A seemingly unrelated news item about a new book speaks volumes about arts audiences, patrons, and friends. The book is by social/political researcher Katherine Cramer Walsh, about how people talk about politics (Talking About Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life, for speed readers, here’s a news summary to get the gist of it).
Walsh spent several years observing and interacting with a group of retired, white, middle- to upper-middle-class men in a coffee shop in Ann Arbor. As a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, she became intrigued by how this group discussed politics, even though it wasn’t their reason to gather. Says Walsh:
‘Researchers generally believe that when people make sense of politics, they do it with party identification and political tools….What I found was that they make sense of politics with social tools. People aren’t political animals first. They are more social animals, and they are relating to each other and making sense of the world along with each other.’
So, who cares, you may ask (and probably already did). I’d suggest that the assumptions made by political researchers are much like the assumptions made by arts managers, marketers, and other staff: people must discuss and engage with the arts much like we do — with all the distinctions between disciplines, genres, professional/amateur, cultural context, and history we use.
I’d suggest that if you made a similar effort to Walsh’s and listened, instead, to how people discuss cultural events and engagement you’d find a similar result. To paraphrase: People aren’t arts audiences first. They are more social animals, and they are relating to each other and making sense of the world along with each other.
Another discovery by Walsh could be equally adapted to arts audiences:
‘When most people talk informally about politics, they aren’t doing it to solve the world’s problems,’ she wrote. ‘Their intent is not to improve democracy or foster brotherly love. Instead, their conversations are a way of sharing time, figuring out the world together and feeling like part of a community.’
Similarly, engagement with cultural expression isn’t a separate endeavor for arts attendees (or even for arts professionals, I’d boldly suggest). It’s part of a continuum of activities with which we engage our world, make sense of it, share it with others, and feel like we’re part of something. How useful is it, then, to continually perceive and define the arts as something separate from life?
In an odd twist, Walsh labels this last point as a ‘pessimistic conclusion,’ suggesting that people should discuss politics with the primary intent of solving the world’s problems. How similar to the many conversations I’ve heard from classical music managers, frustrated with their audience for coming to events for reasons other than the music.
