The VRA Regional Workshop program presents a practical workshop to learn event promotion and marketing strategy.
This is the last week to register, registration closes on June 8th.
A Deep Dive on Promoting Programs
Instructors : Tess Colwell and Alex O'Keefe
Date and Time : Wednesday, June 10th and Thursday, June 11th, 2026 / 2:00 - 5:00 PM EDT
ONLINE
Workshop fee : $50 VRA members/ $65 non-VRA members
Registration capped at 40
Register now to secure your spot
This hands-on workshop will guide participants through practical, sustainable approaches to event promotion and marketing strategy. Learn how to create effective promotional materials, identify the best outreach channels for your audience, and develop workflows that can be adapted to your institution's needs. Participants will leave with a complete event promotion plan, new skills in writing and design, and a customizable toolkit using freely available resources.
Register today to build your outreach confidence and connect with colleagues across the GLAM community!
Course Description
In this workshop, participants will learn step-by-step how to develop promotional materials for events, as well as the basics of designing a larger strategy. These steps will streamline marketing outreach practices for a manageable and sustainable approach. Ultimately, participants will have skills necessary to promote an individual event and tools to embark on standardizing an outreach plan based on their institution's procedures.
The instructors are from different art library backgrounds (one large academic and one art and design school) with event-planning and promotion expertise that is demonstrated in their joint research and work outcomes. They will introduce a customizable toolkit they designed using freely available tools which can be used in any collection's context. Additionally, freely available writing and graphic design tools will be reviewed. Ideally, participants will bring one event they'd like to promote to the workshop (but will be given a sample event for the exercises if not).
During the workshop, the instructors will walk participants through a series of hands-on, solo and collaborative activities to create promotional materials and a big-picture plan for event marketing while integrating GLAM best practices from scholarship. The process will include: identifying the best outreach channels based on audience, prioritizing marketing efforts based on the event, writing effective event descriptions, reviewing basic graphic design concepts, and combining this into a sustainable workflow for event promotion. Participants will leave the workshop with one complete event promotion plan, skills in writing and design, a community of peers for future support, and a variety of resources to enact a sustainable marketing plan at their institutions beyond this event.
Learning Objectives
Participants will...
Assess their context, audience, and landscape to identify ideal marketing channels (such as social media, printed matter, emails, and external event copy)
Write effective event descriptions for an event – considering their audience, reviewing each channel, and using freely available tools in the process
Review basic graphic design considerations for promotional materials, including accessibility, readability, voice, brand, and channel
Create a customized template for marketing their events that includes timelines, outreach channels, scaffolded methods, and documentation
Register here