AMA Conference 2025: Amplify

This year, Indigo Share sponsored a bursary for someone to attend the AMA conference with a passion for audience insight who hadn't been to the event before. We were very pleased to offer the bursary to Freya Goble, who is currently Communications Assistant at Dundee Contemporary Arts. She shares her reflections here in this guest blog piece.

I was delighted to receive a bursary from Indigo to attend the 2025 Arts Marketing Association Conference in Edinburgh. Through this exciting experience, I was able to connect with other arts marketing professionals, gain knowledge through a series of engaging talks and leave feeling revitalised by the passion and enthusiasm we all feel towards the cultural sector.

There were several key messages that resonated with me during the conference which I’m looking forward to taking forward in my role as Communications Assistant at Dundee Contemporary Arts:

Amplifying impact isn’t just being louder; it’s being more intentional.

This was one of the key ideas from Benjy Kusi’s inspiring keynote speech which opened the Conference, and I found that it was emphasised over the course of the conference. Many of the speakers explained that the most effective change came from being specific and intentional rather than simply doing “more”. For instance, Trinity Laban dramatically reduced the page count on their website to create a focus on individual stories which appealed to their core student demographic, while the Natural History Museum explained that creating targeted marketing campaigns that appealed distinctly to different segments of their audience boosted engagement. I learnt that making positive change is not just about working more, creating more content and being the loudest – it’s about making adjustments in intentional, achievable ways.

Solutions can be found by approaching a familiar issue from a new angle.

I felt inspired by how many of the sessions focused on finding a fresh perspective on familiar situations. For instance, the Princess Theatre in Torquay reframed the stress caused by late bookers by viewing them as a distinct audience segment with consistent booking patterns and creating a marketing plan that was tailored towards their needs, while National Galleries Scotland changed their content strategy on YouTube to focus on the unique audience there, rather than simply replicating their other video content. This emphasised to me the importance of attending networking events and conferences like AMA to learn from other organisations, share knowledge, and uncover perspectives that you may not have thought of before. This experience has inspired me to connect more with others across other arts organisations and interdepartmentally at DCA to share viewpoints based on different contexts and experiences.

Your audience and community are your greatest asset.

Many of the AMA Conference sessions emphasised that audiences love to feel a genuine connection with arts organisations. From Roundhouse creating inspiring promotional videos starring their own studio users, to National Galleries Scotland featuring their colleagues’ expertise in their video content and Trinity Laban making student testimonies a focal point of their website, audiences respond well to human stories at the heart of an arts organisation. Taking this approach can help audiences connect to your work on an emotional level, fostering bonds between organisations and local communities and generating loyalty. At DCA, we’ve seen a great response to our video content which focuses on staff reviewing recent films in our cinema or talking about their favourite work in the galleries, and my learning at AMA Conference has inspired me to continue this work and consider ways to involve audience contributions too.

I am grateful to Indigo for giving me the opportunity to attend this inspiring event. I left the conference filled with ideas to share with the wider team here at DCA. The conference taught me the importance of sharing knowledge across organisations: although many of us in the arts sector face similar challenges, our strength lies in our creativity and the fresh perspectives we bring to these challenges. By connecting across organisations, we’re able to learn from one another, amplify our impact and produce positive change in the cultural sector.