4th September 2017
9:45 – 10:30
Lecture: Introducing audience development
(Alessandra Gariboldi, Fitzcarraldo, Italy)
Overall, Audience Development is a transversal phenomenon which cross-cuts not only specific cultural policies addressed to support access and participation in the cultural sector but also policies addressed to support cultural access and participation in a broader sense, as well as policies aiming at fostering cultural consumption by young people and the use of new technologies. Generally speaking, the concept evolved from an almost purely marketing-oriented approach to a more holistic and processual vision of AD as a multi-faceted means aimed at deepening, strengthening and widening the relationship between cultural institutions and different audiences. So what is actually Audience Development? What does Europe mean for AD in 2017? And more generally, do we all mean the same when we talk about it? Why is it so important for cultural and social development? What does “good” AD look like? This lecture will try to look at the main features of this complex concept, setting the framework for the development of the three-day seminar.
11:00 – 11:45
Lecture: Living theatre Audiences
(Armelle Stépien, PR and audience development consultant, France)
How is the issue of audiences viewed today in France? What encourages people to visit the theatre, and what discourages them from doing so? How to apply strategies for audience development and diversification in relation to art projects? These are some of the questions we will be trying to answer by presenting several examples from public theatres in France. Using the examples of two programmes for artistic and cultural education that have been developed by the theatre Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe from Paris, we will be discussing how to establish new forms of relationship with the audience through the use of innovative methods and the practice of mediation – which are practices that have to be constantly reinvented within the ever-changing context.
12:00 – 13:30
Examples of good practice relating to target groups:
Children as audience and the cinema
(Slobodanka Mišković, Art kino, Croatia)
The Art-kino is a platform for developing Rijeka’s audiovisual culture. It’s not just a place to go see a film but also a hub of discussion, communication, exploration, and education. Precisely because of this special attention is given to developing film going habits in children and the young, and motivating them to watch, understand, and make their own films. In many aspects of their lives children and the young create and share moving images and the digital world and community are becoming increasingly larger parts of their reality. Because of this it is necessary to consider the ways we could help them develop skills necessary to understand, interpret, and apply the language of the cinema. The Art-kino has several continuous educational projects, of which the most known and successful is the “Škola u kinu” (“School in the cinema”) one, made in cooperation with local elementary and high schools. The project resulted in over nine thousand local schoolchildren visiting the Art-kino during the school year and having an opportunity to acquaint themselves with valuable films. Educational programs developed in cooperation with local schools are one of the key programming goals of the Art-kino institution. They are an important cultural and social value for the community we’re active in and are also the Art-kino’s key development potential.
The seminar will acquaint us with examples of good practice made by the Art-kino, i.e. its Škola u kinu project, its beginnings, context, methods employed, and programming and project goals.
Examples of good practice relating to target groups:
Teenage audience and contemporary theatre
(Alma R. Selimović, Bunker, Slovenia)
Teenagers are known to lose interest in all art events that school and parents were taking them to when they were younger. Being too grown-up and too cool for children’s performances and too young for adults’ performances they are left with many choices, but few of these are of high quality and outside the mainstream culture. Bunker is developing several programs for teenagers in the field of contemporary theatre that Alma R. Selimović will present: with some we reach out to teenagers through schools and with some they join us as curators – we offer them a platform for their own programming.
14:15 – 16:45
Workshop: Creating and executing a cultural mediation project
(Armelle Stépien, PR and audience development consultant, France)
Cultural mediation creates connections between a work of art and its audience. Its activities should take into consideration a variety of parameters in order to achieve success with both the project’s authors and with users, while respecting the social spaces and actors involved.
After a short presentation on the challenges related to cultural mediation, the participants will be asked to work in small groups on the creation and execution of a cultural mediation project. Methodologies that take into consideration issues that may arise during the creation of the project, such as target audiences, goals, schedule, evaluation, information, promotion and budget, will be proposed. Next, each project will be presented to the entire group after which the participants will be given the opportunity to exchange their views and opinions.
14:15 – 16:45
Workshop: First things first! – What you need to have in place and working effectively before you commence audience development
(Paul Bogen, Olivearte, UK)
What’s it about?
Audience Development is not a project – it is a long-term process. And if you want to do it effectively, you first need to have a healthy, well-functioning organisation with some key structures, processes and policies already in place and working well.
So, this workshop is all about how to assess if you are really ready to start developing your audience. This will include discussing and examining areas such as purpose, vision, policies, communications, strategies, finances, people, resources, structures and organisational culture. It will then cover specifically what you need to have in place before embarking on audience development with some ideas and options of how to do this.
Who is it for?
Anyone interested in or considering doing Audience Development, especially Directors/CEOs, producers, programmers, curators, and people in communications/marketing and PR should participate.
What might you learn?
