The Great Fresno divide
After reading various threads on this weekends' Re:FUSE Festival, I'm struck with the question of how an event (any event) jumps the great Fresno divide.
It's like this:
People used to believed there was "nothing to do in Fresno." Whether it was true or not, didn't matter. That was the tag line. But that line doesn't stand up anymore. Anyway who cares to look knows they can find something "to do" every night of the week, and on most weekends (like last weekend for example) they will have choices (lots of them).
But what about those who aren't looking? Here's where I see the divide, and it raises questions, like:
* Should promoters (regardless of the event) be content with reaching and drawing the usual suspects (those who are looking)? And how to you quantify them as a group? Are we talking hundreds of people? Thousands?
* Then, what do you do with everyone else?
I'm reminded of something Jarah Euston told me before leaving Fresno. She came to the realization that there were people (probably lots of them) who were happily content with what they were getting from Fresno, and it wasn't up to her to try to change their minds. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the idea.
So, how much hand-holding is too much? What's the balance? Is there a magic bullet that could reshape events like The Rogue, or Reel Pride, or The Fresno Urban Sound Experience (the events are apples and oranges at this stage in terms of draw/etc., but the point is there, no)?
Good Poing Apathy
Apathy,
You make a great point. You have to really think about who lives in the Fresno areas. Personality, education levels, income, lifestyles etc. Many people including my own friends and family are very much the type that are happy with no change, because... lets face it.. Change scares us all. People in the Fresno area live here because its not the big city life like SF, or LA or large cities. If it became that some day, you might see them move away. So with that being said your absolutely right about trying to get the average demographic to more events here, but your missing out on a key demographic. The 18 to 30 population, college kids, etc. As they grow up, they may tend to do move events and change the culture of the city as they are exposed to move events over time.
We are a very diverse town and living here for my entire life I have seen how it grew and then became stagnant. It just takes time and innovative ideas to get the ball rolling.... oh and yeah i almost forgot. Money :-)
That's some good stuff.
man, that's some good stuff. I'm glad it was posted, as a FUSE meeting is right around the corner. Thanks to Famous Guest.
Audience research
If the goal is to grow the audience, we (collectively) need to do audience research. Who is it, in terms of demographics and psychographics that we want to attend event ______ that isn't currently attending event ______? Why aren't they attending? Is it a lack of awareness or some aspect of the product that does not appeal to that group?
It's easy to say that Fresno is a community of 500,000+ and that more than ______ number of people should be attending RE:FUSE or Rogue or whatever. But Fresno isn't 500,000 people who all think alike or are alike. There's a lot of different demographics out there. Some are more likely to be interested in your product than others. Getting the white female, age 50, with two kids, who listens to KMJ and lives north of Nees to stand on top of the Spiral Garage to listen to Wheels of Fortune on a windy Saturday night might not be all that likely. Or you could spend so much time and effort to get that person, that you could have had 20 people from another demo with that same expenditure of resources by targeting another group. You've got to go after the low hanging fruit first. Learn more about them and develop strategies to go out and communicate with them.
It's ok to plateau, as long as we're always working our way up.
(warning: this response is just form my perspective as one person...your beliefs may vary)
I sincerely believe that we had a bit of a rennaissance here in town starting about 8 or 9 years ago----this is when people like Jarah started up Fresno Famous, Marcel started up Rogue Festival, Creative Fresno started up, the internet was uniting local arts people and making them feel less alone. The outcomes/acquired assetts of this happy explosion are still with us and growing (some of them started before this imaginary Big Boom, Year Zero, whatever---of course):
Reel Pride, Art Hop, Rogue Festival, FUSE festival, lots of cool and consistent members of the local blogging community, (FUSE festival being a bit of a newcomer, but was being incubated for sure.)
I think we've hit a bit of a plateau. Oh yes, we've moved up the mountain a couple of thousand feet from where we were. We've formed our big and happy tribe. It's something to be happy about.
And now, I DO believe that the next step to growing these things, to help use the arts to transform our communities, is to expand outward.
The Tower District and its surrounding activities are very very very much something for us to rejoice in and be thankful for.--same with Downtown.
It's now time to integrate Greater Fresno into this.
We have, it seems , more people in the Works of the City and in the big organizations who are sympathetic to this cause, who understand how latching on to this creative power can benefit us all----culturally AND economically.
It's time to spread it out. Hold hands. Use the connections in City Hall and in various established organizations. Do whatever you gotta do. It's silly that so many people who really DO enjoy the Arts do not know anything of some of these valiant efforts. 'Art Hop? No, never heard of it.'
Yes, we have a spread out, sprawled-to-the-max town to contend with; geographically it ain't easy. But, as a commenter more or less said: we're not infested with artsy-fartsy types like San Francisco is---we gotta SHOW these people how much fun, how uplifting, how satisfying these events can be.
Oh yeah, suggesting we legislate a No TV Night once a week would probably get me called a Socialist or something, but I dern well believe it would help! (laughs)[Seriously, what would the world be like, if one day of the week....just pick one..Tuesday or whatever, TV just wasn't broadcast.]
Oh yeah, and further integrating the power of local colleges/universities (also a problem of geography) would be a great help. There's lots of great people/events/energy already in place in those institutions.
Keep on keepin' on.
Well...
Hand-holding is always going to be needed, and in some communities, too much hand holding is going to be needed. That's life in the kind of city Fresno is. We're not San Francisco with a plug and play arts/culture/music scene - it's a tougher sell here. That's the nature of the population.
I look at it this way, having to "sell" something in this community 24/7 for the last near-decade. It's better than it was 5 years ago. It's night and day from 9 years ago. We're getting there.
The magic bullet is always money, so scratch that. Most if not all of the Re:FUSE/Rogue/Reel Pride/Met/etc folks hosting events of this kind are simply not working with anywhere near the budget for promotions that your Wild Waters or your River Park merchants or even the Grizzlies are. That was, is and will continue to be a hard fact to live with. And if there was a huge sponsor base in town that afforded that luxury we'd have a far more engaged community to work with.
That said, we don't, and the hand holding comes into play. But the thing is, guys...it's working! It really is. Maybe it wasn't evident when Jarah left and maybe it's not to some now, but all of this coupled with the great word of mouth so many of the aforementioned things get is making a difference.
Who knows where we'll all be in another 5-10? How much hand-holding is too much? Who knows. But we've got a pretty "right" amount right now.
nothing is perfect
Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't.
By the way . . .
That last comment came from me - Aileen Imperatrice (forgot to include my name, duh).
Apathy
There will always be people who are happy with just remaining in their own worlds and not venturing out to explore. Some of my relatives are a prime example of not caring to take in any new experiences outside of their comfort zone. They would much more prefer to spend all their time just attending events focused on their kids or grandkids and not feeding their own minds. And for them, there is no amount of convincing that anything is worth attending other than what they care about. We can continue to offer a great event and let them decide for themselves whether to enjoy or not. Don't get me wrong, promotion is still important and it's always a good idea to consider a wide diversity of viewpoints, but as Jarah so wisely pointed out, there is only so much we can do and not drive ourselves crazy in the process.
Post new comment