We build audiences.  We build participation. We plan for it, and guide it.  Our clients have seen as much as 200% audience growth.  They return to us, over and over, to keep them growing.

We work with individual institutions, consortia, foundations, public agencies – all to build cultural participation.  Large cities, rural communities.  Mesa’s new Center for the Arts.  Montana’s rural arts audience development initiative.  A more culturally active Cincinnati.  Even larger participation at the Fleet Science Center in San Diego, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the Ecotarium in Worcester, MA, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, the Strong Museum in Rochester.   Consortia studies from Springfield, MO to Springfield, OH,  Kalamazoo to Los Angeles. New audiences for Opera America. 

Counsel to organizations requested and funded through public agencies and foundations such as Lilly Endowment and The James Irvine Foundation.

We study and provide cultural participation counsel to dozens of organizations coast to coast, every year.  Our work ranges from short term solutions such as target marketing to massive studies on trends and issues affecting audience participation. 

  Representative Projects and Clients

Cultural tourism is the tourism of the future.  ArtsMarket’s leadership in identifying potential cultural audiences and then counseling institutions to win their participation is the foundation of our cultural tourism counsel, showing clients how to win tourism for their institutions and communities.   

Recently, after Cincinnati’s business leaders saw what we accomplished in Indianapolis, they hired us to work with their city. 

•     Focus group research conducted in target cities, to explore attitudes and perceptions of your city as a cultural tourism destination.

•     Market analysis to determine the best target markets for advertising to win cultural tourists to your city.

•     Gap analysis to explore your institution or city’s strengths and weaknesses as a cultural tourism destination. 

•     Comprehensive cultural tourism inventories.

•     Keynoter for cultural tourism summits and conferences.

Louise Stevens literally wrote the book on arts education partnership planning and on evaluation. Contracted by the NEA, she wrote Through a Mirror, a Guide to Program Evaluation, and Planning to Make the Arts Basic. 

Dozens of state arts agencies have asked her to evaluate and help plan stronger arts education programs and partnerships.  Cities have worked system-wide with ArtsMarket.  Foundations and nonprofits have asked for our evaluation of their programs.  San Diego Unified School District.  The Gund Foundation.  The Ford Family Foundation.  The City of  Boston.  Richmond, VA.  The NEA.     

•       In-school programs

•       Residencies

•       After school and community programs

•       Arts, science and cultural learning   programs

•       Teacher professional development institutes

•       Statewide and regional plans

•       Partnerships/institutions and organizations

•       University-based programs

Representative Projects and Clients

When Jane Alexander stepped into the chairmanship of the NEA, a call came out to ArtsMarket.  Would Louise Stevens come and work with her senior management team to develop outcomes-based benchmarks for the NEA?  Ms. Stevens had already been asked by the NEA to evaluate and help transform other programs – the Locals funding, Folk Arts, and Advancement.  Her evaluations helped start reshaping and structuring the NEA to maximize efficiency with its more limited funding, getting the most out of each program.

Many state agencies, foundations, and individual nonprofits have similarly turned to ArtsMarket, some over and over, to evaluate programs and recommend strong new approaches.  The Greater Hartford Community Foundation. California Arts Council.  Ohio Arts Council. Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.  Montana Arts Council.  

Representative Projects and Clients

Creative Economy. 

Cultural Vitality. 

Louise Stevens pioneered cultural planning.  She wrote the Cultural Planning Work Kit (published by the University of Massachusetts, Amhurst), and subsequently led scores of cities through cultural plans.  She facilitated the Oregon Cultural Plan that led to the creation of the Oregon Cultural Trust. 

Bay City, Michigan to Berkeley to Boston.

Jackson to Sarasota.

Cincinnati.

Indianapolis.   

Fort Wayne is an example of a city returning for more assistance, as cultural vitality becomes the foundation for economic development.  First we worked with the cities arts organizations.  Then with Downtown Fort Wayne, Inc.      

States turn to ArtsMarket for cultural and agency development plans, grounded in our expert field research and facilitation, including a few:

Nevada multi-agency cultural resources plan, Illinois, New Hampshire, Montana, Oregon, Connecticut

Representative Projects and Clients

Viability.  Economic strength.  Solid operating projections. 

What makes a project feasible?  How can it be best structured to be viable in the long term?

When the Vincennes University needed to know if its proposed Red Skelton Museum and Performing Arts Center would work, it turned to us.  We took the plan beyond the University campus, looking at what could be done through this new institution to serve as the cultural tourism hub for the entire region.  What partnerships could be created.  What the economic impact could be at every stage, every size.  The return on public fund investment.  The operations.  The programming.  The staff structure.

Some feasibility plans aren’t building based.  When PlayMakers Repertory Company needed to look beyond its current level of operations, we provided the comparative research: models, structures, funding.  We then led the strategic/feasibility planning to position the Company for the future as one of the great artistic assets of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Universities.  Cities.  Foundations.  Nonprofits.  All look to our guidance to test feasibility.  Economic analysis.  Market analysis.  Benchmarking.

Representative Projects and Clients

When an independent panel of economists selected our research as the best example of economic research and planning for the 2003 International Economic Development Council award for cities with population 50,000-200,000, they attested to our unique capacity to link economic and market analysis.

Think of what real economic analysis can do.  What is the value of the audience that culture brings to a city?  How many square feet of retail are possible?  How many restaurants?  How much office space?  What will the tax return on investment will there be?  How many hotel rooms will be filled?

What market will transform the community? 

What is needed to spark the transformation?

ArtsMarket is uniquely positioned to undertake these studies.  Our combination of market and economic research is what leads states and cities to ask us to help them chart a strong economic future through arts, culture, and creativity.

The House that Art Built is Louisiana’s award-winning economic analysis of the arts – done by us.

Montana’s Arts and the Economy.

Berkeley’s Culture and Economy.

Cincinnati’s gap analysis: Transforming Cincinnati.

Representative Projects and Clients

 Representative Projects and Clients

Once your organization has identified its best prospects and is ready to implement a direct mail campaign; then what?

ArtsMarket takes market research to the next level by guiding each client through the direct mail campaign design, implementation and assessment process. As a broker, we have the capacity to assist your organization pulling counts by theatre goes, arts attendee, income, catalog buyer, age, family status, etc for the best price, on-time, every-time.

Representative Projects and Clients
Comprehensive List of Direct Mail Services

Where your market lives, shops and works influences every buying decision they make. By taking this a step further and identifying the predominant characteristics of your constituents' lifestyle choices we can determine who your best prospects are and where to find them. 

Since 1983 ArtsMarket has been using GIS (Geographic Information System) data collected by the US Department of Commerce, US Office of Management and Budget, the US Census Bureau and ERSI Business Information Systems to pioneer geodemographic methodologies that have changed the way the creative industry has come to know their audiences and constituents.

Representative Projects and Clients

Arts and cultural resources resources, along with many other creative industries have been successfully leveraged to complete many of ArtsMarket's downtown redevelopment projects. We know arts and cultural assets can serve as some of the most efficient and effect mechanisms behind economic development agendas - and have successfully proven this many times over. For more information on how ArtsMarket can help your community plan, create and support a downtown core, contact Louise Stevens at lstevens@artsmarket.com.

Representative Projects and Clients