An introduction to Project Audience, a not-for-profit collaboration of arts organizations and individuals working together to connect individuals with creative experiences through tool development and research.

1. Collaborating with communities to connect
individuals with creative experiences

2. “
We realized that cultural communities
have been working in
isolation, spending large sums of
money from small budgets in order to
come up with the exact same solutions
to engage audiences. Since day
one, Project Audience put our faith in
the power of collaboration and the
economy of developing technology for
the common good.
Kelly Tweeddale, Chair
Project Audience Board of Directors
“Harps and Angels” at the Center Theatre Group/
Mark Taper Forum (Los Angeles, CA)

3. SECTION I: BACKGROUND
Source: Arts and Cultural Alliance of Central Florida

4. BACKGROUND WHAT IS PROJECT AUDIENCE?
Project Audience is a community of practice committed to helping
build lasting connections with audiences through arts and culture.
Our core strategy involves developing collaborative, affordable,
sustainable technologies to help local, regional, and national arts
organizations support activities and services that will encourage
more people to be involved in the arts.
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5. BACKGROUND HISTORY OF THE PROJECT
2009
2010
Project launch,
communityfocused planning
and discussion
2011
Research and
development for a Development of a
technology solution business plan and
the concept for a
pilot project
2012
2013-14
Launch of a oneyear pilot project in
Southern
California
Implementation of
Project Audience
platform and
research in
communities
across the U.S.
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6. BACKGROUND WHO WE SERVE
Project Audience is for:
Individual Arts And Cultural Organizations
(Theaters, Orchestras, Museums, Etc.)
Arts Service Organizations
Convention And Visitors Bureaus
Ticketing Agencies
Researchers And Arts Advocacy Groups
Media And Journalists
Artists and Creative Professionals
Technologists
Cultural Philanthropists
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7. BACKGROUND WHO WE ARE
The work of Project Audience is guided by a national Board of
Directors, as well as by input and ideas contributed by members of the
national arts and culture community. Board members represent
communities of different sizes, demographics, and locations, including
Central Florida, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and
Seattle.
Subcommittees of the Board, including committees for
Communications, Development, Governance, and Technology, in
collaboration with the project’s Program Director, oversee the daily
work of the project. Membership on most subcommittees is open to all
members of the community.
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8. BACKGROUND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PILOT 2012-13
ExperienceSoCal, was an 18-month project to develop a model toolset for
an online arts and culture resource. It was built on the existing solution
developed for the ExperienceLA portal, a project of the City and County of
Los Angeles.
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9. BACKGROUND PILOT PROJECT GOALS
Develop easy to use tools to allow arts and culture
organizations to contribute, manage, and publish event
information.
Test robustness of tools at the regional level and assess
their scalability at the national level.
Engage the national arts and culture community in
discussion about the tools and their value.
Survey participants and the national arts community on their
data.
Research implications for and potential of project data for
audience development and arts advocacy.
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10. BACKGROUND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PILOT PARTNERS
Experience LA.com
LA Stage Alliance
Arts Orange County
Artsopolis
Balboa Park Online Collaborative, San Diego
Patron Manager (ticketing integration)
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11. SECTION II TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
Source: Arts and Cultural Alliance of Central Florida

12. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY THE PROJECT AUDIENCE SOLUTION
Developed during the Southern California pilot project, the Project
Audience-Civic Connect Platform provides arts organizations with
affordable, easy-to-use tools for publishing event information and
other content, customizing individual websites, reaching mobile
users, and participating in large-scale data analysis and research.
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13. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY THE PROJECT AUDIENCE-CIVIC CONNECT PLATFORM

14. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
Core Features
Microsites
Events calendar
Filtering
Reporting
Mobile
RSS
Interactive map
Local Transit
Social Media/
Marketing
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15. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
Core Features
Microsites
Reporting
Mobile
Social Media/
Marketing
The microsite builder
allows contributors to
develop simple
calendars for
specialized
audiences, festivals,
and other events
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16. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
Core Features
Microsites
Reporting
Mobile
Social Media/
Marketing
Reporting tools include
a customizable
interactive dashboard
that provides snapshot
views of the cultural
landscape of Southern
California as well as
traditional analytics for
contributors
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17. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
Core Features
Microsites
Reporting
Mobile
Social Media/
Marketing
The site has been
developed using
responsive design
techniques, resulting
in a mobile-optimized
site that should make
the need to develop
mobile apps
redundant
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18. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
Core Features
Microsites
Reporting
Mobile
Social
Media/Marketing
The site provides full
social media
integration and can
be customized to
produce email
newsletters,
advertising, and
content licensing
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19. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY CONTRIBUTING & MANAGING INFORMATION
Administrative Interface
The robust distributed publishing
environment is supported by an
intuitive administrative backend
that is designed to allow nontechnical contributors to manage
content and administer multilevel user roles and permissions
with ease.
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20. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY CONTRIBUTING & MANAGING INFORMATION
Contributing Data
Data can be contributed in several
different ways: through fully
automated or semi-automated
processes, and via traditional
manual data entry. The project’s
goals was to create an ingestion
toolset that can scale up with ease;
the toolset includes easy-to-use
API mapping tools for integrating
custom APIs.
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21. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY CONTRIBUTING & MANAGING INFORMATION
Normalizing and
Deduplicating Data
A data management layer, which
includes behind-the-scenes scripts
for normalizing and de-duping
records, optimizes efforts already
undertaken by organizations on
their own data streams and
facilitates the ingest of records
arriving from multiple datastreams.
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22. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY DISPLAYING INFORMATION
Filtering
The system’s robust
filtering capabilities
provide patrons with a
highly personalized
experience. The filters
(for event
type, audience, accessibi
lity, and budget) are easy
to map to and administer
in the administrative
interface.
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23. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY DISPLAYING INFORMATION
Transit and Maps
Integrated transit information that shows
public transit routes to events can be
presented. Neighborhood maps highlight
culturally-rich areas for patrons planning a
night out.
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24. SECTION III RESEARCH
Source: Arts and Cultural Alliance of Central Florida

25. RESEARCH LA CULTURAL BENCHMARKING PROJECT
A research project developed in concert with our Los Angeles pilot project
explored the question, “What is the full extent of cultural production in L.A.?” by
attempting to create a comprehensive dataset representing all of the cultural
events in L.A. during a one-month period.
The events we collected—spanning culture from high to low, professional to
amateur—constituted a much larger set than those contributed to the
ExperienceLA.com resource, and led us to believe that, using a mixed-method
collection process, it might be possible to create a
sustainable, comprehensive, real-time database of cultural events that would
have profound implications for urban planners, cultural producers and
policymakers, funders, and, of course, patrons of the arts, including
tourists, families, and students.
Read more about our research at: www.projectaudience.org/research
Source: Arts and Cultural Alliance of Central Florida

26. SECTION IV WHERE ARE WE GOING NEXT?
Source: Arts and Cultural Alliance of Central Florida

27. WHAT’S NEXT? REFINING OUR TOOLS AND METHODS
A hosted version of the Project Audience-Civic Connect
platform will be released in 2014, making it possible for
communities of all sizes to adopt the Project Audience
toolset.
We are currently working to release the functional
specification and platform documentation, as well as the
software code.
New functionality will be added to the platform as additional
partners join the community of users.
Source: Arts and Cultural Alliance of Central Florida

28. WHAT’S NEXT? NEW PARTICIPANTS
In 2014, Project Audience expects to announce a new
membership model that encourages participation in our
discussions and activities, regardless of whether you or your
organization is using the Project Audience-Civic Connect
toolset.
We continue to look for interested members of the arts
community to participate in the work of our subcommittees
(communications, development, technology and, coming
soon, research and standards).
We encourage researchers interested in working with our
events dataset and cultural organizations interested in
discussing our work on standards for expression of event
information to contact us.
Source: Arts and Cultural Alliance of Central Florida

29. WHAT’S NEXT? REGIONAL ROLLOUTS
We are actively seeking to partner with new communities
interested in adopting our tools or joining our research efforts
as we plan a series of regional rollouts.
The ideal partner will be committed to working with a local
community of arts producers and patrons to create a longterm plan to support data collection and
contribution, publication, and community engagement.
We hope that the next communities to implement the Project
Audience-Civic Connect platform will bring fresh ideas for
modifying the existing functionality and developing new
tools and services.
Together, the communities that adopt the Project Audience
tools and methods will form the nucleus of an ongoing
conversation about best practices for audience
engagement.
Source: Arts and Cultural Alliance of Central Florida

30. REGIONAL ROLLOUTS CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
The ideal regional rollout partner should have some or most
of the following resources already in place:
Good, clean, rich data (Data, Data, Data!)
Strong connections with its local community, including
municipal partners and a well developed local/regional
network
Marketing, outreach, and training/support resources
On-the-ground capacity (staffing)
A strategy/plan that recognizes the ways in which
aggregating and presenting event data serve the partner and
its community
Budget, resources, and a plan for sustainability

31. CONTACT US
We welcome your ideas and input! Visit our website or contact us at
the coordinates below for more information about our work and how
you can participate in it.
info@projectaudience.org
www.projectaudience.org
@projectaudience
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