How healthy your organisation currently is, what’s most important and how to assess this. What your organisation’s relationship with and attitude towards its audience is at present. If you are really ready for Audience Development, and if not, how to develop and deliver a plan for this.
5th September 2017
9:15 – 10:00
Lecture: Audience development planning: between idea and reality
(Alessandra Gariboldi, Fitzcarraldo, Italy)
AD came into being as a fragmented practice rooted in the cultural organisations’ need to pursue their various goals. AD projects have been mostly planned and run by single departments (usually education or marketing), most of time without a strategic vision and operational planning that would make the most of it. Planning is the most trivial and at the same time a very complex challenge when it comes to establishing relationships with audiences, since life has the nasty habit of meddling with our straightforward and perfect plans. Nevertheless, good planning is the only way to pursue our audience goals, and the best way to succeed. The lecture will give an overview of what an AD plan looks like, and how some organisations try to combine it with real life work flow.
10:15 – 11:00
Lecture: Organisational change and audience centricity: European perspectives
(Cristina Da Milano, ECCOM, Italy)
There are many different ways to tackle the challenges related to audience development and engagement that depend on the diversity of cultural organizations: from established institutions that are reinventing themselves, to organizations created as audience-centred, from artistic paths naturally leading to participatory practices, to marketing and communication changes motivated by a new management.
Nevertheless, as the recent EU funded “Study on Audience Development” demonstrates with an in-depth analysis of 30 case studies from all over Europe, those which have been successful in promoting and implementing audience-centric policies have some things in common: a receptive attitude, a trial and error approach, data relevance, and shared objectives. Most of these clearly describe the link between audience development and organisational implications and leadership issues. The cases analysed present a varied and balanced mix of “reactive” and “pro-active” changes: the reactive approach still remains a dominant state for many cultural organisations trying to respond to external pressures; the proactive one is based on organisational behaviours that anticipate and interpret emerging social phenomena, producing ad hoc answers and innovation in terms of proposal, format and engagement strategies.
The shift towards a more audience-centric approach requires the creation of an organisational environment able to provide change through open innovation processes and a strong involvement of all the staff: leadership plays an important role in introducing innovative and alternative approaches and in removing internal resistance.
11:30 – 12:15
Lecture: The value in evaluation
(Jonathan Goodacre, The Audience Agency, UK)
Evaluation is often regarded as the process you go through at the end of a project, usually to justify your existence to a funder or stakeholder. However, it can be an immensely valuable exercise that can help us change, develop, and improve our practice and understand underlying trends and impacts. This lecture will therefore look at the value of evaluation with a particular focus on the audience and using practical examples of the way it can help us develop our work.
12:30 – 13:45
Examples of good practice relating to artistic forms and transformation of institution:
Building an Audience through the Transformation of Institution
(Tijana Palkovljević, Matica Srpska, Srbija)
At the beginning of the 21st century, cultural institutions faced a major challenge – how to adapt their actions, programs and activities to the needs of the audience of the new millennium. In the museum profession the following question was raised: could a new audience be created without the overall transformation of traditionally designed museum and gallery institutions? The Gallery of Matica srpska, as a national conservative gallery, has decided to solve the problem of less developed audience building through continuous decennial transformation of space, programs and communication strategies. After ten years of work, the results are visible: audience numbers have increased while the types of audiences have been diversified. However, all that has been achieved in the Gallery so far is only the foundation for the further audience development since this is an never-ending process. And the possibilities are numerous…
Examples of good practice relating to artistic forms and transformation of institution:
Putting audiences at the heart of the museum experience: examples of good practice
(Sofia Tsilidou, NEMO, Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Greece)
Museums have in recent years been confronted with global trends and challenges that have urged them to shift their focus from objects to audiences and increasingly adopt an audience-centric approach. Becoming more audience-centered has prompted museums to embrace change in terms of professional, structural, and organizational development. What does this change entail? What do museums that changed to become more audience-centered have in common? By analyzing museum case studies from different parts of Europe, this presentation will seek to illustrate how different audience development goals have informed the choice of different interventions by museums to attract new and wider audiences, increase commitment of existing audiences, and develop more enriching experiences for all audiences.
Examples of good practice relating to artistic forms and transformation of institution:
From audience to readers
(Mika Buljević, Booksa, Croatia)
Kulturtreger’s main goal is the promotion of literature which makes the development of reading habits the foundation of its work. This approach views readers not as book buyers but as active citizens whose actions influence and shape the literary field. Strategies for reader involvement and motivation form the basic tenets of the organization’s programming. A presentation of Kulturtreger’s work puts focus on these strategies and the way they are implemented in their main programmes, such as Booksa literary club and Booksa.hr online portal for literature.
