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how about surveying your target audience?

just finished helping to open a facility called 'artspace' here in shreveport.  we're small, about 21,000 square feet. this is our third weekend of ops and its still way to early to tell what kind of attendence we'll have.

my biggest single regret as a consultant to the project was i didn't press harder for the informal survey i had outlined.  the results of such a survey (my intention was to get samples from several different locations where we thought our visitors might likely go - such as a bookstore, the mall, etc.)

while i doubt it would have given definitive answers, it would have at least allowed us a baseline for our assumptions.

the main questions i was trying to answer:

did they know who and where we were?
what would be their response to a range of admission prices?
How often did they go to cultural institutions? and where?
Did they have any response to our decision to locate downtown? (the end of downtown we are on is less frequented than other parts.)
Did they think our first exhibit (Peter Pan turns 100 this year) was exciting?
Did they like our ideas for the second exhibit?
etc.

again, i wasn't trying to be definitive, just trying to establish a baseline.

its hard as heck to get people who have lived and breathed these new projects, bringing them to fruition to think anything other than what they're doing is the most important thing in the world.  bringing them to a realistic assessment is in the institutions best long term interest.

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