Abstract
This article reports the findings of a questionnaire and interview study with arts audiences in a UK city, and compares the experiences of arts attenders with those of an “audience exchange” group, in which participants were taken to unfamiliar arts events and then discussed their expectations, first impressions, and intentions for future arts engagement. The study considers how the established values and behaviours of regular audience members might be inhibiting or alienating to first-time listeners, and identifies continuums of engagement that draw on psychological frameworks of identity and belonging. Differences between the factors in audience satisfaction in cinema, theatre, and music are explored, and the effects of familiarity with one art form on understanding a first encounter with a new one highlight the range of perspectives that audience members bring to any given event. The implications of these findings for audience development strategies are considered, showing how research with audiences can be a developmental tool in itself, by encouraging reflective discussion of arts experiences amongst new attenders.
Highlights
Research with arts audiences takes place across a variety of academic disciplines and commercial contexts, from market research to sociology, and from contemporary art to live-streamed cinema
“Audience experience”, in its various definitions, is notoriously difficult to access through empirical research: Belfiore and Bennett (2007) highlight the disjunction between a theoretical understanding of the arts that increasingly focuses upon the interaction between the art work and its audience, and a lack of research evidence regarding the nature of that interaction
Questions of identity and belonging are addressed as newcomers encounter an apparently close knit community of regular audience members; while those regulars themselves negotiate the norms of attendance, sometimes reacting against what they perceive to be the “ideal” audience member, describing their own habits as more eclectic and distinctive than those of someone assumed to attend frequently, predictably and sociably
Summary
Research with arts audiences takes place across a variety of academic disciplines and commercial contexts, from market research to sociology, and from contemporary art to live-streamed cinema. Using the Arts Council England’s Taking Part survey data (see Martin, Bunting, & Oskala, 2010), Miles and Sullivan (2012) offer a comprehensive analysis of current patterns of arts attendance in England, confirming Bourdieu’s theory of the inter-generational transmission of cultural practices, but noting that those outside “high art” do not necessarily view themselves as being deprived of that access They suggest that the “deficit” model commonly used in arts policy discourse is unhelpful, since all participation has value, asserting that cultural and social mobility should still be supported by policy-making and arts education By conducting a cross-arts audience survey within one UK city, this project looked at different audiences’ experiences in a small range of venues, exploring the variables of attendance habits, motivation and attitude across a local population before investigating these in greater depth through interviews and focus groups with first-time and frequent attenders
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