Notes from the breakout sessions
Museums and Historic Sites
Three things you cannot do yourself, but would help if you could have them
1.)Research About Visitors
This would have to be conducted in multiple locations across two full seasons to be valid. We would like to know:
Who is coming, doing what, staying where?
What is their travel path in the area?
What would make their experience better?
Do they have any interest in combo tickets? Other ticketing schemes?
What is their net worth (could they be donors?)
You need to learn why they come into the region AND why they come to a particular site
2.)Of the many ‘central’ web sites, which 2 or 3 things have the greatest market reach for two groups (1)tourists/visitors and (2)residents? If someone could show us, quantitatively, which ones were best, or which ones propagated to other sites w/o intervention, then we’d know what to do, learn that system, etc.
3.)How do the smaller museums and historic locations get noticed and pulled into the main stream larger locations (e.g. Wild Ctr, Fort Ti, ADK Museum)? The discussion about this topic devolved into web sites again and how the data is kept current. A suggestion was a winter marketing workshop aiming at teaching people who run small locations how to do promotion on a handful of the best websites.
4.)A consolidated event calendar would be great. Many past attempts have failed. It should likely be built on an existing calendar. Two possibilities are: (1)the NCPR calendar and (2)the I Love NY calendar.
Who is willing to work these topics?
1.)The customer research work needs a team to scope out what sort of information is desired, look for grants, perhaps submit a CFA, but other grant sources may be available. David Kahn, Garet Livermore and either Hillary or Stephanie from the Wild Center were willing to organize this. The Wild Center will have experience with the millennial research project to bring to the table.
2+3.) The group combined the web site questions. The Adk Foundation (Andrea Grout) runs the ANN list serve. A list serve could be set up for this group as well. ROOST and the TPAs could help. Historic Saranac Lake could help. The Wild Center (Hillary) could help as well. In addition to a list serve, two workshops were mentioned
ANN could organize a winter workshop for small organizations about how they can use the existing websites for the region, how they add and update information on then, etc.
Hillary (Wild Center) could organize a session at the April 17-19 Museum Conference of NY, which is going to be in Lake Placid, to address similar issues.
The sense was we should do both of these things.
Items that surprised the group from the panel discussions
- The importance of collaboration broadly, but especially in applying for grants. An example was discussed regarding The Wild Center’s successful grant for research about millennials which is to be broadly shared with other institutions.
- A visitor to the region expects an ‘ecosystem of experiences’ during their time here. It can change with the weather, moods, family or group dynamics. “What the customer wants” isn’t really well known.
- The need to define what success is, and measurable metrics, in advance
- Simply sharing ideas and venues could create value
- We have to find season extenders. And we have to find initial capital to fund trial runs of ideas for season extenders. We don’t know what will work. We don’t have money to cover failed experiments.
- Adding local food, local beer and so on to most events brings a bigger crowd. Who knew!
Performing Arts Breakout Group
Jim Herman, Moderator
Community Communications
The simplest idea was to set up a shared bulletin board or listserv for all arts groups to use in keep in touch, asking for assistance/advice, etc. The arts have to become a community in the region and the place to start is with easy, inclusive communications. This would make all kinds of coordination and idea sharing much easier. One area that was brought up was scheduling coordination. Also in block scheduling situations.
Shared Calendar
A lot of the discussion was around streamlining the process for disseminating calendar information. There are many different calendars (newspapers, websites, apps, etc.) and it is very time consuming to send information to them all. Also, people don’t know of all the places their event information should be sent.
Ideally there would be one authoritative electronic database of calendar information for the entire region. From it, a variety of hardcopy calendars could be generated. It was pointed out that a hardcopy version is still important, especially for places that still don’t have good Internet or cell service.
For this shared regional calendar to work, it requires a committed staff person who is proactive about finding all the organizations to contribute to the calendar and then also doing the work of getting the information to the other calendars that are not going away. If there is enough work put into it, everyone will recognize this as the authoritative calendar and always go to it.
It was not clear where such a position could be created, perhaps at NYSCA? There are examples of how this can be set up in other regions. There has to be a real commitment to making this the authoritative calendar and making sure other calendars are updated from it. Otherwise, this becomes just one more calendar to update alongside all the rest.
