Posts Tagged ‘tip’
Five tips to get you started
Tip #1 – Just register the outreach activities you are already doing
Organizations don’t need to develop a completely new event to join Culture Days. Existing outreach or arts education programs can be included in Culture Days.
Example: Your gallery hosts five artist talks a year. Simply schedule one of those talks during Culture Days.
Tip #2 – Cross-promote and enhance your ticketed events
Add a free Culture Days activity before, after or adjacent to your ticketed events taking place during September 30, October 1-2, 2011. Activities such as artist talks, backstage tours or demonstrations can enrich the audiences’ understanding of the work they are about to see and draw new people to your main attractions.
Example: Hold an “instrument petting zoo” for kids before a concert. Orchestra players explain how to handle and make sounds on the various instruments in the symphony.
Tip #3 – Remember your creative process can be as interesting as the final product
As artists, we put our hearts and souls into our art works yet most of the time we only show the final product. Witnessing the creative process in action can cultivate the public’s understanding and appreciation of your artistic labour as well as develop a deeper enjoyment of the finished work.
Example: Open your dance rehearsal to the public and encourage questions and dialogue between the audience, performers and choreographer.
Tip #4 – Invite the public to join in
Encourage the public to give your art form a try with hands-on activities. The public will develop an appreciation of the technical challenges of art-making and may discover their own creative impulses.
Example: Invite people to get their hands dirty throwing clay on a wheel at your pottery studio.
Tip #5 – Make new connections! Collaborate with other artists and arts workers
Collaborate with artists, arts organizations, municipal cultural staff and community facilities in your local area to plan and schedule activities. Pool your resources, venues, talent and time to collectively build the Culture Days movement in your community and attract larger crowds to events.
Four Great Insights into Outreach and Arts Education
Attendees at the Opera.ca Regional Roundtable take part in a mock Culture Days activity workshop. From left to right: Stephen Bye, Opera Hamilton, David Speers, Opera Hamilton, Caitlin Coull, COC, Calista Biermans, Toronto Summer Music and Cecelia Paolucci, Toronto Summer Music.
On Friday, May 14, I attended a regional roundtable on arts education and outreach presented by Opera.ca the nationally association for opera in Canada. Following several other speakers on arts education, I had the opportunity to introduce the Culture Days movement to leaders in the Ontario opera scene. Three arts education staff from the Canadian Opera Company, Tapestry New Opera Works and Opera Aterlier led a group exercise designed to help organizations understand the value of arts education and to brainstorm ideas for potential Culture Days activities.
Arts education programs are often called “outreach” but Christina Loewen (Opera.ca Executive Director) floated the idea that we should in fact be calling it “inreach” since the idea is to welcome the public inside our arts organizations and within the creative process. “Inreach” conveys many of the goals of Culture Days. With a mission to develop new opera works by Canadian and international creators, Tapestry invites the public to “inreach” during every step of their creation and production process throughout the year. The reason is simply, said Amber Ebert (Tapestry), “Artists are our best spokespeople.” The passion of artists positively reflects on their company and imparts to the public a great appreciation for their art form.
Many arts managers wonder about the value of doing outreach when resources are tight and staff limited. Outreach is often justified on the assumption that consumers of free programming will eventually become ticket buyers but the transition is never so simple. When companies invest in arts education, especially when it is aimed at children, the return on that investment could take 20 years or more. Therefore, Katherine Semcesen (COC) explained the priority of outreach should be to promote your art form first, your company second. Collectively, outreach will build a greater arts-aware public, which will in turn produce a stronger arts and cultural sector.
Nancy Hitzig (Opera Atelier) reminded us all to think back to that one influential arts education moment that inspired us to pursue careers and lives in the arts. Most of us can recall an awe-inspiring school trip to a museum or a special music teacher who shared her enthusiasm for the violin. Each Culture Days activity has the potential to be one of those special moments for someone else. You can be the artist who inspires the next generation to pursue their artistic potential and play a hand in shaping their life-long love of the arts.
