Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts: A Critical Analysis [1st ed. 2019] 978-3-030-26652-3, 978-3-030-26653-0

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xi
Introduction (Ben Walmsley)....Pages 1-23
Understanding Audiences: A Critical Review of Audience Research (Ben Walmsley)....Pages 25-62
Deconstructing Audiences’ Experiences (Ben Walmsley)....Pages 63-90
Capturing, Interpreting, and Evaluating Cultural Value (Ben Walmsley)....Pages 91-110
Researching (with) Audiences (Ben Walmsley)....Pages 111-139
From Consumption to Enrichment: The Long Slow Death of Arts Marketing (Ben Walmsley)....Pages 141-163
Co-creating Art, Meaning, and Value (Ben Walmsley)....Pages 165-198
Engaging Audiences Through Digital Technologies (Ben Walmsley)....Pages 199-224
Conclusions and Implications (Ben Walmsley)....Pages 225-241
Back Matter ....Pages 243-248

Citation preview

NEW DIRECTIONS IN CULTURAL POLICY RESEARCH

Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts A Critical Analysis Ben Walmsley

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research Series Editor Eleonora Belfiore Department of Social Sciences Loughborough University Loughborough, UK

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research encourages theoretical and empirical contributions which enrich and develop the field of cultural policy studies. Since its emergence in the 1990s in Australia and the United Kingdom and its eventual diffusion in Europe, the academic field of cultural policy studies has expanded globally as the arts and popular culture have been re-positioned by city, regional, and national governments, and international bodies, from the margins to the centre of social and economic development in both rhetoric and practice. The series invites contributions in all of the following: arts policies, the politics of culture, cultural industries policies (the ‘traditional’ arts such as performing and visual arts, crafts), creative industries policies (digital, social media, broadcasting and film, and advertising), urban regeneration and urban cultural policies, regional cultural policies, the politics of cultural and creative labour, the production and consumption of popular culture, arts education policies, cultural heritage and tourism policies, and the history and politics of media and communications policies. The series will reflect current and emerging concerns of the field such as, for example, cultural value, community cultural development, cultural diversity, cultural sustainability, lifestyle culture and eco-culture, planning for the intercultural city, cultural planning, and cultural citizenship. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14748

Ben Walmsley

Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts A Critical Analysis

Ben Walmsley School Performance Cultural Industries University of Leeds Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research ISBN 978-3-030-26652-3 ISBN 978-3-030-26653-0  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26653-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: Miemo Penttinen - miemo.net/Getty images Cover design by eStudioCalamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

I would like to dedicate this book to audiences. Audiences are the lifeblood of the performing arts and this book highlights the ways in which they have been marginalised for centuries. Audiences are extraordinary; they perform myriad roles in sustaining the arts, acting as critics, fans, champions, donors, and sense-makers. Since the first time I went to the theatre I have been fascinated by what happens to audiences in the course of a live performance. We can call this catharsis, or we can call it transformation, or even just entertainment; but something happens when audiences engage and are engaged with live performance that is special. So this book constitutes an extended plea for audiences to be taken more seriously and represents a tribute to their passion and commitment. This book has been fuelled by, and is partly based on, a significant body of empirical research that I conducted with audiences between 2010 and 2015. I am constantly moved and humbled by the generosity and depth of insight provided by audience research participants, and without their openness of spirit this book would never have come to fruition. So a huge thanks must be extended to all those who participated in my audience research projects. Research of this type is also dependent on the generosity of arts organisations, so I also want to acknowledge the moral and logistical support of colleagues from Melbourne Theatre Company (especially Ann Tonks), Leeds Playhouse (then West Yorkshire Playhouse), Slung Low (particularly Alan Lane), Unlimited Theatre (Jon Spooner), Transform (Amy Letman), Yorkshire Dance (Wieke Eringa and Antony Dunn), and Love v

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Arts Leeds. Thanks are also due to Brooklyn Museum, National Theatre of Scotland and Watershed for permission to reproduce their images and capture their inspiring audience engagement activities via case studies. Prolonged periods of research cannot take place without funding, so I’d like to acknowledge the support of Leeds Metropolitan University (now Leeds Beckett University), which offered me a research fellowship back in 2010 that enabled me to undertake research in Melbourne and kick-started my ensuing career as an audience researcher. I’d also like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council England and Nesta, who have funded several of my research projects over the past ten years and who continue to champion empirical audience research. In these times of apparent austerity and considering the increasing pressure to support STEMbased research, it feels more vital than ever to support arts and humanities research, and these organisations have consistently supported research into the arts. Publishers also play a key role in commissioning and disseminating research, of course, and so I would also like to thank the dedicated team at Palgrave Macmillan for their belief, support, and encouragement. The School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds offers the perfect environment to undertake audience research and the School has generously funded two research sabbaticals over the past five years that have enabled me to develop this monograph. So I’d like to acknowledge my wonderful colleagues at the University the Leeds and my inspiring audience research peers, who have shaped and supported this publication in all sorts of ways. Some have read and fed back on early drafts—especially members of the School’s Audience Experience and Engagement Group. Particular thanks are due to Anna Upchurch, Maria Barrett, Matthew Reason, Joslin McKinney, Kirsty Sedgman, and Ruth Rentschler, who have acted as formal or informal reviewers and as constant inspirations of how to conduct audience research with care, humour, humanity, and rigour. Tragically, Anna Upchurch left us far too soon, but as a founder editor of this book series (alongside Ele Belfiore) and the most generous of colleagues one could ever hope for, Anna persuaded me to write this book in the first place, so I will be forever in her debt and I hope that this book represents some small part of her wonderful academic legacy. Finally, I’d like to formally thank my partner, Fabien, and my family and friends, who have patiently supported the development of this monograph and seen me through the inevitably challenging moments that arise in writing a sole-authored book.

Contents

1 Introduction 1 2 Understanding Audiences: A Critical Review of Audience Research 25 3 Deconstructing Audiences’ Experiences 63 4 Capturing, Interpreting, and Evaluating Cultural Value 91 5 Researching (with) Audiences 111 6 From Consumption to Enrichment: The Long Slow Death of Arts Marketing 141 7 Co-creating Art, Meaning, and Value 165 8 Engaging Audiences Through Digital Technologies 199 9 Conclusions and Implications 225 Index 243

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List of Figures

Fig. 6.1 Beyond marketing (Adapted from Levy and Kotler [1969, p. 68]) Fig. 6.2 Development of key abstract terms from 1987–2016 (Walmsley 2019) Fig. 6.3 The Consumer Exchange Model Fig. 7.1 Audience typologies with respect to engagement styles (Source Brown and Ratzkin [2011, p. 23]) Fig. 8.1 Five Minute Theatre 2012 (Image courtesy of National Theatre of Scotland) Fig. 8.2 Social production at Bristol’s Watershed in 2010 (Image by Toby Farrow, courtesy of Watershed) Fig. 8.3 An interactive comment kiosk at Brooklyn Museum (© 2004–2019 the Brooklyn Museum. Image courtesy of Brooklyn Museum, under Creative Commons License 3.0) Fig. 8.4 A screen-grab of the Respond platform (Image courtesy of Breakfast Creatives) Fig. 9.1 The Audience Enrichment Model

153 155 156 178 207 210 211 213 232

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List of Tables

Table 6.1 Key abstract terms (1987–2016) Table 6.2 Economic distinctions

154 156

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

A Plea for Audiences Back in the 1970s, the French philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre made a famous plea for intellectuals in his acclaimed essay Plaidoyer pour les intellectuals (Sartre 1976). In his essay, Sartre argued that society can’t complain about its intellectuals without accusing itself, because we attract the intellectuals that we deserve and create. Despite the facile marketing soundbite that the contemporary customer is king, the same could certainly be said about today’s performing arts audiences, who are often ignored, blamed and even derided by a sector that generally fails to listen to them or engage with them on equal terms. Another French dramatist, Antonin Artaud, invoked the metaphor of the Fall to explain how audiences have been disempowered and disassociated from the public and are therefore irrevocably doomed in their illusory search for judgement and catharsis (cited in Blau 1990, p. 42). Indeed since the time of Plato, audiences have been variously, but consistently, feared, vilified, victimised, ignored, patronised, pacified, mollified, homogenised, ridiculed, abused, segmented, and even killed-off (both literally and metaphorically). This all points towards the reality that the audience (whatever that slippery construct might mean, and to whom) has fallen from grace.

© The Author(s) 2019 B. Walmsley, Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts, New Directions in Cultural Policy Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26653-0_1

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This unhappy state of affairs is aggravated by the apparent antipathy exhibited towards audiences by many arts professionals and even, somewhat extraordinarily, by audience scholars themselves. Herbert Blau (1990) rightly claims that there is a tradition of disdainful and disconcerted ambivalence towards the audience and that many people who work in the theatre perceive audiences as “a kind of usurper or intruder” (p. 40). This historical and prevalent disdain towards audiences shapes the academic and sociological context of this book, which embarks from the acknowledgement that audiences have been systematically, and sometimes cynically, sidelined, undermined and alienated by scholars, artists, managers, producers, arts organisations, policymakers, and society more broadly. So it is now time to plead on behalf of audiences; and via an in-depth critical analysis of audience research in the performing arts, this monograph makes the case for a more sustained, more authentic, more relational, and ultimately more effective engagement with audiences. The underlying premise of this book is that we are currently living in a climate of quixotic thinking and theory regarding audience behaviour and engagement. Whilst on the one hand, some scholars, especially in media studies, are hailing the “end” or even the “death” of the audience (Livingstone and Das 2015) and conferences in the arts sector are devoted to “the people formerly known as the audience” (Rosen 2012), in actual fact, performing arts audiences are thriving, especially the commercial audiences in London’s West End and on Broadway. What is interesting to observe, however, is how audience behaviour and expectations are changing, as the next generation of “prosumers” matures and as factors such as big data, co-creation, participation, digital engagement, and live streaming continue to impact on the sector. As traditional sources of arts funding start to dissipate and alternative income sources such as philanthropy and crowdfunding continue to rise, audiences are increasingly being targeted as donors, which further complicates and potentially compromises their relationships with artists and arts organisations. Mindful of this evolving context, this book will prioritise audiences and their lived experiences and explore the implications of changing audience expectations and evolving practices of engagement for artists, arts managers, marketers, cultural leaders, policymakers, and, of course, for audiences themselves. The terminology surrounding audiences is particularly unhelpful in shedding light on the audience experience with core terms such as “theatre”, “spectator”, and “audience” all reflecting one particular sensory response to the performing arts. There is thus an urgent need to clarify

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the underlying terms that describe and denote the act of being an audience member and to critique the pernicious etymological associations that conspire to reduce this complex, multisensory pursuit. I will address this endeavour later in this introductory chapter. Questions of audience engagement naturally beg the fundamental question of what an audience actually is and does. To what extent do audiences constitute a congregation, a collective, a community, or even a public? How do people transform into an audience and how might they best prepare for this transformation? Blau poses an important question in his deconstruction of the audience project: “To play the part of an audience is to play the part of not playing a part, and how do you rehearse for that?” (1990, p. 298, original italics). This question goes to the heart of audience engagement because it challenges both the ability and the preparedness of artists and performing arts organisations to develop their audiences aesthetically. As a theorist, Blau defines the audience as a constructed consciousness, an initiated body of thought and desire (1990, p. 25). But as the practitioner Stanislavsky points out, playing to no audience is “like listening for an echo in a place without resonance” (cited in Blau 1990, p. 255). As Stanislavsky intimates here, one of the primary roles of the audience is to provide resonance and meaning; and yet surprisingly little research is dedicated to this hermeneutic endeavour. Helen Freshwater (2009) rightly contends that without the audience there is no real performance. Considering this indubitable primacy of the audience, it is quite simply astonishing that empirical research of and with performing arts audiences remains both contested as a scholarly endeavour and immature as an academic field. In fact, as Kirsty Sedgman (2016) notes, audience research is often dismissed as futile and even inimical. Audience research is frequently considered nonproductive as, through talking about the experience, audiences will only be able to explicate a pale approximate shadow of it; and at its worst, audience research is seen as potentially destructive, as what audiences remember afterwards will be not the ineffable experience itself but the shadow experience as it was described. (p. 24)

