Counting Down I

So this is it: my last blog as Chief Executive of Audiences UK.  It feels like no time ago at all that I took up the role, but so much has happened since.  At my interview I said this was my ‘dream job’.  It has turned out to both immensely rewarding and deeply challenging.

I’m not sure how far we have come in sharing our main message – great audiences need great art and great arts need great audiences.  As a sector, we’re still debating what is more important, quality or accessibility?  The answer is they are both vitally important.  Offering poor artistic experiences is worse than not offering experiences at all.  But at the same time a sustainable arts sector needs to understand and increase its focus on the needs of its current and potential future customer base.

If revenue funding decisions are anything to go by, some UK funders seem to disagree.  But the attitude to the adversity faced by the leadership of so many of the audience development agencies, first in Wales and then in England, fills me with huge respect for my colleagues.  Chief Executives and Boards placing their focus on the best ways to sustainably deliver their charitable aims and objectives -rather than simply being driven by concerns for the future of their own organisations and their own jobs - displayed a sense of wisdom and responsibility that is rare within, and beyond the cultural sector.

But perhaps this maturity shouldn’t be a surprise.  Around the world the UK is acknowledged as the leader in understanding and growing audiences.  This display of pragmatic leadership, in the face of unprecedented circumstances by audience development agencies, just reflects the decades of highly talented individuals and teams working together to solve seemingly intractable challenges and move the sector forward.

If I’m honest, I (like many others) know there have been quality ‘issues’ within some parts of the audience development network in recent years.  I think we were in the process of beginning to address these as the larger axes started to fall.  But I will leave my post with a very different personal perspective on ‘quality’ within the Audience Development Agency network: I have never worked with so many dedicated and extremely gifted people in my life. It has been an enormous pleasure working with you and learning from you all.

Not least amongst this number is my multi-talented, hardworking and extremely patient colleague Gerry.  I handover the baton of executive leadership of Audiences UK to very capable hands and can say from experience that she has inherited a ‘dream job’, but in what I hope will quickly become a significantly less surreal world.

David Brownlee, Chief Executive, Audiences UK