Wallace Grantees Project Book

Innovation and Innovation and Excellence: Excellence: The Philadelphia The Philadelphia Engagement Engagement Projects Projects 1

Innovation & Excellence: The Philadelphia Engagement Projects

Wallace Excellence Awards Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Arden Theatre Company Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia The Clay Studio Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial Opera Company of Philadelphia Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe The Philadelphia Orchestra Philadelphia Theatre Company The Wilma Theater

Engage 2020 Innovation Grants

Innovation and Excellence: The Philadelphia Engagement Projects Art Sanctuary

City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program Curtis Institute of Music

Fairmount Park Art Association First Person Arts

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia New Paradise Laboratories

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The People’s Light & Theatre Company Walnut Street Theatre

Philadelphia is truly a hub for American arts and innovation. That’s why we’re so proud of the twenty organizations honored tonight, and why we’re so grateful to the Wallace Foundation for being the catalyst for the projects that were created. And now the ball’s in our court, so as we recognize these twenty organizations that are exemplars of Philadelphia’s national leadership, we hope you’ll use this evening and this publication to learn more about these arts innovators, and help us to carry their fine work forward.

Innovation & Excellence: The Philadelphia Engagement Projects

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Wallace Foundation The Wallace Foundation is a national philanthropy based in New York City with a long history of support for building arts participation. The Wallace Excellence Awards were created to support exemplary arts organizations that pioneer effective practices for engaging more people in high-value arts activities. One of the foundation’s goals in the arts is to build current and future audiences by making the arts a part of more people’s lives.

The Wallace Excellence Awards initiative supports exemplary arts organizations in six cities to craft and try out ways to reach more people. Since 2006, grants have gone to 54 arts organizations in Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, San Francisco, Seattle and Philadelphia. Drawing on the work of participating organizations, the Foundation will publish a series of case studies designed to provide insights about how arts organizations can attract new audiences to the arts and deepen the involvement of current audiences.

Wallace thanks the Excellence Award recipients, the other arts organizations that participated in this initiative and our two local partners, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and The Philadelphia Foundation, for allowing us to join with them in this effort to improve the lives of people. For more information, please visit www.wallacefoundation.org

The Philadelphia Foundation Since 1918, The Philadelphia Foundation has linked those with financial resources to those who serve societal needs. It is the region’s community foundation, serving Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties.

By growing the 800 funds established by its donors and distributing about $15 million annually in grants and scholarships to effective nonprofit organizations, The Philadelphia Foundation improves Southeastern Pennsylvania’s quality of life. The Foundation helps build healthy communities, strengthens children and families, advances economic opportunities and enhances culture and recreation. For more information visit www.philafound.org.

Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance is the region’s preeminent leadership, advocacy and audience development organization for arts and culture. The Cultural Alliance strives to make Philadelphia one of the foremost creative regions in the world and leverage arts and culture to inspire individuals and build community and civic engagement.

The Engage 2020 Innovation Grants highlighted here are a direct outcome of consumer research conducted by the Cultural Alliance and detailed in the 2009 report, Research into Action: Pathways to New Opportunities. Ten organizations received up to $75,000 to pioneer programs designed to specifically engage new audiences in creative experiences.

The Cultural Alliance’s Engage 2020 program is a research and audience development initiative designed to double cultural engagement in the region by 2020. Engage 2020 is sponsored by a lead grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, with additional support from The Wallace Foundation and The Philadelphia Foundation. For more information about the Cultural Alliance and Engage 2020 please visit philaculture.org.

Wallace Excellence Awards The Wallace Excellence Awards were created to support exemplary arts organizations to pioneer effective practices to engage more people in high-value arts activities. The Awards have been an important part of the Foundation’s efforts to develop and share effective ideas and practices for enhancing arts participation and bringing the powerful benefits of the arts to all. Award recipients are:

Excellence Awards Innovation & Excellence: The Philadelphia Engagement Projects

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With the generous support of the Wallace Foundation, the Annenberg Center has embarked on an extensive effort to understand the values of its audiences and how those values impact engagement, loyalty and retention among its audiences. Building on the 2007 Major University Presenters Values and Impact study conducted by WolfBrown (wolfbrown.com/index.php?page=mups), the Center partnered with five other Major University Presenters to conduct a study which yielded a detailed segmentation model as well as a segmented database of patrons.

The Center identified the Diversity Seekers segment as a high priority segment, as their values align closely with the mission and vision of the Center as well as its programming. In partnership with audience members, the Center utilized the research findings to develop the Artists & Audiences Changing Lives program (AACL). AACL features three artists per season who support specific social causes, and provides opportunities for audience members to connect with the artists about these important issues. In addition, the Center donates a portion of the ticket purchase to a charity selected by the artist and connects audience members with relevant community organizations in the lobby before the performance. Community collaborations and donations have included Philabundance, Habitat for Humanity, Knit-a-Square, Jazz House Kids and Hope Partnership for Education.