Sedgman goes on to heed Bourdieu’s portentous warning about the “implacable hostility to those who try to advance the understanding of the work of art and of aesthetic experience” because this presents a “mortal threat to the pretension […] of thinking of oneself as an ineffable individual” (p. 25). So audience research emerges as a sociological power game

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governed by the rules of cultural capital—a game in which some powerful cultural gatekeepers have a vested interest in silencing audiences and therefore in undermining audience research. To some extent, then, audience research is not only a policy tool but actually a political act, because it challenges established thinking regarding who actually has the right to express an opinion on questions of cultural engagement and aesthetic experience. There can be no doubt that scholarship has systematically overlooked audience research in the past. As Susan Bennett observes, “what a theory of theatre audiences needs is not the neglect it has historically received, but a systematic, if cautious, approach that would make clearer the relationship between the art form […] and the audience […] that supports it” (1997, p. 17). However even revered audience scholars such as Bennett appear to be ambivalent towards empirical audience research, claiming that the performing arts sector itself is making such significant progress in understanding audiences that there is “little need or merit” in academics seeking to replicate its efforts (2006, pp. 226–228). Fortunately, this beleaguered perspective on audience research is not shared by the vast majority of contemporary researchers, some of whom, like Janelle Reinelt, have abandoned their historic disregard for empirical research and come to value its ability to explicate audiences’ experiences on their own terms. Most of the recent scholarship on reception in theatre and performance studies points to a lack of sustained attention to spectator research, or more specifically, to the kind of research that tells us what spectators experience, how they make meanings or feel feelings in relation to theatre, and how they come to value “assisting at performance.” These features have been much less investigated and interpreted than the theoretical framing of the problems of the audience […] or the description of the reception of particular performances. (Reinelt 2014, p. 337)

Reinelt’s reflection here represents the high degree of consensus amongst audience researchers that the field has suffered from a significant overreliance on theoretical approaches to explicating the audience experience. Even Blau, that most theoretical of audience scholars, acknowledges, albeit implicitly, the urgent need for an empirical approach. We simply do not know, in any reliable – no less ideal or accountable – sense, who is there nor, in the absence of the classical subject, where to look. We are despite this still likely to generalize – as I have said and maybe done –

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about what the audience, with its disparate, cross-purposed, alienated, and incalculable perceptions, feels and felt. (1990, pp. 355–356, original italics)

Katya Johanson summarises the research context pithily, noting that “the audience has been all too absent from past scholarly performing arts studies” (2013, p. 168). This deficiency is not only a methodological and epistemological failure on the behalf of audience studies in the performing arts; it represents a perplexing and counter-intuitive conundrum, considering that the actual audience is “more complex and interesting” than the ideal audience that has long received the attention of scholars (Johanson 2013, p. 170). The net result of this deficient research context is that over the past few decades, and indeed centuries, theoretical scholars have conspired to: make general assumptions about audiences; speak on their behalf; assume a simplistic homogeneity of reception and response; and construct reductive notions of “bad” or “ideal” audiences (Sedgman 2016, p. 17). In short, audience research has not historically been very audience-friendly. This general disregard for audiences is also apparent within the performing arts sector itself, where artists often either praise or vilify audiences both in the rehearsal room and in the auditorium, treating them with “a kind of benign paternalism” and creating a “phantom audience that we as makers, project, out of an admixture of experience, hearsay and blind anxiety” rather than “the real people who actually watch a performance” (Chris Goode, cited in Sedgman 2016, p. 161). As Conway and Leighton put it, the role of the audience member as “an active, skilled and discerning participant in the consumption process” has been sorely neglected (2012, p. 37). Caroline Heim (2010) echoes this damning verdict, observing that the active role of the audience has been significantly “undervalued” in contemporary practice and that audiences are often just treated as “a homogeneous mass incapable of creativity” (p. 1) or of holding a “unique personality” (p. 21). In light of the fact that audiences are “living, dynamic and heterogeneous” and contribute “crucial meanings” to performances (ibid.), Heim laments the current state of audience engagement in Western theatres, where walking out and clapping are often the only opportunities for audiences to actually express a critical response (2016, p. 35). Heim rightly concludes that the fact that audiences often cherish and sometimes “almost deify” their theatre programmes (p. 133) signifies their hunger for engagement beyond the short temporal sphere and space of a performance itself. With the rise of digital media and producer disintermediation, global audiences are becoming increasingly powerful. Digital communications

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technologies are giving audiences more agency than ever before to signal and tailor their leisure and entertainment preferences. This rising power means that audiences are of growing interest to media and social media platforms and also to research councils and governments, who are starting to invest heavily in areas such as digital storytelling and immersive media. Even supra-governments like the European Union are allocating significant budgets to audience research, conscious no doubt of the historic connection between arts engagement and active citizenship (Walmsley 2018). Yet despite this shift in focus, policymakers, artists, producers, marketers, and even audience scholars often perpetuate narrow and reductive configurations of arts audiences. In her groundbreaking short book Theatre & audience, Helen Freshwater calls for a rejection of “the notion of ‘the audience’ as a singular or homogeneous entity” in favour of “a detailed interrogation of diverse and sometimes unexpected responses, and an ethnographic engagement with the range of cultural conditions which inform an individual’s viewing position” (2009, p. 28). This current book responds to Freshwater’s call by placing centre stage the diversity and complexity of audiences’ projects and experiences; it takes a fiercely audience-centric stance and explores the implications of changing expectations and practices for the myriad stakeholders who are concerned with, and reliant on, audiences.

Defining Audiences As I suggested earlier, audience research is plagued by loose, woolly terminology that often perpetuates ambiguity and hinders attempts to cohere a scholarly community around it. To begin with the core term itself, the word “audience” is undoubtedly what Josephine Machon labels a “vexed term” (2013, p. 98). Its Latin roots (from audire, to hear) suggest a group of passive listeners, who simply engage their ears at one step removed from performance. Despite its Latin etymology, the term also lacks a gerund, which makes it difficult to articulate concisely the precise activity that audiences actually engage in. The term “spectator” at least has a gerund (“spectating”) and even a related noun (“spectatorship”) which of course denotes the act of spectating. But again the Latin origins (spectare) reduce what audiences do to the deployment of one of their senses, evoking this time a group of voyeurs who observe or gaze at a performance from a distance. Related terms such as “theatre” (from the Greek theatron, a place for viewing ) similarly delimit the audience experience to an act of spectatorship.

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The terminology surrounding the act of engaging with the performing arts is thus more than vexed; it is reductive and deceptive, and singularly fails to capture the rich multisensory and phenomenological complexity of the act. Certain theatre practitioners hold the view that the role that audiences play in the performing arts, or at least the role that they want them to play, is so far removed from traditional notions of spectatorship that the word “audience” is no longer valid. Jerzy Grotowski, for example, claimed that the term “audience” was no longer relevant because he wanted to remove any kind of distance or separation between performers and audiences (cited in Ben Chaim 1984, pp. 47–48). In light of the rise of immersive and oneon-one performances and of co-created and participatory work, and even with the hindsight of Boal’s Forum theatre, we might justifiably conclude that boundaries between performers and audiences are blurring almost to the point of oblivion. So we can see already that audiences are increasingly being perceived as an endangered species, not just because younger audiences are shunning traditional performance genres and venues, but also in the sense that their artistic and social functions are morphing into something fundamentally different: audiences are perhaps gradually transitioning into co-performers. Despite this radical, if gradual, transformation of the audience project, traditional modes of performance still prevail, and it seems that we are stuck with our reductive terminology, at least for the time being. However, as audience studies has developed and grown in confidence, scholars have started to neologise. John Fiske (1992), for example, notably deployed the neologism of “audiencing”, which he borrowed from cultural studies to describe the active pursuit of being an audience member. Reason and Londelof (2016) have since adopted the term into performance studies and elaborated an effective definition: ‘Audiencing’ describes the work of the spectator. It describes acts of attention, of affect, of meaning-making, of memory, of community. A focus on audiencing recognizes that attention is a constructive or performative act, that spectators bring performances into being through the nature of their variously active, distractive or contested attention. (p. 17)

This definition helpfully broadens the scope of the act of being an audience member and starts to encapsulate its aesthetic, interpretive, social and psychological qualities. However, welcome though this new term assuredly is,

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when I began to write this book I still felt poorly served by the audience lexicon and found myself often searching in vain for an abstract noun to convey the wider concept of what some scholars refer to as “spectatorship”. This struggle reflected Bruce McConachie’s observation that there is no adequate English word that encompasses all that an audience does in the context of the performing arts (2008, p. 3). “Spectatorship” simply doesn’t work for me because of its negative connotations of sitting on the edge of something, of passively observing without really taking part. So I have coined the term “audiency” here to connote the general state of audiencing and the conceptual theorisation of it. It is of course not just the core terms of audiency that remain slippery, problematic, and contested: many, if not most, of the terms used to describe audiences and their relationship to the performing arts are laden with value judgements (Freshwater 2009, pp. 2–3). “Audience development”, “audience enrichment”, “participation”, “co-creation”, and “engagement” are all either ambiguous, loaded, or both: whilst “audience development” and “enrichment” suggest some kind of cultural deficit amongst audiences, “participation”, “co-creation”, and “engagement” are vague to the point of being meaningless, at least when used in isolation. They are perhaps typical examples of what Clive Gray (2015) might refer to as deliberate policy ambiguity. In other words, the vague nature of these concepts can serve politicians’ and policymakers’ interests by remaining elusive or hard to pin down; it is therefore difficult to evaluate any policy-related progress (or rather lack of progress) against them. Caroline Heim translates this idea adroitly to the field of audience research, arguing that “approaching, writing about and conceptualising audiences and what they do is slippery, risky, complex and full of paradox” (2016, p. 5). Even with our growing armoury of dedicated concepts and terms, audience researchers still struggle to pin down the act of audiency. This is probably a result of the significant role ambiguity that affects audiences. I mentioned earlier in the chapter that audiences are now often expected to fund or crowdfund their favourite artists and organisations, and in the transactional context of relationship marketing, this makes total sense. However, Heim (2016) characterises audiences variously as guests, fans, groupies, critics, communities, consumers, co-creators, co-performers, and co-conspirators. For Josephine Machon, audiences alternate between passive consumers, witnesses, associates, clients, guests, co-producers, protagonists, and “creative comrades” (2013, p. 73). For companies like Lone

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Twin they are partners who share an equal role in a common artistic endeavour (Sedgman 2016, p. 14). This role complexity illustrates the significant dissonance surrounding audiency and audiencing, and highlights the tensions that infiltrate the relationships that different stakeholders try to develop with audiences. For example, to consider an audience member as a guest and as a donor appears inherently paradoxical; and how can cocreators also function as critics and consumers? Audience development theory tries to square these circles through its notion of laddering, taking audiences on a journey from outsider to co-performer, for example. Marketers and fundraisers might explain the dissonance via segmentation theory. But ultimately, audiences are active agents whose performance encounters are messy and individualised (Sedgman 2016, p. 16). What matters, and is of interest, therefore, is perhaps less what audiences do and more how we actually engage them.

