93-821 Marketing and Audience Engagement
12 units, Carnegie Mellon University
The success of arts and cultural institutions in the 21st century and beyond will depend upon creative, unconventional and coordinated long-range approaches to communicating with their stakeholders. Communication is a core activity of any arts enterprise. External Relations frames and holds together the brand of all stakeholder communications across earned and contributed income streams (marketing = earned; development = contributed). Today's communication professionals are crucial to their arts organizations; they maintain existing audiences, secure new audiences, create future donors, and create the brand for the institution. They interact with all aspects of the organization, from personnel to fundraising. This course provides readings and professional presentations to guide the understanding of successful marketing and communication, while following a project-based method to allow students to investigate hands-on the opportunities addressing the changes within the arts audience and the shifting digital landscape for marketing the arts in the United States. The focus of the course is marketing and communications within a nonprofit arts organization, while recognizing that the audience doesn't typically distinguish the difference; yet, due to budget and purpose, marketing not-for-profit arts organizations is significantly different as compared to a for-profit entertainment venture. This course will provide each student with marketing principles and theories as well as opportunities to actualize theories with assignments and a final project utilizing current technologies. The course requires active, practical engagement and intellectual rigor.
Prerequisites: none listed
Offered: Spring 2027, Spring 2026
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