Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance

Breakfast Club: Engaging Teens - Dec. 8

Throughout the region, arts and cultural organizations have been finding innovative ways to engage and inspire young audiences.  Most of these efforts have been geared toward younger children however, while the older, teenage population tends to get ignored. Often times, teens’ interests are lumped into the same category as children, when really they should be treated as a separate and unique constituency.  

Figuring out what types of programming and marketing will appeal to teens can be quite a challenge.  As arts organizations then, why should we pour our efforts into serving a demographic that can be so difficult to connect with? How can we create experiences that are more enticing and engaging to teens? What are some of the keys to turning young audiences into loyal patrons now and into the future?

Join us for the next Breakfast Club as we seek answers to these questions and learn best practices from other arts organizations through four selected readings:  

  • Strategy for winning young audiences: pipeline vs. parallel?, by Peter Linett
  • Holly Aresnault on engaging young audiences, by Holly Aresnault
  • Museums and Teenagers: Care and Feeding,  by Judith H. Dobrzynski
  • Marketing to Young Audiences, by Leslie Ribovich

This session will provide an opportunity to discuss ways we can offer experiences that better connect with teens, that are relevant and inviting, and that even allow teens to come together as a community to help brainstorm new ideas for youth programming.

All Breakfast Club attendees are asked to read the readings in advance of the session and to come prepared to discuss them.  A link to download the readings will be included in your event registration confirmation.

Breakfast Clubs are supported by The Wallace Foundation and The Philadelphia Foundation and are a program of the Cultural Alliance’s research and marketing initiative Engage 2020. Engage 2020 is sponsored by a lead grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, with additional support from The Wallace Foundation and The Philadelphia Foundation.

Figuring out what types of programming and marketing will appeal to teens can be quite a challenge. How can we create experiences that are more enticing and engaging to teens? What are some of the keys to turning young audiences into loyal patrons now and into the future?