{"id":1212,"date":"2020-08-26T11:06:27","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T15:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/?p=1212"},"modified":"2020-08-27T14:22:32","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T18:22:32","slug":"new-series-audiences-during-the-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/2020\/08\/new-series-audiences-during-the-pandemic.html","title":{"rendered":"New Series: Audiences During the Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Post by Guest Editor, Hannah Grannemann<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the pandemic first hit and performances stopped and museums closed in mid-March, I watched. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, after 17 years working in the arts, mostly in nonprofit theatre, I joined the University of North Carolina Greensboro faculty as an Assistant Professor of Arts Administration and Director of the Arts Administration Program<\/a>. Just prior to joining UNCG, I was the Executive Director of Children\u2019s Theatre of Charlotte, and Managing Director of PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, NC. I\u2019m a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and Yale School of Management. I\u2019m familiar with making the decisions needed to keep an organization running under challenging circumstances. I can understand how this is working for arts organizations, but don\u2019t have to worry about my own during this crisis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From my lucky position as a teacher and researcher, I could be a knowledgeable observer from the sidelines. You remember what it was like at the beginning of this crisis. First, there was a rush by arts organizations to communicate to their audiences what was happening with their tickets or opening hours \u2013 cancellations, postponements, honest admissions of \u201cwe just don\u2019t know, but we\u2019ll tell you when we do.\u201d Then, there were public explanations about what was happening with their staff. (Good, I thought, trying to keep the trust with your audience and donors, plus other stakeholders like artists and community supporters.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there was the rapid and voluminous posting of video content: performances, gallery tours, Zoom panels, home performances, thrown-together online fundraisers. All with a vibe of \u201cthe show must go on.\u201d I got worried. Oh no, I thought, we\u2019re forgetting everything we\u2019ve learned about audiences, namely that audiences value the whole experience of attending arts events, seeing them primarily as social experiences. And I worried that organizations were deluding themselves that they would be able to replace the lost income with revenue from online content, which wouldn\u2019t work because audiences won\u2019t see them as holding the same value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now we\u2019re many months in, and it\u2019s been fascinating to see audiences, artists, and organizations adapt. Audiences ARE watching online content of all kinds in record numbers. Artists quickly tired of creating performances from Zoom boxes and are making all kinds of new works.  Organizations are regrouping with virtual and socially distanced seasons with admirable flexibility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen, but \u201cthe show must go on\u201d ethos is serving us well, I think. Besides, what else would we do? Resilience is a hackneyed word by now, but it applies. People in the arts are nothing if not resilient. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s taken a long time for the arts to be as audience-centered as we are, and there is a long way to go to become as audience-centered as we should be. But it\u2019s now largely frowned upon to totally look down upon our audiences as we have in the past, sneering at them if they \u201cdon\u2019t get it\u201d (at least openly). The best organizations have taken responsibility for having a real relationship with their audiences, though there are as many interpretations of what that means as there are arts organizations and artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My goal as guest editor of Lynne Conner\u2019s \u2018We the Audience\u2019 blog<\/a> for the next six months is to share and respond to what I\u2019m seeing happening during this Coronavirus\/COVID-19 crisis through the lens of the audience. My deepest gratitude to Lynne for giving me this space to explore for a while. There are important and robust conversations happening about artists and arts organizations, how they survive and thrive. I hope to add to the collective conversation by focusing on the audience and audience experience. I will surely intersect with the issues of artists and arts organizations since we can\u2019t really separate these three groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyday there are new ideas, plans, calls to action, reasons to despair and reasons to celebrate. In this space I will be sharing and responding to what I\u2019m seeing \u2013 and I ask you to share and respond as well. I\u2019m sure that I will sometimes misinterpret and be wrong (I pray that I will recognize it when it happens), and sometimes you will just plain disagree with me. I\u2019ve been heartened to see that there are spirited but generous debates going on about all aspects of what we are facing. I don\u2019t promise to be perfect, but I promise to be open and to learn quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Join me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest editor Hannah Grannemann begins a new series on arts audiences during the Coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"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":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28,29,30],"class_list":["post-1212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","tag-arts","tag-audiences","tag-research","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1212"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1216,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions\/1216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/wetheaudience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}