A Week Less Ordinary in Politics

Audiences UK has been born in a week when politicians have been discussing a major national audience development initiative. This may have been why the arts leads of some of the political parties in England have been so welcoming to Audiences UK and so interested in the Audience Development Agency network.
 

None of them seem to be heaping praise on A Night Less Ordinary (ANLO), the free ticket initiative for under 26 year olds. And what do we think? If the government gave us £2.5 million with no strings and told us to go away and develop new young audiences, would giving away tickets be our preferred approach?
 

No. And certainly not in an untargeted way.
 

We know that’s the view of lots of theatres too, because we work with them. We also know that there’s some innovative work taking place to use the scheme and the funding to develop and sustain attendance from some sections of the population that don’t traditionally attend. These venues may not be hitting their targets, but they are doing excellent work and delivering great value for the investment. We need to identify these success stories and share the learning around the country. That’s what Audiences UK is here to do.
 

We’re committed to helping to ensure the money invested in the scheme does the most it can to develop audience development practice in the UK. We’re also committed to lobby for future investment in national audience development initiatives. When ANLO was launched, Ed Vaizey said: ‘What really worries me is that if the initiative doesn’t go well, it will damage any attempt to do something similar in the future, because people will say “we tried that and it didn’t work”...’. It worries us too! But fortunately, from our conversations and from their policy documents, it appears that the main parties in England all still seem to be committed to increasing access to culture.
 

ANLO may not be the scheme that we would have wanted, but we would still applaud any government that found extra money specifically to increase cultural engagement. It would be great if they talked to us about the basic design though, not just the delivery.
 

So let’s not just dismiss ANLO, let’s learn from it. Let’s learn from the success stories from venues who are reaching new audiences through innovative practice. Let’s remember that the most effective approaches to developing cultural engagement come through the accumulated learning of the Audience Development Agencies and the sector.
 

And, if we need targets, let’s make them achievable and realistic, not just very large round numbers.
 

David Brownlee, 18 March 2010