-6.jpg)
The Scene Room
The Scene Room Podcast spotlights the movers and makers redefining the performing arts—focusing on innovative marketing, leadership, and the importance of collaboration. Hosted by Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman, with a keen eye on audience trends and cultural shifts, the goal is to explore how artists and organizations are connecting with communities, shaping the future, and redefining what it means to engage and inspire.
The Scene Room
Aubrey Bergauer — Running Your Arts Organization Like a Business
Imagine doubling your audience size and quadrupling your donor base in today's challenging arts landscape. That's exactly what Aubrey Bergauer accomplished at the California Symphony by applying business principles to arts administration — and now she's sharing her playbook with us. Her bestselling book, Run It Like a Business, packs all these insights into one powerful guide!
Aubrey's journey into arts administration began at the age of 16 when she realized there were careers beyond performance in the orchestra world. Twenty years later, she's revolutionizing how arts organizations approach audience development through data-driven strategies that yield remarkable results.
The conversation illuminates why classical music organizations must pivot toward audience-centric approaches. With declining arts education creating knowledge gaps, Aubrey explains that we can no longer assume audiences understand programming terminology or composer backgrounds. Rather than expecting potential attendees to educate themselves, successful organizations proactively provide context and entry points.
Perhaps most revealing is Aubrey's insight that arts organizations don't have a new audience problem — they have a retention problem. When up to 90% of first-time attendees never return, the focus must shift to creating meaningful experiences that convert first-timers into regulars. Equally important is giving special attention to first-year subscribers, whose renewal rates typically lag significantly behind long-term subscribers.
Vertical integration emerges as another powerful strategy, with adult education representing a particularly promising opportunity. By offering education programs, organizations can generate new revenue while simultaneously deepening audience engagement and creating more invested patrons who are likely to become donors.
For digital content, Aubrey recommends against seeing streaming as a substitute for live performance. Instead, she advocates using digital "appetizers" that stimulate interest and drive in-person attendance - what she calls "digital content driving analog purchases."
Whether you're a marketer, fundraiser, or arts leader, Aubrey's practical strategies offer a roadmap for sustainability and growth in today's challenging landscape. Her message is clear: combine artistic excellence with sound business practices, and arts organizations can not only survive but thrive.
All episodes are also available in video form on our YouTube Channel. All episodes are hosted by Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman.
Don’t forget to subscribe, share the love, and leave us a review to show your support—it means a lot to us!
Don't hesitate to reach out to us with guest ideas, information you'd like covered, or any ideas you might have—the hope is for this to be a continuous resource and dialogue with our listeners.
Visit TheSceneRoom.com for more information.
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bowman and welcome to the Scene Room. Today I have Aubrey Bergauer, a visionary leader known for revolutionizing the classical music landscape through innovative, results-driven strategies. Her tenure as chief executive of the California Symphony was marked by a doubling of audience size and a near quadrupling of the donor base. I just finished reading her book Run it Like a Business, published in 2024. And I think it is a must read for all arts administrators. Whether you're a marketer, a fundraiser or anyone involved in the running of arts. This is an excellent book to read. So I'm really excited to talk to Aubrey today.
Elizabeth Bowman:Aubrey is offering a free audience growth masterclass on April 10th. She'll show you how to reverse audience decline with smarter audience developments. She will tell you how to stop losing thousands of dollars on every concert and use a data-driven approach to get the buy-in you need. Sounds good. You can find out more about that on her website, aubreyberagowercom. Anyway, let's talk to Aubrey. Aubrey, welcome to the scene room. Thanks for coming. Oh, thanks for having me. Elizabeth, let's start at the beginning. I want to know about your journey into arts administration before we get into the book and all of that good stuff.
Aubrey Bergauer:So many people end up going into arts administration because they started as a performer often and I guess that's true for me too but, like in high school, is when I realized this was a career path.
