Essential Audiences – Visual arts launch

On Friday October 24 decibel will launch its Visual Arts Platform at Watershed in Bristol. The launch, which coincides with Black History Month, will examine art history – reflecting on the representation of culturally diverse artists in the art world and in popular culture.
The launch features a presentation of David A Bailey’s new exhibition, Back to Black, which examines how the Blaxploitation genre has been represented in film, sculpture, printmaking, photography, collage and other media from the 1920s onwards, showing how this genre influenced the work of artists based in the UK, Asia and the Caribbean.

Talks on the day feature cultural critic Kodwo Eshun and award-winning TV producer Parminder Vir, who will discuss the complexities of representing culturally diverse art, and examine and re-evaluate culturally diverse artists.

Early ideas as to how decibel could help African, Asian and Caribbean visual artists centred on profiling work through group exhibition. The aim of this idea was to stimulate links with the creative industries and to increase commercial opportunities for artists, as well as helping to market work more effectively to the public-funded arts sector.

However, it soon became apparent that all too often culturally diverse artists were only asked to be part of an exhibition where that was the single context for the work. It was felt that as long as this attitude persisted in the mainstream galleries then artists from non-European backgrounds would never be given the respect that their work deserved, and neither would their place in contemporary art history be recognised.

Through consultations with artists, curators and the Arts Council Visual Arts Department, a clear role for decibel was identified: decibel would act as a catalyst for promoting long-term change, by creating a dialogue between artists and curators and the mainstream institutions, investing resources in artists, and profiling the work of artists from African, Asian and Caribbean backgrounds.

All this has translated into five main components: The launch, curatorial fellowships and traineeships, six two-year artists’ awards for research and development of work, a large-scale national debate with media and online off-shoots and media profiling of work.

Says decibel Programme Manager, Samenua Sesher, “The decibel Visual Arts Platform is only the beginning of a radical change in the way the Arts Council and the Visual Arts sector examine cultural diversity.”
Critical challenges

The New Audiences programme has highlighted many ideas, myths and misconceptions about cultural diversity marketing. Project manager Jenny Wilson casts her experienced eye on some of the pitfalls recent projects have revealed.

Everybody wants to tell you about their ‘best practice’. I’ve been to a lot of conferences about arts, diversity and audiences over the past few years, and heard many positive presentations about successful projects. But sometimes there’s a lot more to be learned from the challenges organisations have met, and overcome, than from hearing about their unqualified successes. I know from my experience working in this field that there are still a lot of misconceptions and potential pitfalls for arts organisations embarking on developing audiences for diverse work. Here are some assumptions to avoid.

‘Black and Asian work = Black and Asian audiences’

This is an oversimplified equation, which diminishes both the work and the audiences. A huge range of work is available, which cannot be defined as ‘Black’ or ‘Asian’. Equally, to define audiences by ethnicity is to ignore the complexity and diversity within those communities. Generating new audiences, particularly audiences that may perceive the arts as ‘not for us’, is more complex than just programming ‘appropriate’ work. Targeting Black and Asian work only to Black or Asian audiences also makes no commercial sense. Existing mainstream audiences are often eager to broaden their taste and understanding, or hungry just to try something new. Anecdotally, I know of venues that have programmed work to target new Black or Asian audiences, and have seen their core White attenders turning up in droves.

‘We’ve done it once, we can do it again’

The successful elements of a one-off campaign can be repeated, but too often communities are picked up and dropped. It is vital to engage them, not just as annual ‘bums on seats’ for the tour of an established Black or Asian company. Each time expectations are raised and dashed may make it harder to target these communities in the long run. Many venues say that they struggle to sustain a regular programme of Black or Asian work around which to grow an audience. But there are other ways of developing dialogue with a specific community, such as targeting the families with family events, the young people with appropriate shows, or by engaging with communities through outreach activities.

‘We need to consult first’

This is true, but it should be part of the audience development process, and it should be ongoing. There is a wealth of available research as a starting point, and it is pointless spending a fortune running focus groups to tell you what you already know. It’s also important to be wary of so-called ‘community leaders’, who may be gatekeepers, but may not represent the groups you really want to reach.

‘We can’t afford to keep the project activity going’

Any new activity can be costly in its early stages. The key is investment in a long-term plan that develops today’s innovation into a profitable part of tomorrow’s business. It’s vital that the responsibility for engaging with audiences doesn’t rest with one department (usually either the marketing department, or the education/outreach department – rarely both!). An organisational approach to sustaining the work will probably be much less costly than the long-term impact on an arts organisation that fails to reach its broad potential audiences.

‘We tried and it didn’t work’

There is a range of factors at play when any project doesn’t succeed. Good evaluation should be planned from the start, but the circumstances and context can change, too. Previous setbacks needn’t be a hurdle, as long as you’ve really learned from them.

The real success stories come from organisations that commit to understanding and working through the challenges over time. Sharing our mistakes helps prevent others from reinventing the wheel.

J Wilson Associates – Arts Project Management & Consultancy
t/f: 01274 405093;
e: [email protected]