14:30 – 17:00
Workshop: Audience development as a way towards cultural democracy
(Niels Righolt, Danish Centre for Arts & Interculture (DCAI/CKI))
The workshop will touch on some key areas of conflict which most organisations face in the process of widening their audience engagement work. The workshop will include a short introduction to some basic methods and ideas and it will allow the participants to test them on one or two cases from the group of participants. Focus will be on identification, target segmentation, organisational anchorage, internal process, engagement, and maintenance of the relationship.
14:30 – 17:00
Workshop: Segmenting and prioritizing
(Alessandra Gariboldi, Fitzcarraldo and Cristina Da Milano, ECCOM, Italy)
Every AD plan starts with the crucial question: which audiences? Deriving Audience goals from our mission and analysis is a difficult step but looking at our audiences, understanding them, and segmenting them can be even harder. No AD process can be set before admitting that we probably can’t reach everybody, and we certainly can’t reach them at the same time. Segmenting is therefore a critical step for recognising audience needs and purposes in order to plan properly. During the workshop participants will learn how to define segments and how to prioritise them.
6th September 2017
9:15 – 10:00
Lecture: Audience development as a way towards cultural democracy
(Niels Righolt, Danish Centre for Arts & Interculture (DCAI/CKI), Denmark)
Niels Righolt talks about present threads in Danish and Scandinavian cultural politics and how an increased demand for cultural participation influences the design of politics and structures reflected in e.g. AD as an institutional strategy to engage both locally and in a wider scope with both new and existing audiences.
10:15 – 12:30
Panel: ECoC audience development
Facilitated by Paul Bogen
This I tell you brother, you can’t have one without the other. Or maybe you can?
(Agata Etmanowicz, Impact Foundation, Poland)
How does ECoC’s ‘outreach’ category relate to audience development? (Going beyond frequency, numbers…) How can audience development be interpreted in the context of ECoC? (Is it just a trend or a fad? Can it be a tool for achieving a “greater good”?) How can the culture sector & citizens benefit from it? (If only…/How to make audience development work in the border scope) What can we learn from experiences of previous ECoCs? (Is there anything to learn? Let’s take Wrocław 2016 as an example).
European Capital of Culture: A unique opportunity for Expanded Audience Engagement
(Mary McCarthy, National Sculpture Factory, UK)
The ECOC unlike any other project provides a unique opportunity to engage with many audiences simultaneously. This programme allows a city to expand its ambitions and the experiences of its residents and visitors. McCarthy will discuss this opportunity and highlight some ECOC projects which created unforeseen sustained audience legacies.
13:15 – 17:00
Workshop: Audience development planning
(Alessandra Gariboldi, Fitzcarraldo, Italy and Jonathan Goodacre, The Audience Agency, UK)
This practical workshop on audience development will help participants develop strategies that make a difference in their own work. Led by Alessandra Gariboldi and Jonathan Goodacre, who helped to create the Adeste and Engage Audience Development models, participants will be encouraged to consider how their aims can be converted into realistic strategies for the development of their audiences.
The workshop will build on elements discussed previously in the ‘Applause Please’ seminar showing how action plans can be developed from original vision, mission and aims. It will be a step by step process in which participants can share their own experiences as well as learn from successful audience development strategies from around the world.
13:15 – 17:00
Workshop: How to write a successful Creative Europe, Culture sub-programme application
(Paul Bogen, Olivearte, UK)
What’s it about?
This workshop will be a very practical guide on how to write a successful Creative Europe, Culture sub-programme application including what to do, what not to do, when to do it, who should do it and some top tips. It will not guarantee you will be one of the 10% – 15% who annually receive a grant from each strand of the programme, but it will hopefully increase your chances!
Who is it for?
Anyone applying or considering applying for a Creative Europe, Culture sub-programme grant.
Paul Bogen’s experience
Paul has obtained €7 million from the Creative Europe Culture sub-programme and the previous Culture Programme 2007-13 since 2010, for 7 of his own and other organisations’ projects. This includes small and large-scale projects from 2 to 4 years in duration with 4 to 15 partners. He has a 100% application success rate for his own projects and was an assessor for the EU’s Culture Programme 2007-13.
7th September 2017
10:00 – 16:00
Workshop: Who is our audience (and who’s not?) – Researching audience can be super fun!
(Agata Etmanowicz, Impact Foundation, Poland)
Audience development process of course starts with you (your organisation) but the next / parallel task is to gather as much knowledge as possible about your audiences. We usually think and claim that we know all about them but do we really? How far can we go beyond just numbers? Are we able to get rid of prejudice and stereotypes about our audience and start from scratch, driven by curiosity? Audience research can be “all in one”. It can be both fun and a task involving and bringing together the whole organisation. It doesn’t have to be only about questionnaires; it can be super creative, in line with the character of the organisation, and part of the artistic process. It can strengthen relationship with existing audiences and create a bridge towards new, future, potential audiences. Let’s rediscover some old research tools and design new ones!
