Six years of audience development work has not upped engagement levels
Public engagement with the arts has not increased at all since 2005/06, according to the latest figures from the ‘Taking Part’ survey, which was launched by the previous Government to gain an insight into the impact of the DCMS’s portfolio of activities.
People are now engaging with the arts less frequently, and the proportion of the Black and minority ethnic population (BME) involved in arts activity at least once a year has fallen by 4.5% over this time period. Across England as a whole, the proportion of young people (aged 16–24) involved in the arts has remained stubbornly constant, although audiences aged 65–74 have increased. As for the regional picture, there has been a similar fall in engagement in London and the South West, but elsewhere there has been no change. By contrast, the number of people who visit museums and galleries has grown by 5%, including growth in all age groups from 25 to 75.
Arts Council England (ACE) refutes the research findings. A spokesperson told AP: “Attendance figures for the arts have stood up remarkably well in view of the recession. In fact, our research shows that our regularly funded organisations are reaching more people than ever before with audiences growing from 43 million in 2008/09 to 46.6 million in 2009/10.” Its own research also “shows that today a young BME person is as likely to engage with the arts as any other young person”.
However, the Taking Part survey is a continuous annual survey of adults and children living in private households in England, and is widely recognised as providing the most reliable national estimate of adult engagement with sport, libraries, the arts, heritage, and museums and galleries. The reported findings on the arts sector, all based on statistically significant figures, have been published in accordance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics produced by the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), the watchdog responsible for monitoring and promoting good practice in the collection and interpretation of data.
The robust evidence of the absence of audience growth in recent years will draw into question the extent to which state-sponsored audience development initiatives can influence public attitudes and behaviour towards the arts. This was illuminated in evidence to the Select Committee inquiry into the funding of arts and heritage, when Danny Moar of Bath Theatre Royal condemned ACE’s “remorseless and obsessive preoccupation” with audience development. He said: “The funding system has spent so much time… chasing after new audiences who, for perfectly legitimate reasons, are just not interested.”
In response, Dame Liz Forgan, Chair of ACE, acknowledged: “There may be some justice in this… One of the cuts in our own expenditure that we had to make was that our next plan for audience development was specifically going to be aimed not at people who never go to the arts, but at people who consume the arts a very little bit to see if we couldn’t encourage them to do it a little bit more. I’m sure that’s the sensible way to go.”
However, this appears to be at odds with ACE’s published 10-year strategy, ‘Achieving Great Art for Everyone’, which gives specific targets including “more people… engaging in the arts in places where participation is currently low” and “larger and more diverse audiences… experiencing and benefiting from the work of the organisations and artists that we fund”.
For more than a decade ACE placed significant emphasis on developing audiences for the arts: £20m was spent on its ‘New Audiences’ Programme which ran between 1998 and 2003, and more recently, as well as running its own initiatives and having its own Directorate of ‘Engagement and Participation’, ACE has been providing regular funding for seven audience development agencies across England, amounting to just over £1m in 2010, in addition to Lottery project money. But the announcement of the latest Taking Part figures coincides with the news that all have failed in their bids to become part of its new National Portfolio of funded organisations.
Furthermore, ACE’s recent proposed audience development initiative, Arts Nation, which aimed to “develop best practice for arts organisations looking to provide audiences with a first step into the arts” was cancelled to protect front-line funding.
A spokesperson for ACE told AP: “We will continue to look for ways to work with our national portfolio organisations and audience development agencies to deliver maximum public value and achieve our goal of reaching more people.”
AudiencesUK, the national network of audience development agencies, said: “We look forward to a productive dialogue. The sector has never needed the skills of this internationally acclaimed support network more than it does now.” Audiences South, which is a business unit of Hampshire County Council and has been subsidised to work across Hampshire and the South East region, has lost its funding and is working on a winding-down plan before closing in September.