How to Win Friends (for new work) and Influence People (in medium-sized cities): a user’s manual

Tired of scrambling for audience in an overcrowded market? Want to get a bunch of local folks interested in your innovative new work, make them into a supportive family for your organization, and (metaphorically) hug them tight? 

Literal hugging optional.

Then consider patterning your theatre after one of these out-of-the-box thinkin’ regional superstars.

This user’s manual explains how three very different organizations, based in cities with under a million residents, have connected with audiences, promoted new and innovative work, and lived to tell about it. The subjects under examination are:

The Fusebox Festival: an annual hybrid art festival in Austin, Texas. In a city of festivals (including South by Southwest and City Limits), Fusebox claims a smaller, more specialized piece of the Austin arts market pie. Mmmm, pie. 

The Wexner Center for the Arts: a multidisciplinary presenting venue in Columbus, Ohio. Known to its friends as The Wexner, or if you’re close, just “Wex.” Though the Wexner also presents visual arts exhibitions and musical performances, today we’ll focus specifically on the performing arts program, okay? Okay. 

 Des Moines Social Club: an arts complex in downtown Des Moines, Iowa that houses a theatre, restaurant, a coffee shop/comic book store, classrooms, an art gallery, office space for other nonprofits, a culinary school, and a variety of arts activities. Trivia: Des Moines is French for “the moines.”

These three organizations all encompass activities that go beyond presenting and producing theatre; from cooking classes to happy hours to film screenings, each produces a constellation of offerings that contribute to its status in its home community. Because these organizations do such a good job of engaging their communities, audiences start to cheer for them the same way they do for sports teams. As Michael Kaiser points out in The Cycle, arts folks tend to think of a comparison to sports as negative, but you know what sports teams have? Fans.

 

Exhibit A: Fans

People who are excited about what the team does, share their enthusiasm with others, and are willing to forgive a losing game once in a while. Here’s how you can follow in their footsteps.

Step One: Know your place
In one of the country’s largest arts markets like, say, New York, being an arts organization producing new work can feel a bit like being a Jessica in a 1990s classroom; there’s a completely unreasonable number of you, and no one’s quite sure which is which. Working in a smaller city, however, gives these organizations an advantage; they’re not just any Jessica, they’re your hometown gal. Each of our three examples works to understand the community they live in, and to make the most of their hometown advantage.

The Wexner
The Wexner has been operating on the campus of The Ohio State University for 25 years, longer than most of its students have been alive. Having a built-in population of young people who walk by the doors every day is an advantage, and the Wexner takes advantage of it by offering an array of special perks for students, like free admission, a discount in their store, and special programming and events just for students. Living on a college campus isn’t all keggers and toga parties, though. 

Though sometimes toga parties do happen.

The Wexner thinks of itself as a research laboratory for contemporary work. It takes advantage of its placement within a learning institution to advance an agenda of experimentation.  

But the Wexner’s reputation isn’t limited to the boundaries of campus. You can be excused for not immediately thinking of Columbus as a premiere arts destination, but perhaps Wexner CEO Sherri Geldin can change your mind. Here she is reflecting on the opening of the Wexner in 1989:

“It was clear to me that extraordinary people were already here. There were sophisticated hungry people in the community who would get on planes to experience things elsewhere. I’d like to think that over time we have broadened and deepened that audience for contemporary culture.”

Word, Sherri. By bringing world-class performances to Columbus, The Wexner has taken advantage of the existing hunger, and earned some fans in the bargain.

Des Moines Social Club 
You might not think of Des Moines as a cultural mecca (or be able to point to it on a map), but it’s gaining a reputation as an up-and-coming metro area for young, ambitious people. Last May it opened a newly renovated two-building complex converted from an historic firehouse. Fans of the DMSC are proud of their engagement. Seriously. They have t-shirts. But audiences aren’t the only ones watching this young organization’s progress with interest. City officials “see the Social Club as a lure for economic and residential activity,” writes the Des Moines Register. That understanding of the city’s needs and interests helped the DMSC raise $3.5 million for their new facility. Not too shabby for a 6-year-old organization.