Though the initial results are exploratory due to a small sample size, the preliminary results show that AACL participants are more likely to feel an allegiance or bond with the Center and that the Center is worthy of their financial support. In addition, they are more likely to recommend the Center to a friend and have vivid memories of the event.

In addition to conducting ongoing values based audience segmentation, the Annenberg Center plans to continue AACL and develop additional programs to enhance engagement among its other audience segments. Therefore, the Annenberg Center is seeking additional funding opportunities to support ongoing programming for AACL in addition to continued segmentation research and corresponding engagement program development.

Nicole Allen Cook Director of Marketing and Communications cookn@ac.upenn.edu 215-898-6706

3680 Walnut St. Philadelphia, PA 19104 www.pennpresents.org

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Excellence Awards

With support from the Wallace Foundation, Arden Theatre Company set out to convert Children’s Theatre audiences into lifelong theatergoers by instituting a series of positive and meaningful theatre experiences designed to engage and evolve with our audiences as they travel through childhood, adolescence, and their young adult years. To this end, we established the following goals: 1) To increase Children’s Theatre attendance by 8%, 2) To increase audience crossover from Children’s Theatre to Mainstage by 6%, 3) To increase enrollment for Arden Kids’ Crew (grades K – 5) by 16% and 4) To increase enrollment for Teen classes (grades 6 – 12), to 376 participants.

We surpassed our goal for Children’s Theatre, increasing attendance by 16%, double our projected growth. We have maintained an average of 17% crossover between Children’s Theatre and Mainstage audiences, but are still testing innovative marketing efforts to raise that percentage.

We expanded our offerings for Arden Kids’ Crew to occur over three semesters and include five unique eight week courses, one day workshops every Saturday, and our first ever preschool class. Here again, we exceeded our goal with an increase of 30% in Kids’ Crew enrollment. Teen Company, launched in 2008, experienced a growth of 90% over the course of the grant period, with 305 teens participating in Arden Drama School in 2010/11.

We are energized by our success in broadening our Arden Drama School offerings, and in deepening the commitment of our audience members to the Arden experience. As the Wallace grant period comes to an end, we will continue to set ambitious goals for growth in Children’s Theatre attendance, teens attending Mainstage productions, and participation in Arden Drama School. To support our initiatives to develop lifelong theatergoers in Philadelphia, please contact Arden Development Director, Angela DuRoss at 215.922.8900—we welcome partners in this effort.

Photo: Kyle Ober

Amy L. Murphy Managing Director Arden Theatre Company 40 North 2nd Street Philadelphia, PA 19106 215-922-8900, ext. 21 amurphy@ardentheatre.org www.ardentheatre.org

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“This is the first time I’ve ever heard this kind of music played live. I really like it,” was a comment we heard several times during our Wallace Excellence Grant Project. The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia’s work for Wallace focused on creating a variety of public access to classical music with the intention of expanding our core audience. Our string quartet performed “Rush Hour” and lunchtime concerts in crowd-trafficked spaces. Our full 33-piece ensemble explored new venues, promotional opportunities and ticket pricing structures with our Community and Family Concerts and developed partnerships with other nonprofits through Collaborative Concerts. We distributed enhanced CDs and ticket vouchers for future performances and collected data on classical music consumption to attain baseline knowledge of our own audiences as well as the Greater Philadelphia public. All of this was designed to create visibility for the Chamber Orchestra and draw new audience members to our subscription series of concerts in the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. To date, we have served over 10,000 people through these efforts, many who experienced the exquisite beauty of live classical music for the first time with us and remain active listeners at our performances.

Now, we seek support to continue our core music performances and develop programs for specific audience segments reached during our Wallace project, in particular, families. There is a great need to keep classical music accessible for the adults we have reached through Wallace promotional efforts in the general public and for arts programs tailored for Philadelphia families with young children that will encourage them to explore performing arts and create audiences for the future. We hope you will invest in our plans and join with us to ensure great classical music stays vibrant for years to come in our community.

Michele Blazer Director of Development and Communications 1520 Locust Street, Suite 500 Philadelphia, PA 19102 mblazer@chamberorchestra.org 215-545-5451, ext. 25 www.chamberorchestra.org

Photo: www.mcveyphoto.com

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Excellence Awards

The Clay Studio’s project was to increase participation among culturally-inclined 25-45 year old professionals who live or work in Philadelphia. Originally we thought that this demographic would be attracted by cocktail receptions or artist talks. Through extensive market research, we learned they wanted to participate, touch clay, and try something “cool” and “hip”, especially with friends and family. Date Night (“get a little dirty on a Friday night”), a two-hour event in the classroom, became so popular that it is now offered monthly, and a new workshop Out of Hand (“don’t let stress from the work week get out of hand”) was developed for singles who want a similar social art experience. The Studio created programs for adults and their children that fit into busy lifestyles – 5-week introductory classes for those who couldn’t commit to an entire semester, and drop-in Saturday morning adult/child workshops that fed into week-long clay camps for children.

