Orchestras Canada

We’ve got three recommendations this week – and a plea! We’ll start with the plea.

We would love to feature recommendations from our readers in this section of our newsletter. If you’ve encountered a website, blog, article, book, magazine (or whatever!) that you think other orchestra people from across the country would find pertinent and insightful – in either official language – write us a short paragraph about it, and we’ll feature it (with credit) in an upcoming issue of Orchestra News.

And on to this week’s recommendations:

1. The folks at Technology in the Arts have posted a pair of articles on the use of social media to engage “older” audience members. With the most significant growth in social media use (a whopping 100% increase from 2009 to 2010) coming in the 65+ demographic, it’s a timely discussion. You can follow it, here.

2. Charity Village turned us on to an interesting blog devoted to hot topics in arts marketing, entitled Arts Marketing Resources. We were particularly taken with the beginners’ guide to website analytics, posted in June. You can find the blog, here.

3. Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA), a US-based organization of private and public funders, is currently holding a discussion on the ways that they might individually and collectively work to address some long standing challenges that arts organizations face because of their capitalization structure. GIA has published an interesting and thoughtful report on the challenges and opportunities – and it’s well worth reading for anyone who has pondered the reasons why things feel the way they do. You can find it here.

CCI – Ontario Presenting Network is presenting a Touring Workshop at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, September 20-22, with Canadian touring mavens and workshop facilitators extraordinaire Judy Harquail and Lendre Kearns. Here’s how CCI describes the event: “This three-day intensive will provide practical tools and strategies for touring performance in the current context. With participants and guest presenters from across the country, the outcome will not only be increased knowledge for those involved but a new network of colleagues who will no doubt collaborate and support each other in the future.” Registration is $100 per person and includes 3 lunches; accommodation and travel costs must be covered by the applicant. Applications are due September 7, and space is limited to 30 participants. For more information, please contact Judy Harquail by phone at 416-949-7312.

Technology in the Arts is presenting a webinar entitled “The Quick & Dirty: Making A Video”, on September 2 from 2:00pm-3:30pm Eastern, and registration is only $25 US. Here’s how they describe the session: “Video technology is a cost-effective way to promote your work and engage your current (and potential) audience through channels that are widely accessed and have a broad reach. Arts organizations can effectively harness this technology to improve their visibility, attract new audiences, and find exciting ways to tell their story. This webinar will help you identify ways in which a video might best be used by your organization and discuss the tools you will need to physically produce and promote your video.”
For more information, or to register, please visit here.

The Charity Law Information Program (or CLIP) is offering a series of low-cost, high-value seminars in locations across the country on effective compliance with Canada Revenue Agency regulations affecting registered charities. Topics include

Understanding CRA’s Fundraising Guidance and More
The Dos and Don’ts of Charitable Receipting
Applying CRA’s Fundraising Guidance and Best Practices

For dates and locations – and for more information, please visit CLIP’s website here.

In November 2009, Technology in the Arts (based at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University) launched a survey of arts and cultural organizations in order to learn about their ticketing needs and to gauge how well current ticketing tools are meeting those needs.  According to their recent communiqué, “nearly 900 arts and cultural professionals completed the survey to evaluate their satisfaction with over 50 ticketing software tools.”  And now you can read the final report, which explores the following questions:

• Which attributes do arts organizations consider critical in a ticketing tool?
• What factors influence organizations’ ticketing software choices?
• Which tools are arts and cultural organizations using?
• How satisfied are arts and cultural organizations with their current ticketing solutions?

You can find it here.

Are Young Professionals Supporting Your Orchestra?
Last week, at an event in Toronto, Business for the Arts released the results of an Ipsos Reid poll on the attitudes of young, working Canadians to the arts. According to the poll, “a majority (51%) agree (21% strong, 30% somewhat) that ‘the arts and culture are important’ to them.”  We’ll let Ipsos Reid continue:

“These young, working Canadians – the future of tomorrow’s manufacturing, boardrooms and corner offices – are considerably more likely to be supportive of the arts than are Canadians in general, as only 42% of Canadians overall ‘agreed’ that the arts and culture are important to them.

But the apparent affinity for the arts among these up and coming Canadians isn’t necessarily translating into tangible support:  only one in ten (12%) say that they attend arts and culture events often, while 34% say they never attend these type of events.  Further, just 5% often donate money to the arts and culture sector (52% have never done so), and only 2% often volunteer in the arts and culture sector (58% have never done so).

Many young, working Canadians appear to want to get more involved in the sector.  Just 23% believe that there is nothing they can do personally to support the arts and culture sector, and 17% think that the only thing they can do to support the arts and culture sector is to give money to arts and culture organizations.

Three in ten (27%) would like to know more about how they can get involved in the arts and culture sector (compared with 18% of Canadians overall), and a similar proportion (24%) would like to spend more time volunteering in the arts (compared to 16% of Canadians overall).”

For more information on the study, please visit here.