Audience-Building and Marketing Workshops

We Hearts the Arts has gotten together with some of our province’s best and brightest to offer a series of workshops designed to strengthen the marketing and branding of our arts organizations, arts-and-culture related businesses and non-profits. After all, if each one of us is strong, the whole community is strong!

Open to everyone! Book early! Space is limited! Email sarah@womensfilmfestival.com

We’ve got four incredibly affordable workshops:

Creative Marketing 101
Learn about marketing, advertising and creative media strategies with Ray Creative Agency. Speaking at the workshop from Ray will be Jenny Smith, President/Creative Director; Sherrie Reynolds, Director, Client Services; Jane Connors, Independent Media Director; and Shaun Hibbs, Online and Interactive Marketing Consultant. You can find their bios here. This workshop also includes a one-on-one follow-up session with Ray Creative at your organization at no extra charge. April 1 & 3, 12-5pm at NIFCO, 40 Kings Rd. $40

Creating a Brand for NL Arts
How does your brand fit within your vision of arts and culture in the province? This two-day workshop will help you develop your brand and a brand for arts and culture in the province. April 8 & 10 from 12-5pm at NIFCO. $40

Getting Started with Adobe InDesign
Make your posters, newsletters, and ads pop with this hands-on workshop on InDesign facilitated by Elling Lien, former Editor and Art Director of The Scope. April 26 & 27, 12-4pm in the Cox & Palmer Second Space at the LSPU Hall, 3 Victoria St. $40

Marketing with Movies
Aimed at artists in any discipline, this workshop will teach you how to make quick and effective videos to promote your events. Facilitated by artist and public programmer Jason Ross Sellars. May 25, 12-4pm in the Cox & Palmer Second Space at LSPU Hall. $30.

This series is proudly supported by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and is presented in part by St. John’s International Sound Symposium, St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival, Neighbourhood Dance Works, Artistic Fraud, Resource Centre for the Arts, and Breakwater Books.

For more information, click the image above or email Sarah Smellie at sarah@womensfilmfestival.com

How have other governments partnered with the arts?

That’s what Wanda Nolan aimed to find out this fall. She’s written this (still rough!) report on collaborations between governments and teams of artists and arts organizations that aimed to promote arts and culture in their regions. This is part of a larger We Heart The Arts strategy that we hope will result in partnerships with the municipalities and government of Newfoundland and Labrador to help them promote all of the province’s arts and culture to the people in their regions. Win-win? You bet. Download the report here. And please mind any typos, grammatical snares and formatting weirdness. This is still a work in progress.

Petition to increase municipal arts funding in St. John’s

The cut-off date to sign the petition asking the City to increase their arts funding to $4 per capita by 2017 has passed, but Patrick Foran of Artistic Fraud wrote a great letter and assembled some important numbers for the campaign. Like these:

Large Municipality / Per Capita municipal culture grants
Vancouver  $28
Calgary  $18
Montreal $17
Ottawa $10
Toronto $8
Average for Large Municipalities  $14

Even when compared with cities of a similar size, The City of St. John’s falls short:
Victoria, BC  $4.11 per capita
Barrie, ON   $2.53 per capita
St. John’s, NL  $1.72* per capita
*The city stated at the time that Municipal Arts Grants were $1.50 per capita. The population figure for St. John’s, 106,172 is based on the 2011 census. 

You can see the petition, which links to a great article in the Telegram about the city’s arts funding and its response to the petition, here.