Stephen Cashman presents a new analytical framework which he believes will enable a wide range of audience development activity to be appropriately categorised, classified and evaluated on its own terms.
The Swiss army knife model
Earlier articles in this series have made impressively strong if apparently divergent observations about audience development, one arguing for an approach which is sustainable and sensitive to the needs of both art and audiences, and another emphasising the moral imperative and responsibility associated with public funding. But whilst these contributions offer dual perspectives, they are not necessarily duelling ones.
Audience development describes a practice which can have a range of uses and intentions that when applied appropriately, can play a part in helping an organisation achieve its particular objectives. So rather than coming up with a single and definitive definition, perhaps what really needs to be recognised is that audience development is almost like a Swiss army knife - a multi-faceted tool that can be used to accomplish a range of jobs in a variety of settings.
In November 2001 the strategic audience development agency, Developing Audiences in the North (DAN), was commissioned to evaluate Northern Arts? Regional Audience Development Initiative. To do this we needed an analytical framework to categorise and classify the projects being undertaken as part of the initiative. In reviewing each of these projects, it became clear that a framework for analysis would have two main characteristics. Firstly it would allow us to note and record the sorts of audience development activity happening in the field according to four considerations - a set of ?4 Ps?:
? The purpose of the audience development activities
? The process used to undertake them (which tended to correspond with cycles of continuous improvement)
? The priorities, aspirations, and strategic intent of the resulting ways of putting audience development thinking into action
? The payoffs generated.
Exploring the projects in the field and applying these four considerations resulted in the model shown below.
Secondly, at the framework?s core were the priorities that determined the sort of approach taken. Here that model beloved by marketing people - Ansoff?s product/ market matrix - was adapted. The activities were classified according to whether they were intended to apply to existing markets and existing products, existing markets and new products, new markets and existing products, or new markets and new products. Furthermore a kind of activity relating to research was added.
This gave the analytical framework a kernel which proposes that there are five categories of potential audience development activity or intentions, and that these form a menu from which organisations can select according to their needs and circumstances.
The model suggests that audience development interventions can be used to deliver five flavours of audience development activity intended to:
? Develop an audience?s usage of an organisation together with that audience?s pattern of consumption (?retention & cultivation?)
? Develop an audience?s social, demographic and geographical breadth (?broadening scope?)
? Develop the range and quality of the experience offered to an audience (?programme development?)
? Develop both the audience?s breadth and the scope of its experience by expanding the range of provision to attract new and different types of audience members (?innovation?)
? Develop the range of knowledge an organisation has about its audiences (?audience development research?).
This overall framework?s usefulness was entirely validated by the way in which it enabled DAN to classify, record and analyse the scope of audience development activity being undertaken in the north of England. And although it makes no claims to being definitive, it does serve to emphasise how audience development is a multi-faceted tool and methodology that can be used to serve a diverse range of organisational needs.
Stephen Cashman is Chief Executive and Managing Consultant of Developing Audiences in the North. t: 0191 420 2624; e: dev.aud.north@dial.pipex.com