The Clay Studio learned that the key to audience engagement is to offer hands-on art experiences within an inviting environment that are memorable, low-cost and fun! Therefore, we will now take a dynamic new approach to integrate hands-on, interactive experiences outside of the classrooms and into the Galleries. During selected shows, one gallery space will be used for the exhibition and another for related auxiliary programming. Artists will help visitors create a ceramic piece influenced by work in the gallery, or use social media to interact with others online, or curate their own mini-exhibition with pieces set up in the space. A revamped website and social media plan will also help to keep this audience informed and engaged.

The Clay Studio requests support for hands-on programming to enhance our artistic offerings and reach a much broader audience who may be unable to afford artistic experiences otherwise.

Christina M. Edleman VP for Institutional Advancement The Clay Studio 137-139 North 2nd Street Philadelphia, PA 19106 christina@theclaystudio.org 215-925-3453, ext. 13 www.theclaystudio.org

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As one of the nation’s first community arts centers, the Fleisher Art Memorial is built on a history of engaging individuals from diverse backgrounds in enriching arts experiences. Access to the arts has been at the core of Fleisher for over a century, and its tuition-free and low-cost classes, contemporary exhibitions, and community site-based programming reaches over 16,000 individuals annually. Fleisher’s project focused on developing new means of programming, marketing, and evaluation to better serve children and adults in its surrounding South Philadelphia neighborhoods by identifying and reducing the barriers that keep low-income and immigrant families from participating in organized arts programming.

Come to us, show us, welcome us was the message repeated by community members and became the basis for a set of organization-wide community engagement strategies. Staff members underwent training that included collaborative discussions covering topics from relationship building and partnerships to metrics and messaging, with opportunities for staff and faculty to learn how to apply strategies in each program area. Staff members were joined by members of Fleisher’s board for site visits to local community partners, including the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia, the Hispanic Outreach Program of Annunciation Church Community, and United Communities South Philadelphia.

Building on this groundwork, Fleisher is preparing to launch two new communitybased programs that introduce its creative offerings in safe and trusted neighborhood settings.

ColorWheels, a mobile art studio, will travel to community sites to engage residents in collaborative art-making. Building Community Bridges brings Fleisher’s teaching artists to nearby Mifflin Park, a gathering place that forms the nexus of a neighborhood revival, for a month-long residency. An ongoing community investment in these programs underscores the power of art to transform lives and will help Fleisher create an art-centered platform with which to engage, inspire, and enrich Philadelphia’s vibrant neighborhoods.

Rebecca Bolden Director of Development 719 Catharine Street Philadelphia, PA 19147 rbolden@fleisher.org 215-922-3456, ext. 311 www.fleisher.org

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Excellence Awards

The Opera Company of Philadelphia received a generous grant of $750,000 to broaden attendance of adults aged 44 to 55. The Opera Company invests heavily in youth and young adult education programs, but recognizes that opera participation may become difficult during the period when adults are establishing careers and families. The project encouraged reentry into opera through a multi-faceted approach which included: • The development of a new, uniquely-scaled opera • Enhanced adult education activities that series, the Aurora Series for Chamber Opera at

encouraged participation, increased knowledge

the Perelman Theater, which would encourage

and maximized enjoyment of opera;

opera sampling from a dynamic new audience;

• Establishment of a technology plan that

• Deployment of new communication strategies

provided meaningful, timely, and accessible

that effectively conveyed the Opera Company’s

information about OCP’s performances and

established brand characteristics;

activities.

This grant was transformational in its effect on the audience development culture at the Opera Company of Philadelphia. Key accomplishments include a comprehensive branding key which has provided cohesion between all areas of the company, from artistic to administrative areas, and enhanced audience communication through e-marketing, outreach opportunities, and social media that has deepened audience participation. The Wallace Excellence Award provided crucial research funding which allowed the Opera Company to learn and respond to perceptions about our art form, leading to the establishment of a mentorship program for audience members. Most importantly, the project successfully increased audiences aged 44 to 55 from 22% at the start of the project, to 33% during the most recent season. New attendees in the target age group doubled in our final year.

To continue this important work, the Opera Company of Philadelphia requires continued funding of research and audience development tools in response to an ever-changing arts market.

The Opera Company is also developing comprehensive digital media plans including simulcasts and on-demand content distribution as means of broadening our reach.

Annie Burridge Director of Development Opera Company of Philadelphia 1420 Locust Street, Suite 210 Philadelphia, PA 19102 215-893-5906 (direct) burridge@operaphila.org www.operaphila.org

Photo: Kelly & Massa Photography

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The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe supports artists, and has brought the world’s newest and most cutting-edge contemporary art events to the Philadelphia region since 1997.

