Open Call: Audience Development Training Programme

You are invited to take part in a new training programme on audience development. This series of workshops will take place between April and June 2024 and are led by international audience development experts, The Audience Agency.

Audience Development Workshops

Audience Development is acknowledged as an important part of a relevant and thriving cultural sector. Many funders also make it a requirement to have an audience development plan. But what does it mean in practice? And how can it help us in our work?

This series will be built on the concept of producing an audience development plan based on The Audience Agency’s popular ‘Guide to Audience Development’ and on two European projects – Adeste Plus and Connect.

There will be five workshops, presented as a progressive series, that will enable participants to construct an audience development strategy.

The workshops will be:

  • 3-4 hours’ duration (expected to be in the mornings of the days below)
  • Free to attend – subsidised by the Galway Culture Company
  • For a peer learning group of 15-20 organisations
  • At a central venue in Galway
  • Practical in scope, with participants developing an audience development strategy over the course of the series. Case studies and examples will be included.
  • Networking and peer to peer learning opportunities
  • Appropriate for a range of organisations, covering visual and performing arts, venues, touring and community arts
  • Delivered by Jonathan Goodacre and Penny Mills from The Audience Agency

Workshop Schedule

11 April Workshop 1: Audience Development Key Principles

25 AprilWorkshop 2: Understanding Audiences

2 MayWorkshop 3: Developing Strategies

16 MayWorkshop 4: Implementing strategies

6 JuneWorkshop 5: Evaluation and Next Steps

Who is it for?

This series is for people who have (or could have) some responsibility for audience development at their organisation. They should have a degree of seniority within their organisation with the capacity to be a decision maker and implement audience development strategies.

The course is available to one person per organisation.

You will need to attend all five sessions.

How to apply

This training series is open to all arts and cultural organisations in Galway.

In order to ensure the series includes the organisations that can most benefit and to help prepare the basis for the programme we would be grateful if you could fill in the following application form. We aim to include all applicants but in the event of a large response, we will select participants who we believe would benefit most from the course. This selection will be undertaken by Galway Culture Company and The Audience Agency based on responses to the application form.

Click here to apply. 

The deadline to apply is 5pm on Friday, 8th March, 2024. Successful applicants will be informed by Friday 15th March.

Read more about the project here. 

Apply here