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Audience development through collaboration between marketing and outreach

'Early in 2001, East Lindsey District Council (ELDC) in Lincolnshire decided to appoint a resident orchestra for three years. East Lindsey is one of the largest district council areas in Britain but has one of the lowest population densities. It has historically been poorly served for professional classical music with one large-scale orchestral concert at the Embassy Centre in Skegness every two or three years. The The London Mozart Players (LMP) bid focused on the need to hold many small and medium-scale concerts alongside community and education activity. It was also agreed from the outset that the involvement of local organisations - voluntary, public and private sector - was a key factor in its potential success.

The LMP's bid was successful and a launch event and an extensive consultation process took place during Autumn 2001. Two consultation meetings open to anybody and everybody interested in the idea of a residency were held in November 2002. There was an opportunity for all those attending to ask questions, suggest ideas and say how they wanted to become involved. A hundred people expressed an interest and offered a wide range of support, including hosting concerts and workshops, marketing and distributing publicity material, advocacy and simply enthusiasm for the whole concept of an orchestral residency.

One of the main aims of the LMP's East Lindsey Residency is to cover as many different areas of the district as possible with a combination of concerts and outreach activity. Ticket prices for concerts are kept broadly in line with whatever the host venue is used to charging. The LMP managing director, marketing manager and orchestral manager all event-manage the concerts themselves with the LMP running the box office on the door and selling CDs and programmes. The managing director introduces himself and the orchestra at every concert and the musicians introduce some of the music from the stage as well as meeting the audience in the interval or after the concert.

In the early days of the Residency, local concert 'promoters' and LMP staff sometimes didn't meet in person, and communication could often be wholly by telephone and, as is generally more and more the case, through email. However, it soon became clear that an initial meeting was essential to build trust between the two parties, especially since the promoters, though often very enthusiastic and organised, had often never promoted a classical music concert before. There is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting - for the LMP to be assured the promoter has the time, energy and resources to take on the responsibility of 'selling' the concert locally and for the promoter to feel confident about the orchestra's support.

One of the aims of the residency is to work with other local organisations such as The Firebird Trust, a community music organization operating in the region, to build on and enhance their work. As well as a composition project with this trust, other creative collaborations have included a young people's creative dance day ending in a performance for family and friends, concerts with tea and chat in sheltered housing, a composers' workshop, sessions in special schools as part of a long-term programme involving repeat visits, and a Family Arts Day involving hat-making, face-painting, drama, dance and music workshops for parents and children to take part in together.

It also became clear that a meeting between LMP staff and the East Lindsey promoter well in advance of the concerts also helped build trust between the two parties. There is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting - for the LMP to be assured the promoter has the time, energy and resources to take on the responsibility of 'selling' the concert locally and for the promoter to feel confident about the orchestra's support.

There is a great desire for professional classical music concerts in East Lindsey and the issue is simply how to ensure that people who are mostly living in rurally isolated villages know about them. However, these villages have a real sense of community - the village hall and its committee are often the centre of village life - and so putting one poster up in the right place usually means everybody in the village knows about it. We are also building up a database of people who returned the initial feedback forms, book tickets for concerts through the LMP and fill in questionnaires at the concerts.

The methods used to market the concerts are therefore very simple and rely on the three-way partnership of ELDC, the LMP and the concert promoter to ensure the widespread distribution of leaflets and posters

Alongside this, is coverage in the local press and radio. The absolute key to the success of the LMP's concerts in East Lindsey however, is the local promoter. It has been one of the most wonderful discoveries of the residency to find so many remarkable individuals, who are keen to take on the responsibility. It is a substantial one: firstly ensuring the effective distribution of posters and leaflets in their own town or village and those nearby, together with persistent 'word of mouth' marketing and secondly setting up a temporary box office and pushing advance rather than on the door ticket sales.'

Ceri Hunter, Projects Manager, London Mozart Players

'East Lindsey District Council is delighted with the success of the London Mozart Players residency to date. The management of the project by the LMP has been exemplary; tour schedules have been created which respond to the original consultation, work well with local promoters, and ultimately provide access to high quality events in small communities, in deprived wards as well as helping to strategically develop venues such as the Riverhead Theatre. We are particularly grateful that very much as the people of East Lindsey have adopted the LMP as 'theirs', the LMP have adopted East Lindsey, and include the district as a location for work funded as part of their national programmes additional to the remit of the original residency.

The steering group functions well as a means of constantly reviewing the project, ensuring that coverage is indeed district wide, and in generating ideas for new and innovative ways of working in the future.

Perhaps the two greatest benefits to the district are that from a single yearly concert attended by less than 500 people, we have been able to move to 9 concerts a year, 10/12 workshops/or community concerts, reaching approximately 3500 people in total and taking place across the length of the district. Also, the publicity from the residency has been fantastic, be it internally, where residents' impressions of the council are enhanced by its decision to develop this project, and nationally where East Lindsey is being held up as an area hosting a cutting edge programme of orchestral audience development activity.'

Kat Fishwick, Arts Officer, East Lindsey District Council