PETER BOYDEN CALLS FOR MORE RECOGNITION FOR THE ROLE OF MARKETING IN ARTS MANAGEMENT
138 delegates, speakers and guests attended the first SWAM conference at the Winter Gardens in Weston-super-Mare in March.
The theme of the conference was communication and there were plenty of chances to open new channels between delegates during breaks and breakout sessions. But Shirley Kirk, Director of SWAM, pointed out that it was also an opportunity to celebrate the role of arts marketers and raise both status and understanding of the profession in the region.
Key note speaker Peter Boyden set the tone for the day when he called for marketing to be placed at the strategic heart of arts management. He saw the purpose of the conference as reinforcing the power and value of creative marketing and reasserting its capacity to deliver art “which is fit for purpose” to the largest possible number of people.
“Marketing doesn’t exist at the cost of an organisation’s cultural integrity,” he said “It actually does two critical things: maximises the resources available to the artist and informs and completes the process of cultural transaction.”
“Despite the changes in emphasis on the role of arts in society during the past 50 years, the fundamental value of a strategic understanding of marketing in a cultural environment remains and the process stays the same.
“Everything in an organisation flows from the answers to three questions:
· Why are we here?
· Who are we for?
· What do we do?
The same questions should drive all planning, with strategic marketing central to strategic management, not a bolt-on. Marketing is not just a publicity function to be carried out on a tiny budget when the creative work is complete. A strategic marketing approach should inform every senior management decision.
“This doesn’t mean that artistic choices should be market driven but is a way of thinking about the whole picture to make sure that each pound of public investment is running as hard and as far as possible without compromising the artist’s right to take risks.
“We live in exciting times for the arts, times of new money and less bureaucracy with proper resources for arts and education coming down the road. It is a pivotal moment requiring a strong and clear understanding of the nature of the relationship between the artist and the audience.
“Without arts marketers, Chris Smith’s critical insistence that quality and access are two sides of the same coin has limited practical meaning.”
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