Fusebox Festival
Few arts organizations can claim to be as place-minded as the Fusebox Festival. They recently won a prestigious ArtPlace grant for their ThinkEAST Living Charette. So wait, what’s a living charette? Think of it as Austin EPCOT: a 24-acre former industrial site that project leaders want to use as a laboratory for the neighborhood of the future. 

Like EPCOT, but probably without a monorail.

During this year’s Fusebox Festival, the ThinkEAST team will pilot a temporary creative community on the site. This project has community residents, business people, and civic leaders all aflutter. ArtPlace Executive Director Jamie Bennett said at the grant announcement, “Investing in and supporting the arts have a profound impact on the social, physical, and economic futures of communities.”

This isn’t just a side project for Fusebox, either. Community building is central to their mission: “We see this project as an exciting extension of our Free Range Art initiative,” said Ron Berry, Fusebox’s Executive Director. (Also, gentle reader, we’ll talk about Free Range Art below. Hold your questions.) “It's an opportunity to explore how we can reposition the arts to play a more vital, indispensable, role in civic life.” Sounds cool, Ron. Very cool.

Step Two: Look at a calendar

In live performing arts, we’ve yet to figure out how to escape the bounds of time that restrain us. Until we each get our own TARDIS, we’ll have to make strategic use of the time available to us, and convince audiences that their limited time will be well spent with us. 

Our venue is bigger on the inside.

Each of our examples has mapped out a different tactic for wringing the most out of the pages of their calendar.

The Wexner

Although there’s always something going on somewhere at the Wexner, the performing arts offerings represent a relatively small part of the events calendar. Performance runs are typically short: one to three days’ worth of shows. However, public performances represent only the tip of the iceberg. Wexner’s prestigious artist residencies can span weeks or months, and represent opportunities for deep engagement with the Ohio University students and the broader community. For instance, the 2011 residency of the multi-media performance ensemble The Builder’s Association involved the campus community in the creation of the new production House/Divided as part of a Creative Campus Innovations grant. The Wexner’s on-campus constituents benefit from sustained contact with the resident artists, and public performances serve as the cherry on top of the engagement sundae.

The cherry might be the best part!

Des Moines Social Club

There’s something (usually more than one thing) going on every day at the Des Moines Social Club’s downtown complex. Their homepage prompts you to select a category when you arrive (anything from culinary events to music to theatre), but if you click on “happening today” you get a video of one of the DMSC’s friendly staff giving you the run-down of the day or the week’s events.

The Des Moines Juice, a guide for the early professional set, explains the club’s strategy this way: “One of the dozens of programs — a StageWest play, let's say — brings you through the door. During drinks at Malo's bar after the show, you strike up a conversation with an attendee who's excited about a 3XWrestling event happening in the same theater the next month. They invite, you accept and you see something you'd never see otherwise.” In that way, the DMSC can actually use the calendar as a tool to bring together disparate parts of their audience: sneaky, mission-based matchmaking.

Fusebox Festival

As an annual festival, Fusebox is most visible during its twelve days of programming each year. However, that doesn’t mean the Fusebox folks take their ball and go home after the last curtain call.  They’re experimenting with ways of connecting with their fans throughout the year. For example, in April they commissioned a new play to be presented entirely in text messages to anyone who subscribed. 

But really, though.

The “performance” lasted six months, and sent three or four text messages a week. And unlike most text messages from nonprofits (“Keep us in mind for Giving Tuesday!”), audiences wanted to read these. As an added bonus, the project kept Fusebox fans kept thinking about the festival for six whole months.

