![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Construction-scaled.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>When arts organizations went into shutdown in 2020 and 2021, they asked audiences, donors, staffs, and their communities to continue supporting them even when they weren\u2019t producing and open to the public because they were working hard during the shutdowns to improve themselves in myriad ways, including building new audiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
They weren\u2019t going to let a good crisis go to waste, they said. In other words, they were going to \u201cbuild back better\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m ready to see what they\u2019ve been doing to building new audiences, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s too soon to expect it. <\/strong>It may be too soon to expect to see a reversal of the pre-pandemic trends of slowly declining arts participation and audiences, but it\u2019s not too soon to see discernable audience-building activity from the arts organizations who we all kept alive during COVID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s what I\u2019d like to hear about from any arts organization that promised to reopen better than before:<\/p>\n\n\n\n These pieces of information would show that an organization was making a worthy attempt to attract and serve an audience for the next decades, just as they had attracted and served the audience of the past few decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I got really worried when I read an article in The New York Times, \u201cLive Performance Is Back. But Audiences Have Been Slow to Return<\/a>\u201d by Michael Paulson and Javier C. Hern\u00e1ndez. The reporters asked leaders of major nonprofit performing arts organizations in New York City, Baltimore, and Wisconsin about the continued \u201cworrisome and persistent\u201d lackluster demand that threatened the health and sustainability of the organizations, if not their very existence. Manhattan Theater Club\u2019s sales were down by \u201calmost a third\u201d. (Executive Producer Barry Grove didn\u2019t say whether that was compared to a pre-pandemic year, compared to the 2020-21 season, or if that WAS the 2020-21 season.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what are the arts leaders doing about the continued empty seats left by audiences who hadn\u2019t come back? According to this article, responses include waiting, handwringing, worrying, and hoping that audiences will decide to come back soon, but they think it will take more than a year or two. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These kinds of sales and attendance drop offs mean that making big changes can\u2019t wait<\/strong>. But only Marc C. Hanson, the new (as of April 2022) President and CEO of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO), gave a gesture towards change in article, when he was quoted as saying that \u201cIt would be a mistake to simply focus on trying to restore what perhaps existed before the pandemic, because our world has changed in fundamental ways.\u201d The BSO is cutting 10 concerts to better match current demand.<\/p>\n\n\n I’m not using the absence of evidence in this one piece of media coverage to assert that new audience developments aren’t happening; the article was about the persistent reticence of about 15-20% of pre-COVID audiences<\/a>, not attracting new audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, I know it\u2019s happening in at least some organizations. The BSO is doing three concerts in new locations as a new initiative<\/a>. Actors Theatre of Louisville produced \u201cA Christmas Carol: Scrooge\u2019s Ghost Encounter Live in VR\u201d<\/a>. How much new play development is happening for VR? Shanta Thake produced a vibrant mix of free and pay-what-you-can model with the \u201cSummer for the City<\/a>\u201d series at Lincoln Center that felt like a proof-of-concept of a new, more open vision for arts participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s happening at an arts organization that you care about? Is hope their only strategy, or have they been taking measurements, drawing blueprints, and breaking new ground to build back better?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Get new posts from Row X straight to your email inbox with the free ArtsJournal Daily or Weekly newsletter. Sign up here<\/a>.<\/em> Or, level up to the Premium Newsletter <\/a>or become a ArtsJournal Patreon Fan<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Arts organizations promised to build new audiences when they reopened. What’s been happening?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300,"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":[13,56,12],"tags":[79,85,78,76,84,80,47,74,83,75,77,72,86,82,71,81,87],"class_list":{"0":"post-299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-covid","8":"category-engagement","9":"category-strategy","10":"tag-actors-theatre-of-louisville","11":"tag-audience-development","12":"tag-baltimore-symphony-orchestra","13":"tag-barry-grove","14":"tag-build-back-better","15":"tag-christmas-carol","16":"tag-covid","17":"tag-javier-c-hernandez","18":"tag-lincoln-center","19":"tag-manhattan-theater-club","20":"tag-marc-c-hanson","21":"tag-michael-paulson","22":"tag-new-audiences","23":"tag-shanta-thake","24":"tag-the-new-york-times","25":"tag-virtual-reality","26":"tag-wolfbrown","27":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Construction-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1706&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdmYVE-4P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","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=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Planning-Drawing-scaled.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1\")
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