I attended the conference: San Francisco Bay Area Arts Town Hall Conference.

Arts Town HallProgram
Monday, June 9, 2008 from 12:30-8:30 p.m.
The Arts Town Hall is conceived as an opportunity for the entire Bay Area arts community - arts organizations, individual artists, funders, cultural policy leaders and other stakeholders - to convene for a day to consider some of the larger trends and forces shaping the regional arts ecology, as well as share practical information through a variety workshops and networking sessions.



from 2:30 to 4 pm I attended the Session: Reach:"What we know about audience participation and engagement: We have met the audience, and it is us"

Here are the notes I took
Alan Brown from Irvine Foundation conducted a survey about cultural engagement in the Riverside, Fresno and San bernardino areas. The variants they looked at were: Cultural roles models, Heritage and Participation or cultural engagements, which can be seen in subcategories of modes: Inventive, original art, interpretive, adding to preexsiting art, curatorial, selecting, editing, organizing and collecting other people's art, Observational, Ambient: art that happens to you that you did not choose.
Tapestry of involvement in creative experience: Third of the adults interviewed, said they want to take dance lessons.
The venues where the cultural activity happens:
Home, informal venues(coffee shops, Churches)
Some cultural activities focus on social aspects such as book groups or storytelling.
A good number of the population that were interviewed took pictures with digital cameras. the instruments they played were Guitar, Drum and Keyboard.
The research and results of it will be released soon, but Alan Brown point was that in order to connect to the audience's value system one has to think holistically and consider the non traditional settings and venues.
Belinda Taylor pointed out some expectations today's impowered customer has: They want to have autonomy, have control, customized experience and they love looping! The meet the artist and take a class and find out how things are done. The other thing is that they do not have much tome, so short experiences have more value to them and your art should be personally relevant to them for them to choose to spend their limited time with you.
Louise Music fromAlameda County Office of Education's Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership said that in asking the parents what they value in art learning process, they learned what the interests were.
and Carlos Velazquez from Teatro Visionsaid their company is planning to have surveys for documentation and Evaluations via Zoomerang.
Tenoch Flores from
Fenton Communications presented the filmmaker's contest and what thinkings went into it. The winners of the contest can be seen at the website:
One Nation, Many voices
They planned on diverse categories, promoted through partner organizations, had celebrity judges and cash prizes, timely subject matter and content.
Challenges for having another contest:
Keeping concept and content fresh, expanding the audience.
Final takeaways:
Know your target audiences, is it actually reaching or are we talking to ourselves?
Design assignments/categories to tieback to contest themes.
Online participation is a two way street, not all comments re useful.
Marketing and publicity are not afterthoughts. Media strategies should be implemented early in the planning, marketing fine tunes contest and campain plans
Nicole Neditch, Oakland Art Murmur
First Saturday Artwalks started with 8 galleries in June 2006, it was advertised by postcards media and e-mail. It made more attendence for everybody. Press was more willing to write aboiut a group, street fairs came out of it, Art bus was instituted, city pitched in and printed a map, East west Oakland, cross promotional tool, she is the owner of :Mama Buz Cafe
Jez Kuono, Ono Lee, CounterPULSE
Talked about the importance of thier blog and website to the promotion of the artwork happening in the space, they use Wordpress for their blog.
Nishat Kurwa, News Director, Youth Radio
What's the new what
Some of the topics that were addressed are as follows: niche audience, adult facilitators, framers, innovation, competing tensions and issues, fake skins.

SFBA Arts Town Hall has a blog