What were the specific goals of this creative economy project? Describe the community development challenge or opportunity that your project was designed to address:
The community challenge and goals were threefold: 1) to enable this wonderful day of free cultural activities-Opening Our Doors--to be better known by a wider audience. Due to our limited marketing budget, Opening Our Doors is not known by as many people as we would like. 2) To engage a younger, more "mobile"--in all senses of that word--demographic. Our event features many activities for family and children but we also have cultural activities that are geared to adolescents, and plenty for young adults and young professionals. We wanted to meet and engage these demographics where they are at. 3) Finally, we just wanted to make it easier for our repeat participants and all others to navigate the event and plan their day.
If the goals change over time, please describe how:
Not really though we did begin to recognize the App's extended value in achieving other goals, such as more promotion and marketing of our 22 member institutions and our 20 participating local organizations. We realized the App was such a good general marketing tool that we are in the process of working with Art Morpheus' New Art Love to create a Fenway Cultural District App that would provide information on programming that goes on throughout the year in our member institutions and our community partner organizations.
Who was involved in this project and what did they do? (be sure to include the partners from outside of the creative sector and how local voices were included):
Project Partners: Lead was Art Morpheus, specifically their Social Enterprise Initiative New Art Love was the developer of the App. All of the members of our Fenway Cultural District Committee were participating partners--we have 42 organizations represented that represents a collaboration of Fenway Alliance member institutions such as the MFA, BSO, Gardner, Berklee, etc, and local community organizations that participate in Opening Our Doors--Mission Hill Youth Collaborative, Boston Children's Chorus, Sidewalk Sam, etc. Their role was to get us information about the specifics of their activity for Opening Our Doors so it could be in the App. They were also tasked with promoting it to their wider constituencies.
How does this project relate to a larger community development strategy?
It aligns with one of our major Fenway Cultural District community development strategy to enhance the identity, marketing and branding of the entire District.
What projects or places, if any, inspired your approach to this creative economy project?
Several other Cultural Districts have developed an App or are developing one, but really, we just saw a need for our festival to have one!
