Boost Your Fall Arts Event: Apply for Marketing Support Today!
Arts and cultural organizations in the Greater Pittsburgh region can apply for in-kind marketing support this fall as part of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council’s community marketing initiative.
Our research has found marketing to be one of the top five challenges for local arts organizations, with 56% of respondents to our Arts Community Survey identifying it as a "very significant" or "extremely significant" challenge, especially those with low budgets.
Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Hillman Foundation, the Arts Council’s campaign is designed to assist organizations in need of marketing support and to encourage local participation in arts events. In Allegheny County, our research shows that arts and culture attendance remains approximately 21% down when compared to pre-pandemic levels.
We want to help bring your audiences back.
This year’s campaign will kick off with two months of promotional support to help boost attendance at your events this fall. This support will include a mix of paid media ads, printed materials, and inclusion in the Arts Council’s weekly events blogs. A second iteration of the campaign will be announced in Spring 2025.
Submit your events occurring between October 1 and December 15, 2024 for consideration for our fall campaign by September 13, 2024: Application for Fall Marketing Support
Eligibility:
- Must be an arts or cultural organization in Allegheny, Beaver, Greene, or Washington counties. (Our coverage is defined by the areas we serve as a PA Partner in the Arts.)
- Submitted events must be arts and culture adjacent. (This includes visual arts, concerts, performing arts, literary arts, and film.)
- Only one event submission per organization will be accepted as part of the campaign. (Organizations can, however, submit an unlimited number of events for inclusion in our weekly events blogs at any time throughout the year.)
- Priority for paid advertisements will be given to organizations with annual budgets of less than $250,000, LGBTQ-led organizations, and/or BIPOC-led organizations. (The Arts Council defines a BIPOC-led organization as one where 51% of leadership and/or staff identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color.)
- Events must occur between October 1 and December 15, 2024. Events that are still being planned may be submitted, but please provide as much information as possible.
What’s New This Year
In the past, the Arts Council has provided promotional support for local events through Artsburgh, a free events website. But while this platform served the community well at the time of its launch, we’ve decided to end our contract with Artsburgh based on feedback from regional arts organizations, arts patrons, and findings of our recent strategic planning process.
To be fully transparent, the website was no longer being heavily used by arts patrons, and we don’t want to waste your time submitting your events to a website that’s no longer working.
Instead, we’ve shifted our efforts to better serve our community. We’ve expanded our weekly events blogs to provide free promotional support to a wider range of arts and culture happenings every week. We’re also in the early stages of building a brand-new, more holistic arts service platform and database that will feature a broader range of services, estimated to launch by the end of 2025. In the meantime, stay tuned! We also will be transitioning the Artsburgh name and branding to another new initiative that will launch with our Spring 2025 campaign.
Questions? Reach out to Lisa Cunningham, Director of Marketing and Communications, at lcunningham@pittsburghartscouncil.org