These aren’t my words, I’ve stolen them Sir Nicholas Kenyon’s excellent piece in The Independent last week, available here. It is incredibly refreshing to hear the leader of a major cultural institution talk so passionately about the need for arts organisations to place a greater focus on what audiences want in a rapidly changing world and increasingly challenging financial climate. He argues that successful innovations in the arts are increasingly involving the audience in radically new ways and arts organisations need to work more flexibly and collaboratively to guide audiences to a whole new range of experiences.
The Barbican has long had a reputation for innovation in understanding and listening to its audiences. Interestingly it is a venue owned and run by a local authority (albeit a unique local authority) that has not received ‘Regular Funding’ from Arts Council England until very recently. At last, there’s been some acknowledgement in the national press about the importance of Local Government funding of the arts. Charlotte Higgin’s piece in Tuesday’s Guardian (available here) sketches a picture of the complex ecological connections between the commercial and the publicly funded andnbetween national and local funding.
You can’t cut funding at a local or national level and not expect there to be negative ripples through the arts, including sectors that a traditionally viewed as ‘unsubsidised’ or ‘commercial’. But for the sector to adapt and survive what is likely to feel more like a tidal wave, it needs to follow Nick Kenyon’s advice and work more flexibly and collaboratively, focusing on the rapidly changing expectations of audiences.
David Brownlee, Chief Executive, Audiences UK
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