Started all the way back in the 1960s as a way to give discounted symphony tickets to University of Cincinnati students,
Enjoy The Arts was established as a non-profit in 1982, and has grown to offer members discounted tickets to more than 40 arts organizations.
Enjoy the Arts (ETA), serves mainly as an audience-development program. With many arts organizations, like the Symphony or the May Festival, cultivating a younger audience can be a challenge. Throught, ETA, people under 35 can purchase an Orange membership for $50 ($35 for full-time students), and then receive free pairs of tickets to more than 25 organizations, including the Cincinnati Ballet, the Cincinnati Opera and the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. Members also have access to a 50 percent discount to all participating organizations after using their vouchers. ETA also has a Noir Membership, which is open to all ages.
"It all just works as an incentive to get more people involved in the arts scene in Cincinnati," says Samantha Robinson, manger of Enjoy the Arts. "Our goal is that once people are a little older they would buy season tickets to one or a few of the organizations we helped expose them to."
In an effort to grow ETA's membership base of 800, Robinson is working with to make joining the organization simpler as well creating a simpler way to use the vouchers. Currently, all vouchers come in paper form and members must carry a booklet with them. Robinson and ETA volunteers must hand-stamp every voucher. ETA is now conducting a survey to determine what kind of platforms members would rather use. Robinson says mobile, online and other platforms are being considered. With a more technologically based system, ETA could offer simpler services, like mobile voucher redemption, and also track which organizations people most often attend, the retention rate of members, and how likely members are to purchase season tickets to organizations they have visited after becoming a member of ETA.
"Once we update our system, we will be able to give our members a more user-friendly experience and the arts organizations more information on the benefits of joining ETA," Robinson says. "All this will hopefully bring more people out to experience the arts in Cincinnati."
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By Evan Wallis
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