Please help me avoid “preaching to the choir”

I’m a 63 year old, white, male, middle class, bi, theatrically British and relatively well connected, Guardian headline reading, Radio 4 listening, champion of new work and new producers.  I know people who are younger than me, queerer than me, and people of a different class, gender and cultural identity. I know people who are more internet savvy and digitally native BUT…when I write/shout out, I am likely to reach just those in my bubble.

I know that, were I promoting a virus, my task would be to help it hop from my particular host species or community and find a new species or host to infect. My virus (or marketing message) will then reach a new community and keep spreading to infect (or inspire) new hosts (readers/audience) beyond my own.

So this is why I ask for your help.  To use producer Joanna Morley’s terms, I want to talk to the ‘change audience’ not the ‘reflected audience’. I want to reach those people who don’t reflect my demographic and attitudes. I want to reach those who are different from me / changed from me.

But why ?  Well I believe the world needs to hear new stories told by different storytellers and championed by producers who think differently and break through the traditional barriers and norms or the theatre industry.  I am not that change. I am too old, white and middle class.  I am one of those people who could get in the way of progress. But I am leading a series of programmes which are designed for a diverse community of creatives to consume, change and share.

For the moment I can only talk to the audience I have, you the reader. But maybe you could help me sing out to a new generation of potential theatremakers and creative producers ?

• I need to find one or two people who are willing to shout out about the programme I offer with Producers’ Pool and the Diploma in Creative Producing, so that their voice is reaching a new audience in a new country, different demographic, or alternative way of thinking.
• I need to find one or two voices who, when they speak, many new generations of creative practitioners listen. Honest ‘influencers’ of a different demographic.
• I need to find new ways to reach the next generation of creatives digitally, beyond my Facebook, Twitter and Linked In followers and their friends.
• I need a writer/journal that will take my ‘good news’ story and spread it to a different readership, giving the work we are doing a bit of validity and gravitas.

Strangely I know how to do this when selling a show. For 45 years I have been finding ‘message pathways’ to reach audiences who are not like me. Sometimes I have managed it, sometimes I have been less successful and the audience looks a lot like me (or indeed never shows up).  I have taught marketing for 20 years. I know the theory and the practice. But at the moment I realise I need a few people to appear before me who will spread my message into a new direction.

Anyone out there who might be up for infecting/inspiring a new community of listeners, please get in touch.

Thanks so much