The Wallace Foundation supported our initiative to double Festival participation amongst area students and 18-25 year-olds. This was successfully achieved through the direction of a Community Outreach Coordinator who under the Marketing Department’s leadership achieved these goals via updating online technology, increasing use of social media and smartphone applications, a Festival Blog, relationships with academic leaders, designing Festival-based course-work for students, developing email lists for this target population, and crafting a student-focused advertising campaign. Through this program’s work, the number of tickets sold to students and 18-25 year-old attendees nearly tripled from 1,317 in 2008 to 3,625 in 2011. Dramatic increases were also fostered in the categories of volunteerism, and Philly Fringe enrollment. Thanks to Wallace’s research support, the project provided learning opportunities for the Festival to better understand, and then break down the barriers to participation perceived and experienced by this target population.

Philadelphia Live Arts is primed to support more artists, reach more audiences, and make the city a greater destination for contemporary arts. Now, in our 15th year, we’re embarking on a plan to transform a waterfront, historic fire hydrant pumping station into a year-round contemporary performing arts center that will enable 12 months of contemporary programming each year, in addition to our annual 16-day Festival.

This center will link the Old City neighborhood to the burgeoning Delaware River waterfront, and feature year-round programming through a theater, rehearsal studios, bar/restaurant, box office, outdoor plaza for performance and audience interaction, and professional office and meeting spaces. With your support, we’ll create an exciting destination on the waterfront, where audiences can fully experience inspired performers creating the next wave in contemporary performing arts!

Laura Van Tassell Development Associate Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe 919 N 5th Street Philadelphia, PA 19123 laura@livearts-fringe.org 215-413-9006, ext. 15 www.livearts-fringe.org

Photo: ©Jacques-Jean Tiziou

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Excellence Awards

Designed to build and engage audience participation and commitment levels, the basic strategies employed in The Philadelphia Orchestra’s market segmentation plan have involved determining audience interests and tastes through a comprehensive survey process, then designing and marketing concert series that appeal to each of the resulting preference groupings. To measure the success of those efforts, the Orchestra has tracked and assessed ticket buyer behavior using key statistics – attendance levels in Verizon Hall, subscriber renewal rates, and retention of single ticket buyers from year to year.

Using recent patterns of attendance and renewal behavior when developing the goals for this project, we anticipated modest increases in participation each year following implementation of the plan—a 6% increase in renewals and an 11% increase in overall attendance—over the four-year grant period. The optimistic estimate for capacity growth in the concert hall reflected several basic assumptions, including a positive response by audiences to the new program model, increased satisfaction based on their proper “fit” in a program series, and a stronger inclination to return and renew from season to season. We also predicted that non-subscribers would find their experiences with us more fulfilling—particularly in light of some of the new enhancements that were offered— and would also return at a higher rate than in previous years.

With the arrival of our new president and CEO, Allison Vulgamore, the Orchestra underwent a new strategic planning process that called for a “pause” in how we were using our audience data to inform our marketing strategy. That same data was then filtered through a different “lense,” which informed us that we were speaking to our audience in a way that was not connecting with them..

With a new strategic plan, four years of invaluable data, and the anticipation of a new Music Director, we changed the messaging of the 2011-12 season marketing campaign and evaluated how and when to implement some of the recommended « segmentation » strategies. Materials were designed with more subtlety in the segmentation messaging, specifically in response to the concerns voiced by some about being patronized or pigeonholed by the structure and language of the 2008-09 brochures. Brochures were also created that tied in the segmented programming more fully with the day and time of the concert, based on ticket buyers’ primary attention to those factors when making decisions.

Craig Hamilton Vice President, Government and Community Relations The Philadelphia Orchestra Association 260 South Broad Street, Fl. 16 Philadelphia, PA 19102-5080 chamilton@philorch.org 215-893-1922

www.philorch.org

Photo: Pete Checchia

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Philadelphia Theatre Company undertook an audience building program that expanded participation among art-attendees from key suburban centers in the Greater Philadelphia region, including Southern New Jersey. The urgency behind this comprehensive initiative was the October 2007 opening of the Company’s new venue, the Suzanne Roberts Theatre on the Avenue of the Arts.

The new theater has provided PTC with significant new capacity to increase participation. Current total programming at PTC serves roughly 59,000 people each season with the capacity to serve well over 70,000. Quantitative progress toward the multi-year goal of increasing participation from the identified suburban communities in the Philadelphia region is 7% per season over the four-year span of the grant.

In the final year of our four-year grant, PTC has made significant strides and our rate of progress is exponentially higher than it has been in the previous three years. We have stepped up our in-house audience research and have been gathering data that greatly helps inform our marketing efforts in South Jersey and the Western Philadelphia Suburbs. That in-house research coupled with the significant knowledge gained from the grant-funded research conducted by Shugoll Research has helped build our audience in these two important and previously under-represented regions of great capacity. We believe that the cumulative effect of the analysis of our data over these years along with our targeted marketing efforts in direct mail, outdoor, print, and radio advertising, and telemarketing have paid off for our organization. The highest percentage increase from one year to the next throughout the life of this grant has been this final year. Audiences from the targeted zip codes as outlined in the grant have risen close to 17% in one year and the number of participants has grown by over 5,000. This success points to sustainability and growth for our organization and bodes well for PTC’s future success regarding audience engagement and other areas of outreach within these targeted regions.

