Rapport fra Europa-Kommissionens om publikumsudvikling. 2012. 56 sider.

This report highlights 22 different cases for inspiration on the topic. The first chapter is an interview with Ann Branch, Head of Unit ‘Culture Programme and Actions’, DG Education and Culture, European Commission:
Why a focus on audience development?
Some big cultural opportunities are being missed in Europe. As a generalisation, when people read books, see films, go to the theatre and listen to music, they tend to choose either local or national culture or so-called ‘mainstream’ global – mainly Anglo-American – popular culture. Both are perfectly legitimate, however, it is a pity that people aren’t getting to see or experience a wealth of rich art works from other countries as much as they might. As a result, there’s a lot of great work that’s not reaching a wide audience.
There are other major opportunities too, that are ripe to be exploited by the cultural operators in Europe who are adventurous enough to grasp them. These are the challenges of responding to the huge changes in audience behaviour and expectations. Part of this arises from technical innovation. The digital revolution has opened up limitless possibilities for cultural operators – everything from museums exhibiting some of their treasures online, to webstreaming concerts and performances that bring a worldwide audience to events that would otherwise only be seen locally, as well as reaching audiences in places with limited cultural infrastructure. At the same time, rising levels of education and the ever-widening choice for leisure and entertainment mean that people are far more demanding and every offering has to be ready to fight for attention. And all this is happening at a time when tighter restrictions on public funding appear more rather than less likely.
This is why it is a challenge as well as an opportunity. But the tougher competition is matched by every-greater public demand, so the result can be much greater prizes for those who are able to deliver what an increasingly discerning public wants. Alert cultural operators also recognise that economic opportunities are being missed, if audiences are not maximised at European level: the EU single market is a concept that can have validity across the cultural as well as the political sphere. But success in these rapidly changing circumstances requires a shift in the mind set of cultural operators. They have to adapt to a new multidimensional world, in which they are no longer the sole gatekeepers of art, nor the only decision-makers about what the public should or shouldn’t see or hear or experience. Audiences have to be treated differently: many people, accustomed to the dialogue of social media, are no longer willing just to be passive; they have become used to commenting, to becoming, as it were, actors themselves. More and more operators are seeing the value in addressing audiences upstream – not to dumb art down, but to link creation and presentation with a clearer idea about audiences, and a clearer identification of what they expect and feel is relevant to their lives. Similar engagement downstream, to meet artists and performers afterwards, is already showing the way ahead in this type of enhanced engagement.
Engagement and participation is central to this new approach. It is no longer a game of ‘them and us’. The proscenium arch cannot be the only prism to refract the contact between artists and audience. And institutions – and buildings – dedicated to culture can no longer afford to stand aloof, waiting complacently for an elite audience to seek them out. Just as efforts are now being made to engage audiences in the artistic process, so the design and use of cultural buildings is being adapted, offering multi-functional usage, easier access, longer opening hours, and new facilities for new publics… In this emerging world, culture and the arts become a channel for civic engagement too.
This process of audience development is not just a one-way street. If artists and organisations listen and share more closely, they too can find themselves transformed. They can create new interactions with their actual or potential audiences, and can at the same time discover new directions and new approaches in their own art.
But realising these opportunities needs a change among cultural agents. They require new skills for new ways of relating to audiences, which means retraining, different recruitment, building novel strategic partnerships – with for example, the retail, publishing and media sectors. There are no simple answers, no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. The need for adaptability will be a permanent feature, but there are great possibilities for those operators that are ready to embrace this reality.
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Foreword
The best part of my job as European Commissioner for Culture is no doubt to witness the tremendous impact that EU funding for cultural activities can have on the lives of Europeans, for audiences and performers alike. Thanks to funding from the European Union’s Culture Programme, many thousands of cultural practitioners from all cultural sectors have, over the years, established professional contacts to help improve their skills, worked on new projects and performed or showed their work for new audiences all across Europe. This exposure has helped them, and other emerging talents, to develop international careers and work across borders, and has likewise given European audiences a chance to experience original work from European artists first-hand.
Engaging the public with European culture is a paramount priority for the European Commission, and it is why we have decided to focus on audience development in the proposal for the Creative Europe Programme. Audience development is a strategic, dynamic and interactive process of making the arts widely accessible. It aims at engaging individuals and communities in experiencing, enjoying, participating in and valuing the arts through various means available today for cultural operators, from digital tools to volunteering, from co-creation to partnerships.
Audience development as a concept may be relatively new, but some cultural organisations have already been engaged in a dialogue with their audiences for a long time. That is why we wanted to present a snapshot of projects supported by the EUs current Culture and MEDIA programmes, other EU programmes or without direct EU-funding, to provide inspiration for our work ahead. In this brochure you will find projects from a range of cultural sectors across Member States that have developed vibrant audience development strategies and techniques.
I hope you feel inspired by them as much as I do. Let us learn from each other and work together towards introducing audiences of all ages and backgrounds to culture, deepen relationships with audiences and foster cultural and social inclusion.
Androulla Vassiliou,
European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth
Content
Why a focus on audience development? | 4
Creative Europe | 8
Artichoke | 12
Audiences Europe Network | 14
Crossing Cultures | 16
Crowd sourced creativity | 18
Europa Cinemas | 20
Exchange Radical Moments! | 22
Fotorally Euro Slam | 24
Four CORNERS of Europe | 26
Kaunas Biennial TEXTILE’11 | 28
Mladi Levi Festival | 30
Modul-dance | 32
Opening the Book | 34
Opera J | 36
Participation and Inclusion | 38
Rec>ON (Reconciliation) | 40
RESEO | 42
Robots and Avatars | 44
SANCTUARY | 46
Script&Pitch Workshops | 48
Theater Zuidplein | 50
Theatron | 52
Young Europe 2 | 54
Tagged: EU, Europa, Europa-Kommissionen, konferencer