When CPA had to cancel its holiday favorite, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer™, for example, it decided to create a special exhibit featuring the show’s performance puppets, giving visitors, for the first time, a chance to inspect the exquisite characters up close and in person. Yet as CPA doubles down on its digital outreach, it finds other opportunities to innovate in ways that do not require a Zoom room or similar well-worn technology. Streaming live shows or shows that are part-live and part-recorded, for example, is one way CPA is exploring dynamic programming, offering some limited in-person opportunities, while simultaneously offering new shows and workshops for an ever-growing online audience that spans all 50 states and more than 80 countries, up from only nine countries before the pandemic. Through creative ideation, the senior leadership team was able to launch new revenue streams, even as it aimed to preserve traditional ones. “We weren’t doing something new by leaning into the digital programming, but rather expanding the scope of what we had already been doing for two decades.”Īs classrooms closed and social distancing forced schools throughout metro Atlanta to cancel field trips, CPA saw its earned income fall by 70 percent. “We are somewhat unique in the digital space in that we have all this experience,” says Sara Burmenko, director of digital learning. So when the organization found itself cancelling in-person shows because of social-distancing, it was well poised to pivot quickly. Just before the novel coronavirus surfaced late last year, CPA already was planning to expand its long-running Digital Learning Platform. “We’ve produced and presented digital learning for more than 20 years, because part of our mission is to be accessible and that includes outside of Georgia,” says Beth Schiavo, executive director of the Center. The Center for Puppetry Arts(CPA) went digital before digital went cool-long before the global pandemic made virtual offerings a necessary device in the programmatic toolbox of nonprofits everywhere.

Delivering Innovation Online and On Stage

Center of puppetry arts