Today’s complex audiences crave a deeper connection to music makers both locally and globally. To provide this, orchestras require an understanding of how listeners and music fanatics relate to and consume music in the digital world.
When we return to the concert hall, we will be forced into a wholesale reevaluation of our revenue model. It isn’t simply that demand will be down, we’ll have fewer seats, and patrons will expect to pay less. The reality will be more nuanced and we’ll need to look to our patrons to tell us what our value is to them.
COVID-19 is challenging many of us to rethink how we lead, create, raise funds, program, and engage with audiences. If the pandemic is a portal (as Arundhati Roy puts it), where do we hope it will lead us? How can we reimagine and reinvent our organizations to be more relevant, equitable, and successful?
Even though in-person performances are suspended and marketing resources are reduced, we are not on hiatus. In fact, maintaining and growing patron engagement is more important than ever. According to Fred Reichheld, Bain Fellow and Creator of the Net Promoter System, “What you do now—how you treat your patrons—will be what everyone remembers after the COVID-19 crisis recedes.”
Orchestras are dealing with unprecedented economic challenges, and board engagement in managing this crisis is more critical than ever. Susan Nelson of TDC provides insights on how boards can help their orchestras make informed decisions based on their principles and values and daunting choices in this constituency session from the League’s 2020 Online Conference.
As our organizations contemplate seismic change in an uncertain landscape, a strong scenario-building process can help us to find the way forward. By identifying and understanding the important yet unpredictable forces at play, how these forces converge, and how they will likely influence our reality going forward, scenario-building can help us to begin to tell new stories about the future, and shape new strategies in pursuit of new realities.
In this League Conference session, three musicians—violist Tia Allen, violinists Lady Jess, and Stephanie Matthews—share how they created unconventional, but substantive music careers on the fringe of the classical music establishment.
Every crisis presents an opportunity to shape the future. The coronavirus crisis has disrupted nearly everything in our lives. It has also presented arts organizations with an opportunity to adapt and evolve.
This session is facilitated by Tresa Radermacher of the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra, Tiffany Ammerman of the Marshall Symphony, Bruce Colquhoun of the Spokane Symphony, and Julie Meredith of the Utah Symphony.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic uncertainty, orchestras are faced with shuttered seasons, canceled fundraising events, and upended community engagement. Despite the critical contributions that orchestras make to our culture, society, and economy, many orchestra leaders are wondering, “Can we even ask for money right now?”