Audience Engagement Alongside “audience”, “engagement” is the other core concept that drives the focus of this book. So for the purposes of this book it is important to define precisely how I understand “engagement” and to justify the privileged conceptual role that I have accorded it. Despite the fact that in the past two decades the arts marketing and cultural policy literature has witnessed an exponential rise in the deployment of the term “engagement” (Walmsley 2019), very few authors have actually attempted to define the concept, never mind differentiate it from similarly relational concepts such as “participation” and “involvement” (Brodie et al. 2011). As we have already seen, audience studies has adopted and been content with what Martin Barker refers to as “loose and vague concepts” for far too long (2006, p. 128); “engagement” is undoubtedly an exemplar of a loose and vague concept, and my first objective here is therefore to attempt to synthesise existing definitions of the term in order to produce a meaningful and workable definition. There exists a significant gap in understanding about what actually constitutes audience engagement . I will argue in the course of this book that this epistemological lacuna is serving to hamper the progression of audience research as an emerging academic field and as an area of exponential growth in the arts and cultural sector, and in the wider creative industries. This book will therefore shine a light on engagement and on its constituent processes.

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In the context of this book, engagement incorporates a much more complex and nuanced approach to developing relationships with audiences than crass attempts to market to them or simply allow them to participate or even co-produce. This is because active participation is not a given: it is made possible by the particularities of an event (Sedgman 2016, p. 13). However, I want to push Sedgman’s analysis further by framing engagement as a philosophy underpinned by an audience-centric ethos that recognises audiences as partners in processes of artistic exchange. Indeed engagement has been aptly described as “a unifying philosophy” that combines marketing, education, artistic programming, and development to maximise impact on audiences (Brown and Ratzkin 2011, p. 8). Many of the surprisingly few definitions that do exist perceive engagement primarily as a psychological process or state (Brodie et al. 2011, p. 253). Brodie et al. trace the theoretical roots of engagement to relationship marketing’s focus on interactive experience and value co-creation, which, they maintain, offers “a transcending view of relationships, which contrasts with a more traditional, transactional view of marketing relationships” (ibid.). Vincs et al. (2009) certainly belong to this strand of research, defining engagement as being “compelled, drawn in, connected to what is happening, interested in what will happen next” (cited in Vincs 2013, p. 135). This definition successfully highlights two clear goals and manifestations of engagement: namely to captivate audiences concurrently, in the moment of appreciating a work of art; and to draw them into the future creative life of an artist or organisation. It also foregrounds the key concepts of immersion and flow that we shall explore in Chapter 3. Susan Ashley (2014) provides a broader, sociological definition of engagement, characterising it as “a process for generating, improving or repairing relationships between institutions of culture and society at large” (p. 261). This is a particularly useful definition in the context of the cultural policy imperative for subsidised arts organisations to become more relevant to their diverse communities. Engagement is a necessarily broad term, which is used by organisations to describe their attempts to occupy audiences’ attention, to involve them, to establish meaningful contact, and even to assure impact (Ashley 2014, p. 262). However, Ashley warns that engagement can also lead to “misrecognition, lack of parity and the subordination of some publics to management and regulation” and that it can be undermined by the “political agenda-setting, conflicting subjectivities and power relations inherent in intercultural communication” (p. 263).

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Engagement activities can thus result in “problematic and unequal encounters” unless audiences are encouraged to “assert their own agency” and make their own choices in the way they use the arts as a “resource” (ibid.). Like audience research, engagement, then, is a political act that is open to manipulation and abuse. Like power, it is perhaps not something that is often relinquished but something that must be seized. This is where the politics of participation and co-creation come into play, and we will therefore scrutinise these proliferating phenomena very carefully in the course of this book. In their erudite discussion of arts encounters and their apparent impacts, Belfiore and Bennett (2007) expound an interactive model of engagement based on factors pertaining to the individual, the artwork, and the environment, which we might interpret in terms of the subjective, the aesthetic, and the social. Lynne Conner (2013) provides a more prosaic, but nonetheless insightful, definition of engagement, associating the term with the deployment of gears that enable a mechanism to function (p. 37). Likewise, audiences, she suggests, engage in the process of art-making when they feel a vital part of its engine. In a similar vein, Steven Tepper defines engagement as “to interlock” or “involve” (2008, p. 363). Following Conner, Tepper’s definition reflects a post-structural perspective of audiency, which perceives audiences as people who “actively connect to art – discovering new meanings, appropriating it for their own purposes, creatively combining different styles and genres, offering their own critique” (ibid.). Taking a similarly emancipated stance, Campanelli describes engagement in terms of “emotional connection and empowerment” (cited in Brodie et al. 2011, p. 266), whilst Sashi (2012) claims that effective engagement establishes intimate bonds, which culminate in enduring relational exchanges between producers and customers, and which can effect both loyalty and delight, transforming customers into fans. Jennifer Radbourne (2013) approaches engagement from a marketing perspective and contends that engagement is all about “converging” with audiences. Radbourne observes an evolving context wherein audiences are increasingly seeking appropriation, connectivity and transformation through their arts experiences; she argues therefore that the role of modern arts and cultural organisations is to “converge” creators with consumers of art (p. 155). Supporting a number of existing studies into audience motivation, Radbourne concludes that performing arts audiences’ primary goal is emotional engagement, which can most effectively be secured via immersion in the arts experience (p. 153). Brown and Ratzkin (2011)

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also explore engagement from the perspective of arts marketing, offering a helpful deconstruction of the concept by discerning six diverse audience typologies of engagement, ranging from reading and critical review to insight seeking and active learning (p. 2). The authors also delineate what they regard as different stages of engagement, which we will explore further in Chapter 2. This more plural understanding is also adopted by McConachie, who rightly claims that an adequate understanding of audiency must encompass many aspects of engagements with performances (2008, p. 7). The consensus between these researchers is that there is not a one-size-fits-all model of audience engagement. In summary, then, theoretical definitions coalesce around the notion of engagement as a psychological process which aims to develop intimate, meaningful, converged, and enduring relationships with audiences by involving them in interactive, immersive, and hermeneutic experiences. This in turn emancipates and empowers audiences and generates deep connections by enabling audiences to become an invaluable part of the art-making process. Engagement emerges therefore as both a strategic management process (or a psychological manipulation) and a sociocultural benefit. In order to appreciate the ultimate goal of the engagement process, it is important to consider what these meaningful and enduring relationships might look like from the demand side. The development of the wider economy from the services economy of the late Twentieth Century to the experience economy of the new millennium (Pine and Gilmore 1999) is perhaps one of the most familiar tropes of twenty-first century marketing. However, since the turn of the millennium, scholars such as Bill Sharpe (2010) have started to argue that experiences per se are no longer sufficient for the post-postmodern consumer, who is actually seeking a particular kind of experience—namely one which is shared, meaningful, valuable, and enduring. This focus on meaning reflects Silvia’s (2005) finding that audiences’ meaning-making is positively correlated to their aesthetic enjoyment. Sharpe’s thesis is essentially that art acts as the currency in this new economy, “the currency of experience, putting our unique individual experiences into motion amongst us as shared meaning” (p. 2). This new economy of meaning is characterised by participatory modes of engagement, both within the arts and beyond them, and the ultimate goal of this engagement is aesthetic and spiritual enrichment.

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Commentators on the creative economy are currently fixated on the so-called attention economy, a perspective that regards consumer attention as a scarce resource and therefore as a “cultural problem” (Crawford 2015). Within museum studies, Stephen Bitgood’s (2010) research with museum audiences links attention closely with engagement and suggests that engagement encompasses a number of intellectual, perceptual, and affective processes, including learning, flow, inquiry, and immersion. Based on his extensive research in this area, Bitgood has developed an “attentionvalue model”, which designates engagement as the third stage of audiences’ attention process, following the prior states of focus and captivation. In other words, audience focus and captivation are prerequisites of engagement, which represents the most difficult level for audiences to reach as it requires “deep sensory-perceptual, mental and/or affective involvement” alongside “some type of exertion or concentration” (Bitgood 2010). This returns us neatly to the chapter’s opening citation, which pondered how audiences can rehearse for being an audience member (Blau 1990, p. 298). Engagement has emerged here as an integral component of effective audiencing; as a state of mind and body that demands not only the deep immersion of audiences but also the careful mediation of producers. Suffice to say that engagement does not happen by itself.

The Case for Engagement There are many rationales for dedicating an entire monograph to audience engagement, but perhaps the most compelling is the mounting evidence that the goal of being engaged is actually the primary motivation behind audiences’ decision to attend the performing arts. McConachie regards this as a physiological transformation, claiming that as audience members, we seek “emotional engagement and the chemical changes it brings to our brains […] the means for a direct jolt” (2008, pp. 95–96). There is also growing consensus that engaging audiences on a macro scale is imperative not only to the long-term health of the arts and cultural sector but more importantly to the cultural vitality of our communities (Brown and Ratzkin 2011, p. 35). This is a view increasingly shared within cultural policy and it is gradually starting to effect a more community-based and participatory approach to arts funding, which is incrementally shifting its focus from artistic quality to social relevance. From the organisational perspective, the ultimate goal of engagement is “to enable arts organizations to develop empathy with their audiences

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and communities, communicate persuasively to them, engage meaningfully with them, and shape resonant and relevant arts experiences and programmes with them and for them” (Baxter et al. 2013, p. 117). This relational perspective on engagement supports our earlier synthesis of existing definitions of engagement, which framed it as both a strategic management process and a sociocultural benefit. As business-minded leaders might say, engagement is a win-win. Yet it remains under-theorised, under-researched, and under-utilised, especially in the context of the performing arts, where it is often tacked onto core promotional activity as an adjunct or afterthought. As Maxine Greene notes, informed engagement with the arts does not happen automatically or naturally; it requires reflective time and dialogue (Greene 1995, cited in Reason 2013, p. 106). Reason goes on to add that “the unthinking, unblinking eye of passive consumption can only be countered by ensuring that spectators are actively processing and evaluating their experiences and as a result become cultural producers of meaning” (2013, p. 110). This point responds to Blau’s rhetorical question regarding how audiences can prepare (or be prepared) for their audiencing activity. Just as the co-production of cultural products cannot happen without artists to coproduce them, so is the co-creation of meaning dependent on some form of mediation, which I am referring to here as “engagement”. As Deleuze argued, effective engagement can enable a work of art to leave the domain of representation to become experience (cited in Machon 2013, p. 109). Based on our previous discussion, we can now develop the Deleuzian theory by adding that effective engagement can enable a work of art to leave the domain of experience to become meaning. This, again, is the process increasingly referred to by audience scholars as “enrichment”. This book takes a fresh approach to engagement by placing it at the heart of the enquiry into audiency. It offers fresh insights into the concept drawn from arts marketing and cultural policy, such as evolving theories of consumer behaviour, value creation and co-creation and changing perspectives on the politics and practices of participation and audience development. As such, the book has the ambitious aim of broadening and reconfiguring the paradigm of audience studies.

Audience Studies Attempts to research performing arts audiences in any consistent and coherent way have been held back by the significant fragmentation that characterises the wider field of audience studies. At its best, audience studies

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is radically interdisciplinary, and in an academic context where interdisciplinarity is increasingly extolled, this rich potential for cross-pollination is undoubtedly the field’s greatest strength. At its worst, however, audience studies is fractured and dispersed across such a diverse range of traditionally incompatible fields, disciplines, and sub-disciplines that attempts to collaborate become mired in methodological dispute. Consequently, findings and developments in one particular field often get lost in translation, or even worse, ignored. Audience researchers come in many different guises, and they emerge (often in a defensive minority) in conferences dedicated to arts marketing, arts management, cultural studies, cultural policy, theatre studies, performance studies, dance studies, opera studies, media studies, film studies, reception theory, critical theory, semiotics, and dramaturgy. The implications of this are that audience research is generally marginalised in and by the academy. As we shall see in Chapter 5, audience research is plagued by myriad methodological challenges, ranging from the positive bias of audiences and memory recall issues to researchers’ poor grasp of methods and their inherent confirmation bias. These issues combine to undermine and delegitimise audience scholarship, which is often disregarded by social scientists and civil servants, in particular, as being overly narrative or anecdotal. These methodological issues are compounded by tensions between theory and practice—notably by scholars’ perceptions of a lack of rigour in arts evaluation and by practitioners’ perceptions of academic idealism amongst scholars. Neither of these perceptions is fully misguided: sector research on audiences and their experiences is often indeed biased and advocatory, whereas academic research is often overly theoretical and/or impracticable. Audience research is also hampered by ambiguous and whimsical cultural policy imperatives (which very rarely value audiences’ experiences per se), and by the utter complexity of capturing what are invariably ineffable, multisensory experiences. So where does all this leave audience studies? In his aspirational essay on the future of audience research, Martin Barker calls for a “fully elaborate research paradigm […] combining a theoretical framework, working concepts, methods of enquiry, research implements, and paradigmatic studies” (2006, p. 129). This is perhaps a natural response to the prevalent critique that audience research “never transcends clever description” (ibid.). Barker’s call to develop one research paradigm with one theoretical framework certainly represents a lofty goal; but it is surely a problematic one in what is an inherently plural, disparate, and radically interdisciplinary field that

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draws on so many different research paradigms and traditions. However, Barker is right to allude that in order to achieve widespread recognition and legitimacy as an academic field, audience studies does need to become less fragmented and more coherent; and the search for suitable theoretical frameworks, methods, and paradigms is certainly an underlying objective of this book.

