Ideas

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the arts and culture industry has been spilling out of online spaces. We’ve embarked on virtual tours, taken online classes, and watched countless live-streamed performances. We’ve seen foster dogs meeting fish, Instagram dance classes, and science snacks. Here at Tessitura, organizations using our e-commerce platform have sold more than 10 times as many digital experiences on their sites this year than at this time last year.

So how do you get started with monetizing virtual experiences? We’ve taken a look at the arts and cultural industry, including the leaders who shared their insights in “CI to Eye Live: How Arts Organizations Are Monetizing Livestreams and Digital Content” (available on YouTube), and have put together some tips to help you plan.

We didn’t rehearse this.

No one did.

Almost overnight, arts administrators everywhere had to put on their programming hats for an entirely new venue—a digital venue. Instead of curated experiences involving lobbies, printed programs, and curtain calls, it’s a world of livestreams, blog posts, and emoji reactions. You are the arbiters of your organizations’ digital presence and now have to improvise events with smaller teams and less money. Cool.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) was one week into their 2020 season when COVID-19 shut down in-person production. But as luck would have it, video recordings shot for posterity would turn into a monetized digital content opportunity. We worked with them to explore YouTube pre-roll campaigns to promote this new, video-based endeavor.

In many ways, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston could not be more different. One is a historic building with a private permanent collection of European, Asian, and American art with an idyllic courtyard. One is an art museum and research institution featuring Degas, Homer, and other greats, sitting on top of 140 acres in the Berkshires. One is Boston’s waterfront museum, which hosts leading contemporary visual artists and performances, recently featuring the works of William Forsythe and Yayoi Kusama.

Despite significant differences, these museums have one thing in common: they were all allowed to open as of July 6th per Massachusetts’ Phase III Step 1 of post-COVID reopening.

In the midst of a pandemic, arts organizations are leaning into Facebook’s organic features to reach their audiences as they spend more time at home and online. Livestreams, watch parties, video premieres, curated playlists, archival clips—you name it, someone’s probably tried it.

Ask the Industry features advice from arts marketers in their own words. We hope it will spark new ideas for your organization.

In our latest installment, we’re asking two arts administrators, “What are you doing to go the extra mile for subscribers and members during COVID-19?” Sara Billmann, Vice President, Marketing & Communications at University Musical Society, and Mike Servedio, Web and Social Media Manager at The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University give insights on how to shine a spotlight on your nearest and dearest.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we shared a statement denouncing this act of racist violence and sharing our support of Black Lives Matter. A statement is important, but not enough. Real change can only come with clear policy, plans and written commitments.

We are in the midst of a pandemic, economic crisis, and social movement to acknowledge and dismantle our society’s racist present and past. All of these forces deeply impact our industry and our company. The path forward is fluid and evolving almost daily. We choose to see this uncertain moment as an opportunity for reflection and a time to evolve and strengthen our commitment to equity and social justice.

We are angry and saddened after the senseless killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, David McAtee, James Scurlock—the list is heartbreaking and long. We stand together with Black Lives Matter. These killings are but one symptom of systemic racism, a system of laws and norms enacted to push BIPOC down to help white people rise up. It permeates American culture and our institutions, and every white person in America benefits from it. If any good is to come from this tragic time, it is first, a widespread acknowledgement and understanding of systemic racism, and second, institutions not just taking an active and public stand against it both internally and externally, but ensuring meaningful change starts with them. 

Gibney is a dance organization based in New York City. We asked their team to write about the evolution of their fundraising efforts in light of COVID-19.

On March 19, Gibney’s spring Gala—The Wonderful World of Gibney—publicly shifted to the “Keep the Wonderful World of Gibney Turning” campaign. In lieu of celebrating Gibney’s "world” of artists with a fundraising event, we would instead find ways to support them during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the next 6.5 weeks, this campaign went through more iterations than any we’ve ever worked on. It became a testament to the moment: so much is unknown and changing by the minute, there is a relentless cascade of information, opinions and emotions are right at the surface, and there is no precedent to fall back on. 

As we all continue to cope with the reality that it may take a while for audiences to safely return to our venues, the question arises of how to meet the cultural needs of our patrons in a digital space. Enter livestreaming. Arts organizations are urgently and suddenly becoming media companies, but while we’re experts at producing live content in person, the prospect of live digital content is unfamiliar territory.