Amy Lebo Director of Marketing and Communications Philadelphia Theatre Company 230 S. Broad Street, Suite1105 Philadelphia, PA 19102 alebo@philadelphiatheatrecompany.org 215-985-1400, ext. 102 www.philadelphiatheatrecompany.org

Photo: Mark Garvin

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Excellence Awards

The Wilma Theater is very grateful for the Wallace Foundation Excellence Award, which allowed us to initiate our campaign to Build the Audiences of Tomorrow. This campaign works to broaden both our core audience and especially our young and student audience, by removing barriers to participation with innovative and effective marketing, through careful development of programs which provide context for and interaction with our productions, and by heavily subsidizing tickets for young audience members. A central factor of the campaign’s success has been the emphasis on coordinating efforts across our organization to accomplish specific participation goals. These programs depend on contributions not only from our Education staff, but from Special Events, Marketing, Literary and Artistic staff for their success, and the full commitment across the organization to the goals of the campaign to Build the Audiences of Tomorrow has been the central element of the program’s continuing impact. The campaign has been incredibly successful in achieving its core goals of increasing student participation in Wilma programming, exceeding our projections for total student participation and more than doubling our goal for participation in our Wilma Classroom program.

We are very optimistic about the prospects for continued engagement with students that the campaign to Build the Audiences of Tomorrow has reached, as well, and we have seen evidence of repeat participation in our programs. With the conclusion of the Wallace Foundation Excellence Award, though, the Wilma is unable to sustain campaign activities at current levels. With diminished funding, we are unable to maintain our Education Fellowship; we also have fewer resources for classroom instruction and ticket subsidies. The Wilma’s campaign to Build the Audiences of Tomorrow has greatly exceeded expectations; without additional funding, we expect a scaled-back version to consolidate and maintain our gains.

Jamie Haskins Managing Director The Wilma Theater 265 S Broad St Philadelphia, PA 19107 jhaskins@wilmatheater.org 215-893-9456, ext. 110 www.wilmatheater.org

Photo: Jim Roese

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Engage 2020 Innovation Grants The Engage 2020 Innovation Grants supported programs designed to specifically engage new audiences in creative experiences, building on the key findings from the Cultural Alliance’s 2010 report, Research into Action: Pathways to New Opportunities. Grantees are:

Innovation Grants 14

Innovation & Excellence: The Philadelphia Engagement Projects

Hip-H’opera is a long-term project collaboration between Art Sanctuary and the Opera Company of Philadelphia. In 2007, the Opera Company approached Art Sanctuary with what started as a novel idea: create a project that allows young people to marry two completely disparate genres of music and watch “magic happen” as the youth redefine what both look like in their own terms.

“Hip H’Opera: the Song Cycle” was born out of that spirit of innovation and collaboration and has since grown into the Hip-H’Opera project. In the last year we’ve worked with three Philadelphia high schools: Nueva Esperanza Charter School, Lincoln High School and Martin Luther King High School. Each school was assigned a teaching artist from Art Sanctuary and the Opera Company who conducted a series of workshops using the Hip-H’Opera learning guide that was developed with both organizations. The students, over an 18-week period, learned the history and aesthetics of hip-hop and opera, genres that use the human voice to tell profound stories. And, as a result, the students told their own stories using poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, capturing the their lives as they believe they need to be told – from their own voice.

The result of the Hip-H’Opera project will be a full-length hip-hop Opera. The libretto will be completely informed by the writings from the students in phase one. During this next phase of the project, those students from the first phase who self select to participate will be part of the Hip-H’Opera Leadership Program. This is a smaller group of students who will meet once a month on a Saturday for a part-writing workshop and part-career shadowing experience. Our hope is to open the students to careers in the Arts to which they have never been exposed. They will meet costume designers, set designers, producers, writers, playwrights, editors, actors, singers, dancers, choreographers, composers, musicians and many more. The students will also follow the progress of the libretto for Hip-H’Opera and provide consultation and feedback for the composer and librettist, Daniel Bernard Roumain and Marc Bahmuthi Joseph, respectively. The final production is expected to premiere in Fall of 2013.

Tarana J. Burke Managing Director Art Sanctuary 628 South 16th Street Philadelphia, PA 19146 tburke@artsanctuary.org 215-232-4485

www.artsanctuary.org

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Launched on February 24, 2011, the Albert M. Greenfield African American Iconic Images Collection showcases 47 of our most iconic African American themed murals – those that celebrate historical moments, speak to the strengths of our African American communities, or depict the promising future made possible by our youth. With a primary goal to enhance civic engagement with Philadelphia’s cultural and historical offerings, the first year of the Collection offered monthly events to the public held at a variety of venues as well as unique guided tours and downloadable audio tours narrated by Grammy Award-winning artist ?uestlove of the Roots targeted toward a varied audience. In addition, lesson guides for local schools engaged students in the Collection, bringing real-life depictions of Philadelphia’s rich African American history and culture to classrooms citywide. In the first year of the Collection, Mural Arts engaged thousands of Philadelphia-area residents, visitors, and students.

