Surrey Arts – develop enewsletter, editing, coaching
Writing Services was asked to develop an enewsletter and provide follow-up editing and telephone coaching services to staff at Surrey Arts. The aim of the enewsletter was to improve the organisation’s communications with staff, partners, school heads, teachers and music leaders/tutors. Surrey Arts is the county’s music and arts service, and also the lead organisation in the local music education hub.
Following an initial briefing meeting with music education champion Marc Jaffrey, Anita met with Hugh Craig and Karl Newman, senior members of the Surrey Arts team, to discuss the project. One of the challenges was to make it easy for readers to navigate a huge amount of information and stories from across the arts service. The other was to work within the design/layout restrictions of the County Council’s enewsletter service.
We agreed that Anita would work with the team face-to-face and remotely over a period of months, including:
• interviewing staff responsible for different parts of the Service to identify news and stories
• developing a framework for the first enewsletter. This covered audiences, goals, key messages, calls to action, suitable stories, and timeline
• interviewing staff, writing much of the content, or editing staff members’ contributions.
• providing telephone support to Hugh Craig, the team member responsible for communications
• developing a set of recommendations for the ongoing enewsletter process. This covered the editorial process, guidelines for contributors and how to build and engage the audience
Surrey Arts is now able to communicate regularly with all those involved in the Hub and in its wider work, letting people know about news and opportunities, telling the stories behind the work, and advocating the value and impact of the Service.