Aubrey Bergauer:And so for me it was age 16, I think, at my youth orchestra in my hometown, and I was one of those orchestra kids, like you know, dedicated and won the concerto, competition and all you know all that kind of stuff, and was sort of on that path. And then one day the orchestra the youth orchestra went through an executive director change and I remember them introducing this new person to us before rehearsal, saying like a sentence about what that was, and for me that was the light bulb moment when I realized, oh, there is a job managing this, producing this. And as much as I like my instrument, it wasn't what I playing, was not what I wanted to do for my job forever, and so for me it was like this is what I can do. So the path has been that ever since I pursued degrees in performance and business and knowing that that's what I wanted. And now here, 20 years later, is how long I've been in the business now.
Elizabeth Bowman:Amazing. I remember when I was growing up and I was a singer a choral singer when I was about 12. And someone said to me that you could make money as a choral singer, like that could be a job. And as you're growing up, you don't realize that these sort of extracurricular things can be jobs. So I love that story because you just think, oh well, it's just too fun. But then you don't realize, like who's organizing this?
Aubrey Bergauer:How is this?
Elizabeth Bowman:all coming together. So tell me a bit about the book. When did you decide to write the book? Why did you decide to write the book?
Aubrey Bergauer:I wrote the book because people were asking for a playbook and it's funny, these things go hand in hand. 20 years in this business and over that time I've had a lot of success working out the strategies I talk about in the book. And some people think, like, oh, like, I'm known for my work in California Symphony. But the truth is, the strategies I write about I started putting into practice truly my first and second jobs in this business at major companies where I cut my teeth. So to give some examples of that and then how this translated, I remember you know I think I was 23, 24 years old. I was the audience development manager at the Seattle Opera and there one of the parts of my job was overseeing the Young Patrons Group. We grew that group to the largest Young Patrons membership group of its kind in the country through the strategies I'm now known for. That's where we started working on patron retention. That's where we started working on segmentation and talking to different segments differently. And okay, that's how we grew that group. Okay, fast forward, the career progresses.
Aubrey Bergauer:Later I'm head of marketing at the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival. Through these same strategies patron retention, user experience, digital content we had a 43% increase in revenue and 20% increase in attendance and I thought, oh my gosh, there is something here. Then I thought I'm never going to see stats like that again in my life. I was like my career, I'm never going to beat this.
Aubrey Bergauer:And then in 2014, so now over 10 years ago went to go lead the California Symphony and I thought, okay, I get to bring it all together Same song, different verse started putting into practice these same versions of these strategies I had been working out at the organizations before, put it all together from that chief executive seat and we doubled the audience, quadrupled the donor base. I mean, these are stats you just don't hear in classical music. And so all of that at the time 15 years of putting these strategies into practice across multiple organizations that turned into the side hustle of the speaking and consulting. And then, along the way, blogging, and then, along the way, people saying like, okay, can we please have it in a book? Can we just, can you just give me the playbook? And I thought, okay, let's try to codify this in a prose type form called a book.
Elizabeth Bowman:I loved your book. I think it's really fantastic and all arts administrators, marketers, fundraisers, everyone should read this book. Not to sell your book, but I think-.
Aubrey Bergauer:No, I'm grateful when I hear that that's the response. It's like okay, that's the impact, right, that's what we want.
Elizabeth Bowman:You emphasize the importance of audience-centric strategies in the book, which I love the experience of the audience and really putting the spotlight on the audience, which makes total sense. The more I hear about this idea, the more I'm like why haven't we thought of that before? It seems that we have an audience, we have performers, so we have A and we have B. Why not? Which the script you know a little bit. Why has that not been experimented more on? So tell me a bit about that it's so funny.
Aubrey Bergauer:I was mentioning to you before we hit the record button. I'm here in Indianapolis, speaking at Butler University, and this exact question came up this morning. The question I've heard it so many times in my career and probably many listeners have to the question of do we serve the art or do we serve the community? Do we serve the art or do we serve the customer? Versions of that question.
Aubrey Bergauer:First off, not mutually exclusive. We don't have to choose A or B, but, to your point, I think so much of our artistic history we have focused on the art, which is why we are so excellent at the art, so there's no shame. I think we should be so proud. This is a real theme in my book. We have such a fantastic artistic product, abundant supply of truly fantastic musicians, right, all these things. And also, if we don't have an audience, none of that other stuff gets to exist. We have to have people who support us and support us meaning in the form of ticket sales and, as we hope, donations.
