Leading Change: Audience Diversification in the Arts

Key findings

• Programming decisions are the organisational decisions least likely to be influenced by the aim of diversifying audiences.
  • Arts organisations require ‘Dynamic Capabilities’, that is, the capacity to work beyond organisational structures, and to network with diverse communities.    
• Organisations can be reluctant or uncertain to look outside their organisational structures for new ideas, information, support, or collaborators.
  • Arts organisations require ‘Social Networking Capabilities’, that is, the ability to move beyond institutional expectations, to adapt and reconfigure organisational practice.  
• Staffing changes often interrupt a commitment to audience-centric practice, particularly when a single staff member carries responsibility for working with communities.
  • Arts organisations require appropriate ‘Business Improvement Processes’, that is, strategic processes and business practices that commit staff and resources to audience diversification.  

The project also developed a model of audience-centric practice, comprised of 8 tasks, that arts organisations can use as a guide for their own adaptions and experiments in this field: 

1. Recognise need for change
2. Identify target audience
3. Research audience and their barriers to participation
4. Programming is responsive to target audience
5. Develop relationship and multiple connections with target audience
6. Gain broad organisational commitment to audience diversification
7. Undertake evaluation and reflective practice
8. Change the organisation’s usual way of operating.

The Leading Change project was supported by an Industry Advisory Group, including: Wesley Enoch (Chair), Jamie Lewis, Catherine Jones, John Nolan, Veronica Pardo, Fayen d’Evie, Seb Chan, Jeremy Smith, and Peter Ross.