{"id":228,"date":"2022-05-20T03:04:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T08:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/?p=228"},"modified":"2022-05-19T17:33:45","modified_gmt":"2022-05-19T22:33:45","slug":"why-audience-research-matters-and-why-it-matters-now-policies-politics-and-practices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/2022\/05\/20\/why-audience-research-matters-and-why-it-matters-now-policies-politics-and-practices\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Audience Research Matters, and Why It Matters Now: Policies, Politics and Practices"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Row X guest blog by Ben Walmsley<\/a>, Professor of Cultural Engagement at University of Leeds, UK<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is the second in a series on Row X will be featuring short essays written by the co-editors of the Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>a major reference work published in April 2022. The series is introduced here<\/a>.

The Companion represents a truly multi-dimensional exploration of the inter-relationships between audiences and performance. Spread over four sections and featuring the research and thinking of sixty international contributing authors, the volume considers audiences contextually and historically, through both qualitative and quantitative empirical research, and places them within current conversations in the field of audience research. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The chapter \u201cEthics in Audience Research: By the Book or on the Hop?\u201d by Katya Johanson<\/a> and Hilary Glow<\/a> is available for free to everyone. Follow this link, then click on \u201cOpen access content is available for this title\u201d to access the chapter.<\/strong>

Post your comments and questions to X readers to engage with us about important issues central to audience research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why Audience Research Matters, and Why It Matters Now: Policies, Politics and Practices<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

By Ben Walmsley<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By exploring the wider impacts of engagement with the performing arts beyond the act or location of performance itself, Part Two of this Companion takes a meta or macro view of audiencing. The authors in this section represent a broad spectrum of academic disciplines, including arts management, cultural policy studies, political science, sociology, applied theatre, performance studies and education. This breadth reinforces the multidisciplinary nature of audience studies and offers a particularly rich blend of approaches.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Ben Walmsley<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Although audience scholars are certainly not the most diverse of cohorts, we have made a best endeavour to broaden the range of voices in this section, and I hope that the case studies drawn from Australia, Bangladesh, Ghana, Ireland, the UK and the USA will find resonance with readers\u2019 worldwide experiences of audiencing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Companion, we discuss why audience research matters and why it matters now<\/em>.<\/strong> We note that audiencing is part of human beings\u2019 natural cognitive processes (our ontology) and also an important means of experiencing the world as we live in it with other people (our phenomenology). In this second part of the Companion our attention turns very much to what phenomenologists would term our being-for-others. Accordingly, the chapters in this section focus on a broad range of topics that we have loosely conjoined under the umbrella heading of \u2018Policies, Politics and Practices.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Policies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In what we hope are the end stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, audiences and cultural engagement are rising up the policy agenda. Governments of all shapes and sizes are desperately trying to understand the implications of the pandemic on the creative economy, on the workforce and on key aspects of cultural supply and demand. It seems that even the most sceptical and instrumental of governments has observed the intrinsic social value of the arts and culture, which have clearly offered solace to communities in times of hardship and which offer a potent way to build a more empathetic and animated society by revitalizing empty high and main streets and engaging with isolated individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politicians and civil servants are interested in the potential for cultural engagement to develop civic pride and to develop happy, creative people. We are witnessing a global shift from elitist institutions towards everyday creativity, spurred on by renewed calls for cultural democracy. This shift is captured powerfully by Steven Hadley<\/a> in Chapter 9, who decries the failed and often disingenuous attempts to develop and diversify audiences, and by Maria Barrett<\/a> (Chapter 10) and Bree Hadley<\/a> (Chapter 11), who both illustrate what cultural democracy can look like in practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related indelibly to policies, the politics surrounding audiences and audiencing in the performing arts are heating up in the aftermath of not only the Covid-19 pandemic but also the Black Lives Matter movements and the global climate crisis. Public and personal finances are in a perilous state and difficult public spending decisions will need to be made which will inevitably impact on the performing arts sector. This means that questions about economic and social impact will (re-)emerge with a vengeance, effecting what is likely to be a new age of instrumentality in cultural policy characterized perhaps by the need for cultural institutions to prove themselves socially \u2018useful.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, in turn, will impact on how cultural activity and engagement is evaluated. In Chapter 15, Julian Meyrick<\/a> and I reflect on the dangers of basing evaluation methods on the futile and paradoxical objective of measuring what cannot be measured. The fact that the cultural sector still finds itself in the uncomfortable place of needing to justify its very existence and dance to policymakers\u2019 ephemeral tunes is perhaps testament to the disjointed research agenda and poor knowledge management that Alan Brown<\/a> rightly calls out in Chapter 8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Practices<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The act of audiencing highlights the active role of the audience member, which manifests in terms of multisensory, spiritual and political engagement with performance. There are growing signs of activist and radical engagement amongst audiences, but the political nature of audiencing is certainly not a new phenomenon: several authors featured in Part Two highlight the longevity and universality of this kind of engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, in Chapter 14, Awo Mana Asiedu<\/a> explores the rich Ghanaian tradition of \u2018efficacious theatre\u2019 \u2013 theatre that is pragmatic, and socially and politically engaged. Similarly in Chapter 13, Meghna Guhathakurta<\/a> illustrates how \u2018interactive theatre\u2019 can empower audiences to break barriers and taboos. Meanwhile in Chapter 12, Kirsty Sedgman<\/a> offers a more epistemological perspective on practices of audiencing, making a powerful case for an overdue rapprochement between fan studies and audience studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power of audiencing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In combination, the chapters featured in Part Two of this Companion capture evolving notions of audiencing in the performing arts at a pivotal moment of our century. The authors represented here embody the polyvocal and interdisciplinary nature of audience studies and demonstrate the role that performance can play not only in holding up a critical mirror to ourselves, others and our societies, but also in effecting social change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Ben Walmsley. Highlights from Part Two of the Routledge Companion to Audiences and Performing Arts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,70,10],"tags":[69,66,67,7,65,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-audience-research-literature","8":"category-guest-post","9":"category-introductions","10":"tag-audience-research","11":"tag-ben-walmsley","12":"tag-katya-johanson","13":"tag-lynne-conner","14":"tag-matthew-reason","15":"tag-routledge","16":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Square-Routledge-Companion-Cover-Image.jpg?fit=1955%2C1955&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdmYVE-3G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":288,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions\/288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}