I’m in Maine at the moment, preparing for a week-long visit to Colby College to think about and talk about audiences and the arts. At conferences and other arts conversations, there’s certainly a lot of talk about how audiences are changing. The assumed contract between artist, audience, and community seems under renegotiation — pushed in part by the power shift of digital and network technologies. And since our cultural organizations and business models are built upon the older contract, cultural managers are concerned.
But one of my premises while here in Maine is that technology for the most part doesn’t change things, it only reveals what was already there. The urge to participate, to create, to connect, and to interpret was likely always a part of the audience experience. But the channels available to deliver the arts experience weren’t accommodating to that urge (darkened theater, one-directional broadcast media, curated exhibition). That’s where Lynne Conner’s fabulous work on the history of audience behavior backs me up.
Arts audiences certainly still want to receive and observe, but they also want to play other roles in the experience from time to time. And as the Groundswell work from Forrester Research suggests (see below), consumers seek different roles in different measures, and not just in the arts.
How does your audience want to engage your work? And are you providing the path, and the invitation, for them to do so?
This is fantastic. I had just found Forrester’s tool last week. I am using it to help figure out the strategy to engage our community (Washtenaw County, MI) and drive growth on our new web portal. Taking stake from some existing good ideas, it is one-of-a-kind. Almost all of the content of the site will be community generated, unlike many heavily manicured spaces. The site will provide profiles for artists, enthusiasts, venues, and organizations (local arts directory). Through these points it’ll allow event management, opportunity to share resources, and finally provide a community forum for conversations on arts and culture.
We are counting on the trends you describe. Hopefully leading to a more participatory arts and culture community here in our corner of Michigan. We have had growing success in initiatives like cultural plans and leadership groups. This active role is evident.
I also work at a local historic theater. They do old school sing-a-longs, which have been very popular. Still a bit to go in cultivating this new interaction online and off.
As a sneak peak for your readers, they can check out our site in development at a2arts.org (it’s secret domain). It’ll officially launch soon at a3arts.org.
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Justin Fenwick
Outreach Manager, Arts Alliance
Ann Arbor, MI
I think technology has definitely had an effect on fan/artist interactions. This has both an upside and a downside. Artists now have the ability to go directly to their fans via the internet without the aid of a middle man which can be more profitable if the artist has mastered the art of social networking.
The downside is that fans crave this kind of direct interaction with artists now. They want to be able to read an artists blog or see them posting updates on twitter and feel involved and close to what’s going on with the artist. So for an artist to really reach out and expand their fan base they have to take to time learn the new forms of social media and take the time to write blogs and read responses and try and adjust what they’re doing accordingly so that they can provide fans with the most intimate experience in a way that will have them telling their friends and hopefully creating an ever expanding fan base.
Technology has the ability to both create and reveal artistic movements. Technology allows amateurs to create music, teaches visual artists new techniques and allows performers to learn from experience things that they could have never observed. It allows growth and teaching to people that, for differing reasons, might not be able to access those tools elsewhere.
Technology can also reveal to the public art that currently exists, but may have never existed in the public eye. Artists can publicize their work, create blogs, join web collectives and even sell their pieces online, all from home or their studio.
Technology (along with the internet) allows more people the chance to access art and share their art with others.
I would agree that while technology reveals what is already there, as it creates many more ways for us to connect and create. However, it also, has a terrible tendency to divide us through solitude. Many people today would rather text then talk or play online than meet and chat or even chat on the phone. Not sure where technology will take us as a society.