Getting Millennials to Attend Arts Events

Music organizations are among those who are thinking hard about how to attract millennials to their events.  (By the way, millenials represent the generation born between the early 1980st and the early 2000s.)   Articles on this topic are popping up frequently, and Thomas Cott recently devoted an edition of his popular daily “You’ve Cott Mail” email newsletter to this topic.

Cott included a couple of articles that I found particularly interesting, which I have linked below:

The first lists a few strategies to make your event more appealing to young millennials, such as crafting a full-evening experience, letting audience members use social media during parts of the evening, and keeping the quality of the art very high but also relevant to the audience.  The second piece argues for face-to-face interaction with millennials when promoting your event, such as having event participants or creators speak to local college classes about the upcoming production.

Have other ideas for getting millennials in the door?

About the author

Stephen Danyew
Stephen Danyew

Steve Danyew is a composer, saxophonist, teacher, and arts administrator based in Rochester, NY. Danyew composes works for chamber ensembles, large instrumental ensembles, choirs and more, and currently serves as Managing Editor of Polyphonic.org. His music has been hailed as “startlingly beautiful” and “undeniably well crafted and communicative” by the Miami Herald, and has been praised as possessing “sensitivity, skill and tremendous sophistication” by the Kansas City Independent. Steve received a B.M. cum laude, Pi Kappa Lambda from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami and holds an M.M. in Composition and Certificate in Arts Leadership from the Eastman School of Music.