Time For NZ Audiences to Take a Bow

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release

Time For NZ Audiences to Take a Bow

--Auckland venues had better be on their best behaviour as a leading UK audience experience expert jets into town in June.--

Queues, expensive drinks, uncomfortable seats, a hot auditorium, and staff who look like they’d rather be somewhere else. It’s a story familiar to almost anyone who’s spent a night out at a theatre.

For years, the actual experience of their audiences seems to have been at the back of some venue manager’s minds.

But that’s all changing.

Enter Lisa Baxter, former rock magazine marketing manager turned audience experience expert, founder of the UK-based strategic insight consultancy The Experience Business. She’s on a one-woman mission to put audiences back at the heart of our theatres, museums and galleries.

The field of audience experience is a relatively new one, but for arts and culture organisations in the UK it’s becoming one of the hottest topics of the decade.

From the creation of Chief Experience Officers to sending in ‘secret-shopper’ audience members, British theatres, museums and art galleries are all beginning to spend some serious time and money on improving their audience’s experience.

Driven by a tough economic climate where audiences think carefully about where to spend their money, organisations are realising the importance of fine-tuning their customers’ experience to ensure that they go home with happy memories of the whole evening, not just the main event.

Baxter’s worked with some of the UK’s leading cultural centres, including the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, London’s Lyric Theatre, the legendary Liverpool Everyman Theatre and the UK National Football Museum, helping them re-focus their attentions onto the experience of the average audience member.

Her innovative work has won her plaudits from across the UK, but it was Baxter’s early experiences at rock concerts that sparked her interest.

“Working for a rock magazine, I attended lots of concerts,” she explains, “There I experienced the passion of the audience, cleverly channelled and fuelled by an industry that was intensely customer focussed.”

“But in the arts there sometimes seems to be disappointing disconnect between the inspirational 'why' of the arts and the drudging reality of the audience experience. And so I began a mission to find ways of re-connecting arts organisations with the humanity of their audiences.”

Auckland-based arts & culture consultancy Henslowe Irving are hosting Lisa’s visit to New Zealand. Company director Dr Miles Gregory hopes that Lisa will help Auckland theatres up their game when it comes to the audience experience.

“Venue managers know that people’s last experience at their venue can be a make-or-break factor when they’re considering buying tickets in the future,” adds Dr Gregory.

“But often venue managements don’t have the time to step back and really think about whether it’s fun – or not - to attend an event at their venue. This is a brilliant opportunity for Auckland venue managements and their teams to step out of the everyday routine and spend some time with a world expert.”

Lisa Baxter will be running a workshop at the APACA Conference in Canberra on Wednesday 29th May and speaking at the Australian Council for the Arts Summit also in Canberra Thursday 30th May . She wil be giving a one-day ‘Audience Experience Lab’ in Auckland on Thursday 6 June, 11am – 5.30pm, Whitecliffe School of Arts & Design, Parnell. Email miles@hensloweirving.com for further information.

ENDS

© Scoop Media