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Programme StructureNothing is more important than your audience.
Delivered in partnership with the BFI Film Audience Network, REACH: Strategic Audience Development is a workshop driven, project-based training programme for independent film exhibitors who wish to learn how to expand their audiences in a strategic manner, best utilising available resources of money, expertise and time.
What will the course cover?
The programme has been designed to fulfill specific audience development needs of the independent film exhibition sector, with specific recourse to:
- Boosting audience choice
- Attracting a wide variety of new audiences to a deeper and richer range of film content
- Strengthening skills in understanding, researching and building audiences
- Encouraging public participation
- Engaging audiences from diverse backgrounds
- Utilising available resources to achieve goals
- Implementing practical audience development projects within your organisation
Programme structure
Module 1 – Audience Development Forum & Lab (Sep 2 – 4, 2014)
Three days of workshops, presentations and case studies will help participants develop a greater understanding of their organisation and the current cinema audience landscape. Participants will be encouraged participants to use pioneering and proven audience development success stories as the springboard for their own projects.
Module 2 – Pilot Projects & Audience Development Day
Having designed an Audience Development Pilot Project, participants will be matched to an expert advisor to help them implement their plans. Participants will have an online platform to use as an informal collaborating space throughout.
Module 3 – Seminar Day and Exit Sessions (Jan/Feb 2015 TBC)
Participants will present their projects to the cohort, with feedback workshops and discussion groups formed from these findings. Participants will have a final advisory session with their matched advisor and case studies will be posted online.
There will also be a FAN Audience Development Day at each of the Hub Lead Organisations, details about which are to be confirmed. Participants will be required to make a short presentation on their projects and current findings.
Course leader
Heather Maitland is an arts consultant, author, lecturer and Associate Fellow at the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick.
Heather has worked as a marketer for a wide range of arts organisations: from the smallest of touring theatre companies to running the London branch of the RSC’s marketing operation. She has supported over 100 arts organisations as head of two of the UK’s audience development agencies, including working closely with Cinelincs, one of the first cultural cinema consortia.
Her current projects include bench-marking cinema audiences in the Republic of Ireland, working on audience development with 32 contemporary music ensembles in 18 EU countries and supporting Irish opera companies to develop audiences.
Heather has nine books on arts marketing and audience development to her credit and writes a regular column for the Journal of Arts Marketing. She has delivered over 200 seminars and workshops around the world.
Applications for this course are now closed