In the upcoming years we will continue to update the Collection, adding new murals of significance. This year we are working on two murals that will be added to the collection; one a collaboration with local icons The Roots, and the other a poetry-focused project in collaboration with Sonia Sanchez. In addition to regular tours, we will host a special exhibition this winter, and will continue to host events to ensure that the public remains engaged in our work. Funders could support the continuation of the project through a formal collections program that will make the curation and management of the Collection a cornerstone of our mission. This program would allow us to continue to add new murals depicting key themes that are missing from the current collection, interviews, and interpretations to our existing collection.

Photo: Rachael Clark

Kristina Palmer Vice President for Development 215-685-0738

kristina.palmer@muralarts.org City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program The Lincoln Financial Mural Arts Center at the Thomas Eakins House 1727-29 Mount Vernon Street Philadelphia, PA 19130-3321 www.muralarts.org

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Innovation Grants

As it seeks to train the world’s most gifted young musicians, the Curtis Institute of Music creates performance opportunities of the highest caliber for the region’s classical music enthusiasts. With a variety of offerings—from orchestral concerts to opera productions to chamber music recitals—our challenge is to assure that we are connecting audiences with our artistic product in a way that keeps them coming back for more. We hope to do this by creating and marketing a uniquely tailored “experience” for patrons.

Curtis’s Engage 2020 project began this fall with a survey of our audience to determine what they felt would enhance the experience of a live performance at Curtis. Survey respondents were categorized into one of three distinct audience segments (identified in the Paid Patronage Study): “one-timer”; “return after lapsed”; and “loyalist”. Based on the findings, Curtis will implement an experience-focused marketing initiative this year aimed at each of the three specific groups.

We hope to demonstrate that creating and marketing a patron “experience” tailored to three distinct audience segments results in increased frequency of participation in each segment.

Ultimately, we seek to grow the participation of those “loyalist” Curtis patrons and bring a significant number of those in the other two segments to the “loyalist” level.

Overall, as a result of the growth in participation stemming from this marketing initiative, we seek to achieve a twenty percent increase in ticket sales in 2011-2012 compared to the average ticket sales of the previous four seasons. We believe this will represent an important first step as we work to enrich and grow our engagement with audiences. And, importantly, we see it as a significant contribution to the ambitious goal of “doubling Greater Philadelphia’s cultural engagement by 2020.”

Bob Paul Director of Institutional Relations Curtis Institute of Music 1726 Locust Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 bob.paul@curtis.edu 215-717-3184

www.curtis.edu

Photo: Peter Checchia

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To promote the unique approachability and accessibility of Philadelphia’s public art – no tickets, no barriers – the Fairmount Park Art Association worked with consultants to develop an innovative marketing campaign designed to raise the visibility of Philadelphia’s outdoor sculpture by drawing attention to the artworks and creating memorable pathways to engagement. The campaign will celebrate Philadelphia’s preeminent collection of public art with free and unique experiential events for diverse audiences, including a tango dance party at the Swann Memorial Fountain in Logan Square, a Sculpture Flash-light Mob, Public Art Bike Tours, and giant message balloons flying high above the sculptures on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The campaign will be carried out this spring and has been developed in partnership with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation and the City’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy. Community engagement will be measured through analytics from the Art Association’s interpretive audio program, Museum Without Walls™: AUDIO. With the largest collection of outdoor sculpture in the country, Philadelphia is considered a livable city in part because of its impressive collection of public artworks. However, many residents and visitors take this important cultural resource for granted, or it goes unnoticed. The “re-messaging” campaign is the most recent example of the Art Association’s efforts to reconnect audiences with the public art that is one of Philadelphia’s hallmarks and a key contributor to its quality of life. The Art Association is known as an innovator in the field of public art, and we are constantly seeking new ways to promote and support our multiple missions to commission, preserve, and interpret public art in Philadelphia. Funding from the community enables us to install permanent and temporary public art commissions by world-renowned artists, develop innovative outreach activities, distribute free maps and guides, and present our award-winning Museum Without Walls™: AUDIO program.

Jennifer Richards Development & Communications Manager Fairmount Park Art Association 1616 Walnut Street, Suite 2012 Philadelphia, PA 19103 215-546-7550

jrichards@fpaa.org www.fpaa.org www.museumwithoutwallsaudio.org

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Innovation Grants

In 2010, First Person Arts, whose purpose is to connect and empower people through the sharing of real life stories, planned, developed, and mounted the First Person Museum. This first-of-itskind “museum of the people,” convened community groups for Story Circles in which they shared stories about objects they treasure.

The stories were published in chapbooks and displayed, along with the objects that inspired them, in a multi-media exhibition at the Painted Bride Art Center that ran during the annual First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art. The participants, their friends and families, Festival audiences and Painted Bride patrons visited the exhibition during the two months it was on display.

