‘My research is better than your research’

Knee-jerk reactions to the publication of the DCMS figures revealing ‘no change’ in audience engagement with the arts over the past 6 years are fascinating. Faced with any statistics we don’t like, we have a number of options:

1. Ignore them – file them away and pretend they don’t exist. Don’t draw them to anyone’s attention in case they should start asking difficult questions, and hope that no one is as numerate as you are, and can’t make sense of them anyway.

2. Dispute their validity – pick holes in the methodology used to collect the data, point out its deficiencies (all methodologies are ultimately a compromise) and attempt to rationalise why the apparent message emerging from the figures is fundamentally flawed.

3. Argue about their meaning – interpretation is an art, not a science. Up to a point, it is perfectly possible to draw different conclusions from the same research findings. Only the blindingly obvious cannot be disputed (and politicians even manage to do that).

4. Produce counter-statistics – find another piece of research, collected in a different way at a different time, that reveals something different (i.e. something that tells the story you want to hear), then argue that “my research is better than your research”.

5. Reflect on the message being delivered by the figures – look at the numbers with an open and enquiring mind, and think about what’s unexpected in what they reveal. (The only thing that’s really interesting in any set of research findings is the unexpected.) Then consider the implications of that for the future.

What is so interesting about the DCMS Taking Part figures is that their validity (see no. 2 above) is difficult to dispute, meaning that those who don’t want to face up to the possibility that arts audiences really have not increased over the past six years have to resort to numbers 1, 3 or 4. But in the brave (new?) world of under-funded arts, a dose of reality is far more valuable – if ever there was a time for ensuring that all public funding is spent on what really makes a difference, this is it.

So, what does the disappointing message being delivered in this rather surprising set of figures actually mean? In fact it raises some very interesting and fundamental questions about audience development, but also about the arts more generally.

Firstly, is all audience development activity ineffective? Clearly this isn’t the case. We can all point to initiatives, schemes and strategies that have introduced people to the arts, deepened their appreciation of cultural activity and delivered fantastic life-changing experiences to individuals. But having said that, not all audience development initiatives work either – some cost a lot of money and achieve virtually nothing – check out the activity that took place through the New Audiences programme and see what worked, what didn’t and what left a legacy. It’s an interesting and rather uncomfortable exercise, because it suggests that most short-term interventions to encourage people to try the arts do not change their attitudes – just as supermarket price promotions encourage us to switch brands, only to return to our normal shopping habits when the price goes up again.

Alternatively, perhaps we simply aren’t spending enough on audience development to make a difference. Commercial organisations attempt to develop their audiences (i.e. get more customers by targeting different market segments) all the time. Without it they wouldn’t survive (no Government funding to fall back on). What happens to them? Those that operate in mature ‘mass markets’, like the arts sector which is trying to influence an entire population, spend their multi-million pound marketing budgets in the hope of grabbing just one or two percentage growth in business. Is it realistic to expect the paltry amount invested in arts audience development to flick the dial of a developed nation that is spoiled for choice in terms of leisure options, many of which are much cheaper and easier to access than the arts?

Then there’s the observation by Danny Moar of the Theatre Royal Bath, who succinctly pointed out to the Government Select Committee on Funding of the Arts and Heritage that some people simply don’t like the arts, and we should perhaps afford them a little more respect and accept this with good grace, rather than pursue them with evangelical zeal. Personally I’m not interested in pole vaulting (or pole dancing for that matter). Apparently the Pole Vault Academy was set up in 2002, to “encourage participation in pole vaulting by increasing the opportunity young athletes have to try out the sport”. But do you know, it’s just not my thing, so I won’t be trying it, thanks.

Another possibility is that audience engagement with the arts is driven almost exclusively by macro cultural trends, and to try to influence this in any direction would be akin to sitting Canute-like at the edge of the incoming tide. As Lord Winston pointed out on BBC1’s Question Time last week, pretty much everything in our lives is related to our education – our employment prospects, our life expectancy, our family size, our health... and yes, our cultural engagement, too. Persuading people to take up their ‘cultural entitlement’ will always be like pushing water uphill if their education has failed to create an artistic comfort zone in their lives.

And finally, could it be that audience development activity has actually been very effective at stimulating arts engagement, thereby preventing an otherwise inexorable decline? In other words, perhaps people just don’t value the arts (as we define them) as much as they did, and we have to incentivise more of them to get involved. It’s another unpalatable possibility, and draws into question whether we should even bother to monitor individual engagement with cultural activity at all, but rather regard it as what economists would describe as a ‘public good’, deserving of public funding because the whole of our society would be much the poorer without it. If arts policy in this country were to focus on this, rather than attempt to make converts of those least inclined to engage with cultural activity, I suspect many of us would be rather relieved.

Liz Hill is Managing Editor of ArtsProfessional