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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a> suggests (see below), consumers seek different roles in different measures, and not just in the arts.<\/p>\n How does your audience want to engage your work? And are you providing the path, and the invitation, for them to do so? <\/p>\n \n