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It is unfortunate that Government paranoia about statistics means that the headline figure being much quoted in the evaluation of the New Audiences Programme is the 800,000 people who have supposedly become arts attenders in recent years (p1). Jolly good news, of course (though it?s probably best not to ask too many questions about how that particular figure was arrived at). But what is, perhaps, more significant is that the £20m direct government investment in audience development has enabled 1,157 arts organisations to take a few risks and do something new and different.
The opportunity for organisations to re-consider their relationships with their audiences and to take action to encourage new attenders has been a valuable one, and the careful documentation of the experiences of those who took part will form a valuable legacy of the project. It would be nice to think that those reading the case studies on the New Audiences website might now be inspired to run some similar initiatives themselves ? but their inspiration may be short-lived. The DCMS has already started planting the seeds of expectation that it will be the museums sector that is set to celebrate following the current spending review, and that cash for the arts is going to be in short supply. So given that audience development activity is seldom at the front of the queue when the budgets are divvied up in arts organisations, it will be interesting to see whether the 800,000 people are still attending in three or four years? time.

The ACE spokesman claims that one of the lessons of the New Audiences project has been that, alongside financial competence and artistic invention, successful audience building is now considered a key measure of an arts organisation?s performance. Some from outside the arts world might say about time too. Art may be for art?s sake, but that?s not much good if nobody gets to see it.