Wallace Report on New Concepts in Audience Development
Arts organizations are looking for ways to develop their audiences. What works? What doesn’t? And how can successes be sustained? Building Arts Organizations that Build Audiences is a new report documenting a June 2011 Wallace conference of foundation-supported arts groups, marketing mavens, researchers and others, provides some potential answers, including encouraging organization-wide learning.
From the report:
What emerged at the conference from John Holden, David Bradford, Leslie Crutchfield, David Hawkanson and others was that new practices—gathering data, sharing information, making meaning out of it together, and creating a learning culture in all parts of the organization—can help create the climate that fosters smart decision making about what to sustain.
Change is often incremental, Windham said, relying first on early wins and then on gathering an expanded base of support. Various institutions will take various approaches depending on their history and mission. But, Windham noted, all of this comes in service of an objective that transcends the differences: allowing more people to reap the benefits of the arts. “How do we help people find meaning and beauty in their lives is the question,” he said. “The meaning-making is what we are looking for.”