Contact:
Catherine Brandt
202-712-2054
[email protected]

Americans for the Arts, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts and arts education, today announced that it will hold its annual National Arts Marketing Project (NAMP) conference in Louisville, KY from November 12–15, 2011. More than 500 arts professionals will be in attendance.

“Louisville is at the crossroads of an honored tradition and a bright future,” said Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. “It is a city that celebrates America's heritage and competitive spirit.  Its arts community knows how to engage their audiences in yesterday’s history, today's classics and tomorrow’s innovations. Louisville epitomizes the conference theme: Winning Audiences.”

The NAMP Conference will highlight the results from two new studies on audience engagement:

• Sen Associates and Trudel|MacPherson Arts Consulting’s “How Strong is Your Social Net” study which explores adoption and usage of digital and social media, measurement tactics, platforms, and return on investment (ROI). Findings track the “how,” “to whom,” “what,” “why,” and “how often” of communications across multiple platforms and probes perceptions of effectiveness.
• The Wallace Foundation’s study on audience engagement, which provides case studies on how several arts organizations across the country, including the San Francisco Girls Chorus, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston Lyric Opera and Steppenwolf Theatre, expand their audiences and measure their engagement the organization.

The conference will also showcase two new technology tools for arts marketers:

• Charlotte-Mecklenburg Arts & Science Council’s www.power2give.org, a groundbreaking new fundraising tool designed to address changing trends in philanthropic giving.  The final product is a unique website that allows anyone to easily give a gift to the organizations and projects they are most passionate about.
• WolfBrown and partners’ new web-based dashboard that allows arts organizations to see the impact they’re having on their target audience. The new tool is designed to measure the intrinsic impact of the arts.

Additional conference sessions will cover a wide range of marketing topics, including technology, revenue generation and audience engagement. In addition, two full-day preconferences will be offered to those attendees who want a back to basics refresher on the fundamentals of marketing the arts or want to take their organization’s marketing efforts to the next level of audience engagement. 

Americans for the Arts and Destination Marketing Association International will present the Arts Destination Marketing Award during the opening keynote address on November 13. This newly established award honors a local arts agency and a convention and visitors bureau that have successfully collaborated to improve tourism to their community and is intended to reinforce the importance of a strong relationship between a community's destination marketing organization and its cultural-heritage and arts agencies.  The inaugural recipients of the award are:

• Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau;
• City of Ventura Office of Cultural Affairs and the Ventura Visitors & Convention Bureau.

Sam Horn, noted author and consultant; Scott Stratten, president of UnMarketing; and Oliver Uberti, design editor at National Geographic Magazine will provide keynote addresses at the conference. Other featured speakers include Jeff Levine, chief marketing and communications officer at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Stephanie Pereira, outreach director at Kickstarter; and Brian Reich, author of the new book Shift & Reset.

The National Arts Marketing Project Conference is cosponsored by Arts Learning Xchange, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Wallace Foundation, Brown-Forman, Yum!, Livestream.com, Louisville CVB, Louisville Marriott Downtown, and Sam Horn.

Americans for the Arts is the leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts and arts education in America. With offices in Washington, D.C. and New York City, it has a record of 50 years of service. Americans for the Arts is dedicated to representing and serving local communities and creating opportunities for every American to participate in and appreciate all forms of the arts. Additional information is available at www.AmericansForTheArts.org.