Meanland: Developing online audiences


Lisa Dempster, Director of the Emerging Writers’ Festival, joins Meanland online (and at great expense) from the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair with some great advice on how an arts organisation might best become an online digital hub for the community it serves.

Very briefly below are the five key points Lisa covers in her discussion, but if you’d rather hear and see Lisa talk than read a list go right ahead and hit that big ol’ play button on the video below.

1. Bring your audience together
2. Encourage and facilitate discussion
3. Get to know your audience and introduce them to each other
4. Create meaningful events where your audience can participate as experts
5. Digital engagement doesn’t just happen online


Lisa Dempster

Lisa Dempster is the Director of the Emerging Writers' Festival, and creator and Director of its EWFonline stream of online literary programming. Lisa is a professional writer and editor. Her titles include the travel narrative Neon Pilgrim and vegetarian review book The Australian Veg Food Guide. As the publisher at Vignette Press she created the successful sub-cultural journal the Sex and Death Mooks.

More by Lisa Dempster ›

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  1. Hi Lisa,

    Great stuff! I particularly like your observation that our audiences/participants are often experts or creatives in their own right. There’s something really amazing about seeing someone develop from a ‘beginner’ in the audience to an ‘expert’ on a panel etc – it creates a very special feeling and authenticity to any creative community, hey.

    Is this your first ever video blog? It’s awesome – you’re a natural 🙂

    Cheers,
    Meg

  2. Thank you Meg! I agree with what you say about expert audiences above, and I can’t stress enough how key it has been in making EWF as successful as we are. I personally have been fostered by the EWF over the years and in turn as Director have tried to extend the same opportunities to our audience; it has made a huge difference to the festival’s sense of identity and community. It’s so vital yet so overlooked by many orgs, and the digital space makes it very simple to begin implementing…

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