The project generated a rich collection of stories and histories and provided a platform for voices that are often unheard, demonstrating to them the value of telling their stories. It engaged participants who were ethnically, economically, and geographically diverse and included people of different ages and genders. It drew people to the exhibition who seldom attend arts events in Center City and introduced them to First Person Arts and its programming. It also gave visitors an opportunity to contribute their own stories on site and via an online gallery (firstpersonmuseum. org) which still remains active.

We plan to continue this project by expanding the community storytelling program and enhancing the online gallery. In 2012 the Story Circles will be built around the theme “The Things They Carry” and will involve immigrant groups sharing stories about objects they brought with them from their native lands. Story facilitators, filmmakers, sociologists, and historians will work with participants to develop their stories for presentation at individual community events and at a combined event at the 2013 Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art. Photos, videos, stories, and historical information will be uploaded to the online gallery. Social media will be used to encourage online visitors to share their stories and to make the online gallery a destination for internet storytelling.

Vicki Solot President and Artistic Director First Person Arts 1 S. Broad St. 17FL Philadelphia, PA 19107 vsolot@firstpersonarts.org 267-402-2058

www.firstpersonarts.org

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the audience inCHOIRing was a two part project, a season long marketing communications and audience outreach project, and an innovative performance designed to encourage audience participation in a program of significant choral/orchestral music. The concept was aimed at answering the questions: How do we engage our audiences? How do we invite you to become an active partner in our art? What is the thrust of new concert experience?

In BIG SING performances, chorus members sat with the audience (unbeknownst to audience members) and performed with them. Audience members described the experience as “cinematic surround sound” and highly tactile in that audiences could feel the vibrations of the music, hear the music around them, and sing with the chorus. As a 75-year old open rehearsal participant stated, “At this point in my life, being a spectator is not welcome. I love it but hunger to be a part of it”. During the project, audience members watched tutorial videos to learn about the chants that formed the basis of the Duruflé Requiem and were invited to participate in open rehearsals and at the concert. Chorus members blogged about the rehearsal process to offer a personal point of view about being in our chorus. All was launched through a microsite making everything accessible to the community and nationally.

This season, we continue our audience engagement with Rituals: EAST/WEST, a multiorganizational project that includes a commission, cultural exchange, youth, and masterwork accompanied by an orchestra. One of our primary strategic goals through June 2014 is to broaden and engage our core audience while building new audiences. Our concert programming will continue to reflect audience engagement opportunities, in addition to using online tools to draw audiences into our behind-the-scenes story and to provide a more tactile, whole experience.

Photo: John L. Shipman

Janelle McCoy Executive Director P.O. Box 59522 Philadelphia, PA 19102 jmccoy@mcchorus.org 215-735-9922

www.mcchorus.org

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Innovation Grants

New Paradise Laboratories has created an online interactive tool, FRAME, where audience can use their computers to engage with the company in a variety of entertaining and illuminating ways. Part performance site, part responsive blog, part delivery system for our mission, FRAME is currently in a beta launch period. Six live curators—we call them the NPL Specialists—have created fictional characters with six distinct worldviews to engage in an ongoing conversation that illuminates aspects of NPL’s artistic mission. These perspectives are delivered through a visually dynamic series of web postings in a media-rich web environment where audience members are invited to interact with the curators.

FRAME was a significant component of our recent web-based performance EXTREMELY PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF PRIVACY: in that piece, FRAME served as a lobby/intermission site.

Audience members were deposited there to delve into special postings that reflected on the content of the piece—it was a web-based lobby display and conversation.

It is intended that FRAME be NPL’s primary institutional representation online. We are therefore planning many ways to use it. This involves building FRAME into a full-fledged online performance venue. We envision: • more projects that work in tandem with live pieces • pieces that are created specifically for the site • a 30-second web film contest • a mash-up feature that will allow audience to create their own vj mixes • a variety of materials that augment and amplify NPL’s artistic mission Inger Hatlen Managing Director New Paradise Laboratories 1325 N. Randolph Street, Suite B Philadelphia PA 19122 ihatlen@newparadiselaboratories.org 215-923-0334 215-917-7677

www.newparadiselaboratories.org

photo: Jorge Cousineau

Innovation & Excellence: The Philadelphia Engagement Projects

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Family Arts Academy at PAFA’s inaugural year, 2010-11, was an extraordinary success. Attendance levels at the more than 110 family art-making workshops in community locations and at PAFA, plus at 5 community events and festivals, exceeded 7,500, more than double the first-year overall attendance goal set in PAFA’s Engage 2020 application. Participant feedback reflected very high satisfaction – average ratings of 4.7 or more on a 5.0 scale for quality of workshop, instructors, and helpers. The program is rooted in two attributes – family engagement and art-making – linked to academic achievement, and PAFA’s professional assessment clearly confirmed the presence of markers of parental engagement linked to achievement in the program’s art-making workshop activities.

