Audience Engagement Research

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Design Thinking: The Art of Being Customer-Focused

Taking a cue from businesses like Continuum and IDEO, organizations of all kinds are prioritizing customer satisfaction as a necessity to insure future viability. Orchestras have lots to learn around this practice, including developing quick, inexpensive experiments that let them prototype new experiences that increase customer loyalty. Come prepared to roll up your sleeves, use a different side of your brain, and try something new.

Dan Buchner, Director, Innovation, The Center for Creative Leadership; former vice president of organizational innovation, Continuum

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Engaging College Students in Classical Music

Young adults in college represent a critical segment of the future audience for classical music. The musical experiences they have during these formative years lay the groundwork for a lifetime of musical involvement. What programming and engagement strategies might orchestras use to better reach college students? Learn from new research funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This paper highlights exemplary practices in student engagement, and explores ticketing, marketing, and programming strategies that are likely to surmount the many barriers that stand between college students and a deeper relationship with classical music.

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Findings from the New World Symphony

New Ears, New Eyes – What New Audiences Are Telling Us – PDF
The New World Symphony is exploring five performance formats and conducting research with the patrons:  WALLCAST™ Concerts, Mini Concerts, Journey Concerts, Discovery Concerts, and Pulse: Late Night at the New World Symphony. We believe our music can be meaningful to far more people than those who are currently in our audience. By studying the audiences’ depth of experience and watching their ticket buying patterns, we endeavor to find new ways of engaging audiences for the benefit of the listeners themselves and to provide more stability for the art form. By sharing this research data with other orchestras, they can make informed decisions when programming for the engagement of new audiences.