MEASURING THE EXPERIENCE #20
When referring to the need to be more creative within urban planning, Landry and Bianchini[1] have talked about the need for those concerned to find “new ways of talking” in which normal routes and networks are set aside and a more open system set up which enables people of different skills and disciplines to talk and listen to each other and find “new ways of describing things”. Such a concept could equally cross-refer to the way artist-led organisations, as matter of course, engage and negotiate with other professionals in business, industry and the cultural sector and with communities when they set out to realise their ‘ideas’.
The notion that because artists are predominantly concerned with artistic practice they are not sufficiently attuned to the needs of audiences was raised by some arts officers within case studies. Some groups were said to be out of step with “the more innovatory approaches to audience [development]” and too focused on the needs of artists… than on looking outside at audiences”. Clearly, however, artist-led organisations are in general highly conscious of the need to engage with audiences, although equally clearly, how artists interpret audience need and activate the relationship may not necessarily immediately fit within in the definitions used by funding bodies.
‘Audience development’ has become a key objective within the arts infrastructure. In the performing arts, this can be achieved by creating and marketing programmes which have a broader appeal and which will lead to that important performance-indicator, ‘bums on seats’. Some aspects of visual arts programming can use similar tactics to increase visitor numbers, for example, a gallery may run outreach activities for schools and communities and public art projects may be accompanied by practical workshops for community groups. Such strategies can be measured by quantifying audience figures and producing written evaluations of the outcome of community programmes, etc.
Some areas of visual arts practice, however, are less easily measurable, particularly those which are dependent on creating a dialogue or a mutually-beneficial interaction with people over a period of time. In such situations, the notions of engagement with and empowerment of people through an extended collaboration based around common concerns become more appropriate descriptions than ‘audience development’ of what artists are seeking.
Artists-led organisations tend to have a defined geographical location for their practice, based on where the artists themselves live and work. Although in some cases other artists may be invited into a particular project, there nevertheless tends to be a core group of artists whose intimate knowledge of the arts environment and the social and political make-up of an area forms an integral part of defining the group’s artistic visions and the development of new work. In terms of encouraging the involvement in or participation of, other people in a group’s activities, it is arguable that because the artists are carrying out their practice on their ‘home territory’, they have an acute interest in maintaining a rapport with their ‘audience’, who are likely in many cases to live in close proximity to them or with whom they otherwise will regularly come into contact.
The interest in attracting an audience which includes the artists’ own neighbours, who want to see what people they know who are artists actually do, is cited in the Cambridge Open Studios study. An artist concerned in that event has reported that as a result, one of her neighbours has become a regular purchaser of her work. It could be argued that this type of relationship – between artists and their neighbours – although less readily quantified by ‘normal’ audience measurement methods, provides an interesting indicator of how the visual arts might have an impact on the lives of more people in the long term.
The level of interest in studio visiting shown by neighbours and others with whom artists regularly come into contact is further demonstrated by the artist-led ‘Real Art Tour’ held in the rural area of Tynedale in June 1996. This attracted over 1,300 visits to twenty-three artists over three weekends. Although it formed part of Visual Arts UK in the Northern region which specifically aimed to increase visual arts audiences, it was significant that a third of all visitors had not visited any other visual arts event in the previous three months, and that twenty-seven percent had heard about the event by word-of-mouth rather than through the printed publicity which was widely available.
[1]The Creative City, Charles Landry, Franco Bianchini, Demos, 1995
MEASURING THE EXPERIENCE #20