Researching Audiences In his comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of performance and perception Willmar Sauter adds his voice to the growing chorus of audience researchers who acknowledge the marginal existence traditionally accorded to audiences. Sauter maintains that in order to gain a deeper understanding of audiences’ experiences, both during and after performances, we need to develop radically different research strategies (2000, pp. 26–27). This book responds to Sauter’s call by advocating for an interdisciplinary and triangulated approach to audience research that places aspects of experience and engagement at its heart. It does this partly by showcasing research that shares these relational objectives. A prime example of this relational approach to audience research is Radbourne et al.’s (2013) edited collection entitled The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts, which offers a range of different perspectives on audience experience and engagement. One of these perspectives is offered by Lisa Baxter et al. (2013), who make a powerful case for change in audience research strategies, calling for more creative and innovative methods of enquiry into audience engagement, and contending, justifiably, that arts organisations need to shift their focus from financial to experiential value: For arts organizations operating in an experience economy, it is important to understand how they can deliver value through understanding the experiences they create and manage. It is not enough to count ‘bums on seats’. They need to know and understand the ways in which the arts experiences they offer hold value for their audiences, and what kind of value that is, whether it be a good night out or a meaningful aesthetic experience. […] arts organizations need to use insight to put the audience at the centre of their creative and professional practices. (p. 117)

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Although explicitly challenging arts organisations to engage in questions of cultural and experiential value, this exhortation also represents an implicit challenge to the myriad arts funders who do indeed count “bums on seats”; and it directly contradicts Susan Bennett’s curious contention that the sector is making such considerable progress in understanding audiences by itself that academic research in this area is becoming redundant. Dwight Conquergood also advocates for a more creative and sophisticated approach to audience research, claiming, for example, that the method of participant-observation succeeds in privileging the body “as a site of knowing” (cited in Kattwinkel 2003, p. xi). Conquergood argues that the acts of speaking, listening and acting enable researchers to gather experiential knowledge as opposed to the purely exterior knowledge gleaned from detached observation. As we shall see in Chapter 5, this tension between anthropological and ethnographic engagement is indicative of the many mysteries and idiosyncrasies that characterise empirical audience research. Indeed, as became evident during the discussions that took place over the two-year International Network for Audience Research in the Performing Arts,1 the tensions, complexities and paradoxes that are seemingly inherent to audience research are actually one of the drivers for many audience scholars. For instance, my own research with audiences has unearthed a deep sense of ambivalence amongst theatre-goers regarding the extent to which they perceive themselves as individuals or a collective. Many audience members, including myself, see themselves as simultaneously both, which often establishes an inner psychological and ontological tension as we oscillate between contradictory modes of being: we like to share in the communal buzz before a performance, the collective silences, the common gasps, the shared applause, and the atavistic sense of communitas delivered by a standing ovation; and yet we rail at the noise or cognitive dissonance that interrupts our flow or hinders our goal of escapism, and argue, sometimes fervently, with those who offer alternative interpretations of a performance from our own. In order to deal with this inner conflict, we are beginning as a research community to acknowledge the fact that audience members generate “elaborate viewing strategies” as they develop

1 This was a research network funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) led by the University of Leeds (UK) in conjunction with Deakin University, Melbourne, that ran initially from January 2017 to December 2018. See https://audienceresearch.leeds.ac.uk.

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their engagement with the performing arts (Sedgman 2016, p. 16). Audiences’ experiences are therefore increasingly being represented as multidirectional and multifarious; and like wider questions of cultural value, the precise nature of these experiences will inevitably always lie beyond scholars’ grasp. This, at least for me, is what makes audience research particularly intriguing.

Scope and Aims In light of this confession, the aim of this book is certainly not to completely demystify the audience experience. Audiency is intriguing and mystifying, and the job of audience studies must therefore be to communicate its rich complexity. So the core aim of this book is to explore and reveal audiences as they manifest themselves in situ, based on empirical studies and on critical insights derived from audience theories and histories. As I intimated at the start of this chapter, this book is intended as a plea for audiences, at least in the sense that it aspires to place audiences back in their rightful place at the heart of scholarship into their own experiences. The book approaches audiences and audience engagement from a range of what I consider to be complementary perspectives: cultural value, marketing, and co-creation. It considers the role that different methods and methodologies can play in elucidating audiences’ experiences with the performing arts and investigates how existing and emerging technologies can inform our understanding of how to engage audiences. I have chosen to explore audience engagement within the specific context of the performing arts, and I therefore draw predominantly on theories, empirical studies and case examples from theatre, dance, music, opera, and musical theatre. I decided to limit the focus of this book to the performing arts for several reasons. One personal and pragmatic reason is that most of my own audience research has been conducted with audiences of theatre and dance. A logical and academic reason is that the field of performance studies covers all of these art forms and sometimes theorises about them generically. A strategic reason for the performing arts focus is to apply insights from other fields and sectors in order to galvanise thinking about engagement within the performing arts and recommend enhancements, especially from the museums sector: as Lynne Conner notes, museums have led the field in acknowledging and facilitating audiences’ cultural right to interpret art and the performing arts have much to learn from them in

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this endeavour (2013, p. 148). A more epistemological rationale is certainly that the different genres that comprise the performing arts share a number of underlying commonalities, including of course the existential requirement for a live audience. Monica Prendergast (2006) expresses the exceptionality of live performance beautifully, arguing that it offers “a crucial counterbalance to the prevailing forces of film, television and other mass media” (cited in Sedgman 2016, p. 12). She goes on to argue that performing arts audiences are “generally more challenged – aesthetically, affectively and cognitively – in their reception and interpretation of live performance” and that the shared presence in live performance offers potential for “authentic, meaningful interactions between performers and spectators in a way that is not possible in most media-based forms” (ibid.). These provocative ideas and claims will be scrutinised extensively in the course of this book. Considering the core focus on the book, I have made extensive use of research from theatre studies, performance studies, musicology, arts marketing, and cultural policy studies. However, for the reasons outlined above, the book also draws heavily on scholarship from cognate fields such as museology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. As we have seen, audience studies is an inherently cross-disciplinary field and I very much hope that this book will offer readers a unique perspective on audience engagement that breaks down established silos between different academic fields to offer something genuinely interdisciplinary. In homage to the many notable audience researchers who have undertaken pioneering work in the field, this book advocates for a rigorous and empirical approach to audience research. However, in lieu of presenting a body of fresh empirical findings, it provides an overview of an existing body of empirical audience research, including my own, and therefore makes a predominantly theoretical case for empirical research. As such, it aims to provide a robust defence against persisting accusations amongst theoretical researchers of audiences that empirical work is often anecdotal and overly subjective, and therefore of limited worth. The personal perspective I bring to this book is that of a theatre producer and manager turned academic. As a practitioner, I worked most closely with marketing and production teams in the service of theatre audiences. As an academic, my career began with a Ph.D. in French theatre and philosophy that provided a critical comparison of the plays of Jean-Paul Sartre and Eugène Ionesco and their respective contributions to twentieth-century humanism. I now describe myself as an audience researcher, and ally myself

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most closely to the complementary fields of arts marketing, arts management and cultural policy studies. This diverse scholarly context has influenced me, I suspect, to explore audiences in a genuinely interdisciplinary way, and it has certainly shaped my perspective that at the heart of audience research lies a mutual exchange of value wherein audiences should play the role of strategic partners in the artistic mission fulfilment of performing arts organisations. This belief constitutes the underlying thesis of this book. Ultimately, I hope that this book represents a call to action to both academics and practitioners to engage more authentically and rigorously with audiences. I hope that it contributes to the growing body of audience research that respects audiences and engages with them actively and on equal terms. I hope that it helps to further galvanise the currently fractured community of academics cohered loosely around audience research. I hope that it inspires performing arts organisations to invest time and money in dedicated audience research and engagement activity. I hope that it enhances thinking on cultural value and moves marketing of the arts away from a transactional, consumption-based approach towards the relational mode required by effective engagement and meaningful enrichment. As we shall see in the following chapter, there is growing consensus amongst scholars that audience research needs a new theoretical framework. For too long, audience studies has been splintered across seemingly incompatible disciplines that generally dialogue in different languages, spaces, and modes. By taking a radically interdisciplinary approach that combines scholarship from art form specific fields such as performance studies and musicology with insights from museology, psychology, philosophy, sociology, arts marketing, arts management, and cultural policy studies, this book ultimately outlines a new empirical and theoretical framework for audience studies.

References Ashley, S. L. T. 2014. ‘Engage the world’: Examining conflicts of engagement in public museums. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 20(3), pp. 261–280. Barker, M. 2006. I have seen the future and it is not here yet …; or, on being ambitious for audience research. The Communication Review, 9(2), pp. 123–141. Baxter, L., O’Reilly, D. and Carnegie, E. 2013. Innovative methods of inquiry into arts engagement. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 113–128.

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Belfiore, E. and Bennett, O. 2007. Determinants of impact: Towards a better understanding of encounters with the arts. Cultural Trends, 16(3), pp. 225–275. Ben Chaim, D. 1984. Distance in the theatre: The aesthetics of audience response. London, Ann Arbor. Bennett, S. 1997. Theatre audiences: A theory of production and reception. 2nd ed. London, Routledge. Bennett, S. 2006. Theatre audiences, redux. Theatre Survey, 47(2), pp. 225–230. Bitgood, S. 2010. An attention-value model of museum visitors. Available from: https://airandspace.si.edu/rfp/exhibitions/files/j1-exhibition-guidelines/ 3/An%20Attention-Value%20Model%20of%20Museum%20Visitors.pdf [Accessed 5 April 2019]. Blau, H. 1990. The audience. Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press. Brodie, R. J., Hollebeek, L. D., Juric, B. and Ilic, A. 2011. Customer engagement: Conceptual domain, fundamental propositions, and implications for research. Journal of Service Research, 14(3), pp. 252–271. Brown, A. S. and Ratzkin, R. 2011. Making sense of audience engagement: A critical assessment of efforts by nonprofit arts organizations to engage audiences and visitors in deeper and more impactful arts experiences. San Francisco, The San Francisco Foundation. Conner, L. 2013. Audience engagement and the role of arts talk in the digital era. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Conway, T. and Leighton, D. 2012. “Staging the past, enacting the present”: Experiential marketing in the performing arts and heritage sectors. Arts Marketing: An International Journal, 2(1), pp. 35–51. Crawford, M. 2015. The world beyond your head: How to flourish in an age of distraction. London, Penguin. Fiske, J. 1992. Audiencing: A cultural studies approach to watching television. Poetics, 21, pp. 345–359. Freshwater, H. 2009. Theatre & audience. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Gray, C. 2015. Ambiguity and cultural policy. Nordic Journal of Cultural Policy, 1(18), pp. 66–80. Heim, C. L. 2010. Theatre audience contribution: Facilitating a new text through the post-performance discussion. Saarbrücken, Lambert. Heim, C. 2016. Audience as performer: The changing role of theatre audiences in the Twenty-First Century. London and New York, Routledge. Johanson, K. 2013. Listening to the audience: Methods for a new era of audience research. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 159–171. Kattwinkel, S. 2003. Introduction. In: Kattwinkel, S. (ed.) Audience participation: Essays on inclusion in performance. Westport, CT, Praeger, pp. ix–xviii.

