Matt Lehrman
“There’s more to audience development than sales and marketing,” says Matt Lehrman, the Principal of Audience Avenue, LLC, “Social media is creating incredible new opportunities - and responsibilities - for arts & cultural organizations to engage their patrons.”
Matt Lehrman is an Audience & Customer Engagement (ACE) expert who inspires innovation and solves profound problems for companies, causes and (especially) arts & cultural organizations.
Matt’s career started in real estate finance and commercial banking, but for more than 20 years, his deep passion has been to promote arts & cultural participation. In naming him “Best Cheerleader for the Arts” the Arizona Republic wrote, “For some, arts marketing is a career. For Lehrman, it's a calling…His enthusiasm is genuine and infectious.”
Matt’s arts marketing experience started in 1995 when he was named Director of Marketing of the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts and which grew into a shared-services function with the 1999 inauguration of SMoCA, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 2003, Matt Lehrman founded Alliance for Audience & ShowUp.com, the pioneering audience development collaboration of Arizona’s arts and cultural community.
Since 2012, as Audience Avenue, LLC, Matt works with arts & cultural organizations of every size and genre as a speaker, facilitator, and consultant on topics of audience development, strategic planning, and business model innovation.
For the 2014-15 season, Matt served as Interim Managing Director of Arizona Theatre Company, the only member organization of the elite League of Resident Theatres (LORT) whose productions take place in two cities, Phoenix and Tucson. In addition, Lehrman has served as an Adjunct Faculty Member teaching entrepreneurship and business management at Arizona State University since 2012.
Matt Lehrman’s workshops have been presented across the US, UK, and Canada and he is a Professional Member of the National Speakers Association. You'll find a complete schedule of upcoming and past presentations here: www.audienceavenue.com/schedule.
Matt's blog, Audience Wanted, is published by ArtsJournal: www.artsjournal.com/audience