Aubrey Bergauer:So it's not mutually exclusive. In fact, one begets the other and we need each other. Like I said, we focused on the art for so long and I'm not saying don't focus on that. I am saying we do need to focus on the audience piece, though, because, as we know, growing that success is focusing on the audience. What do they need? What is their experience? How do we help them come and enjoy the art that we love producing and that we're so good at producing? So hopefully that helps, kind of like set the stage for not exactly flipping the script but thinking like, no, we actually really need an audience, otherwise we don't get to do what we do.
Elizabeth Bowman:It must boil down to the arts education component here, because we have now a full generation of people who have had cut arts programs in their schooling, so they didn't grow up with that type of education. So now we're confronted I mean inevitably with a totally different audience than we had before. So that is likely obviously why we need to change the marketing strategy to this audience centric version, because we just have a completely different audience.
Aubrey Bergauer:Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think the lack of public art education, public music education, is a huge piece of the reason why, just as you said, why we have to change how we talk to our audiences, how we market to them. You know, it used to be that we could have a program listing on a website that said overture, concerto, full symphonic work or opera title, or you know, and people knew what that meant, knew who those composers were, knew who those soloist names were, knew who those conductor names were. Those days are gone and I don't mean to sound so dramatic about it, but the truth is it's not taught anymore. So how can people know? And once I started uncovering that with user experience, research of smart, educated people, but realizing, oh people, my age, millennials I'm like very old millennial, but millennials like right, they weren't taught this, they don't have a music degree like I do, they don't know this quote, unquote baseline information. And then I realized, aubrey, it's not baseline if it was never taught. And so that really, for me, changed so much of how I think about approaching the audience and how do we bring them along.
Aubrey Bergauer:We have a choice Now. What we're saying right now is, if the knowledge gap exists. Then I realized, as an executive director, I have a choice. Do I stick my head in the sand and say, too darn bad, go figure it out, go look it up. I heard arts leaders say that, well, they should just go look it up, okay. Well then you've lost a sale because a lot of people aren't going to do that. Or I realized, aubrey, then it's on you and your organization to fill in that knowledge gap. So I feel like that's the choice before us gap.
Elizabeth Bowman:So I feel like that's the choice before us. I think that people are genuinely interested and curious, and so we have that going for us. Absolutely, because there are a lot of very educated people, like we were just talking about, who didn't have this baseline education and we wrongly assumed they did. But they're investing in learning more about wine or bourbon or you know not to say it's all alcohol, but they might go to a museum and have an experience where they're learning about a different culture or that kind of thing. So classical music is no different than that. They want to have that experience. But I think we need to figure out ways that they understand they're going to learn from it and not just sit there and feel uncomfortable.
Aubrey Bergauer:Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. People want to learn and, as you said, that's to our advantage, that's in our corner, and so if we're making the choice, ok, great, then how do I, as an arts organization, help fill in that knowledge gap? The fact that people already want to learn, that is that's so helpful to us. So then it's like we kind of have to. It takes a lot of empathy. We have to go back to kind of what was square one for us, what made that piece of music interesting in the first place when we first learned about it? What was the fact about that composer's life? That when we Like all those things, it's like okay, yeah, go in the way back machine for ourselves and think through like yeah, that's those moments that we did have. Like, how do we help bring that to others?
Elizabeth Bowman:That's great advice, because there are so many stories about the composers. When you were a music student reading about them, you talked about them with your friends and thought it was hilarious or tragic or a lot of tragedy in there, but yeah, a lot of tragedy.
Elizabeth Bowman:Let's move to data, because this is a problem in the arts, where arts organizations aren't necessarily sure how to dissect the data or use the data. I feel like AI is going to be very helpful soon in terms of figuring out and reading this for arts marketers. But tell me a little bit about data. I know you're big on data-driven decisions.
Aubrey Bergauer:I think the more I learn about data within our field, whether it's at the organizational level and the organizations I've worked for or I read research at a more macro level, or even more macro, like workplace trends or things like that that affect all of us inside and outside the arts, no matter what, I guess level of granularity is what I'm trying to say. I feel like I'm betting on a winning horse, right Like the data is what helps inform the decisions I make, and we're in an industry where you know, we're having to try new things, we're having to adapt. The world around us is changing so much and I don't know about you, but I don't want to guess. I don't want to guess at what I need to do. I really would like an indicator of what's going to work, and so for me, that's it big reason why I'm always, always following the research and the data, and then I think the other piece of it is good.