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Livingstone, S. and Das, R. 2015. The end of audiences? Theoretical echoes of reception amid the uncertainties of use. In: Hartley, J., Burgess, J. and Bruns, A. (eds.) A companion to new media dynamics. Chichester, Wiley, pp. 104–121. Machon, J. 2013. Immersive theatres: Intimacy and immediacy in contemporary performance. London, Palgrave Macmillan. McConachie, B. 2008. Engaging audiences: A cognitive approach to spectating in the theatre. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Pine, B. J. and Gilmore, J. H. 1999. The experience economy: Work is theatre and every business a stage. Boston, Harvard Business School. Radbourne, J. 2013. Converging with audiences. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 143–158. Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.). 2013. The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect. Reason, M. 2013. The longer experience: Theatre for young audiences and enhancing engagement. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 95–111. Reason, M. and Londelof, A. M. (eds.). 2016. Experiencing liveness in contemporary performance: Interdisciplinary perspectives. London, Routledge. Reinelt, J. G. 2014. What UK spectators know: Understanding how we come to value theatre. Theatre Journal, 66(3), pp. 337–361. Rosen, J. 2012. The people formerly known as the audience. In: Mandiberg, M. (ed.) The social media reader. New York, New York University Press, pp. 13–16. Sartre, J.-P. 1976. A plea for intellectuals. In: Sartre, J.-P. (ed.) Between existentialism and Marxism. New York, William Morrow, pp. 228–285. Sashi, C. M. 2012. Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social media. Management Decision, 50(2), pp. 253–272. Sauter, W. 2000. The theatrical event: Dynamics of performance and perception. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press. Sedgman, K. 2016. Locating the audience: How people found value in National Theatre Wales. Bristol, Intellect. Sharpe, B. 2010. Economies of life: Patterns of health and wealth. Axminster, Triarchy Press. Silvia, P. J. 2005. Emotional responses to art: From collation and arousal to cognition and emotion. Review of General Psychology, 9(4), pp. 342–357. Tepper, S. J. 2008. The next great transformation: Leveraging policy and research to advance cultural vitality. In: Tepper, S. J. and Ivy, B. (eds.) Engaging art: The next great transformation of America’s cultural life. Oxon, Routledge, pp. 363–383. Vincs, K. 2013. Structure and aesthetics in audience responses to dance. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 129–142.

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Walmsley, B. 2018. A plea for audiences: From active spectatorship to enactive audiency. In: Bonet, L. and Négrier, E. (eds.) Breaking the fourth wall: Proactive audiences in the performing arts. Elverum, Kunnskapsverket, pp. 196–209. Walmsley, B. 2019. The death of arts marketing: A paradigm shift from consumption to enrichment. Arts and the Market, 9(1), pp. 32–49.

CHAPTER 2

Understanding Audiences: A Critical Review of Audience Research

Introduction The aim of this chapter is to provide a critical overview of the existing literature on audience research and audience engagement in order to ascertain what we already know about audiences in the performing arts and to identify any significant epistemological gaps. The chapter will survey the seminal contributions to this rapidly emerging field and identify the recurrent themes that characterise the scholarly contributions to it thus far, which I have identified and categorised as follows: the pacification of audiences; power, elitism, and class; cultural policy, participation, and co-creation; immersive performance; performance venues, spaces and places; performance as ritual; reception theory and semiotics; research methodologies; the audience experience; value and impact research; young audiences; arts marketing and management; audience engagement and enrichment. Whilst this is certainly not intended as an exhaustive categorisation of audience research, it is proposed here as an emerging taxonomy that will hopefully help to construct a paradigm for audience studies in the performing arts and, in so doing, offer a useful point of anchorage for scholars in the field. As Martin Barker insists, audience research remains a loose and fragmented field that lacks not only a scholarly home but also a coherent set of questions and principles around which scholars might cohere:

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The question I want us to ask – and I regard our ability to ask and answer it as a sign of the potential maturity of audience research as a field of work – is this: what are our ambitions for our field? What are the kinds of questions we want to be able to ask and answer? (2006, p. 127)

As we saw in the previous chapter, until relatively recently, audience research in the performing arts was hindered by a stubborn refusal amongst many scholars to conduct empirical work. The field has also been hampered by a dearth of academic research into audiences in the performing arts. As a broader field, audience studies has to date been overly dominated by cultural studies and media studies, and this is where it is still most likely to be located in the shadowy groves of academe. However, as cross-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary research continues its steep and steady climb up the research agenda, audience researchers are starting to emerge in other areas of academia, not least in departments of theatre, performance studies, and music. However, as audience research proliferates, there is a real danger that scholars will fail to work in a truly interdisciplinary way across established disciplinary divides; that audience studies gets “stuck at the level of accumulation” and loses sight of existing research in fields such as cultural studies (Barker 2006, pp. 126–127, original italics). With this in mind, this chapter will draw on insights from a diverse range of fields and structure itself in a transdisciplinary way that generally privileges recurrent ideas and themes over the fields that happened to generate them.

The Pacification of Audiences One of the most dominant tropes in the existing scholarship is that performing arts audiences have been systematically quietened over the past two centuries. A number of scholars, including Lynne Conner, Richard Butsch, and Caroline Heim, have written extensively about this, arguing that as the arts became sacralised in the Nineteenth Century during the class wars, audiences were deliberately pacified by theatre managers—closed off from the human interaction that was now reserved for the stage itself and obscured in a darkened auditorium where social engagement became impracticable. As Butsch (2008) notes, this pacification of audiences was effected by a combination of factors, including changing trends in theatre architecture, the rise of realism, developments in stage lighting and set design that required a contrasting darkness in the auditorium, and management

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imperatives to raise box office income by welcoming more women to matinee performances, which in turn required a softer etiquette. However, as Judith Fisher (2003) observes, even before these influences emerged, most eighteenth-century theatre performances were actually “relatively quiet” once the opening music started, and most spectators “behaved themselves” (p. 66). There thus remains debate and disagreement regarding the relative bawdiness of pre-Enlightenment audiences, which suggests that claims of constant noise and ubiquitous audience participation have been deliberately exaggerated in order to serve the agenda of what some might call a romantic revisionism of theatre history to support the case for re-democratising audience engagement and reviewing established theatre etiquette. Regardless of why and to what extent the dynamics in the auditorium shifted, the net result was that the focal point, and therefore the power, shifted away from audiences towards producers and performers. However, much as these shifting power dynamics might well explain the subsequent disempowerment of the audience voice, both literally and metaphorically, the discourse surrounding the cynical quietening of audiences needs to be problematised, because the growing number of calls for audiences to be allowed to become more vocal (Sedgman 2018) lie in opposition to recent findings regarding the drivers and impacts of arts attendance—particularly the pursuit of flow experiences, which are reliant on individual concentration, immersion and peace (Walmsley 2011). There is also an underlying assumption that audiences are communities or collectives rather than crowds or disparate groups of individuals engaged in diverse objectives and pursuits, and this tension between homogeneity and heterogeneity still pervades a good proportion of audience research.

Power, Elitism, and Class As we saw in Chapter 1, audiency has always been, or at least always been perceived to be, a political act. Whilst practitioners such as Brecht and Boal consciously exploited the explicitly political act of theatre-going, the implicitly political aspect of being part of a social collective has been noted by many philosophers and commentators stemming back to Plato, who warned how audiences could easily be activated by the dangerous persuasive rhetoric and emotional manipulation that lie at the heart of performance (Hall 2010). Audiences’ perceived propensity for manipulation has long effected a culture of mistrust towards audiences and fostered a prejudiced view of them as “disorderly crowds and unruly subjects” (Butsch 2008,

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p. 24). In his treatise on what he labels “the citizen audience”, Butsch contends that institutions often cast audiences in the role of the “Other” (2008, p. 3). As we will see in the course of this book, this “othering” often serves to objectify audiences, diminishing their intellectual and interpretive capacities and alienating them from both the encoding and decoding phase of the creative endeavour. In his eponymous theoretical study The audience, Herbert Blau (1990) suggests that the issue is not simply about who speaks and who listens, but rather “who constructs meanings and in what positions of language” (p. 8). Blau goes on to argue that variant social interests combine to “disarticulate the process of signification, the signifier itself, from […] the dominant and oppressive systems of meaning” (ibid.). According to Blau, then, audiences are often deliberately excluded from processes of interpretation because meaning-making is in and of itself a highly political and politicised process and one which is therefore primarily concerned with retaining power. Caroline Heim expands on this idea, illustrating how audiences’ voices have been systematically silenced: Due to changes in theatre architecture, the rise in power of arts professionals, changes in audience demographics, and the rise of a commodity culture, contemporary audience contribution has been largely relegated to laughter and applause. (2012, p. 189)

The disempowerment of audiences is a familiar trope in audience research and the cynical dislocation of the act of audiency from acts of interpretation represents a political and epistemological problem that has partly fuelled the rise of scholarship into audience engagement and enrichment. Indeed this problem is one of the core foci of this monograph and it will be explored in due course in relation to cultural value, research methodologies, arts marketing, co-creation, and digital engagement. Considering the prevailing demographic of performing arts audiences, this disempowerment functions on a much wider scale than in the often unseen world of theatres and concert halls and it is to a large extent essentially an issue of class discrimination. Although this book is primarily concerned with actual (as opposed to potential) audience members, it is important to note that audience research has been greatly influenced over the past few decades by Pierre Bourdieu, whose work on cultural capital has served to highlight how entrenched processes of social elitism exclude many social groups from the act of audiency altogether, creating a culture

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where “a narrow band of voices militates against change and innovation” (Jancovich 2011, p. 279). This cultural elitism is illustrated on a national scale by Butsch (2008), who traces the development and dominance of upper-middle class audiences in the United States during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. These audiences carved out for themselves a preciously guarded cultural haven between what they perceived as “uncultivated” working class audiences on one side and the “unappreciative rich” on the other (p. 69). Class has been woefully under-explored by audience researchers. As Willmar Sauter argued almost two decades ago now, the encounters between performers and spectators need to be studied much more closely “in terms of psychology, gender relations, class formations, genre expectations, and other contextual conditions” (2000, p. 48). Given that questions of class are central to attempts to diversify audiences, and that this objective lies at the heart of cultural policy strategies across the globe, it is quite simply astonishing that more sector and academic research has not been dedicated to the particular issues (and notably barriers to engagement) encountered by working class audiences. The rare exceptions to this research lacuna are David Wright’s (2015) extensive exploration of cultural taste and Maria Barrett’s (2015) meticulous ethnographic study of working class audiences, effected through a case study of Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre. Barrett’s research presents a Bourdieusian analysis of theatre-going in the city of Liverpool, highlighting, for example, the particular methodological challenges faced when working with working class audiences (who may be suspicious of “academics” and “interviews”) alongside the significant roles that programming, casting, audience participation, architecture, seating, nostalgia and sociability can all play in establishing a welcoming aesthetic that speaks to a working class habitus. The barriers encountered by working class audiences are reflected of course in the significant challenges faced by working class artists, which merely compound the persistent under-representation of the working class voice in the performing arts sectors and serve to alienate working class audiences even further (O’Brien et al. 2018).

