NORTHERN EXPOSURE CONFERENCE
OCTOBER 9 – 11, 2015
WELLS, BC
Thursday, October 8
7pm to 9 pm – Registration and Pre-Conference
Reception – IMA Gallery, 2323 Pooley Street
Friday, October 9
8:00 am to 9:00 am – Registration- Wells Community Hall
9:00 am to 3:00 pm
Professional Development Workshop - Audience
Development: A roadmap to engaged audiences and
vibrant communities presented by Inga Petri (lunch
included)
Inga has been helping performing arts organizations across Canada develop and implement
practical, hands-on approaches to solving their most pressing concerns. In this session, Inga will
guide participants through presentation, conversation and practical exercises toward their own
roadmap of effective audience development practices.
Much of the conversation in audience development revolves around understanding motivators
and barriers to attendance. Presenters have embraced the concept of audience engagement to
offer important entry points to artistic experiences. More recently, presenters have turned to
understanding the need to shape the patron experience from beginning to end.
In this workshop, we will explore what you can do so your audiences and your community truly
care about you; and what you can do to show that you love your audience back.
The morning session will briefly share key study findings and focus on an interactive discussion
of implications for:
 marketing and messaging – breaking down the process in 5 easy steps
 understanding the dynamics of the purchase decision making
 how to lead audiences to new artistic experiences
 a redefinition of markets
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
honing your sales and your marketing mind sets
The afternoon session will focus on the practical implications of lessons learned on building
vibrant communities through the performing arts:
 authentic relationships and building a cohesive reputation
 building resilient organizations through engaged audiences
 the role of community-engaged partnerships
Throughout the day, participants will collaborate to weave together these data-driven insights
with their own stories to draw a new canvas for local and collective action. Participants will
develop their own roadmap to engaged audiences and vibrant communities. All participants will
receive a handout package that includes easily customizable marketing strategy and
communications planning templates.
Other outcomes of this professional development day include:
 Learn how you can use the Value of Presenting study within your own organization, with
your audience and in your community.
 Tell a compelling story about the importance of performing arts presenting in your
community.
 Be better prepared to adapt to and lead change.
3:30 to 5:00 pm – Continuing the conversation one-on-one with Inga Petri
Participants are invited to bring some of their own marketing materials, questions or any
concerns about audience development, marketing and communications for one-on-one review,
feedback and approaches to addressing issues or finding new solutions in your context.
4 to 7 pm – Registration and Photo booth (photos will be used during “Let’s Get Connected”
networking to kick off the conference)
Dinner available at local restaurants.
7 pm to 9 pm – Welcome reception at the Sunset Theatre and artist showcases
Saturday, October 10
8:00 am to 9:00 am – Registration- Wells Community Hall
9:00 am to 9:15 am – Coffee and Continental Breakfast – Wells Community Hall
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9:15 to 9:30 am – Welcome
9:30 am to 10:45 am Let’s Get Connected. Facilitated by Inga Petri
Networking opportunity for all delegates. Please Note: you must have your picture taken at the
registration desk to fully participate.
You will have an opportunity to meet people engaged in the performing arts from rural
communities throughout the province and beyond. Get ready to share information about:
• who you are and what you do
• your hopes and dreams
• what you’re seeking
• what you have to offer
This information will be posted—creating a Living Wall that can grow and evolve throughout the
conference and contribute to building our networks.
11:00 to 12:30 – Co-creating a Culture of Place, Keynote by Inga Petri
The Value of Presenting: A Study of Performing Arts Presentation in Canada - commissioned by
the Canadian Arts Presenting Association (CAPACOA) and regional presenting networks - has
been deepening the conversation about the role of the presenter within the performing arts
ecosystem, in communities and in society at large.
Through this landmark study we have learned that performing arts organizations - and especially
those in small, rural and remote communities - are expert at forging diverse partnerships that
serve common goals and create social connection, reinforce a sense of place and enhance
quality of life in communities.
Inga will weave together lessons from The Value of Presenting in a powerful narrative focused
on evolving vibrant communities fuelled by the performing arts and its community-engaged
partnerships.
She will highlight compelling stories of community-engaged performing arts partnerships by
drawing on her experiences with arts presenters and festivals from remote Nunavut to rural PEI,
from the Yukon to Ontario. In so doing, she will address common concerns about the artsecosystem, audiences and sustainable organizations.
This keynote will be a dynamic conversation where participants are encouraged to share
comments, reflections and questions.
12:30 to 2 pm – Lunch and Conversation; artist showcases
2:15pm – 3:30pm – Concurrent Session – Cultural Tourism with Inga Petri – Wells Community
Hall
Cultural tourism has been identified as one of Canada’s greatest opportunities to grow bottom
line results for the tourism industry and generate new economic benefits in communities large
and small.
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Despite its cultural tourism potential Canada continues to be perceived first and foremost as a
nature and wilderness destination.
