your organisation is run. The following activities will help ensure that you are really connecting with new people. • Review your governance structures – whether you are a formally constituted group with a board of trustees or you are run by an informal committee, you should think about how you can open up to new influences. For example, if you are an organisation that wants to attract younger people, one way to support that change is to make sure that you have younger people on your committee, and that their suggestions are given full consideration and tried out where possible. • Ask yourself difficult questions – and review the things you take ‘as read.’ For example, if your orchestra has always employed the same conductor, is it time for a change, or to ask the conductor to try something new? Commit to forming new partnerships – it is often • difficult to make changes on your own. Working with others can give you the freedom to try out new things, share the financial risk and increase your impact.
There is no point in collecting information if you are not going to use it, so before you plan how you are going to gather the data, make sure you also know what you will do with it. Qualitative data can be very useful in: • advocacy work – you can use it to bring your events to life and show the difference you have made to individuals; • evaluation reports – you can present a rounded picture of your achievements, and show funders how you meet their targets; • marketing materials – because sharing great experiences makes other people want to enjoy them too; • team building – it is easy to get commitment and generate enthusiasm when people know that what they do is appreciated and bringing real rewards; • planning – because you will know when you have had a real success, and when your efforts aren’t paying off.
D. Is it working?
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We often tend to count our successes with audiences in numeric terms (known as quantitative information), monitoring how many people attended/participated/visited/experienced the work and how much was generated through ticket sales. To monitor and evaluate your audience development achievements, you also need to know who came, why they came and what they got out of the experience (this is known as qualitative information). Using both types of data together can help you understand the impact of your group’s activities. It can also help you to generate funding, especially where funders are interested in achieving social targets (such as community cohesion) or educative targets (such as adult learning). Collecting data can seem daunting, but there is lots of help available on how to do it, and it can be very simple. For example, questionnaires are great for collecting numeric data, but they can also be used to find out how the experience made people feel, either by asking multi-choice questions or by allowing them space to give their own opinions. There is value in collecting people’s opinions and feelings spontaneously, for example, when they are leaving an event. You can often gather great quotes when people are leaving a performance buzzing with excitement. It’s also worth considering going back to them some time later and giving them an opportunity to feed back after they have had time to reflect on their experience. See VAN Briefing 80: Monitoring and Evaluation for some straightforward suggestions on how to capture both qualitative and quantitative data.
E. Hints and tips
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Be clear about why you are doing it – audience development often requires your group to change, and real change requires commitment and time. Establish clear objectives and involve everyone in this process. When they have contributed to and agreed them, it makes it easier for everyone to support them, and for everyone to understand the benefits of change. Be genuine – audience development is about forming long-term relationships, where you make changes with people, rather than imposing them upon them. People will sense if you are not genuinely interested in them and won’t respond. Only undertake audience development work you really want to do and which you can sustain. Don’t make it hard for yourself – sometimes the temptation is to try to attract an audience that is completely different to the one you already have. It is possible to attract completely new audiences, but you’ll have to change more about yourself to be successful. For your first project, try to identify a new audience that you think you can attract with just a few manageable changes. Be realistic – even if your audience development process isn’t likely to need a lot of money, it will probably need a lot of time, dedication, enthusiasm and energy. Ensure that you have sufficient resources available to dedicate to your idea, and plan a realistic timetable. Make sure you have set achievable targets along the way so that you can monitor your progress and celebrate your success!
B R I E F I N G F RO M T H E VO L U N TA RY A RT S N E T WO R K