In continuing Family Arts Academy into its second year, PAFA has drawn upon the experiences and learning of its teaching artists and staff in Year 1, as well as the professionally conducted 2010-11 assessment and evaluation. The 2011-12 program is supported in part by grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

These grants, which fund no more than 50% of project costs, also support other PAFA programs of engagement: Academy Visit Program (school tours serving 10,000 school children in 2011-12); and PAFA After Dark, a new evening program aimed at drawing new attendees, featuring off-beat ways to connect with the art in PAFA’s galleries. PAFA also engages underserved audiences through its After-School Studio Art Program providing free after-school art classes for hundreds of area high school students, and its Lost Dreams on Canvas program through which, since 1993, volunteer artists have painted more than 350 portraits of children who were killed in senseless acts of violence. Each family receives a portrait of their loved one, and reproductions of the paintings form the core of an anti-violence program for young people.

Larry Passmore Director of Foundation Relations lpassmore@pafa.org 215-972-2006

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) 128 North Broad Street Philadelphia, PA 19102 www.pafa.org

Photo: Judy Ringold

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Innovation Grants

“While in High School, none of my immediate or extended family members attended theater.

People’s Light was my first theater experience. Consequently my wife and I attend live performances in Philadelphia and New York.”

“I feel that the teens and young adults who have seen plays at People’s Light have walked away a little more knowledgeable, a little more down-to-earth, and a little more culturally aware.”

These are comments from surveys of alumni of People’s Light & Theatre Company’s Arts Discovery High School program, begun in 1987. The program brings students from 21 diverse area high schools to attend plays free-of- charge, with supporting curriculum guides provided for teachers and students. There are more than 450,000 alumni of this program, and our outreach to these now-adults consisted primarily of advertising on Facebook. 564 respondents completed the survey; 2 focus groups with 19 participants provided more in-depth discussion of the program’s impact. Finally, we invited respondents back to the Theatre for events for adults and families.

A newer program at People’s Light for teens is STEP - Subscription Teen Engagement Program – an intensive program involving teens as subscribers and then theatremakers. This diverse group of 36 young people read our 9 season scripts, socialize over dinner, and see the play together.

Led by professional teaching artists, the teens also talk with artists involved in each production.

In the summer, they become theatremakers as they explore one of our upcoming season plays and make their own work responding to the themes in that play.

With the help of the Engage 2020 Innovation Grant, People’s Light has deepened its longtime commitment to work with teens. We now need support to continue these and other exciting projects on the horizon that bring the finest artists together with young people for mutually beneficial learning opportunities.

Grace E. Grillet Managing Director People’s Light & Theatre Company 39 Conestoga Road Malvern, PA 19355-1706 grillet@peopleslight.org 610-647-1900, ext. 122 www.peopleslight.org

Photo: Wendy Bable

Innovation & Excellence: The Philadelphia Engagement Projects

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“Seeing the Stage Through Our Eyes” is an exciting new partnership between Walnut Street Theatre and The Philadelphia Inquirer developed with the support of 2010-2011 Innovation Grant.

The overall goal of this comprehensive, theatre-based writing program is to engage teenagers and their parents in the artistic work of the Walnut by creating a deep and meaningful shared cultural experience for both student and adult alike.

Through a competitive application process, 100 local students (grades 9-12) from eleven counties in three states were selected to participate in the “Seeing the Stage Through Our Eyes” Program. Each participant received a pair of subscriptions seats to attend the Walnut’s five 2010-2011 Mainstage productions along with a parent, guardian or adult mentor. After seeing each show the students submitted a review or feature article responding to each production. A limited number of articles were selected to appear on the Walnut’s website and published in full-run and student editions of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Throughout the season, both students and adults attended a variety of project-related enrichment events including a kick-off reception and panel discussion with theatre critics from The Philadelphia Inquirer, a backstage tour of the Walnut, and a final feedback session and awards ceremony. Finally, students were provided with educational study guides before attending each show and encourage to participate in an online blog on the program’s website Though this was initially intended to be a one-time program, “Seeing the Stage Through Our Eyes” was tremendously successful in its inaugural year. In the tradition of the Walnut’s commitment to outstanding education programming, the theatre’s Senior Management decided to continue a scaled-back version of the program without outside funding for the 2011-2012 season.

It is our hope that we will be able to attract both institutional and individual funders to help fully restore this important and meaningful program in future seasons.

Robert Weinstein Associate Director of Development Walnut Street Theatre 825 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19107 robw@walnutstreettheatre.org 215-574-3550, ext. 505 www.walnutstreettheatre.org

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Innovation Grants

The Wallace Excellence Awards are funded by The Wallace Foundation in collaboration with The Philadelphia Foundation and the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. The Engage 2020 Innovation Grants Program is supported by The Wallace Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and The Philadelphia Foundation, and is a program of the Cultural Alliance’s research and marketing

Design: Tabula Creative

initiative, Engage 2020.

Innovation & Excellence: The Philadelphia Engagement Projects

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Innovation & Excellence: The Philadelphia Engagement Projects