new models for new audiences

With the recent decision from Arts Council England (ACE) to remove core funding from audience development agencies, organisations who have been working on engaging the public in the arts for over 30 years have suddenly become vulnerable to the whims of the marketplace.  In a time of severe financial hardship, agencies will now only receive support from ACE on a project by project basis.

Audiences South, the organisation I have directed for the last five years, was not directly affected by these national decisions.  Our Arts Council regional office removed direct support for audience development agencies in 2006.  Hampshire County Council, who own Audiences South, have in recent years therefore subsidised it above and beyond an annual service level agreement.  With the council needing to make big cuts this year, it decided the subsidy was no longer viable and closed Audiences South.  Having lived without direct Arts Council funding to audience development in this region for three years, what are my reflections? 

When Eric Pickles famously referred to audience development as a “non-job” he perhaps revealed the core of the problem – a genuine lack of understanding of what audience development is and what it achieves.  In the commercial sector it is at the heart of what drives every business – getting the public to understand, desire and buy your product.  Within the arts sector this involves a collaboration between education, outreach, desire and engagement.  It is what every state funded arts organisation should be doing.

So how did we get to a point where the Arts Council could not find an estimated £1.5 million (less than half a percent) of the overall National Portfolio funding to support the audience development agencies and the infrastructure they had created?

The majority of agencies began their lives as “Arts Marketing Agencies”, Audiences South started life as Solent Arts Marketing, an Arts Council Touring Department initiative in the mid-70’s, when Hampshire County Council partnered ACGB (Arts Council of Great Britain) in joint funding a Regional Marketing Officer post to assist national companies. 

Since the early 70’s, the agencies have continued to provide support and advice, in marketing, business development, leadership and public engagement.  They have supported organisations to understand who does, and doesn’t engage with them, and then to increase engagement.  Audience Development is not just around the oft quoted “hard to reach “group, it’s a holistic process and addresses and benefits all.

The Arts Council’s future desire for audience development work, as expressed by Alan Davey, is “to fund this work in a more flexible way in future, that allows for fleet of foot commissioning and provides the best value for money.”  Best value for money does not always imply cheapest and the Arts Council should be cautious that its newly commissioned work is not ad hoc, incoherent and piecemeal.  My greatest fear would be that work became invisible and un-transferable to the wider sector.

With waning of public subsidy and with less money available from both central and local government, authentication of excellence by the state no longer guarantees financial security.

Excellent art in the future will need to seek new models; a model where excellence is authenticated and financed by the audiences.  If the arts are to remain relevant we will need to balance creativity and artistic innovation with audience numbers and we may find that the infrastructure to support that is gone.  This will be a sad day, as, to adapt Walt Whitman, “to have great artists, there must be great audiences”.

First published in NCA news Summer 2011.

James Gough, Director of Audiences South