Leslie Shipps, Alan Saban and Nick Aboundader volunteered to help get this effort moving. Dave Warner too. Leslie suggested that Essex County Arts Council could participate.
ADK Arts Advocate
We discussed the idea raised in plenary of having a person who advocated for the arts in planning and economic development meetings. This person might be housed in the same organization as the calendar czar described above. Or maybe this is the same position? Patrick Siler volunteered to help develop this concept.
Discover ADKs website
This website is not set up to support the arts. Arts go under “Family Entertainment”. We need sections on the major arts categories (Performing Arts, Visual Arts, etc.). The app needs to be searchable by town, date, type of event. A button to list free events would be great.
Customer Data
There was agreement that all organizations need to know more about customers, both residents and visitors. It would be very helpful to establish some basic data standards, so the data collected from different organizations could be easily combined for wider analysis. In general, all groups would benefit from dissemination of basic best practices for collecting this kind of data and some reusable templates.
A Major Arts Festival or Weekend
As part of beginning to associate arts with the region, hold one or more high profile arts weekends, maybe more than one in different locations at different times. Maybe combine with an existing event like a studio tour.
Broader Marketing of the Region
There were a number of ideas of how to widen the marketing of the region. One was tapping into the growing Wellness movement, that has a large arts component. Another was to tie into Elder travel groups. Another was more international marketing. In a few years, Plattsburgh airport should have a few direct flights to Europe. Look into wanderable.com. Tap into the heritage of the Philosophers’ Camps.
Make a Better Economic Development Case
There was discussion of how to better make the case that investing in the arts is a form of economic development. Even though most of the actual customers are residents and seasonal residents rather than tourists (LPCA has only 15% of audience from visitors), these are still organizations in the communities that hire people and of course they enrich the quality of life, making the region more attractive for people to live here or retire here.
Do More on the Shoulder Seasons
Using the arts as a season extender makes a lot of sense. In many cases, the summer is already too busy. But, it was noted, the lodging and food places have to be open at the time.
Staff Sharing
There was discussion of the idea of mutual internal free lancing. If you have someone on staff who is very good at something, perhaps at times for a limited need, that person could be “lent” out to another organization. Or it was discussed that two or more orgs might go in and hire a person together and share that person’s time. Would it make sense for some of these arts groups to merge and pool their limited staff resources?
Technical Assistance
Most organizations need technical assistance in things like digital marketing, social media, websites, etc. It was thought that NYSCA could be a source for this. Mountain Lake PBS also volunteered to be a possible resource for this kind of assistance.
Visual Arts
Three things you cannot do and would like to have help:
1)Grants facilitator and research coordinator to do all grants applications for arts organizations
2)Coordinated arts and cultural heritage calendar
3)Help with communications (internal and external) and critical reviews of art presentations
What have you taken away from today’s presentations
1)A need for more consolidation and elimination of duplication in programs
2)Centralized database for transportation, lodging, etc.
3)Data: build audience, targeted marketing
a)Data collected can be useful to prove it’s an economic driver
b)You would ask: their likes, what drove them to you, do you want to justify economies, what drove them to your area, what else did they do in the area (in detail)
c)“Opt in”for research
Next steps for your group to take:
1)An individual or organization to coordinate the arts groups and individuals and their needs
2)Work on action plan for people to identify possible collaborations, awareness, share info, etc.
Question identified:
What are things your organization cannot do but would like to do?
1)Have help putting events on our calendars
2)Media relations
3)Technical support - computer/internet problems
4)CFA (Consolidated Funding Application help)
a)Maybe develop a cooperative network with experienced people to help
b)How to improve success rate (by collaborating with organizations)
5)Low to no-interest fund to save budget between award of grant and when money is received
a)Adirondack Foundation (Lake Placid) and Community Foundation (Oneida County) give interest free loans
6)Have a means to consolidate information on Arts Trails and coordinate the efforts of all of them
7)Ability to centralize all input regarding events, etc. to one site so their people can access it (and travelers, locals, etc. can use it)
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