First WA Showcase Speaker Announced
UK arts audience consultant Heather Maitland is the first speaker to be announced for WA Showcase 9-12 June, 2020.
Maitland has more than 3 decades of audience development and strategic marketing across more than 100 arts organisations from major to small regional and rural players.
She famously said, “For art and culture to be relevant, we need to broaden our horizons, be curious about our audience and community groups, curious to see what happens before, during and after people have become involved in culture. And we must be prepared to change our practices in response to this.”
Maitland will deliver two sessions around the themes, a pragmatist’s guide to audience engagement and drowning in data as well as being part of the expert panel session and delivering a marketing for small organisations workshop.
Executive Director of CircuitWest Ryan Taaffe said he felt Maitland would provide the next logical piece of the puzzle in the audience development learning that has formed a key topic in WA Showcase over several years.
“ We felt the next part of the conversation needed to be understanding and making sense of the vast amount of data gleaned from audiences across WA, as well as scrutinising what data we really need.”
“I feel ‘drowning in data’ really describes how many feel about the challenge of sifting through ticketing, sales, ABS and research data trying to make sense of the next steps in audience development.”
“Heather’s clarity with evidence and her ability to walk in our performing arts shoes will make her a real asset to WA Showcase 2020”
Having worked in arts marketing and audience development since 1983, Maitland has written eight books on arts marketing and audience development. Her Marketing Manual has been translated into Mandarin Chinese and is widely used across Taiwan, Malaysia and China as well as in the UK.
She has marketed a wide range of arts organisations from the smallest of touring theatre companies to running the London end of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s marketing operation.
Helen supported audience and artform development in over 100 visual and performing arts organisations as head of two of England’s audience development agencies.
Find out more or book here http://www.showcasewa.com.au/.
ENDS