Alan Brown identifies the global trends in audience behaviour that promise to overturn conventional wisdom about the presentation of the arts.
Arts participation occurs against a backdrop of changing leisure patterns and a quicksilver notion in the public psyche of what constitutes an enjoyable evening out. Six inter-related macro trends affecting audience behaviours and demand for arts programming appear to be at the heart of the matter.
Divergence of expectations
The criteria for a successful entertainment experience changes along with values and lifestyles. Some people want to fully engage and learn something every time they go out, while others idealise a more passive, disconnected experience. A precious few seek the challenge of unfamiliar art, while many more prefer the comfort of revisiting familiar works. Very little is known about the hierarchy of decision-making or how satisfaction affects future attendance, except that it does. Strangely, some people will go to arts events that they would never choose for themselves if the right person invites them. In their decision tree, the value of spending time with a friend is more important than the particulars of the programme. As the range of sophistication levels in the audience widens over time, so do expectations for fulfilment. And so the ability of an arts organisation to satisfy its community with one type of artistic product gets more and more difficult.
The new calculus of risk
Rather than spending $20 for balcony seats at five performances, more people will spend $100 for a great seat to a single must-see show. This is not peculiar to the entertainment sector, but part of a larger trend towards ?trading up? to premium products and experiences. The new calculus goes something like this: as the price of admission goes up, the willingness to risk an unsatisfactory experience goes down. These days, it seems, consumers will pay almost anything to guarantee a home run. On Broadway, producers now charge previously unthinkable prices for priority seating at hot shows. Museums and musical theatre producers, with their blockbuster shows, have traded handsomely on this trend, creating events that tap into a mysterious blend of ritualism, spectacle and the subconscious reinforcement of one?s place in the world that comes from doing something with thousands of others. Orchestras have yet to claim their share of the blockbuster consumption phenomenon, although three tenors certainly did, and now their progeny.
With the continued squeeze on leisure time, the pressure to achieve nirvana at each cultural outing increases. This goes a long way in explaining the increased frequency of standing ovations these days. The subtle subtext of rising with an audience to acknowledge a great performance is the deep need to validate one?s own participation in the ritual and to identify with those who can tell the difference between a good performance and a great one ? even when you can?t.
Diffusion of cultural tastes
This trend may be attributed to artform amalgamations and the evolution of creative processes. More artists are collaborating across disciplines and cultures. The product of this cross-pollinating is often new and exciting art that is difficult to categorise. And in the digital media age, new art is disseminated at the speed of light.
Mass culture continually transmogrifies old artforms into new ones. Consider the profound influence of Latin culture on every artform over the past decade and, more recently, the infusion of Indian culture into our own. Acculturation is inevitable, folks. This is not a train we can stop, or even steer.
And as the boundaries around the artforms continue to blur, more and more consumers care less and less about the boundaries. Meanwhile, we have constructed cultural institutions ? whole industries, in fact ? around strict definitions of the artforms that are increasingly irrelevant.
Within the realm of music, the download phenomenon represents a critical shift in how people develop preferences for different kinds of music and zero in on their favourite artists. Imagine the following Maria Callas would?ve had if she lived in the Internet era. More people have access to more art. Consequently, more people are able to experience the art of cultures and time periods other than their own ? the globalisation of art from all eras. And more people have more highly developed preferences ? a better sense of what they like and perhaps a growing awareness of what they?re missing. Hence the conundrum of both broadening and narrowing tastes, as consumers are more able to search the vast artistic landscape, try out a lot of art in order to find exactly what they like, and then compile it to their own satisfaction.
Customised experiences
Much of music?s allure to consumers derives from the relative ease with which it can be curated by the listener. In focus groups, music lovers describe how they listen to one kind of music for vacuuming, another kind of music for cooking, another kind of music for exercising, and so forth. Consumers understand what it means to be your own curator, and derive great satisfaction from arranging art around them to the satisfaction of their own aesthetic ? especially music and visual art.
Anyone with TiVo or digital cable service knows about customisation of entertainment experiences ? you choose what to watch, when you?re ready. Netflix, the web-based DVD subscription service, offers consumers a vast library of film on demand. A DVD arrives in the mail; when you?re finished, drop it back in the mail and your next movie arrives days later. Against this backdrop, most arts groups offer a pre-set programme at a fixed time in a single location, and ask you to buy it six months or more in advance.
Multi-sensory engagement
The standard for visual enhancement of live performances is high and going higher, with technological advances in lighting and real time digital image reproduction. The lighting and special effects productions at large scale concerts by pop stars are breathtaking and a vital part of the total experience. Scenic artists are beginning to use this expanded toolkit to fundamentally change the visual aspect of theatre productions, especially big budget Broadway shows.
Over the past 20 years, artists like Philip Glass, the Kronos Quartet and others pioneered the integration of theatrical elements into the traditional concert setting, including lighting, film, projections and other visual effects. One could argue that the visualisation of music is still in its infancy, from a technological perspective, as millions discover the possibilities of synchronising algorithms with digital music on their home computers (e.g. the visualisations feature of Windows Media Player), a sort of private ?Fantasia?.
The gap between visual experiences at popular music concerts and traditional arts performances is not lost on audiences, who increasingly attend both types of events. For example, research uncovers a range of consumer opinions about the visual aspect of orchestra concerts. Some music lovers are enthralled with the visual tableau. For them, a great deal of the value of concert going has to do with watching the conductor and the ensemble and the interplay between them. Others find the visual aspect of orchestra concerts boring. They are likely to close their eyes and let their imaginations create a visual counterpoint to the music.
As the velocity and diversity of visual, aural, tactile and other stimuli in our lives increase, so the brain learns to accommodate them. Parents marvel at how their children can do homework on a computer while simultaneously listening to the radio or watching TV. It is commonplace now to see people reading while listening to their iPods, two fundamentally different and demanding cognitive exercises. In the age of IMAX films and surround-sound in-home theatre, it is truly amazing that people drive to live performances at all.
The live performance experience, we have learned, cannot be duplicated. But the standard and expectation for multi-sensory stimulation at all types of live entertainment experiences continues to rise, inescapably.
Desire for more intense experiences
The sum of all these trends is higher demand for more intense and more pleasurable leisure and learning experiences. In other words, the threshold for satisfaction is higher now, and not just with music but with other stimulants, as well. Kids who grew up with interactive museum exhibits and video games are now hyper-stimulated adult consumers driving the experience economy. Their offspring, meanwhile, are playing in children?s edutainment centres with activities such as pretend supermarkets, dinosaur digs, and television studios. How will arts organisations capture the fecund imagination of the next generation of experience learners?
No one who works in the arts and entertainment business should be surprised by any of this. Quite apart from these trends, it must be said, art is as necessary and essential to people as it ever has been, if not more so. Yet accommodating these trends into mission statements and programme plans, as inevitable as they may be, sends chills down the spines of artists and board members.
The overarching point is that leisure trends are moving people farther and farther away from fixed, static experiences. Anyone who thinks that their offerings are somehow immune to the shifting sands of demand is sadly mistaken. Consumers will never be able to tell us the future of art ? they do not know the possibilities. But we cannot invent a more viable future for our institutions and agencies without a deep understanding of how consumers fit art into their lives.
This article is based on a publication researched and written by U.S. arts consultant Alan S. Brown for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of its Magic of Music symphony orchestra initiative, an 11-year, $15 million venture supporting innovative programming, learning and change among a group of American nonprofit orchestra organisations.
For more information about Knight?s orchestra initiative, including a series of publications about related orchestra issues, see www.knightfdn.org. To contact Alan Brown,