Cultural Policy, Participation and Co-creation Largely influenced by sociology, and particularly once again by the work of Bourdieu, cultural policy research is increasingly dominated by the politics of cultural engagement. Put quite simply, many cultural policy scholars are now concerned essentially with who does and doesn’t engage with the

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arts and why/why not. Accordingly, there is a rapidly growing body of work dedicated to aspects of what has historically been referred to as audience development, but which might more accurately and appropriately be referred to as audience diversification. Whilst this work is undeniably important, partly for the reasons outlined above, it is arguably serving to marginalise audience research within cultural policy studies and, rightly or wrongly, shift the professional policy focus away from the phenomenology of the audience experience. This imbalance was partly addressed in the significant body of work funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (2013) under the auspices of its Cultural Value Project (see Chapter 4), which called for more research into the lived experiences of audiences. Despite this hefty (and continuing) intervention, it is important to note the significant scholarly shift over the past two decades towards questions of participation and non-participation. Indeed according to a recent thematic analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2007 and 2016 in ten leading arts marketing journals, 16% of all articles relating to arts marketing or audience engagement were primarily focused on participation, which emerged overall as the 3rd most popular topic (Walmsley 2019). Typical examples of these publications are Keaney and Oskala’s (2007) article, which explores the reasons for and barriers to older people engaging with the arts, and Jancovich’s (2011) critical analysis of New Labour’s policy drive to increase cultural participation amongst under-represented groups in the UK. Collectively, this significant body of work, which finds its natural home in Cultural Trends, provides an objective evaluation of who is participating in different manifestations of the arts and culture together with a predominantly subjective analysis of why this might be the case and what managers and policymakers might do about it. As such, although it is vital from a cultural policy studies perspective, the insights it offers into audiences’ experiences per se are somewhat limited, and this particular genre of scholarship thus inevitably lies on the periphery of audience research. Despite the recent renaissance in scholarship on cultural participation and democracy, audience researchers have always been interested in a different aspect of participation, namely how audiences participate in the arts. This is an important distinction because it demarcates audience studies as a discipline that explores the how and why of engagement, rather than the who and why not. So the nature of participation has always been a core question for audience researchers who, as we have already seen in this review, have

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long wrestled with debates about active versus passive engagement and traced the decline of vocal audience participation. A perfect illustration of audience research into participation is offered by Gareth White’s (2013) study of what he refers to as the “aesthetics of the invitation”. White’s book offers a rare insight into how well conceived participation can foster a more embodied mode of interpretation amongst audiences and into the role that risk can play in determining whether audiences take up an invitation to participate. As we shall see in the next section of this review, the rise in participatory arts practice has engendered a new subgenre of audience research that coheres specifically around immersive performance. But before we move on to explore this particular genre, we must pause to acknowledge the rising scholarly interest in co-production and co-creation, which indeed is now such a significant (although vastly under-explored) field of study that I will dedicate an entire chapter of this book to it. The novelty of co-creation has been overemphasised in the literature. Although scholars are right to respond to the rise in co-created activity within the performing arts in recent years, co-creation, whether understood as the co-creation of art (product) or the co-creation of value and meaning (process), has actually been a feature of the performing arts since time immemorial, and it was certainly a core aspect of both Ancient Greek and Shakespearean performance. In more recent memory, the Russian actor, director, and producer Vsevolod Meyerhold was highly aware back in 1929 that plays remain unfinished until they reach an audience, acknowledging that “the crucial version” of a production is “made by the spectator” (Blau 1990, p. 279). Blau expresses a seemingly vain hope that co-created art might offer new insights into the audience experience: What happened over the last generation was that we sometimes thought we might see something else by not looking at all, while returning the theater to more or less nonverbal, elemental forms of play and alternative playing spaces in which the old narrative atrocities would be dispersed and the audience could perform. (1990, p. 94)

Blau appears to regard co-creation in a cynical light as a kind of phenomenological bad faith, a doomed attempt by producers and directors to break the fourth wall and conjoin performers with audiences: “We gaze, in separation, at what we cannot touch, though we fear to be touched by that at which

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we gaze” (ibid., p. 84). This separates him from more contemporary audience researchers, including myself, whose empirical work with audiences has highlighted the potential for co-creation to extend live engagement with art and develop empathy with artists (Walmsley 2013b, 2016). In a similar vein, and in direct contrast to Blau, Caroline Heim explores cocreation in terms of “gestural, verbal and paralingual performance” and characterises the special interrelationship between actors and audiences as a “co-presence” (2012, p. 146). So once again there are divergent views amongst audience researchers—on this occasion regarding the potential of co-creation to deepen engagement and deepen relationships between audiences and artists.

Immersive Performance As if in response to this challenge, the past decade has witnessed a flurry of research into audiences of immersive performance, which has rekindled interest in audience research and provided vital insights to audience studies. At the core of this body of work lies Josephine Machon’s (2013) influential monograph Immersive theatres: Intimacy and immediacy in contemporary performance, which combines a critical commentary on immersive performance with interviews conducted with leading proponents of the genre. Machon defines immersive practice in relation to the relative degree of audience involvement, arguing essentially that what delineates immersive performance is “a prioritisation of the sensual world that is unique to each immersive event” alongside a heightened focus on the “significance of space and place” (p. 70). In immersive theatre, Machon contends, audiences are “integral to the experiential heart of the work and central to the form and aesthetic of the event” (p. 72). This is a useful description of certain types of immersive performance, but in an era where many companies and artists have latched onto the term as a catchy promotional hook, it fails to really distinguish immersive work from other participatory genres of performance. However, Machon goes on to explore audiences’ motivations for engaging with immersive work, claiming convincingly that in an increasingly digital world, audiences are hungry for visceral experiences which remind them what it means to feel alive. As she puts it: “Immersive practice creates a space for reinvigorating human interaction and exchange” (p. 72).

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It is this focus on viscerality and exchange that starts to demarcate immersive performance as a genre that might offer privileged phenomenological insights into audiences’ experiences and qualify them as something fundamentally different from many other performance experiences. Indeed by drawing on Debord, Machon illustrates how audiences of immersive performance play the role of “viveurs ” (p. 72) as opposed to the unemancipated voyeurs pitied by Rancière. This suggests that immersive performance can invoke a particular form of co-creation that empowers audiences to become a living component of live performance—at least fleetingly, because Machon goes on to clarify that the disparate roles played by audiences alternate between passive consumers, witnesses, associates, clients, guests, co-producers, protagonists, and even “creative comrades” (p. 73). Considering audience members’ propensity to engage with artists on equal terms and to engage with art via multiple senses, Machon concludes that the term “audience” has become a “vexed term” (p. 98) which reduces the audience project to that of a passive audio witness, whereas in reality immersive performance can have an “affective potential for empowerment and communitas” and therefore act as “a democratising force” (p. 150). So there is a strong suggestion in Machon’s work that immersive performance, at its most authentic, can act as a welcome antidote to the centuries of calculated disempowerment of audiences and serve as a positive emancipatory force. This positive assessment of immersive performance is echoed in the most recent addition to the field, Staging spectators in immersive performance, where the editors argue that immersive experiences can mobilise audiences through processes of “affective rationality” (Kolesch et al. 2019). Jennifer Radbourne approaches immersive performance from an arts marketing perspective and appears to concur with Mahon that this contemporary genre can foster deeper relationships with audiences: Marketing in the arts is now driven by an audience quest for appropriation, connectivity and transformation through the arts experience. New immersive models of performance, presentation, production and distribution, are required in order to attract and retain audiences. (2013, p. 147)

Radbourne and her Deakin University colleagues have developed a significant body of work on performing arts audiences that is largely focused on investigating the dimensions of the audience experience (Radbourne et al. 2013) and how audiences perceive artistic quality and impact

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(Radbourne et al. 2009, 2010). Radbourne’s observation about arts marketing cited above illustrates how audiences’ needs and desires are evolving as they seek deeper and more transformative connections with art and artists, and she distinguishes immersive performance as an ideal model to meet these changing consumer needs. However, as its title suggests, Adam Alston’s (2016) book Beyond immersive theatre: Aesthetics , politics and productive participation takes a much more critical stance. Alston questions the extent to which the “productive audiences” often hailed by immersive practitioners might justifiably be judged to be empowered. Through a range of extended case studies, Alston explores how the putative empowerment of immersed audiences actually stands up to political scrutiny. Ultimately, Alston argues that immersive aesthetics are often influenced in practice by neoliberalism, which can sometimes manifest as a commercial experience machine, and he calls on immersive practitioners to challenge what he perceives to be a negative political interference on a potentially liberating genre. Lynne Conner (2013) is equally critical of immersive performance. In the course of her exhortation for a genuine and dialogic engagement with audiences, Conner dismisses immersive performances such as Punchdrunk’s Sleep no more as “a kind of meta-spectating” that “invites audience members to actively shape each other’s experience, even if that shaping is limited to shoving other spectators out of the way” (p. 146). She also questions whether immersive performance pushes audience members “towards analysis and evaluation of the arts event itself” or “to render meaning once they pull off their masks” (pp. 146–147). In a thinly veiled critique of contemporary practice reminiscent of Alston’s charge of neoliberalism, Conner concludes that arts organisations need to consider their audiences as “a collection of individual subjects who think and feel – as opposed to groupings of demographics who consume” (p. 160). So as with co-creation, the jury seems to be out on whether immersive performance ultimately offers any deeper type or mode of engagement than traditional performance.

Performance Venues, Spaces, and Places The previous section on immersive performance highlighted the significant role that place and space can play in influencing the nature of audiences’ experiences. As Bourdieu (1991) noted, arts venues act as physical manifestations of cultural capital and habitus, and they can elicit profound feelings of unworthiness and incompetence amongst those who are new to them.

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As we observed earlier in the chapter, a very small number of audience researchers are engaging with this theory under the wider theme of class. But the role of the arts venue, or perhaps the location of an arts event, is so important in the context of audience engagement that it warrants its own independent scrutiny, and various audience researchers have focused on aspects of place and space, either expressly or spontaneously, precisely because of its fundamental impact on audiences’ overall experiences of art. As Douglas Brown notes: “A fundamental ingredient of presenting quality arts and entertainment experiences to contemporary audiences is the imaginative design, management and use of the places in which they happen” (2011, p. 103). Brown’s concise history of the design and architecture of arts venues highlights how they have evolved over the centuries from the open public fora of Classical Greece to the socially exclusive Victorian spaces that contained segregated entrances, exits, and seating, and back to more open, but now more intimate, contemporary social spaces. As Janelle Reinelt observes, audience members often invest “in the occasion of the performance rather than the performance itself” (2014, p. 358) and so these more social spaces are fit-for-purpose. However, considering the strong consensus in the literature regarding the vital role that arts venues play in audiences’ artistic encounters, the charge that “arts facilities have not evolved or adapted to the changing expectations and needs of contemporary artists, audiences and communities” is of particular concern (Brown 2013, p. 52). Alan Brown’s manifold empirical studies of performing arts audiences have led him to conclude that: “Inviting audiences to spaces they do not want to visit is a losing proposition, especially when they do show up and feel out of place” (p. 53, original italics). Brown’s research illustrates how audiences often identify with and even personify arts spaces, promoting them in their minds to core determinants of their overall experience. Consumers have deep-seated feelings about arts spaces, describing them as ‘friendly, ‘welcoming’, or ‘cold’, or ‘intimidating’ – attributes often ascribed to people. […] Venues also take on symbolic meanings, either based on actual experience or transmitted through social networks. (2013, p. 53)

From an arts marketing perspective, then, venues are strongly correlated with consumer satisfaction and have a powerful impact on perceptions and word-of-mouth. But as Brown suggests here, their role is far more than simply an augmented product: arts spaces play an important sociological role in their communities, and audiences engage with them on a deeply