In this dynamic presentation, Inga will outline how a vibrant and diverse arts, heritage and
culture sector can play a vital role in broadening and deepening your area’s appeal as a tourism
destination. She will highlight approaches to encouraging and capitalizing on this next wave of
tourism. From building authentic cultural experiences grounded in what makes your area special
to a results-oriented framework for building new kinds of tourism collaborations with the arts,
heritage and culture sector, Inga will offer practical solutions for how you can attract more highvalue visitors from across Canada, the USA and beyond.
This presentation will lead into conversations by participants about how tourism operators and
the arts, heritage and culture sector can collaborate in offering compelling cultural tourism
experiences and positioning BC’s rural interior as a premier cultural tourism destination.
2:15 – 3:30pm – – Concurrent Session – Workshop – Working with Sound with McKillican
Productions – Sunset Theatre
This hands-on workshop will be beneficial both for artists and presenters. Learn the basic Do’s
and Don’ts of working with amplified sound.
3:45 pm to 5 pm – Networking in the Round: Reflections and Insights so far. Facilitated by Inga
Petri
Using a dynamic roundtable format, delegates will meet and discuss their pressing concerns,
hopes and dreams, and share insights with each other about their work in the arts.
5:00 pm to 6:00 pm – Meet the showcasing artists & Tasting by the Barkerville Brewing
Company
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm – Dinner and Conversation, Wells Hotel
7:30 pm – Showcases at Sunset Theatre and Wells Hotel Pub
Sunday, October 11 - Barkerville
Location for Sunday: Barkerville Conference Room
9 to 9:15 am – Coffee and Continental Breakfast
9:15 to 10:30 am – Inspire: Sharing our Stories – Presenter’s Panel with Julie Fowler, ArtsWells
Festival/Island Mountain Arts; Carla Stephenson, Tiny Lights Festival; Karen Jeffery, Sunset
Theatre; Deb Beaton Smith, Rifflandia/Music BC/Break Out West. Facilitated by Inga Petri.
Each presenter will give a 3-minute visual presentation to share an inspiring story of impact of
the arts on individuals or their community. These presentations will lead into an interactive
conversation amongst panelists and delegates on the opportunities and initiatives of shaping
their communities and contributing to quality of life, health and well-being through the arts.
Julie Fowler, ArtsWells Festival & Island Mountain Arts
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Currently working as Executive Director of the Island Mountain Arts Society in Wells, BC, Julie
has been studying, working and organizing in the arts for the last eighteen years. Passionate
about finding ways to celebrate and promote artists, she has helped to create two awardwinning festivals, both featuring a range of artistic mediums from performance to visual arts:
the Art Matters Festival at Concordia University in Montreal (where she also received her BFA in
Art History in 2001), which won the province-wide Forces Avenir Award for best university
project in the arts for its first season and is now going into its 15th season; and the ArtsWells
Festival Of All Things Art, which began in 2004 and is now the largest arts event in the Cariboo
with over 2000 people converging in Wells on the August Long Weekend each year. Along with
the ArtsWells Festival, Island Mountain Arts runs a Public Gallery, School of the Arts, which
includes the Toni Onley Artists’ Project and the International Harp School, and the a new ArtistIn-Residence program. Julie graduated with an Interdisciplinary MFA from the University of
British Columbia, Okanagan in 2013 and her thesis project, a creative non-fiction novel called
the Grande Dames of the Cariboo, was published by Caitlin Press that same year. Julie is proud
to sit on the board of directors for Arts BC and Folk Music Canada.
Carla Stephenson, Tiny Lights Festival
Carla Stephenson is the Executive Director and Founder of the Tiny Lights Festival, a multidisciplinary festival of music, dance, art, film and sustainability in Ymir BC. She is a recent
graduate of the Simon Fraser Community Economic Development Program
Prior to moving to the Kootenays, Carla and her husband Shawn owned a bookstore/ music
venue on the West Coast of Vancouver Island in the town of Ucluelet, population 1200. When
they sold their store in 2007 she swore off all involvement in Community Development, all work
in the Arts and non-profits, all small towns and all dealings with the Canadian music industry.
Carla currently resides in Ymir B.C. an unincorporated town of 375 people. She organizes an arts
festival, serves on several non-profit boards and is married to a composer who runs a recording
studio on their property. She works with local business owners, arts organizations and artists to
create sustainable community economic development in rural areas.
Karen Jeffery, Sunset Theatre
Karen is the Artistic Producer of the 100-seat historic Sunset Theatre in Wells. In addition, she
just wrapped up being the Manager of Ceremonies and Culture for the 2015 Canada Winter
Games in Prince George. Prior to that she was working with Bramwell Tovey and the Vancouver
Symphony Orchestra. In 2010 she was Manager of Village Plaza and Events during the
Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, and was responsible for creating the entertainment,
atmosphere and social activities for the Athletes Villages. She is founder of the Saskatoon Fringe
Festival and worked for many years running the Vancouver Fringe Festival.
