Milton Keynes Cultural Alliance |
The brief for this challenging and stimulating project was to formulate a marketing and audience development strategy alongside a capacity audit that could be effectively utilised by every member organisation to further audience development in Milton Keynes and ensure that culture earned its rightful place within the wider MK strategic context. There were 22 members of the MKCA at the time ranging from theatres to orchestras to museums to music organisations to craft organisations to archives to galleries to organisations representing the community and the council Staff resource within the MKCA membership ranges from unpaid volunteers to four strong marketing dept teams Skills within the MKCA membership range from minimal qualifications to post graduate and professional qualifications Budgets for marketing and audience development within the MKCA membership range from nothing to hundreds of thousands Emma’s challenge was to harness the aspirations of all, consider the changing demographics and rapid growth agenda and produce one strategy that addressed all of the above. The stakeholders were suffering from consultation fatigue and were sceptical of being able to produce a meaningful set of recommendations that could be adopted by such a disparate group. Consequently, the method and approach to producing the work was as important as the end report. The resulting report has proved an invaluable resource to the MKCA membership and has highlighted some key issues for the alliance going forward in terms of how they can most effectively function as a single force for audiences and culture. |