Rural Touring Theatre – Countryside alliance

James Gough explains some of the techniques that can be used to build an audience for rural touring work.

For every example I cite in this article, someone else will have an equally persuasive contrary example. And thats the thing about rural touring and developing audiences for rural communities; each village hall is run by a committee of individuals and each individual has different priorities and reasons for programming theatre.

The recently published Arts Council England report, Arts in rural England: Why the arts are at the heart of rural life, neatly sums up the challenges and opportunities of developing audiences for rural touring theatre: Rural touring schemes bring professional theatre, dance, comedy and music into village halls, using a network of more than 3,000 promoters across England. Volunteers put in long hours to book and market a show, and act as local advocates of the arts.

If you have a good promoter then the show will sell well, if not  or they stray too far in programming terms from the safe  then frequently audience figures suffer. One of the challenges of developing audiences for rural touring theatre is that the company is once removed from the audience. Rural touring theatre companies are not resource-rich organisations. Their key priority must be booking the tours as opposed to concentrating limited resources on single events. Therefore this means the touring company is reliant on the receiving venue  not an alien experience for any touring company, but an issue for those rural touring companies where the receiving venues are managed and marketed by volunteers.

There are just two specific areas around volunteers that I want to focus on; the first is around skills gaps and the second is around conflicting priorities. The skills gap is fairly obvious in that volunteers who are working for their local village hall may not have all the necessary skills to best market a toured-in piece of theatre. However, this can be improved by touring companies providing really comprehensive and supportive marketing packs.

Conflicting priorities, however, is a more complex issue. For village halls the promotion is within the context of a community event rather than as part of an artistic programme. As a producer of rural touring theatre your primary objective may be to create work that is accessible and accessed by as many different members of the community as possible. As a promoter of an event, however, your priorities may be very different. Raising funds to re-roof the hall or at least to ensure the event does not make a loss can sometimes conflict with the touring companies attempts to broaden or develop new audiences. It is therefore not unsurprising that those people who attend events in village halls are frequently not rural excluded groups but a theatre-literate and regularly attending audience. The National Rural Touring Forums (NRTF) research in 2000 showed that 85% of those attending NRTF events had attended professional arts events at other venues in the past 12 months.

So, developing new audiences directly through promoters can often be a difficult if not impossible task. The prerogative therefore lies with the rural touring company to directly develop audiences. Two areas of work in which the audience development agency amh has worked with rural touring theatres in the South are developing rural ambassadors schemes and developing direct relationships between companies and their audiences.

In 2003, amh worked with three rural touring companies to pilot and develop ambassador schemes. These ambassadors worked for the companies and, where successful, acted as mentors, trainers and an extra pair of hands for the promoters, as well as talking to groups within the communities about the coming event. This resulted in increased attendance compared with previous events. Where unsuccessful, the promoters viewed the ambassadors as unnecessary and did not appreciate their assistance. The companies themselves saw the exercise as going beyond the essential use of their resources.

Oxfordshire Touring Theatre Company (OTTC) was one of the pilot companies, and following the success of the ambassador scheme, OTTC has looked to re-focus its approach to audience development. As well as continuing with ambassadors for its own promoted shows in market towns (which in itself is a new area of work centred around developing audiences), it is also working to further develop a one-on-one relationship with all its audiences. OTTCs new marketing strategy looks at increasing its communication with existing audiences and working to better define the brand of OTTC so that audiences can feel more secure about booking and attending its shows without relying on recognisable show titles.

OTTC is also developing an e-marketing list to send previous attenders bulletins on the current activity of the company (not just show-specific information), even if they are not touring nearby for some time. This, coupled with a drive to develop a mailing list at events, is part of a long-term strategy to develop a direct relationship with its rural audiences so that it may better deliver its artistic aims.

James Gough is Director of the audience development agency amh.
amh has been working with OTTC on developing its new marketing strategy.
t: 01962 846962;
w: http://www.amhonline.org.uk; http://www.ottc.org.uk