GRANTS FOR MARKETING.

Through the National Arts Marketing Project (NAMP), arts groups across the country are learning to market themselves like profitable small businesses via innovative approaches such as gift registries and Internet outreach. If they succeed in attracting wider audiences, they could serve as models for other arts organizations.

Working with small and mid-sized visual and performing arts organizations, NAMP has been working with the Arts & Business Council and American Express to advise small and mid-sized visual and performing arts organizations on implementing their marketing plans. Approximately $300,000 in grants was recently awarded to thirty-two arts organizations in eight cities.

Visual and performing arts groups submitted new audience development plans after participating in an eight-day training retreat last spring in Chicago. Sixteen groups received grants of $7,500 to $25,000 to implement all or part of their plans, while the others received grants for $1,500 to underwrite their participation in the training program.

Two groups in each of the eight cities received implementation grants to attract, new viewers. A national panel of arts, business, and marketing experts reviewed the plans and chose grant recipients based on the creativity and soundness of their plans, and the likelihood that the plans would generate a return on their investment.

Maximum Dance, a Miami-based contemporary ballet company that has commissioned work from Mark Morris and eight other contemporary choreographers in the past three years, was among the dance groups to receive an implementation grant. Their marketing plan, for which they received $12,750, included a five-minute videotape featuring quick, MTV-style clips of the company dancing fifteen contemporary and classical works. The video campaign will target people who work, shop, and attend theater and other events in the University of Miami's Coral Gables neighborhood. Ten thousand fliers, offering the free video and a chance to win tickets, will be distributed in the area, followed by the video mailer and a follow-up postcard.

Dennis Edwards, president of the company's board of directors, said the video mailer was inspired by the visual nature of dance. "It's not easy to describe, to put into words, or even to take a photo that captures what [dance] is about," he said. "We feel that if people see the video, they will buy a ticket." Artistic directors Yanis Pikieris and David Palmer put the video together with the post-production company The Loft, which had produced music videos. "We crossed our fingers that the plan would get funded, and we were thrilled that it did," said Edwards. NAMP will track the results, and if the plan works, it may be used as a model for other companies.

Chicago's Muntu Dance Theater, an African dance company whose main home audience comes from the city's South Side, took a different tack. The company will move its spring concert to the North Side, take early reservations, stage informal performances in area bookstores and parks, and host an African culture education series prior to the concert so that audiences can link the dancing to its origins. Ayoka Samuels, director of the company's marketing and resource development, hopes the move will attract new viewers and give concerts more of a neighborhood feel than they've had in the past. Working with the NAMP "has opened our eyes as to how we position the company and what makes us unique," Samuels said.

San Francisco's Lines Contemporary Ballet used its grant to take part in the Chicago program and to share what it learned there with two other San Francisco companies, Robert Moses' Kin and Yaelisa Flamenco.

The Arts Marketing Center began in 1995 as a resource for arts administrators. Julie Franz, founder of the Center and director of the National Arts Marketing Project, coordinated the program with marketing and arts experts around the country. The Project's Web site (www.artsmarketing.org) also serves as a resource -- a place to share marketing experience and post questions that local and national experts and peers answer online.