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personal level that may or may not be connected to the art that takes place within them. This perhaps, at least partly, explains the popularity of sitespecific, site-responsive, and immersive performance, which, as we saw in the previous section, is characterised by its integral relationship with place. Aspects of place and space are undeniably central to questions of audience development, audience engagement and audience enrichment: venues and artistic locations either enhance or detract; they appeal or repel. Although limited research has been conducted into young audiences’ perceptions of arts venues, a comprehensive six-year study of Australian audiences aged 14–25 revealed that venues’ social and communal spaces are often as much of an attraction for young people as the performances themselves (O’Toole et al. 2014, p. 9). The study highlighted the fact that younger audiences want to feel “comfortable”, “special”, and welcome in an arts venue; they seek “a sense of belonging” to a place that is “special, classy or cool” (pp. 50–51). They like the idea of “a place where certain behaviours and protocols were to be followed; a place tinged with excitement and expectation” (ibid.). Younger audiences often sense disappointment and anti-climax when venues lack any palpable “atmosphere” or close soon after a performance, because they appreciate the “buzz and excitement” of a busy public space (pp. 54–55). Studies dedicated to young audiences are vitally important (although also markedly rare) not simply because young audiences are of course the future audiences of the arts and thus their sine qua non, but also because they represent a microcosm of audiences more broadly and can therefore provide fresh insights into audience research: The fresh eyes and honesty often exhibited by young audiences can help to circumnavigate methodological challenges such as positive bias that we will explore in detail in Chapter 5. When it comes to venues, the findings of studies of young audiences tend to reinforce the audience research undertaken with adult audiences— which again is sadly rare on the ground. A wonderful exception to this gap is Karen Burland and Stephanie Pitts’ (2012) study of The Spin—a weekly jazz club in Oxford (UK). As the authors describe it, The Spin takes place in an intimate room above a pub with a bar at the back and a small stage at the front. Seats are arranged in café style with standing room at the back. The researchers selected the club because it had been recently nominated for Jazz Venue of the Year and so they felt it would provide an opportunity to explore what is special about venues and how they impact on audiences’ overall experiences. Their findings highlighted the significance of the small, intimate and social nature of the space, which participants

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compared with being a football fan, sharing with others “feelings of intimacy, connectedness and despair and joy […] surrounded by a like-minded crowd” (pp. 534–35). It transpired that jazz audiences want to feel part of the performance, which involves “being close enough to the music that it is totally immersing” (p. 537). When deciding where to go to see a live performance, participants seemed to be searching for the “ideal” jazz gig, which they articulated mainly in terms of the atmosphere and venue, the performers and fellow audience members (p. 537). Cognisant again of the sociological role played by the venue, the authors conclude that: The Spin’s success must, in part, be related to its choice to develop a community, or “club”, of like-minded individuals who support its activities almost as a matter of routine, suggesting that the current focus on developing new audiences may be better dedicated to understanding how to sustain current audiences and increase their loyalty to events within particular venues. (Burland and Pitts 2012, p. 538)

The Spin is partly a case study in fandom, and as such it highlights the role that arts clubs might play in developing more loyal followers, from both new and existing audiences. It cannot be a coincidence that several significant audience studies are based on jazz. Just as young audiences represent a microcosm of general arts audiences, jazz seems to offer up a particularly intense example of audiencing. This is probably a result of the factors elucidated in the previous case study, namely: intimacy, proximity to performers, and opportunities for fandom and socialisation. This working hypothesis is supported by another study of jazz, which similarly accentuates the particularly social and relational aspects of jazz attendance: For the audience members interviewed, a significant factor in their choice of jazz performance was whether the venue allowed for them to make direct connections, physical or emotional, with the musicians. […] They wanted to be close to the musicians, see them interact with each other and see them play as clearly as they could hear them. (Brand et al. 2012, p. 642)

Alongside this further evidence of the arts providing an ideal opportunity for enhanced socialisation, there are insights into kinaesthetic and educational engagement here which will be developed later in the book. But for now, let’s focus our attention on the concept of intimacy and on its antithetical concept of “distance”.

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Distance emerges as a niche but nonetheless important area of audience research—not least because of its phenomenological implications. As Blau observes, distance impacts upon audiences in both a literal and metaphorical sense: “Up too close you can’t think, too far back you can’t feel. If proximity blurs vision, there is a point beyond which there is an astigmatism in distance” (1990, p. 117). Blau is suggesting here that there is an optimal distance between audiences and performers. Bearing in mind Machon’s research into immersive performance and our earlier discussion about jazz, Blau’s theory appears to be contested by audiences themselves, who often appear keen to actually touch performers and even push fellow spectators out of the way to achieve this! However, the theoretical viewpoint propagated by Blau is supported by phenomenologists, who make a clear distinction between everyday and aesthetic distance: “Our engagement during the theatrical experience may be intense, but it is not the kind of engagement that occurs in life experience. The difference is a function of distance” (Ben Chaim 1984, p. ix). Although Daphna Ben Chaim’s philosophical exploration of the aesthetics of audience response clarifies that there is no unified theory of distance amongst aestheticians, she draws heavily on Edward Bullough and Jean-Paul Sartre to argue that the performing arts function through the deliberate manipulation of distance by artists and that audiences need to be complicit in this in order to derive emotional engagement. So distance ultimately emerges as an enabler of audience engagement. The natural conclusion to draw from phenomenologists and aestheticians is that distance functions differently in art from in real life because art is always a conceit. This reflects the broader consensus in this section of the review that performing arts venues can hold exceptional qualities that are integral to audiences’ artistic experiences. Heim’s research with audiences and performers drives this point home, highlighting succinctly the communitarian value of arts venues and reinforcing the inherently relational nature of the performing arts: “People nowadays have relatively few opportunities to physically commune with each other and feel part of a community, so arts venues have the potential to become community spaces” (2016, p. 123). We will explore this communitarian aspect of audiency further in the following section.

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Performance as Ritual As we saw earlier in the chapter, scholars remain divided on the extent to which audiencing can be considered a collaborative pursuit. Blau, for example, asserts that the notion of the theatre audience as a community can only ever be fictitious (1990, p. 11). For Blau, who was heavily influenced by Sartre, theatre-going represents a kind of futile wish-fulfilment, the ultimate goal of which (i.e. to possess the Other, in form of the performer and/or the fellow audience member) is always ultimately doomed. Blau is ultimately cynical about the audience project, claiming that the desired goals of permanence and collective experience remain de facto elusive: The dative of an audience is this alienated zone where a repeated impermanence is the thing itself and where there is an intersection, too, of being and being more, more than one, the proximity of separation in a space of desire that precedes or exceeds any sort of collectivity. (1990, p. 346, original italics)

In Blau’s opinion, audiences can only ever exist as temporary postulates because: “An audience without a history is not an audience” (p. 16). What Blau neglects here is not simply the fact that some audience groups do indeed share a long history of collective arts experiences (as the case study of The Spin made clear) but also the potential for communitas , a shared state of liminality which delivers communal experience and meaning. He also disregards the value and impact of temporary communities and experiences. According to Victor Turner (1975), communitas “can only be evoked easily when there are many occasions outside the ritual on which communitas has been achieved” (p. 56). This is seemingly a positive sign for audiences, who, as Stanley Fish observed, often arrive at performances as part of “interpretive communities” and approach productions with a “similar language” (cited in Kattwinkel 2003, p. xii). This suggests that audiences are not always as heterogeneous, nor indeed as disconnected, as theorists might lead us to believe. Susan Kattwinkel interprets communitas as a desire amongst audience members to “feel like they are creating and expressing common sentiment along with the performers and each other; a goal of active spectatorship” (pp. x–xi). There are some interesting and significant implications here, which collectively highlight the need for arts organisations to engage their audiences collectively, to develop them as a congregation, or at least to encourage and facilitate this act of communal active spectatorship.

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For Turner, communitas is enabled by the ritualistic nature of performance and by its ability to replace the routine of everyday life with special “dramatic time” (1982, p. 9). Dramatic time allows for what Turner refers to as “ergotropic behaviour” (p. 9), which is characterised by participants’ arousal and heightened emotional activity. This behaviour leads participants into a numinous, hypertrophic state that encourages them to de-sacralise society and ultimately to be transformed (p. 10). Although Turner’s highly influential theories of performance emerged well before the rise of empirical audience research, his notions of arousal and hypertrophy have since been supported by biometric, psychobiological and neurobiological enquiries into audiency. To that extent, Turner’s work might be judged to be somewhat prescient, foreshadowing numerous recent studies that have highlighted the strong emotional impact of the performing arts on audiences as well as its spiritual and physiological impacts (Walmsley 2013a). However, despite the enduring legacy of Turner’s work in performance studies, in her inspirational book Dancing in the streets: A history of collective joy, Barbara Ehrenreich (2007) criticises Turner’s narrow focus on communitas as a manifestation of social structure. Ehrenreich develops the concept by focusing on the psychological drivers that underscore the state of communitas, drawing closely on Durkheim’s concept of “collective effervescence”, which she interprets as “ritually induced passion or ecstasy that cements social bonds” (pp. 2–3) and leads to “communal excitement” (p. 35). This Classical interpretation of communitas nods to the more prevalent theory of catharsis, which will be explored in the following chapter. For now, it is important to note Ehrenreich’s depiction of the performing arts as a joyful communal ritual. It is also worth noting that Ehrenreich’s observations are supported by insights from cognitive science, where experiments have revealed that rhythm can indeed enhance group solidarity (McConachie 2008, p. 73). So once again, there is dissonance in the literature regarding the extent to which audiencing can ever be a genuinely collective experience. The theoretical dividing line appears to be between the spiritualists and anthropologists on the one side and the rationalists and phenomenologists on the other: although phenomenologists believe they have proved that the Self can never be at one with or possess the Other, many anthropologists have borne witness to ritual practice which presents itself as a communal rite. This brings into question the relationship between art and ritual, and in response to this it is important to acknowledge the high degree of consensus amongst audience researchers that art represents a quintessential human

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ritual. Indeed as Ehrenreich notes, art is one of the few remaining rituals we have left and we run the risk of losing it altogether. This brings us back to the insights offered by relational aesthetics, which pertinently suggests that art offers “spaces where we can elaborate alternative forms of sociability, critical models and moments of constructed conviviality” (Bourriaud 2002, p. 44).

Reception Theory and Semiotics One of the main attempts to place audiences back at the heart of audience research came with the development of reception theory, and Susan Bennett’s Theatre audiences remains a seminal text for audience researchers working in this tradition. Bennett’s monograph originally dates back to 1990 and it was therefore one of the first books to apply both readerresponse and spectatorship theories to the context of the performing arts (Freshwater 2009). Bennett was influenced by a number of cultural theorists including Roland Barthes, who famously argued in his Death of the author that critics should take a less biographical approach to literary analysis and focus more on the interpretation of readers in the acknowledgment that interpretation takes place within a complex network of intertextuality, at the heart of which lie “interpretive communities” (Fish, cited in Bennett 1997, p. 40). The notion of interpretive communities will be central to this book and as such this book owes much to the audience-centred thinking proffered by Barthes, Fish and Bennett. Bennett’s book champions what she calls the “productive and emancipated” role that audiences play in critical theory and in explicating what is undoubtedly a complex social phenomenon (1997, p. 1). Bennett laments the developments in production values and mores that engendered the damaging separation of audiences from the stage (p. 3) and the epistemological biases that led to much dramatic theory neglecting the role of audience interpretation (p. 4) and culminated in a situation characterised by the fact that discussions of audience reception remain “simple and cursory” (p. 7). In tracing the development of theatre practice over the course of the Twentieth Century, Bennett highlights the primary role that political (and notably Brechtian) theatre played in emancipating the audience project, shifting the culture of performance from a “hermetically sealed” to a “cooperative” venture where audiences were no longer conceived as passive receivers but as active participants and producers of meaning (p. 30). This shift was precipitated by the rebalancing of power away from texts

