FAMILY ENGAGEMENT CAMPAIGN BRIEF

1PURPOSE

Liverpool Arts Regeneration Consortium wishes to deliver a family engagement campaign, running from September 2010 to April 2011, mainly focused on the programmes of the eight LARC partners.
This is part of LARC’s overall objective to help establish the reputation of Liverpool and the city region as a place where families of all kinds can engage actively and creatively in culture, thereby enhancing their overall quality of life.

2BACKGROUND
2.1LARC

The Liverpool Arts and Regeneration Consortium (LARC) comprises eight of the major cultural institutions in Liverpool. The organisations are: The Bluecoat; FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology); Liverpool Biennial; Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse Theatres; National Museums Liverpool; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic; Tate Liverpool; and the Unity Theatre.
This campaign will be financed through LARC’s Liverpool Thrive programme, which is funded by Arts Council England. It will also build on the work undertaken by the LARC partners through Find Your Talent programme, which is now coming to an end earlier than expected, due to government cutbacks.
Through Liverpool Thrive, LARC has worked with All About Audiences to develop the Family Friendly Merseyside website, building the email list, encouraging cultural organisations to sign up and running some promotional events. A scoping study on family friendly issues was commissioned from Akronym consultancy, which helped to lay the basis for future developments in this area.
(For further information, please see , , and and )

2.2 FAMILY FRIENDLY CULTURAL OFFER: FUTURE POTENTIAL

LARC’s work on family engagement is driven by the aspiration that Liverpool and the city region should become known as a great place to be a parent, and a great place to be a child – as a place where people want to stay and bring up their children, which people want to visit with their children, and where people want to move to in order to enjoy a higher quality of life with their families.
Culture can play a key role in achieving these goals. This is primarily through the intrinsic value of engagement in cultural activity for children and their parents, providing a shared and creative activity for the whole family. It can also provide a safe space for families to bond and spend time together away from the demands and stresses of everyday life. In order to realise this potential the cultural sector needs to develop its family friendly offer and to promote this offer in order to develop and increase family engagement in cultural activity. It also needs to ensure that a wider range of families have access to the cultural offer, so that this is not limited to committed and confident arts attenders.

4THE CAMPAIGN

  • To plan and deliver a shared campaign to increase the engagement of families in the cultural offer of the Liverpool City Region, with a particular focus on the LARC organisations, and on reaching families who do not regularly engage in cultural activity
  • To work with LARC partners, other cultural providers if appropriate, and with agencies with particular expertise in working with less engaged families
  • To develop relationships with other sectors e.g. retail where this could help to reach families who do not usually engage in cultural activities
  • To ensure that the campaign uses an appropriate variety of approaches to achieve its objectives
  • To ensure that evaluation is built into the campaign from the start, to ensure that we know how the objectives are being met as the campaign develops
  • To support the LARC partners in taking forward the main learning from the campaign for the future To work with All About Audiences, Culture Liverpool and The Mersey Partnership (TMP) to ensure that centralised information on family activities is available and appropriate
  • To link with Arts Council England and All About Audiences to learn from the research and preparation undertaken by ACE for the proposed community and family engagement campaign, which will be piloted in the North West during Autumn 2010

The cultural offer for families

  • To work with the LARC partners to consider how the existing family programme during the campaign period can be developed and packaged to support the objectives of the campaign

Demographic research

  • To undertake an initial analysis of the scope of the family market within reasonable travel distance of the Liverpool City Centre area

5MANAGEMENT OF THE CONSULTANCY
The contract for the campaign will be with Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which manages the Liverpool Thrive programme on behalf of LARC. Day to day management will be led by Belinda Kidd, LARC Thrive Programme Director, supported by the LARC Heads of Marketing group.

6TIMESCALE
The consultant will be required to start as soon as possible. The contract will run until the end of May 2011.

7FEE

The total budget for the campaign is up to £20,000, including all fees, and any generic print or advertising required. This does not include any specific marketing activity undertaken by the venues for their individual family offer.

8HOW TO APPLY

Please send your draft proposal, including a brief profile of your agency, by email to Glen Meskell () by noon on the 18th August. Interviews will be held in Liverpoolon the26thAugust(there may be some flexibility on dates for interview due to the holiday season).

Please ensure that the proposal file name starts with the name of your agency, and is limited to one document only.

5SELECTION CRITERIA

In assessing tenders we will be looking for:

Successful delivery of campaigns aimed at engaging a family audience

Knowledge and experience of marketing in the cultural sector

Understanding of the barriers that may discourage families from engaging in cultural activities

Ability to work with the wide range of cultural organisations included within the LARC partnership

Value for money

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