Aubrey Bergauer:Data starts with a question often too, and so I think for organizations listening, you know, there tends to be this I don't know tendency where we think we need like all the data or all the things are like you go to a board meeting, and it's definitely been true for me in the past. You present a few data points and then there's thirst for more and they want all the metrics and all the things. And it's like, okay, okay, okay, I cannot spend my whole day pulling reports like we got to figure out, like what are the key metrics we're going to look at and what data do we prioritize? Right, so I think that's part of some of the confusion or overwhelm that there is a lot out there. So how do we parse it all out?
Elizabeth Bowman:For me, that's where it starts with, at least. It either starts with a good question or starts with like, trying to find an indicator of like. What's the winning strategy here? What are the key performance metrics that arts organizations often overlook or should really be tracking?
Aubrey Bergauer:There are, I think, five that I recommend. We could go more, but I would all say five for now. I'll talk through just a few of them. But the reason I say five is like, if you can count it, on one hand, that is simple, and you just heard me say, like let's try to avoid the overwhelm. Data begets a thirst for more data, like all of that. Like that's all fine, but okay, let's just keep it simple. So let's see a couple metrics within those five I really recommend for arts organizations.
Aubrey Bergauer:First is look at your website. Google Analytics data new website visitors versus returning website visitors this is like one of the basic built-in reports for Google Analytics. So few organizations look at this. Talk about fundamental and baseline. So few organizations look at this. It's so baseline, and every time I work with an organization and they look this up, it's like mind-blown emoji because and this was true for me in my own experience too when I first looked at the data on this, it is something like 72%.
Aubrey Bergauer:75% of website visitors over the past year are new. Not like new first-time ticket buyers, like new, never been to yourorganizationorg before. And it's like what? 75% or whatever the number is, it's like this vast majority. So when I first realized that and then started seeing that replicated at other organizations, I was like, okay, that says so much about like it marries the previous conversation we were just having of like who is visiting our websites and what are we putting on those websites to meet those people? Where they are, they're brand new, they're not subscribers, they're not donors, they're mostly brand new people. So that's a big one where I'm like start there, just know what the website traffic is new versus returning visitors.
Aubrey Bergauer:And then one other. Maybe I'll give you two more, just because now I can't help myself. But another is first time buyer retention rate. This is one that for most organizations it's up to 90% of first time attendees never come back. So we say as an industry oh, we need new audiences, we need younger audiences. But the reality is and the data show nationwide it actually, and beyond the US as well, that arts organizations, in particular classical music organizations, are actually quite good at getting new audiences. We sell hundreds of thousands of tickets to new audiences every year and when up to 90% of them are not returning, that's not a new audience problem, that's a retention problem. The reason I say first timers is because if we don't get a first timer to come back, none of the rest of the relationship can develop. We can't get subscribers if they don't return again. We can't eventually get them to donate if they're only coming once and never again. So that's why that particular segment and data point is so important.
Aubrey Bergauer:And then one more, just because this was another one, that for me, was a real mind blowing moment. Everybody looks at their subscription renewal data. What's your subscriber renewal percentage? The data point I want to suggest is break out first year subscribers from everybody else, because the first year subscriber renewal rate is so much lower than everybody else, and once I realized that that, oh, you have to treat your first year subscribers a little bit differently and how you try to renew them Talk about money on the other side of that Like that really was like a game changer for me. So, anyways, there's a few I could go on and on, but of just like some metrics, some key performance indicators, those are three good ones.
Elizabeth Bowman:That's really helpful when I think of the new users on websites and that also indicates that a lot of people are going to that website and not necessarily returning to that website. So the same thing with the whole retention thing. So you want to figure out ways to get that audience to continuously check your website. And it makes me think of the New York Times genius Wordle, the game you know you can spend well I think you can do it free but you play Wordle. A lot of people play Wordle and the various games on there and you can pay $6 for a game membership and have access to like three articles or something, but it keeps you going back to the New York Times brand over and over again.
