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Some resources for how to develop your audience and increase demand for your arts or cultural product or service.
Diane Ragsdale's address to Australia Council arts marketing summit, 09 July 2008
US arts philanthropy expert Diane Ragsdale gave the keynote address on the subject "Surviving the culture change" to the Australia Council Arts Marketing Summit held in Melbourne on 3-4 July 2008.
Audiences for classical music, jazz, theater, visual arts and other art forms have all declined as a percentage of the population in recent years, and as this new RAND report argues, reversing that trend will require more than simply expanding the supply of art and people's access to it. It will also require cultivating more demand through arts education and other means to ensure that there are more people sufficiently knowledgeable about the arts to want to engage with them. This study, the third in a series by RAND on the evolving role of state arts agencies in building arts participation, examines what it means to cultivate demand for the arts, why it is important to do so and what state arts agencies and other policymakers in both the arts and education can do to make it happen. The report series was commissioned by The Wallace Foundation as part of its State Arts Partnerships for Cultural Participation (START) initiative. 2008.
In the midst of hard economic times, it is clearly more challenging for arts organizations to take the long view and continue to devote time and effort to building new audiences. But this report on a recent gathering of representatives from more than 50 Wallace-funded arts organizations in six cities concludes that participation-building efforts and the resulting lessons are more vital than ever to the long-term health of arts organizations and the entire arts sector. Especially in hard times, the report says, it's essential for leaders of arts organization to take careful stock of the long-term influences and challenges affecting the arts sector such as demographic shifts and new technologies that are creating entire new "spaces" for people to come together and experience the arts. The report describes how organizations are responding creatively to those challenges using such means as market research, re-branding, and drawing audience-building lessons from other sectors such as professional sports. The Wallace Foundation. 2009. More similar articles here.
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