TeenTix websiteTranscript:Austin: Today we're going to be speaking with Shelton Harris, marketing and partnerships manager at TeenTix. Shelton, welcome to the show. Shelton: Hey, thanks for having me, man. How are you doing? Austin: I'm doing pretty well. We're hanging on here. Shelton: Beautiful. Austin: For those in our audience who aren't already familiar, could you talk a little bit about TeenTix and your mission?Shelton: Yeah, a hundred percent. So yes, as Austin mentioned, my name is Shelton. I'm the marketing and partnerships manager at TeenTix, admittedly, fairly new. I only started the job at the top of January, so top of 2020, but TeenTix is a youth service organization that's in the art space that basically works to create equity and opportunity for young people in the arts community. Specifically teenagers, age 13 to 19. Shelton: TeenTix started in, it was founded in 2004 by someone that loved the arts. She was super into dance and theater and just was wondering why there wasn't much of a young presence at these events when she went to them.Shelton: And I think she realized several problems, like ticket prices are too high, or there weren't people in their lives already that were championing the arts and just like it, it wasn't being made an easy experience for a young person to say they wanted to go to the opera, they wanted to go to the theater, or see a musical, or something like that.Shelton: And so that I think was the problem that was set out to fix. And so how it started was the resident organizations on Seattle center campus. So like the, the Seattle opera Pacific Northwest ballet, the Pacific science center, a few little odds and ends, organizations like that. Shelton: Basically, we set it up, or I won't say we, cause I wasn't there at the time. They set it up so that anybody who set up a free account with TeenTix, and that's the beauty of the TeenTix passes. It's free for the teens to sign up. There's absolutely no strings attached. And whether they use it or don't use it, and what that pass grants them the access to is $5 tickets to any one of our partner organizations.Shelton: And at the humble beginning, it was only, like I said, a handful of organizations, resident organizations on Seattle center campus. But that's evolved now to about 75 different arts organizations, not just in Seattle, but in, you know, our surrounding cities. Tacoma, Bellevue, Edmonds, stuff like that as well.Shelton: And it's broken out into like, there's almost nothing that a young person can experience with their TeenTix pass. They can go to the science center, they can see a ballet and they can go to like, there's movies, movie theaters that accept the pass and you know, live music like symphony and opera and just various things like that.Shelton: There's this, like you'd have to check out the list. It's truly impressive how many different organizations there are, but that's kind of the flagship program that kind of inspired TeenTix and what it is. And so here we are, 16 years later, fortunate to still be carrying out this mission.Austin: That's awesome. I had obviously read a good portion of your website before this interview, but I didn't realize kind of the depth that you guys did. Shelton: When I came into this, cause my background is the music industry, management and marketing. And so when I came into this role, my big priority was, the first thing I noticed was that a lot of like the light, like the traditional live music venues, like you know like the clubs that you'd see, like a band or a rapper or a singer or something at work partners. And there's a lot of intricacies as to why it's just a really competitive business as a industry as opposed to a lot of the other arts industries.Shelton: But that's kind of my mission is to eventually get independent club owners and concert promoters to understand that, you know, music is art as well. And it's just as important for a young person to be able to access those as the theater or the opera. And so that's kind of one of my personal goals for working in the organization is to get music being a larger branch of it.Austin: Yeah. That sounds like you'd be able to leverage a lot of your prior connections and really grow the types of venues that teens could partake in. Shelton: Yeah, absolutely. And it's only gotten bigger and bigger, especially in the last few years, like as I think our presence has shifted greatly since we went through, and this is speaking a little bit to your tech side of things.Shelton: We went through a website upgrade last year that kind of revolutionized TeenTix's model at least as opposed to the original software. So originally up until early last year, you had to have that physical pass that we sent out in the mail. Like you'd sign up for it, we'd get your information right, we'd send you a physical pass, and you would absolutely, you'd have to have that pass to go to the event.Shelton: But now that we've, we've got a new website that now issues a digital pass. The moment you create an account. Right. And that pass can now be used from the smartphone. You know, whatever. It could be printed out and stuck in your wallet. There's just, we've increased the accessibility. We still send out that physical pass, but now a teen could literally go to our website.Shelton: Right now, I will let you know despite everything going on, obviously, but they can go to our website right now, sign up for a pass. It would literally be active right away. They could then leave the house with the pass immediately and go see an art event for five bucks. That's super convenient. Shelton: I kind of resonate with what you said earlier. I didn't know about it seems it has been around this long. I'm only 27 so I could have taken advantage of it at one point, but I didn't know about it until this year, and I think that they've had, I think we're a team six is that is they've had a tremendous, tremendous amount of success in kind of the industries that like the original that the founders were originally in, you know, like in more contemporary, traditional art styles. And I think that as time is progressing, that's kind of, I'm trying to hold on to, you know, what was originally the mission and the heart and soul, but also make it a little bit more relevant and a little bit more contemporary for, you know, younger generation or kids that are coming up now. Just making sure that we're able to adapt and still attract newer, younger teams the same way we have been. Austin: It's interesting you say that because when I saw TeenTix and the mission, I immediately thought I would have loved to have gone to all these live music shows, but I feel like I wasn't as exposed to some of these other types of art that your outlining, like I didn't have any expsorue to the ballet growing up or opera, or musicals. Is there a few types of art that teens typically go to more that there's more interest for the ones that are super popular? Shelton: Some of the bigger theaters you like the, you know, like the larger theaters that have like full year long scheduled events. What's it called? That the Seattle symphony is pretty popular, that the movie theaters are quite popular. So we were partnered with various different film organizations. But a couple of the larger ones are SIF, which is the Seattle international film festival. And then nifty, which is the national film festival for talented youth.Shelton: And just a couple of different organizations like that, that not only produce events, but also just exist as a movie theater where you can go and watch films. And so that's one of the perks is, you know, we'll say we're pitching the past to a young person and they say, well, I don't go to the ballet. And it's like, cool.Shelton: Well, do you watch, do you like to watch movies? And it's like, Oh yeah, I like to watch movies. It's like, cool, well, you know, you could go watch any movie that's playing at the AMC right now at one of these theaters. And when they realized that, that's kind of like the in, you know what I mean? Like that's kind of the low barrier for entry.Shelton: That is just easy to get someone hooked. And then we just, you know, we love to remind them that by the way, look at these other 75 organizations that you can also participate in. You make a great point that like, I mean, when I was younger, nobody was necessarily saying, Hey, you know, Shelton, do you want to go to the ballet?Shelton: Or Hey, do you want to go see an opera or anything like that. And so the opportunity just wasn't really there. But I think that's the idea behind the pass is that if the, you know, the risk is lower, it's only $5, it's easy. They can, that any other young person can sign up for a pass as well and go with them.Shelton: We encourage the art or our partner organizations to host teen nights, which is where we'll kind of partner with them to curate. Kind of a, just make the experience a little bit more special and a little bit more interesting for a young person. And normally what that looks like is like. There'll be like a pre show talk where like the director or some cast members will give kind of their perspective on the show. Talk about what it was like planning for it and just give them some backstory on them as artists in the show itself before they perform. Or they'll do like a Q and A afterwards or they'll set up like the health, like free pizza for the teens or like a photo booth, stuff like that. Like we just, we want them to be more comfortable going to a lot of these places.Shelton: Cause like the opera house is not going to be a traditional young space. And so we. We try to change that, or we try to basically coach these organizations on how they can be more friendly to young people because they also want to attack that demographic. So that's kind of the other role we play at for our partner organizations, is not just giving young people that access to the art itself