Elizabeth Bowman:And then, because my husband works at the Met, so I think about the Met Opera a lot. I think you know they have the Met Opera quiz that they've had forever, like for forever, and I was thinking like their app should have a daily quiz on it, maybe even like five questions that are multiple choice, and then people might go back and then have the option to share it, just like Wordle, and maybe people will catch on and go back. And also it's like an education thing, because if they have that multiple choice, it's fun. They're educating their audience and then they're getting people to go back to the app over and over and over again. I want to see more arts organizations playing around with strategies that are obviously working. For these bigger organizations that have the money behind them, like the New York Times, yeah.
Aubrey Bergauer:I love this. I think for me with New York Times, it's cooking, right, and it's like I'm always looking at the recipes and I'm following their recipes on Instagram and it's like but it's the New York Times and the reason I mentioned this and the portal is an excellent example too it's like for a long time I was like why are they doing this? Why is the New York Times investing in a game? Why is the New York Times investing in a? And then I realized it's this exact concept. They're keeping people engaged. That's why they, as a media company, they are faring better than many of the others right now. And just to put a finer point on it, like what you're saying about the Met, could they do the quiz? It's like, yes, and then that marries the previous point of helping fill in that knowledge gap. But then I go even farther beyond like not just an opera quiz. Okay, here's what I just learned. I got to show this.
Aubrey Bergauer:You know those candlelight concerts. People like roll their eyes. The candlelight concerts, right, but okay, this is not an endorsement for them. But what I just learned is that company also runs the accounts like Secret New York, secret San Francisco. If you know these accounts where it's like all about like restaurants and whatever else is going on in the city and I was like no-transcript. And there are those other platforms like come to the candlelight concerts, right, but it's also like they're a curator of all kinds of other call it entertainment, cultural and the broadest sense of the word experiences. That's what I think an arts organization should do. I know somebody's listening and being like Aubrey who has the time for that, but I, but just as a concept I think so interesting of like not just about the New York Times, it's not just about the art on stage, it's like this whole ecosystem to be a part of.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, in your book you talk about building vertically in terms of business systems. It really made a lot of sense, the vertical building, and maybe you could just touch on that because it sort of relates to this topic.
Aubrey Bergauer:Yeah, totally does relate. So great job connecting those things. So vertical integration is when a company brings in-house facets of the business that used to not be in-house, so kind of. The classic example of this is Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie originally made his fortune with the railroads, but then he eventually owned the mines where they mined the ore to produce the steel, and then eventually he developed a training program for the people working on the railroads that eventually became Carnegie Mellon All these different things. He's bringing under one roof more facets of the business.
Aubrey Bergauer:A modern day example is Amazon. They are the masters of this today. Amazon used to have delivery through UPS or whoever they brought that under. That's called Prime. They used to have delivery, you know, through UPS or whoever they brought that under. That's called prime. They used to have their website hosted somewhere else. They brought that under their roof. We call that Amazon Web Services. Now they used to only sell other people's products. Now they sell their own. That's called Amazon basics. Right, and there's I forget, there's more and more things and it's like, okay, that's what they keep doing is it's bringing things under their roof, and why is? Because revenue. So this idea of vertical integration.
Aubrey Bergauer:For an arts organization, the question becomes what is not under our roof now that is part of this broader ecosystem, we're a part of that. We could bring under our roof and monetize. Education is a huge, huge opportunity for that. So many arts organizations have education for children and that's fine. It's fine as long as it's funded, is kind of my quick take on that. Sometimes, if you're losing money on it, I'm like, okay, that's a different problem to solve. But there's grant fundings or donors or whatever. But what about adult education? We just had a whole conversation about adults want to learn, adults want help curating their experience, adults want all these things and it's like you can charge for that. And then there are examples in the book of organizations who have and so now that's a new revenue stream.
Aubrey Bergauer:Adult education, smart adults who either want music appreciation or adults who want to learn how to play an instrument. So often in our industry the way we think about it is if you want to learn an instrument, you have to do it growing up, and then if you want to get good at it, you have to go to conservatory or similar type higher ed program. There's not a lot of opportunity to really dedicate yourself to pursuing, to learning an instrument outside of that. And so there are I talked about in the book several musicians, including musicians at the Metropolitan Opera, musicians at the LA Phil. So we're talking major, major, world class musicians who have figured this out and have online programs that scale. We're not talking private lessons, we're talking online programs that scale and serve tons of people.
