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Review by Jane Coe at Smart ? Marketing the Arts around Surrey
(ACE, 2001, ISBN 0- 7287-0820-5 £8 [£10.96 inc p&p*])

Funky on your Flyer reports on a debate about the practicalities of encouraging young people?s engagement with cultural venues. It is aimed at venue managers, programmers, and marketing and education officers who wish to develop youth audiences, as well as practitioners and policy makers. The report doesn?t provide concrete answers or a how-to guide to the issues of youth audience development. It does, however, suggest a number of routes that venues could take to move forward. They may need to experiment through programming, changing staff attitudes to young people and selective borrowing from youth culture. However, we are warned that youth marketing must involve young people and live up to their expectations (hence, not just funky images on your flyer).The report also discusses the benefits of developing partnerships with gatekeeper organisations, such as schools and youth services, who may be able to tackle some of the barriers. It explores how the buzzword ?mentoring? could be put into practice, both formally and informally, through the development of cultural mentors. Finally, it makes a call to action for funding bodies and policy makers to support the process through a sustainable and integrated approach to project funding.

*For further information and invoicing, contact SAM?s Books. See Bookshop in ArtsDirectory.