By Katerina Graziosi

During a Sacramento performing arts listening session on Aug. 20, members of local theater and dance groups gathered at the CLARA auditorium to discuss the state of audience engagement, ticket sales, costs of doing business and how these groups might benefit from working collaboratively and directly with local newsrooms to expand their reach. 

Put on by Sacramento News & Review and Solving Sacramento, the first of three listening sessions hosted representatives from Capital Stage, B Street Theatre, Celebration Arts, Broadway Sacramento and Music Circus, Teatro Nagual, City Theatre, Sacramento Ballet, CLARA and the City of Sacramento. Listening sessions for music and events venues and visual arts groups will be held Aug. 27 and 28, respectively. 

Many of the arts organizations shared that overall ticket and subscription sales are down, adding to the struggle of making ends meet as the cost of doing business including rent, materials and other overhead expenses has skyrocketed since the pandemic. Other sentiments echoed were how audiences have become much more selective about their engagement, now opting to buy one or two tickets to select shows rather than a season subscription as was the trend in years past. 

Among the themes that emerged from the discussion were how to attract younger and more diverse audiences to engage with performing arts, where to put ad dollars, how to improve language access and cost barriers, partnerships between arts organizations and interest in creating a centralized conduit for the public to learn about what’s being offered locally from the arts community. 

Solving Sacramento was the recipient of a $250,000 grant from the City of Sacramento in May to support local arts journalism and the creative economy. With it, the collaborative has produced 37 arts stories that have been cross-published 63 times as of press time. These stories have included previews, reviews, roundups and features of the impressive repertoire of work from artists and arts organizations our city is home to. (The grant also made the listening sessions possible.) 

Based off other feedback during the discussion expressing interest in spotlighting artists more, Solving Sacramento has created a way for artists to self-nominate themselves to be featured in our newly launched “Sac Art Pulse” print zines that feature some of our published arts stories and strives to drive business to local organizations with half-page ads. The first edition includes a local arts directory. 

Local arts coverage has drastically diminished in recent years, with funding slashed from newsrooms and the loss of several arts and culture publications like Submerge and Sacramento Magazines, and the Sacramento Bee striking its arts coverage entirely in 2019. 

Solving Sacramento plans to continue to fill this void by working with the community and local newsrooms to produce hyper-local arts stories and diversify newsrooms by working with a journalism ecosystem of freelance writers, editors, photographers, videographers, podcasters, illustrators, sound engineers and musicians to bring its arts coverage to life. The collaborative’s weekly “Sac Art Pulse” newsletter features a roundup of information on upcoming theater, music and live events, arts stories and profiles of Sacramento’s creatives.

This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19.