Audiences and Planning

Please email us at beinghuman@sas.ac.uk if you would like to receive the link for the recording of this session.

What are the most effective ways you can plan for your upcoming festival activity? This training session will provide a useful checklist of practical considerations as you continue to develop your public engagement events, with a particular focus on audiences. The training will consider how, through canvassing preferences and requirements using a variety of different means, your audience can help to inform the content and approaches prior to the event, at any stage of its development.

Pulling from examples in the arts, cultural and heritage sectors, this training will showcase best practice examples of activity planning with a focus on the intended audience, and how audience engagement can help to shape activity content and delivery. The session will also include the opportunity to share with other event organisers your collective experiences so far of how you have involved, or intend to involve, your audience in the planning process.

This free online session is the first in our newly redeveloped training programme. This session is aimed primarily at this year’s Being Human Festival organisers (and those still thinking of getting involved), as well as those interested in public engagement in the humanities. Throughout, there will be opportunities to discuss best practice in public engagement with research and how to create events and activities that will appeal to your intended audiences.

This session will be led by Mark Johnson and Anna Salaman.

Anna Salaman

Anna Salaman is a Cultural Heritage Learning Consultant with 30 years of experience working in museums, cultural venues and hands-on spaces, nationally and internationally. Her practice includes developing and delivering programmes, interpretation, evaluation and visitor research for a wide range of venues, ensuring that content meets the preferences and requirements of target audiences.

Mark Johnson

Mark is Public Engagement and Festival Manager at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Mark has previously worked in engagement and events teams at King’s College London and UCL, as well as roles in museums and galleries including the Science Museum and The Whitworth.

Joining the event

This event is free, but booking is required. It will be held online and joining details will be circulated via email to registered attendees.

This event is part of a series of Being Human Festival training sessions exploring public engagement with research. Keep an eye on the Being Human website for upcoming sessions taking place later in the year. We hope to record this session. If you would like to receive a link to the recording, please sign up for the session to receive the recording link once it is available.

Accessibility information

This session will be held on Zoom and closed captioning will be available. Any resources referred to during the session will be circulated afterwards via email. Please make a note of any accessibility requirements in the booking form.