Groups turn to social appeal younger faces social support

Mmmm, doughnuts for all at the outdoor bash immediately following the 90-minute production of “MacHomer,” a weirdly entertaining mashup of “The Simpsons” and “Macbeth?”

Ch — er, actually, make that a vivid example of how some of metro-Atlanta’s premiere arts and cultural institutions are reaching out to a highly prized, younger audience base.

The rather unfortunate catch-all name for these highly energized 23- to 40-year-olds: “young professionals.”

The goal: Injecting critical new blood into the arts organizations’ support systems.

“Lots of our biggest benefactors and patrons are seniors, so we have to cultivate the next generation,” said Christina Hull Eikhoff, a board member at Georgia Shakespeare, whose “MacHomer Brew Party” combined suds, “Simpsons” trivia contests and discounted tickets to a play that retained much of “Macbeth’s” plot and language while recasting the Melancholy Dane and Lady Macbeth as Homer and Marge.

“They’re going to be impressed by what they see,” she said. “We just need to get them here to see it.”

Enter the “Shakespeare Crashers,” a group created this summer to help bring 20- and 30-somethings on bard as audience members and — fingers crossed — future benefactors and board members. And the Crashers don’t have the stage entirely to themselves these days in Atlanta. As the ranks of active arts supporters continues to gray and the people who might normally emerge to replace them become increasingly hard to reach, other cultural institutions are forming real-world social networking groups and fighting back.

Sept. 18 will mark the third go-round for “Single Mingle,” a monthly “meetup amongst the masterpieces” that the High Museum of Art hopes will open eyes among a whole new category of potential patrons.

“We’re still trying to get past so much of the traditional mind-set of what a museum is,” said Billy Fong, senior manager of membership for the High. “[It’s] that you’re not there to have a good time, you’re just there to appreciate the art. Why do they have to be mutually exclusive?”

They certainly didn’t when the Atlanta Opera formally kicked off its “Comprimarios” group with a wine-tasting at trendy Woodfire Grill last month About 35 guests whose jobs ranged from college admissions counselor and wealth management consultant to sales rep for a major residential realty company nibbled on vegetable crudites and heard a gentle pitch for the benefits of a $25 Comprimarios membership (cheap tickets, a free drink at every performance, more special events like this one). A few signed up on the spot. Some others, perhaps inspired by a flier’s description of season-opening opera “The Elixir of Love” — “Country bumpkin woos local hotty ...” — indicated they were at least keeping an open mind.

“I probably wouldn’t join now because of the time commitment,” said Puneet Sharma, 32, a physicist for Emory Health Care. A more avid fan of indie films than classical music, he’d come along at the behest of a friend and admitted to having a good time. “I’d be open to going to some operas. I wouldn’t write anything off. It’s a breath of fresh air for me to see a different side of Atlanta.”

Many of the people who join in these arts-related social networking events are in their late 20s or early 30s and eager to explore different interests and develop new relationships. Some go primarily to socialize, with a few quietly saying they wouldn’t mind meeting “someone special.” Others are highly-motivated when it comes to their careers and may be hoping to mix some valuable networking in with their cultural immersion.

Call ’em what they are — “young professionals” — at your own risk.

“They said ‘young professionals’ sounds like you’re trying too hard,” laughed Stacey Colosa Lucas, Georgia Shakespeare’s director of marketing and development, recalling the comments from a focus group that Eikhoff, a partner at Alston & Bird, and another board member convened. “They said it sounds like you just want our money or our demographic.”

That’s part of it, of course. But what all these organizations really want is loyalty: The kind that makes younger patrons come to a performance initially and then keep coming back, possibly as season ticket holders, active volunteers and fund-raisers.

“If you attract young people early enough in the right way, down the road it will be mutually beneficial,” said Chris Kowal, 25, an associate at financial advisers Homrich Berg, who went to the first Shakespeare Crashers event, a happy hour in conjunction with a performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

He also took part in the focus group. “We told them reducing ticket prices and having social gatherings before or after events would be helpful. Number one, that allows people to have a social network at the event. And it also reinforces they’re there to enjoy the arts.”

The arts organizations are paying attention. The High’s second “Single Mingle,” attended by approximately 400 people in August, featured cocktails in the museum restaurant and a scavenger hunt for artworks in its galleries. Some of the Comprimarios recently attended a Braves game (the musical highlight: Atlanta Opera bass Jason Hardy sang “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch).

Even the Atlanta Ballet has stuck a pointed toe into the pool: Last season’s “Drinks with Dracula” event after a Friday night performance of “Dracula” was very popular with younger patrons. Marketing director Tricia Eckholm said the 80-year-old company is exploring more ways to reach out to this group.

It’s that important. Like the “Mona Lisa” and “The 1812 Overture,” arts audiences keep getting older. From 1982 to 2008, the average age of adult arts attendees in the United States increased by six years, from 39 to 45, according to the National Endowment for the Arts.

Meanwhile, the percentage of people age 18 to 24 who attended arts events during this same period nose-dived — by as much as 36 and 40 percent for ballet and opera respectively (the one bright spot was for art museums, where the attendance rate rose 1 percent.)

Much of the former can be attributed to the aging of baby boomers, a huge demographic chunk comprising more than a quarter of the country’s total population. Unlike the, uh, “young professionals,” boomers grew up before the advent of the Internet, cable TV and a host of other distractions; thus they were free to explore the arts early on and formed lasting attachments to them, one expert says.

Boomers “are niched,” said Rebecca Ryan, founder of Next Generation Consulting, a Madison, Wis.-based market research firm specializing in the 20-to-40 year old population. “They like theater or dance or something else in the art world. And they only want to consume it as art, not a socialization activity or entertainment. What we’re seeing now is the first full generation of young people who grew up without arts programs in school. Maybe they didn’t have piano lessons. They’re still generalists. They don’t know what they like.”

But sometimes they even surprise themselves by how much they do like something.

One of the people circulating at the Woodfire Grill, J.R.Kamra, saw his first opera last year, when he attended an Atlanta Opera performance of “The Marriage of Figaro.” The 32-year-old inventory planning analyst for Home Depot liked it enough that he agreed to help get the Comprimarios group on its feet. And then some.

“In the first year if we can get 10 to 15 young professionals to sign up and also buy season tickets and each tell three or four people about us, that would be great,” enthused Kamra, who moved here from Memphis last year. “Eventually I see us producing major fund-raising efforts for the Atlanta Opera. But it’s a lot easier to ask people for money after they’ve seen an opera.”

Mmmm ... free doughnuts don’t hurt either.

For more information

The Atlanta Opera www.atlantaopera.org; 404-881-8885

Georgia Shakespeare Festival www.gashakespeare.org; 404.504.3400

High Museum of Art www.high.org; 404-733-HIGH or 404-733-4400