Context:

Dartington International Summer School and Festival brings together world-renowned musicians, new and emerging talent, and amateur music makers for four weeks each summer on the medieval Dartington estate in Devon.  The Summer School runs a unique and extensive programme of masterclasses, workshops and courses, and runs in tandem with the Concert Series, which offers three performances every single evening over the four weeks.

Dartington wanted to grow their audiences locally, nationally and internationally.  Although they wanted to secure coverage in traditional classical music publications, they were also keen to branch out into non-music press, including lifestyle and travel press.

Results: 

Through the press campaign we reached over 8.6 million readers. Consistent with Dartington’s initial aims, we achieved press across a broad spectrum of press areas: national, local, classical music, mainstream, travel, lifestyle, online, literature, radio, TV and international.

• Secured coverage in several of the leading UK daily newspapers, including The Times, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail
• Dartington featured in The Times’ Top Ten Classical Festivals Summer 2016
• Secured coverage in the world’s top-selling classical music magazine (BBC Music Magazine), as well as the only global magazine for the performing arts industry (International Arts Manager).
• Classical music features were not limited to mainstream classical; we also reached out into folk, world, jazz and baroque music
• Secured a detailed online feature with the second largest newspaper in the USA – the New York Times Online is visited over 346 million times each month – that is more than triple the number of people that use the Tube each month
• Feature also published in New York Times International Edition, which is sold in more than 160 countries. Readership is more than the entire population of Manchester (over 423,000)
• Secured features in some of the South West’s largest lifestyle magazines, including Devon Life and Exeter Living
• Two leading airlines featured Dartington in their inflight magazines: FlyBe, and EasyJet. EasyJet Traveller has a readership over 6million per month and was recently awarded Travel Magazine of the Year at prestigious awards
• A series of seven videos were posted on the Classic FM Facebook page, which has over 900,000 followers, generating over 200,000 views. Through Classic FM we also engaged over 5,000 followers on Instagram, and our online web feature was shared 1,400 times