Aubrey Bergauer:I think about that. It's just one example of, yeah, this idea of adult education, whether, like I said, whether it's like an appreciation class or history class or that kind of thing, or this learning to play an instrument, and you can go on and on with all the different ways we can serve adults, but just education alone, I think, is such an opportunity for us with this vertical integration piece.
Elizabeth Bowman:Well, it also educates the audience, which makes the actual going to the concerts more enjoyable, and the likelihood of them being donors is much higher if they're involved in that way. So not only are you having them invest in a course, then next thing you know they're investing in you. So it's absolutely perfect. I'm sure that's why it's in your book. It's a perfect circle, it's like compound interest.
Aubrey Bergauer:This is my new thing. I'm like it's like compound interest because, yes, it's the revenue stream, as you just said. And as you just said, yeah, people want more than, and that then matches the data and research I share in another chapter on the membership economy. And what you just said is they want different types of content. They wanted the adult education class and they want to see what's on stage and that paradigm. Right there. There are two different types of content. One consumes Like. This is the model now Netflix wears by. If you watch a romantic comedy and a documentary two different types of content you are way, way more likely to stick with your Netflix subscription. So, anyways, I'm getting all excited and hyper over here because I'm like, yes, yes, elizabeth, you get it, you totally get it.
Elizabeth Bowman:So this is why you're on the podcast, because it's fun to chat about these things. So, speaking of scaling, online teaching and that kind of thing, I wanted to ask you about digital in terms of what arts organizations can offer. Today, now that we're back in live performances and not in the pandemic live stream circuit, a lot of arts organizations have stopped with the importance of the live stream. Tell me about your thoughts on that.
Aubrey Bergauer:I think the pandemic forced us to make this. What now is a wrong substitution. Like streaming is a product substitute and that's like it had to be. For a period of time we had to do that. That's not true now. It's not a product substitute and so those things are not in competition with each other. So that's thought one. Thought two is all of our content, digital content, whether it's streaming or social media content or any other content like a podcast or blog or anything else. All of that digital content is meant to really stimulate interest in the product, which feeds the funnel. Okay, that's a lot of kind of like marketing jargon, but like it goes back to that education piece. People want to learn. Our digital content helps us do that and then people want more and it's on us as marketers at the organization to provide the steps for them to do that. Basically driving people to transaction. In the book I talk about digital content, driving the analog purchase. That's the playbook on that that we want to employ. So how does streaming fit into this? So, like I said, not a product substitute.
Aubrey Bergauer:I also think that organizations also pandemic kind of forced this too. We wrongfully think we got to stream it all or give it all away. We do not need to stream a live stream a three hour opera. The Met charges for this and the Met is one of the few brands that is truly a global brand of an arts organization the Met in Berlin. Phil, they can charge everybody else. I think it's harder to charge because the brand isn't global. But that also doesn't mean you have to give the whole farm away for free either.
Aubrey Bergauer:I'm a big proponent of that. Like I'm here to make money so we can fund our art. So where does that leave us? So I think organizations should stream, a little like let's give people the appetizer, so they want the entree, kind of a thing. Can we stream 10 minutes? Can we stream the overture? Can we stream? You know, I don't know. Pick something. If people want more, great, we have a vehicle for that. It's called buy a ticket. So that's really how I feel about that.
Aubrey Bergauer:And then I just want to mention the piece, because I get this all the time is how do we pay for a piece? This is something I just think as an industry we have to sort out, because it is very expensive to stream. I know this. Anybody who's worked in arts management knows this, I think in the early days when these contracts were made, the idea was that it could be another revenue stream, so that makes sense.
Aubrey Bergauer:Let's pay the musicians more if we're making more money from this. Like I said, I think there's only a couple brands globally that actually can successfully monetize their digital products that way. So for almost everybody else, then I really think there needs to be a collective understanding that no, we're not going to give it all away for free, and if the job of this digital content is to move people to the analog purchase, not charge for it, then that just changes the equation of how do we pay, and so what I want is for artists to get paid, but it's more of a question of when, like, if we use the digital content, be the analog machine, grow the audiences, grow the whole pipeline, then everybody gets paid more, and I am here for that any day of the week.
