From Photography to Foraging: How Guardian Masterclasses Have Become Sell-Outs

Here at Eventbrite, we’ve seen a recent trend in the rising number of classes & workshops on our platform. From learning to be a better communicator to how to make origami statues, it seems there is no topic that people don’t want to learn about!

To find out a little more about our creators in this space, we sat down with Lyndal Reed, Head of Strategy and Development for the Guardian Live, to talk about the Guardian Masterclasses and how these workshop events have grown over the years to become a reliable revenue stream for the business.

To start, tell us about Guardian Masterclasses.

Masterclasses started in 2010 to offer classroom-style sessions taught by an expert. These classes and workshops tend to have a higher price point than our Guardian Live events, because of the educational content provided. A masterclass could be 3 hours long, and over the course of 1 day, a weekend, or even running over 6 weeks. 

Photo: Steve Best. Guardian Masterclass: “Never Lose Another Pitch” with Andy Pemberton and Andy Cowles

Why did the Guardian move into the live events space?

Being a media company, we’ve historically had lots of internal resources to offer journalism classes and workshops, especially with well-known journalists. This proved to be highly popular and successful.

We then decided to expand into different areas of events, with more diverse content. The Guardian has always had a very strong brand presence, so the combination of the two made sense to diversify the portfolio. 

What kind of workshops do you host?

We now have a very diverse classes and workshops portfolio, covering topics, from digital media, photography and copywriting, to self-improvement and even foraging! As long as the subjects align with our key verticals – for example, arts & culture – we would consider it a good fit. 

How has it grown over the years?

I wasn’t around for the first 4 years of the Masterclasses series but when I came on board, it was a big operation with hundreds of classes that, unfortunately, weren’t selling well.

The team was massive, managing a big programme of events – and things weren’t as efficient as they could be. We went through a restructure to inevitably work less but do more.

We cut the programme in half and had one programmer and one producer, which allowed us to tighten things up, operationally. This resulted in an uplift to our profit margins. 

Photo: Steve Best. Guardian Masterclass: “Never Lose Another Pitch” with Andy Pemberton and Andy Cowles

Can you tell us about one of the most popular workshops you host?

Data visualisation is very popular at the moment – at least once a month. We see a strong interest from the corporate market as well as the consumer market.

Another popular workshop is “The Science of Storytelling”, which could be for anything like a novel, to something more business related. We typically have around 36 attendees at these types of classes. 

Why did you choose to move your ticketing over to Eventbrite?

From my understanding, we didn’t have any ticketing platform when we started masterclasses. Eventbrite was seen to be the “easy to use solution”. We began our tenure process around 5 years ago and decided to go with Eventbrite.

We have particularly liked the account management we’ve received and we have always had a very good relationship! Eventbrite troubleshoot our problems quickly and reliably, which is something I haven’t experienced before.

Also, when renewals come up, we like the product updates the team provide us with.

What results have you seen since implementing Eventbrite?

Eventbrite has provided us with an easy way to generate revenue – it’s a powerful tool which allows us to track and report ticket sales to the business.

As the media industry struggles with print revenue, we need to generate other revenue streams and Eventbrite has been instrumental in allowing us to do this.

Is there a particular feature of the product you like using? Why?

The ability to create and clone templates is great, as we have a  standard format for our classes and workshops. I also really like the event reporting feature and how easy it is to pull visual reports, which we can share with the wider business. 

What are your future plans for Guardian Masterclasses?  

Most of our events are delivered in-house, but we’d like to expand to other spaces outside of the city. We’re selling out for quite a few of our events now, so the main goal is to grow the bigger events, which will increase our revenue. 

Photo: Steve Best. Guardian Masterclass: “Never Lose Another Pitch” with Andy Pemberton and Andy Cowles

If you could give a budding workshop organiser any advice, what would it be?

Firstly, the quality of the content is absolutely key. Another point is accessibility, including the location of the venue, venue access and different learning styles. Finally, I’d say maintaining a certain standard – as your portfolio diversifies, you don’t want to sacrifice on quality.

View our demo to find out more about our ticketing platform – maybe we can help your event reach a wider audience too!