Is the Arts West alliance the way of the future?
/Richard Watts, ARTS HUB [30 May, 2014]
A collaborative arts marketing initiative in Melbourne’s western suburbs is already kicking goals after less than 18 months.
Established in January 2014 and funded by Arts Victoria, Arts West is a two year, $100,000 pilot program designed to support a collaborative approach to marketing, audience development and capacity building among nine arts organisations based in Melbourne’s western suburbs: Big West Festival, Footscray Community Arts Centre,Barkly Arts Centre, the Women's Circus, The Substation, Western Edge Youth Arts, Snuff Puppets, Ausdance, and 100 Story Building.
Described as a collaborative arts marketing initiative, the project grew out of research conducted by Arts Victoria using mosaic profiling (a geo-demographic profiling tool that uses aggregated consumer data to provide highly predictive analysis of the Australian population) as well as a qualitative study, and which revealed that although the arts had quite low audience penetration, those surveyed were open to doubling their attendance at arts events in their immediate area.