Deb Beaton-Smith, Rifflandia/Music BC /Break Out West
Deb Beaton-Smith started Beat Music Management over 10 years ago in Victoria, BC to provide
event and artist management. Deb is experienced in working in large-scale events and music
festivals and has held roles that include: Host Chair and Co-Producer for BreakOut West 2015,
Board of Directors with MusicBC, Director of Artist Administration and Grant Development for
Rifflandia Festival, Artist Relations for Rock the Shores, Head of Media and Community Relations
for Rifflandia Festival, Event Programme Manager for Canada Day and BC Day, and Artist Merch
for Surrey Olympic site.
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Beat Music Management is also a full service Management company that works with artists to
assist them in building their careers and taking them to the next level. Artists that have been on
the Beat Music roster have showcased at CIMA/Canadian Blast in LA, Canadian Music Week,
JunoFest, NXNE, BreakOut West, New Music West, and been nominated for the Western
Canadian Music Awards and Canadian Folk Music Awards. Deb currently manages Steph
Macpherson and continues to develop and mentor other artists.
10:45am – 12:15pm – Marketing Workshop, Integrated Web Presence: Growing and
Evaluating Your Online Footprint with Inga Petri, CBC Radio and BC Musician Magazine
In this hands-on, practical training session, participants will gain a clear understanding of the
components of a fully integrated web presence, how they work together to grow their online
footprint and increase audience engagement.
Inga will share a customized web presence framework that you can immediately use to make
strategic decisions about how deep and how wide you need to go to effectively reach your local
community as well as regional, national, U.S. and global tourism markets.
Using specific arts and culture scenarios, Inga will demystify the usual tech talk and
demonstrate:
- Why your website requires meticulous attention to user experience design (UxD)
- When search engine marketing (SEM) makes sense
- How to use search engine optimization (SEO)
- When, how and why to integrate social media like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube with your
web presence
- How to use web and social media advertising
- Why email marketing remains key to generate and qualify leads and build relationships
(eDM)
- How to make sense of mobile: from mobile web sites to mobile event apps for festivals
- Web metrics and evaluation
This training workshop is underpinned by the knowledge that marketing today more than ever is
about telling compelling stories, co-creating meaning, finding the right information when local
residents and visitors need it and making their purchase decisions easy and immediate.
We will discuss how social platforms like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter and tourism-related
sites like TripAdvisor as well as the use of hub sites creates new dynamics between you and your
potential customers in general, and, in particular, how it shapes customers’ expectations of
brands, tourism and cultural experiences.
Workshop participants will work in small groups to put into practice a gap analysis tool
developed specifically for this workshop, and to evaluate examples of select organizations’
online presence.
10:45am – 12:15pm – Funding Panel with delegates TBA
12:30 to 2 pm – Lunch and artist showcases
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2 to 3 pm – Developing your Individual Action Plan - What Will I Do? Facilitated by Inga Petri
Delegates will have an opportunity to develop their own next steps action plan coming out of
the conference, deepen connections with each other and share their intentions with each other.
3:15 to 4 pm – Farewells and Promises. Evaluations
About the Facilitator – Inga Petri
Since 1990, Inga has designed and implemented research and strategies for organizations in the
private, not-for-profit and public sectors, employing collaborative approaches that rally
participants around common objectives.
With experience in diverse sectors – from the performing arts, museums and arts services
organization to government, international trade promotion organizations, national membership
associations and technology companies – clients benefit from an uncommon breadth of
experience and expertise.
Inga provides strategic counsel based on solid research and deep insight; she develops brand,
web, communications and marketing strategies that effectively reach target audiences; and
she delivers tangible results for clients.
Inga has a profound record of achievement in the arts and cultural sector spanning from her
work in Canadian book publishing during the 1990s to research and strategy projects
undertaken for the National Arts Centre, Brookside Music, Alianait Entertainment Group,
Storytellers of Canada, Canadian War Museum, Magnetic North Theatre Festival and others
during the last decade.
Beginning in 2011, Inga has been working across Canada to explore the Value of Presenting: A
Study of Performing Arts Presentation in Canada commissioned by the Canadian Arts
Presenting Association (CAPACOA). Through this study, Inga has helped deepen
the conversation about the role of the presenter within the performing arts ecosystem, in
communities and in society at large.
Inga is a sought-after speaker at national and regional conferences focused on performing arts
and regularly gives talks on the evolving marketing practice and actionable research to a variety
of conferences, professional meetings and in post-secondary institutions. In over 50 keynotes,
presentations and workshops, Inga has met with more than 2,100 members of the performing
arts ecosystem since 2011. She continues to present and workshop on implications of latest
insights and expand on their application in the performing arts.
Inga is a Certified Marketing Research Professional (CMRP). She’s also the recipient of the 2005
Joseph Doyle Award (MRIA). She has obtained the Certificate in Professional Excellence in
Strategic Leadership from the Schulich School of Business (2012). In 2013 she was appointed to
the Advisory Committee for the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Extension School
in Canada (UNAM – Canada).
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