Step three: Meet your neighbors
“Audience engagement” may be the buzziest of buzzwords in contemporary arts administration. Building a family for an arts organization is more about getting butts in seats; it’s about building a relationship with the community that goes beyond a ticket transaction. If your neighbor, Bob, never came to the annual block party, or participated in the neighborhood food drive, or waved to you as he drove by, but instead asked you to buy a raffle ticket for his kid’s school fundraiser every time he saw you, you would not love Bob. Don’t be that guy. All three of these organizations have well-developed (and effective!) strategies to turn ticket-buyers into fans.

The Wexner
As previously discussed, The Wexner might not have the greatest number of performances per year, but the depth of its programming is particularly impressive. Activities include the aforementioned artist residencies, course tie-ins, and talk backs after every show. Notice that the Wex’s mission, “inspiring cultural curiosity and fueling the creative expression of our time,” is all about what it does for people it serves. To that end, they’ve made outreach and engagement a pillar of their current strategic plan. Upcoming initiatives include creating more engagement opportunities for their board and auxiliary donors groups and virtualizing some of their programming, including artist talks and lectures. These tactics could both increase the involvement of existing fans (the board and other supporters) potentially win the hearts of new fans (an internet-based audience). The Wex freely acknowledges that they’ve fallen behind a bit in their use of the newfangled intertubes, but they’re working on it. For instance, each week they post a video to Facebook that features a human-shaped tape dispenser dispensing tips on what’s happening at the Wex. 

Des Moines Social Club
Everything the DMSC does is focused on the neighborhood. You could call them the Mr. Rogers of this group. 

Won't you be my neighbor?

In fact, in case you missed that sneaky bit of the mission statement, it says, “to use the arts as a catalyst to create unprecedented community engagement.” On social media, they’re about as active as your average 13-year-old, which is to say, very active. They have about 14,000 Facebook likes (which is 7% of the total population of Des Moines!) about almost as many Twitter followers. Their downtown location (you know, the one in real, actual space) draws a lot of foot traffic, too, so all in all they have about 200,000 visitors per year, and rising.

However, the key to their strategy is in getting visitors interested in activities they might not normally consider.  “We work to put people who would not otherwise socialize together in the same place at the same time by offering programs that interest opposite types of people,” confesses the 2013 DMSC Annual Report. Executive Director Zachary Mannheimer acknowledges the importance of getting to know their visitors: "It's all about the human relationship. The art is the catalyst, but the human relationship has to be the longevity of the situation, otherwise it won't work."

Fusebox Festival
Fusebox has a particularly loyal set of fans, as evidenced by their 2013 Kickstarter campaign. In Fusebox’s quest to make the festival tickets free, they raised enough money to offset the earned income the festival usually makes by converting ticket-buyers into donors, and helping them feel ownership of the festival. In addition, the campaign for Free Range Art gave Fusebox a chance to hang out with its donors more often than usual with fundraising events and promotions.

Free Range Art resulted in some exciting boosts to audience engagement during the 2014 festival. First time attendees increased by 60%. Overall attendance increased 20%, plus the average festival-goer attended twice as many events as the previous year. So not only did the festival reach more people, but the people it did reach became more deeply engaged, and one step further down the path to becoming a fan.

Why yes, you do have to start at the very beginning of the road.

Also, remember that ThinkEAST Living Charette project? Fusebox hosted a “Meet the Neighbors” weekend with a series of events to “to not only recognize and promote the skills and talents of the communities already living in the Johnston Terrace and Govalle neighborhoods but also to put those communities into conversation with national and international artists and thinkers.” So yes, inviting your neighbors over for lunch on the weekend is also a good way to get to know them.

Step four: Do stuff people like
Here’s the easy part! For your organization to be successful, people need to have a good time when they show up. If I’m going to put on pants and drag myself away from Netflix, I need a reeeeaaaally compelling reason. These three organizations have each found a formula that makes a visit well worth it.

