Within a short period of time, if this is not already happening, an increasing number of arts organisations in London are going to be looking at the new markets leading to 2012 as an "opportunity". However, these efforts must be preceded by critical and objective reviews of their operations before they try to jump on the Olympics bandwagon!
Mirador has prepared an initial checklist for evaluating these options. This list is best seen as a means of looking at the 'big picture' before detailed actions are considered. The following questions are not to be seen as a challenge to curb the new euphoria.
The Perceived Opportunities:
- Why do individual and corporate players in the cultural sector see the Olympics as an opportunity? What has really changed?
- What do they have to do now better before they can tap these new opportunities? How well are they performing now?
- What is the scope for winning more audiences by introducing marketing improvements that the 'new business' of the Olympics will offer them?
- Why could they not achieve these improvements before? Are there any untapped marketing opportunities then that still exist now?
The Real Opportunities:
- How are the new programmes going to be funded and delivered? What will be the impact of these decisions be on the development of arts and cultural organisations?
- How many organisations will actually realise that these decisions are best made by challenging their own 'business planning assumptions' before they can act?
- There are also key questions for arts funders and programming bodies. Have they made any projections for growth of audiences? How did Athens and Sydney deal with these questions? Can we learn from their experience?
- Arts organisations will have to make critical choices – to what extent can they plan and fund realistic expansion based on existing resources?
- Are the arts organisation planning to fund growth, which is not the same as expansion!
The Attainable Opportunties:
Sooner or later the arts funding mechansim may have to address the real challenge – by determining what is attainable and what is not.
- Will the best option be to develop a 'audience/market model' which projects growth on a realistic basis and then decides to fund only the most realistic programmes for provision?
- Will the arts funders opt to 'prescribe' their preferred growth by stating the only options that they will fund by using competitive criteria?
- Will the arts funders receive additional Lottery money at the expense of other causes to fund growth in cultural provision?
Considering the possible impact of the Government's comprehensive spending review, the answer may well lie here- what is attainable by using realistic planning scenarios both at the 'macro' level and the organisational or 'micro' level
