Under Arts Council England?s New Audiences programme, audiences can include attenders, readers, buyers, viewers, listeners, online users and participants. While targeting participants has been tested as a way of building audiences, participation has also been cultivated in its own right enabling people to discover and express their own creativity.
Particular successes have become evident through using participatory methods to draw in ?hard-to-reach? audiences, where one-to-one attention ? the interchange between the professional artist and the group or individual ? is especially important. People from excluded groups have often been first reached by participatory work, which may seek to combat disadvantage. Elsewhere, arts organisations have specifically encouraged participation as an entry point into an artform or a venue and then built a relationship with participants through education and outreach work.
Discovering the new
Aims built into such projects include communicating with a given audience, giving sometimes quite basic information to potential attenders and, above all, kindling an interest in an artform by offering a chance for people to take part in it.
The Norwich Schools? Project, led by Norwich Theatre Royal, aimed to research and break down barriers associated with artforms such as Opera and Dance through a programme of educational activity for school children, teachers and their families. This was a key element in forming the Theatre Royal?s arts and education strategy. The research also explored what effect children?s participation and attendance at dance and opera performances had, in relation to family attendance and attitudes.
Another example is Drumming up Support, a project led by Momentum Arts (formerly Eastern Touring Agency). A group of 11 venues in the Eastern region tested three different marketing approaches made through their education departments. They comprised a ticket voucher scheme, an introductory event for local teachers and a new play for family audiences in which children from local primary schools took a major role. Parents attending a performance at Bedford?s Bowen West Theatre commented that they had not previously been aware that the venue existed, or that provision for children and young people was available.
Enabling participation
Projects targeting disabled people as participants are also noted not only for bringing people into close contact with the artform and with their own creative response to it, but also for enabling consultation and involvement on other levels. The North West Regional Challenge concentrated on disabled people?s access to the arts through a series of ground-breaking projects. Burnley Youth Theatre aimed to increase the participation of young disabled people in their activities, while 3D?s Management Development project examined ways of giving people a say in how a disabled theatre company was being run.
Theatre Resource, which specialises in arts work related to social care and disability, led a project called 2x2x2, piloting a new participatory model of ?taster? sessions in Essex and Hertfordshire to develop disabled audiences. The project attracted 130 visually impaired people and people who access mental health services, who had little or no previous involvement in the arts. The company developed a new participation framework for use as a practical tool for participatory arts organisations and arts workers to judge a project?s success.
Participation also proved effective in health settings. Tonic, the Arts and Environments Programme for the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, supplied creative writing residencies for its patients through links with Ilkley Literature Festival and the Leeds Library Services. Writers-in-residence worked on a one-to-one basis with around 300 people, enabling them to develop their own writing abilities but also writing for patients, with their collaboration. Defining these participants as part of the literature audience recognises the blurred boundaries between producing (writing, collaborating) and consuming (reading).
The written word
New audiences supported a range of reader development projects that made different approaches to targeting audiences. Poems for the Waiting Room and 1,000 Years of Poetry in English, led by Poems on the Underground, both sought new access to poetry in public places. The Poetry Book Society developed Children?s Choice to establish a Children?s Poetry Book Club, while Read the World concentrated on literature in translation. Schemes such as LitCard: Untrue and Introducing the Graphomaniacs aimed to encourage young people improve reading and writing. YouthBoox, led by the agency Well Worth Reading, not only aimed to encourage 13-18 year-olds to overcome their preconceived ideas that reading was boring or uncool, it also tackled issues of social exclusion, emotional literacy, decision-making and destructive behaviour. Eleven youth centre schemes, run through eight projects across the country, reached 127 young people. The project has grown since the New Audiences investment and their website (http://www.boox.org.uk) remains live, with features, reviews, quizzes and recommended reading.
A huge range of New Audiences projects have furthered exploration of the link between the self-developmental, educational and entertainment aspects of participation and the extent to which it encourages attendance, without polarising these two aspects of engagement in the arts.
Beyond the Page
For further information and downloads:
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Feedback to Essential Audiences can be sent to audiences@artsprofessional.co.uk
Essential Audiences is compiled and written by Catherine Rose. For more information about the New Audiences Programme, contact the Arts Council England, 14 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 3NQ.
t: 020 7973 6497 f: 020 7973 6791 e: newaudiences@artscouncil.org.uk textphone: 020 7973 6564