The Wexner
Wex’s roster of commissions and residencies reads like a who’s who of the cool kids in contemporary performance. SITI Company, Big Art Group, and Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company have all worked at the Wex. Audiences feel hip because they get a first look or sneak peak at important new productions (for example, the play Straight White Men in advance of its premiere at the Public Theatre in New York), and artists get concentrated time to workshop new projects. In fact, the Wex punches far about its weight in terms of artistic clout. The “Reputation and Reach Metrics” of their strategic report includes well-deserved not-so-humble brags about the esteem the Wex is held in by other arts organization, its mentions in international media, and its financial support from many of the big names in arts funding. 

Reputation matters!

But perhaps a better measure is how community members rate the Wex in surveys: civic and business leaders see the Wexner as an important cultural asset, and visitors consistently declare themselves “very satisfied” by their experience.

Des Moines Social Club
With 90 different programs operating in the complex, DMSC is consciously trying to be all things to all people. One of the benefits of having a flexible space with varied programming is that they can give the people, yeah, give the people what they want. "At some point, in a lot of our programming, if no one is showing up, we stop doing that programming and we shift it,” says Mannheimer. And because the mission is community engagement, they have more flexibility with what art, precisely, they offer. That doesn’t mean catering to the lowest common denominator. It does mean mixing high-brow with low-brow; a production of the Repertory Theatre of Iowa might take place in the blackbox one weekend, and bare-chest wresting in the same space the next week. So far, no complaints.

Fusebox Festival
So, the thing about running a festival of new, interdisciplinary work is that by definition, the audience hasn’t seen it before. Which means that Fusebox has to earn their trust as a curator. As you may have gathered from their play told entirely through texts, Fusebox digs technology. They use this technology not only to engage with their fans, but also to help people navigate their offerings. You know how Amazon is always offering you things it thinks you’ll like, as in, “This item is often purchased with a velvet kitten tuxedo. Shop velvet kitten tuxedos now.” And you think to yourself, “You know me so well, Amazon!” 

Wait, this isn't what I had in miiiiiind!

Well, on each Fusebox event page, the website politely says, “If this looks interesting to you, you may also enjoy...,” and provides links to other related events.  In a festival of experimental art, in which even festival fans might not be familiar with the offerings, this feature is a much-appreciated service for festival-goers. Thanks to Fusebox’s recommendations, they get to see world-class art and be pretty sure it’s something they’ll enjoy.

Step five: Do better
In sports, they say you’re only as good as your last game, and that might be true of the performing arts as well. Like the performances they host, these organizations are constantly evolving to meet new challenges as their cities, neighborhoods, and audiences evolve.  Here’s a sneak preview of what’s next for our three case studies.

The Wexner 
In the next five years, the Wex is focusing on teaching and learning, and outreach and innovation. Specific plans include creating a dedicated education facility for college students and teens, increasing the scope of its popular artist residency program, and transforming the outdoor plaza near the center into a popular and welcoming public gathering place. Nothing like a good plaza.

Des Moines Social Club
The DMSC is conscious of capitalizing on its honeymoon period for a lasting relationship with its city. (Remember, for their upcoming seventh anniversary, the traditional gift is wool.) 

If you learn to knit today, you can have a scarf done in time!

Plans include expanding their staff (including the recent hire of a new Chief Operating Officer to free up the Executive Director for more fundraising duties), diversifying earned income for sustainability (for example, booking weddings and other private events in the space), and adding new performance and entertainment space to the complex as renovations are completed.

Fusebox Festival
Fusebox is working to capitalize on the changes and developments it experienced when it introduced Free Range Art last year. Near-term plans include continuing leadership of the ThinkEAST community development project, building relationships with existing community organizations to increase audience diversity, extending its Free Range Art initiative through the next two seasons.  Everyone knows free range art tastes better, anyway.

The Wexner, the Des Moines Social Club, and the Fusebox Festival are three very different models, but all have built successful organizations by working with, rather than against, the size of their hometown. Through their efforts, they’ve created fans who think of these organizations as more than just a ticket purveyor. With the help of these fans, our three examples constantly finding new ways to advance their missions. Now go forth and engage!