The roundtable concluded with the arts education staff leading us through an opera creation workshop, where groups had to write and perform their own 5 minute opera with the aid of an accompanist and some simple props. Suddenly put in the position of performers, many of the executive directors and managers were nervous and reticent. With a bit of encouragement and teamwork, we brainstormed some ideas and produced some very silly short operas. The arts education staff pointed out how we were feeling uncomfortable, which will be the same for the public during Culture Days. Participating in the creative process is outside of many people’s comfort zones. We have to be prepared to deal with the public feeling silly or nervous. As activity hosts it is our responsibility to make the public feel safe and welcome within the creative process. If achieved, both the public and the activity hosts will be rewarded with new ideas and stimulating interactions.
Written by Aubrey Reeves, Ontario Arts Council’s Culture Days Animator/Coordinator.
Quick Tips on Writing Interesting and Informative Activity Descriptions
Written by Aubrey Reeves, Ontario Arts Council’s Culture Days Animator/Coordinator
Cet article est aussi disponible en français ici.
The activity description is your introduction to the general public visiting the Culture Days website. It needs to hook people in a few sentences with a compelling reason as to why they might want to attend your activity out of the possible hundreds of activities happening in your province. Here are some tips on how to write a great activity description. These can also serve as guidelines for issues and logistics as you get started on planning your activity.
1) Think journalistically: provide who, what, where, when, why and how at the top of your description:
- Who are the artists, presenters and collaborators? Make sure you include the names of all the artists leading workshops, tours or talks once they are confirmed. Not only is it good recognition for their contribution, but visitors to the website might know of them and want to attend for that reason.
- What is going on? If there are multiple activities happening at your location, don’t lump them all together. For instance: if there an open house, a hands-on workshop and a guest lecture all happening over the course of the weekend, register each as a separate activity. After you save your first activity, you can click “New Activity” from the main “My Activities” page to add another activity.
- Where your activity takes place is entered into the activity address box. While signage will be important on the weekend, please also indicate in the specific directions box if there are unusual directions to get to your activity. Nothing is more frustrating to a participant than poorly explained directions.
- When activities occur (date, start time and end time) is selected using the calendar function after you enter the activity description. This means that you don’t need to include date and time in this description. However, an important detail to flag is whether or not people can drop-in to your activity or if it is important that people arrive on time to participate.
- Why should the public want to attend your activity? Tell us what makes it unique and interesting.
- How will the public engage? Avoid general words such as interact, participate, collaborate without qualifying in what way the public will get to do these things. For instance, this is too general: “the public will interact with craft artists.” Tell us how the public will interact, such as: “the public can pick up a needle and a pair of scissors to be part of a community quilting bee.”
2) Try to keep your full description short and sweet. 3-4 compelling sentence is usually enough to convey all the essential information for a single activity. Visitors to the Culture Days website will want to get the vital information without having to read long descriptions, which brings me to my third point…
3) Provide a web address if you have one. Visitors to the Culture Days site can follow the link to your website to get background information about you or your group, your art form and your major career highlights. You don’t need all that information in your activity description to make it compelling. This also provides you with a cross-marketing opportunity.
4) Avoid too many exclamation points!!!!! Yes, we know you are excited and we are too! But if you put an exclamation point after everything you write, the exclamation loses all meaning! Visitors to the Culture Days website will be reading many activity descriptions, not just yours. It is best to avoid exclamation overkill. Instead, use descriptive words to convey the excitement of your activity.
5) Indicate if there is a target audience or preferred age group. Be clear that the craft studio is meant for kids, or the dance class is only for seniors if that is how you have conceived of your activity.
Just a bit of reassurance: You don’t need to know all these details right now. When you register, you will see that your activity is indicated as DRAFT. If you hit the PUBLISH button, you are approving that the information is correct and ready to be viewed by the public. But don’t worry! Even after you publish, you can go back into your activity to make edits, so if details change, you can always adjust them and then re-publish. We encourage you to PUBLISH sooner than later, so that your activity can benefit from our marketing and promotions as early as possible.