: enough women’s toilets/air con/seats,
staff who know the running time, mobility and access issues, leg room and sight
lines
The unity in Liverpool as a good model
Does the atmosphere in the venue go from the audience
to the artists and back again?
How do you share the risk between the venue and the
company performing? The split model?
Caring about the smaller stuff and doing what you say
you will
Clear website/submissions policy? Surgery days?
‘On Thursday we don’t answer the phone’
Who to contact and the time frame you can expect a
response
Don’t pretend to be more than you are. Literary
department/’It’s Bob and he works part time’
People know who you are: There are three of us and we
everything
The difference between the audience you retain and the
audience you want to expand
Clear signs, as big as possible
Are they audience or customers/or different things at
different times in the experience
Ritual aspects of the experience.
Difference between the café people and the theatre
people
Easy buying experience: what to do during the day?
Balancing the good vs the profitable
Providing a home for the artist
Clear programming policy
What information do you need to program a show?
Hoe do you differentiate between what you programme
and what you produce?
How can you take a risk? And make the audience feel valued
in the process.
‘We make bad work on the way to making good work’
the ladder of development for a show
Who can go in to rehearsals and help/feedback?
How do you enable people to say ‘that last show was
rubbish’
Loyalty: free fifth show
Direct feedback to the artist and the venue
A good space for discussions where all the
stakeholders are contributors
Integrated relationship from top to bottom
Treating the staff the same as the audience
Press – how does your programming get reviewed if it’s
not three weeks?
And many other wonderful things . . .
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