Elizabeth Bowman:During the pandemic. I really enjoyed the shorter concerts that were done in when I was working in Stuttgart, the state orchestra. There we had these noon hour once a week concerts that were done by the orchestra members on rotation, once a week concerts that were done by the orchestra members on rotation. It was very straightforward and I feel like conservatories could easily rotate students through. They could have 20 minute concerts even throughout the year where you get to know the students that are in those programs. They can talk a little bit, they can perform a little bit and then it's over and that student then has marketing material. They have a recording, it's all packaged and it's a complement to the conservatory's marketing material. So everyone wins.
Aubrey Bergauer:I think it's a complement to their musical training too. I mean, that's a whole other tangent of like. How do we teach our musicians today, like the ones coming up through these programs in these schools, that in 2025, you got to do more than play your instrument really well, like it's just more that's required of you to be a successful and the broadest definition of that word musician today?
Elizabeth Bowman:Speaking of community engagement, I love this question because it seems like the most important thing is figuring out how to engage with the specific community that you're in when you go into arts organizations and talk to them about this. What are your main suggestions?
Aubrey Bergauer:One of the first suggestions is well, who's on the staff? You want to serve your community better? What does that look like on your team? And board, too, is a piece of that, and the artist for sure as well. It's just slower to change, harder to change. We're talking about an orchestra. The chairs do not open, the positions do not open at the same rate as they would on staff, for example, or when recruiting for a board where there's no cap.
Aubrey Bergauer:So I start looking at who's making decisions and what does that body of people look like? The community? That's a different answer than yeah, but we programmed for Black History Month. That's a really different answer. And yes, we should be representative in our programming as well. And in some ways that's an easier place to start, because any of us in programming decision-making roles can absolutely make those kind of representative choices.
Aubrey Bergauer:But for me, if somebody truly wants to represent their community, truly wants to engage their community, then you cannot have all homogenous people making decisions about your organization's work. The equation doesn't work that way. So the more I have personally worked on like how do I source the best talent from the full spectrum of talent available on stage, off stage, in the boardroom, the more I've like worked on that, dug up the research on that, applied it in my own work, the more I've just been so I don't know I was gonna say pleasantly surprised, maybe fulfilled, just blown away that like, oh my gosh. Yes, this is what it looks like when people aren't just like me. Better decisions, better ideas, more diversity of thought all the things that the research shows really lead to better results in our ranks.
Elizabeth Bowman:Definitely that makes total sense and I like that because it's very malleable and it can heighten the skills of anyone on the team and it gives people voices who are there who might not think that their obsession with yoga is of any importance to someone, or they're really good at curling, yeah. Yeah, who knows I love it? Are there? Yeah, okay, I'll stop. Um, anyway, aubrey, do you have anything else you want to say about your, your book or what you're doing next? What's next?
Aubrey Bergauer:is a question I'm asking myself a lot these days, so I can't. I don't have an answer for that. I'm really thinking, yeah, what is what is next serving the field more, better, different ways? I'll just say on the book. I'm really thinking, yeah, what is next Serving the field more, better, different ways? I'll just say on the book. I'm really grateful for the response we started talking about. You know, there was an ask for this like what's the playbook?
Aubrey Bergauer:And then, as I'm hearing from more and more people and organizations who are like, yes, this makes sense and I can see myself doing it. And I'm like, yes, what good is it if nobody sees themselves doing it? So doing it. And I'm like, yes, what good is it if nobody sees themselves doing it? So that part, I think, just to see these strategies proliferating throughout our industry, I'm like, okay, you guys, I talk about changing the narrative. That's my whole brand. I'm like, I think it's happening like not to be so, pollyanna, but I believe it can and I definitely see in bits that it is happening and that's amazing.
Elizabeth Bowman:Well, thank you so much for all the work you're doing for the arts community in the States and globally, because I'm sure arts leaders all over the world will read your book and be influenced by it. Thanks for being in the scene room today. Thank you so much for having me.
