Community Focus – Braille and beyond

Arts organisations often fail when it comes to marketing events to deaf and disabled audiences. Steve Mannix explains how things might be improved.
Over 10 million disabled and deaf people live in the UK and, if they attended your venue to the same extent as other audiences, you would expect to see disabled and deaf people making up some 15% of ticket sales or visitors. So how can you and your organisation achieve that?

We all know that some of the best audience development practice is about being what is often termed artist-led and audience-focused, or giving consideration and respect to your audience or visitors. Its about raising your awareness, not just of the work you present but also of its true appeal to the consumer and their preferences. This link between the work and audiences exists for disabled and non-disabled people alike. It just so happens that one of these groups havent maybe had as much experience of the arts  but be in no doubt they have an opinion and strong interest. You ought to see the letters on my desk every week!

To establish a relationship with any community defined by shared needs of, or interests in, your organisation, its important to have a strong understanding of those collective issues in order that you can address them. More crucial still is not to assume what they might be, but to make the effort to understand them from a potential audience members point of view. By not doing so, we inevitably create barriers  often unwittingly. For example, even when we do provide accessible buildings and information in Braille or large print or on CD, we frequently fail to present that information in a way that is audience-focused  that, in a suitably enticing way, tells people what they really need to know or that appeals directly to their interests and concerns.

Knowing your target audience better will help you to direct your message in a way that is mutually rewarding  giving you a thriving audience, and your audiences a quality service. Establishing a dialogue with your disabled and deaf customers really helps, but you can find out more about their experiences through many different media  and critically those which are disabled-led. Find out more about disability and Deaf culture. What are the main issues for disabled people locally? How could your marketing reflect this? (For example in London, free travel is once more under threat for disabled people!).

I know, I have said this so many times, but before you start to devise a marketing strategy or make decisions about your brand  get out there and ask! As with any kind of research, what youre likely to discover is that your disabled and deaf markets are just as diverse as any other. If you plan to communicate effectively with disabled or deaf people, youll probably want to segment this market like any other  grouping individuals by their interest in your work or services, by the style and type of communication they prefer or respond to. It follows, of course, that you may discover that there is no need to target disabled audience members as a distinct group as they have personal interests in music, dance, theatre just as any audience group would. If you get to this point, you are doing fantastically.

Many people ask me why bother to separate disabled people out: they think that they dont want that. Well, this is partly correct. Some do and some dont. However, its a long way to perfection. You are essentially identifying interest and audience/visitor need (for some people that has to extend to physical need in terms of access). Real and active access and inclusion rely on honest communication and good strategic marketing. It is a journey. You must make sure that at all stages you and your organisation does what it says on the tin! Once you start to get it wrong then the audiences trust starts to diminish.

You will find there is no off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all approach to reaching disabled and deaf audiences: it will depend on the aims of your organisation, the interests and needs of your target audiences and the depth of your analysis.

Steve Mannix is
Chief Executive of Shape.
e: [email protected]