Engaging audiences…the report

Back in April, I was an invited panelist in the Wallace Foundation’s annual gathering of its audience development grantees in Philadelphia. Because of the foundation’s deep and longterm investment in audience innovation and engagement, the event drew some of the best and brightest arts professionals for a series of thoughtful conversations. In a down economy, those conversations took on even more import than usual, as practitioners were digging even deeper to define the essence of what they do, and the most elegant ways to engage their communities.

The report from that conference is now online. And it suggests a long-term view on audience engagement that answers the following questions:

• How can arts providers take the longer view of the importance of building more diverse and more deeply engaged audiences even while confronting an economy that is severely threatening their bottom lines?
• How can the arts field harness new technologies and media to communicate with and engage new audiences while maintaining artistic excellence?
• How can arts organizations make better use of market research and other information to better understand, and tap into, major demographic shifts and changing audience preference?
• And how can the arts community learn from and cooperate with each other, share information and develop more effective methods for building audiences that benefit not only individual organizations but the arts sector as a whole?

Useful questions. And while the report can’t capture all of the responses during the Philadelphia event, it gives a good flavor of some possible answers.