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and writers towards directors and dramaturgs that was notable in much European theatre in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. Bennett’s study was instrumental in shifting thinking about audiences into a new empirical terrain, partly by insisting that the audience project needed to be explored through “social co-ordinates” (p. 86), including “proxemic relations” and the interplay between and amongst performers and audiences (pp. 131–32). As Kirsty Sedgman argues, Bennett’s work succeeded in breaking theatre scholarship away from considering audiences’ responses to performance as “natural outcomes of performance intention” (2016, p. 8). However, Sedgman justifiably goes on to critique Bennett’s contribution for its overridingly theoretical focus on the “culturally specific paratheatrical determinants of audience reception” (ibid.). Marco De Marinis (1987) distinguishes between two different levels of reception: the “extra-textual” level of “the real (empirical) receiver” and the “intra-textual” level of “the implied (the hypothetical, ideal, virtual) receiver” (p. 102). According to De Marinis, extra-textual reception involves the effective activation of reading strategies whereas intra-textual reception is concerned with “the manner of interpretation anticipated by the text and written into it” (ibid.). This is a useful distinction because it highlights both the need for empirical research to make fully informed judgements about reception and the fact that by concentrating only on the hypothetical or ideal audience member, theoretical scholars wilfully ignore the semiotic and dramaturgical impact on audiences, their individual viewing strategies and subjective responses, and thus engage primarily in what can only be called assumption. As De Marinis puts it, the ideal or “model” spectator “represents a hypothetical construct and is simply part of a theoretical metalanguage” (ibid.). This implicit call to prioritise the live performance over the text as the ultimate moment of reception was taken up by a number of audience scholars including Vasile Popovici, who rightly argued that “the dialogical nature of the dramatic genre is not to be found in the internal organisation of the play: it is revealed at the level of the performance” (1984, p. 111). Popovici and De Marinis thus also helped to move audience research closer to the audience. In theory, semiotics represented a concerted attempt to analyse precisely how performance was revealed during performance. In his influential monograph The theatrical event: Dynamics of performance and reception, Willmar Sauter (2000) offers a useful summary of the development of audience research. Although in many ways this study argues strongly against a semiotic approach to performance studies, Sauter rightly credits semiotics

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with placing performance “right back in the centre of the debate” (2000, p. 24). This point is emphasised by Martin Barker (2006), who goes so far as to credit the very emergence of audience research, at least in Europe, to the rise of semiotics within its home of cultural studies: For good or bad, audience research in the UK, and consequentially in the rest of Europe, was born under the star of Stuart Hall’s “encoding-decoding” model—a model that sought to offer a conceptualization of text-audience relations which could simultaneously treat texts properly as such (as culturally formed items) and also capture their ideological functions. (p. 128)

However, in Sauter’s view, semiotics dehumanised and commodified performance; and Sauter’s own lasting contribution to audience research was to characterise performance as a “communicative event” that can be “traced to hermeneutic theories, both as a philosophical approach and as an empirical system” (p. 12). This is the view shared by most contemporary audience researchers, who have adopted the intersubjective and co-created perspective of interpretation and meaning-making championed by hermeneutics. Bruce McConachie (2008) places another nail in the coffin of semiotics by positioning it in opposition to cognitive science. McConachie argues that like certain other post-structuralist theories of audiences’ experiences, semiotics merely condemns the audience project to the world of illusion: For some poststructuralist theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, who build on the assumptions of semiotics, spectators rarely get beyond illusory signifiers; they are mostly doomed to a world of simulations that can never touch the Real. But […] the world on stage is not entirely fictional. (p. 48)

Like the phenomenologists whom we explored earlier in relation to distance and communality, the post-structuralists condemn the audience project to the realms of fiction and bad faith. To counter this, and by drawing on documentary theatre as an example, McConachie convincingly illustrates how via a process of “conceptual blending” audiences can in reality be exposed to “a high level of actuality” and happily accept “a minimally intrusive level of fictionality” (pp. 48–49). This culminates, McConachie argues, in a situation whereby audiences “do not believe they are participating in an unreal illusion when they ‘live in the blend’ of a performance”. Unlike

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semiotic theory, cognitive studies can provide scientific evidence for audiences’ ability to blend fiction with reality and run “multiple conceptions simultaneously” (p. 50). A final critique that can justifiably be levelled at reception and semiotic studies is that they fail to explore what Schoenmakers (1990) refers to as “reception results” (i.e. the impact of performance on audiences post hoc). Through their exclusive focus on the decoding of the performance itself, these approaches neglect the vitally important hermeneutic aspects of audiency and as such remain epistemologically flawed. In summary, history has not been kind to reception theory and semiotics, at least in the field of audience studies, where scholars have now moved on to adopt a wide array of empirical methods that enable more sensitive and longitudinal enquiries into audiences’ arts experiences and that finally identify audiences themselves as the rightful subjects of audience research.

Research Methodologies Chapter 5 is dedicated to a thorough critical review of the different methods and methodologies deployed by audience researchers. The aim of this section is rather to review recent studies that themselves provide valuable insights into different methodological approaches to audience research. Martin Barker (2006) certainly provides such an insight in a state-ofthe-field article which sets out his ambitions for audience research. Barker’s greatest expressed ambition for audience research is to be able to state “with sufficient precision to be checkable the conditions that have to be met for an audience member to be said to have attained an unconditionally positive experience from a cultural encounter” (p. 130). Barker is a stoic champion of rigorous mixed-methods audience research and he rightly bemoans the fact that tried and tested methods in one field (such as media studies) often fail to be replicated in others (such as performance studies). As the above citation suggests, replicability is vital to Barker, because he is keen to harbour audience research from persistent charges of description and anecdotalism. To this end, Barker has been part of a research team that has conducted two of the largest scale audiences studies ever undertaken, with almost 25,000 participants responding to a survey on The Lord of the Rings in 2004 and over 36,000 responding to a subsequent study of New Line Cinema and Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit (Barker and Mathijs 2016). Barker is right to rail that audience studies has thus far “been content with loose and vague concepts”, and he is equally justified

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in his call for the field to establish its own working concepts and methods of enquiry (2006, p. 128). However, audience studies has always been an inherently crossdisciplinary and heterogeneous field, and it is certainly unlikely, and probably undesirable, than any one theoretical framework will ever emerge. If a paradigm is ever to be determined for audience studies then it will need to be a catholic one which leaves room for diverse traditions and methods. Like Barker, Kirsty Sedgman is a strong advocate for both diversity and rigour in audience research and both scholars call for a “defragmentation” of the field. Sedgman also urges the discipline towards greater self-reflexivity, arguing that “rigorous audience projects must embed in their analysis an examination of the political and interpersonal implications of the process of research itself” (forthcoming). In other words, the methodologies and methods selected by audience researchers always colour the ensuing “findings”, which are therefore always contingent and contextual. Accordingly, qualitative audience research can only ever be interpretative, and possibly even doubly so, since it generally constitutes “an act of interpreting an act of interpretation” (Sedgman 2017, p. 315). Lisa Baxter, Daragh O’Reilly and Liz Carnegie have also made a significant contribution to developing research methodologies with audiences. Much of their work champions, applies and evaluates innovative and participatory methods of inquiry into arts engagement, including creative and interactive techniques such as guided visualisation. These researchers operate under the guiding principle that: “Audience research participants should be treated as active partners rather than simply sources of data” in order to elicit “richer, deeper insights” (Baxter et al. 2013, p. 127). Their work, and that of Lisa Baxter in particular, offers alternative approaches that not only open up audience research to participants who might struggle to communicate their arts engagement in verbal terms but that also align with the creative questions under scrutiny. Moreover, these creative approaches can also facilitate the emergence of non-conscious responses to arts engagement. Creative methods can be particularly effective with non-traditional audience groups, such as children and participants suffering from dementia, for example. Like Baxter, Matthew Reason deploys a range of creative methods, including drawing and movement, to “deepen and extend the kinds of responses” collected from audience participants (2010, p. 15). As Reason points out, audiences’ responses to performances can act as “a kind of countersignature” to them, morphing and modifying them along the way; and

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although these responses can be intellectual or rational, they can equally be embodied, kinaesthetic and/or intuitive (p. 28). These disparate types of response clearly require divergent research methods, and Reason emphasises the need for synergy between different philosophies and methodologies of audience research: The key concern here is the nature of spectatorship and the relationship between what we might term ‘the experience’ of performance and any one individual’s conscious, reflective ability to externalise that experience. These concerns are at once methodological, asking what is knowable about our own and other people’s experiences; and also philosophical, directly interrogating the fundamental question of what it means to experience art. (2010, p. 15)

As Sedgman (forthcoming) concludes, there are many different ways to research audiences but it is never a neutral act. As we observed earlier in the chapter, Bruce McConachie (2008) takes a very particular approach to audience engagement and strives to make developments through cognitive science. Cognisant of the entrenched prejudices and methodological divides that have hampered audience research over the past few decades, McConachie rightly insists that “cognitive and cultural approaches to audiences need not be antithetical” (p. 5). Nevertheless, he argues that in order to make progress, audience scholars need to “move beyond postshow interviews, audience surveys, and similar methods” and deploy the more scientific tools offered by disciplines such as experimental linguists and neuroscience (pp. 15–16). Like Barker, he is minded to support methodological approaches that have the potential to generate irrefutable evidence about audiences, claiming that “an approach to spectatorship grounded in falsifiable theories and empirical knowledge has a better chance of discovering some critical and historical truths than do theories that cannot be validated scientifically” (p. 14). However, there exists an inner tension within McConachie’s work, which on the one hand claims that divergent methods should coexist whilst on the other establishes an implicit hierarchy between interpretivist and positivist research. This is indicative of the wider tension that persists in the field and that often prevents the mixed-methods or triangulated approach that the field desperately needs. We will explore these challenges further in Chapter 5.

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The Audience Experience It has become apparent in the course of this review that scholars are increasingly moving away from theoretical approaches to audience research and investing their efforts in explicating audiences’ diverse and complex experiences of the performing arts through empirical methods. Helen Freshwater, for example, advocates for a cultural studies approach to audience research, noting that a more embedded approach makes manifest the individual positionality inherent to the audience experience: Ultimately, cultural studies has come to be characterised by a rejection of the notion of ‘the audience’ as a singular or homogeneous entity, a detailed interrogation of diverse and sometimes unexpected responses, and an ethnographic engagement with the range of cultural conditions which inform an individual’s viewing position. (2009, p. 28)

The following chapter will be dedicated to deconstructing the nature of audiences’ diverse experiences of the performing arts. The aim of this section is to review how the key authors who focus explicitly on audiences’ experiences explicate those experiences and to outline the implications of this for audience research more broadly. As Freshwater intimates, one of the main reasons to prioritise audiences’ experiences is to guard against the general objectification and homogenisation which audiences have faced for centuries. The common tendency to refer to an audience as ‘it’ and, by extension, to think of this ‘it’ as a single entity or a collective, risks obscuring the multiple contingencies of subjective response, context, and environment which condition an individual’s interpretation of a particular performance event. (2009, p. 5)

Focussing research on audiences’ lived experiences implies exploring the complexities inherent to these experiences and accepting the nature of audience engagement as plural and contingent. However, in an attempt to simplify this plurality, some scholars have strived to narrow the scope of audience research and delimit the inevitable contingencies. For example, Radbourne et al. (2009) attempt to “measure” the audience experience. Based on a qualitative study of audience engagement in three Australian performing arts organisations, the authors discern four core dimensions of the audience experience: knowledge, risk, authenticity, and collective

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engagement. They argue that if audiences’ expectations in relation to these dimensions are satisfied, then audiences will be highly likely to return to an arts organisation, which, they maintain, represents a valid proxy for experiential “quality” (p. 28). The problem with this reduction is not simply the small sample size that the authors themselves concede; it is also that it diminishes the subjective nature of audiences’ desires and fails to account for the artistic and emotional quality of their experiences, factors which have been demonstrated time and again to be primary determinants of positive engagement. Once again there exists a tension in audience research between positivism and interpretivism, and in the context of the audience experience, this generally occurs across disciplinary divides such as arts management versus cultural or performance studies. We will explore the foci and contributions offered by arts management and marketing in due course, but at this stage it is important to note that many audience researchers working in this domain are keen to offer solutions to arts organisations and policymakers, and so their research is inevitably more utilitarian and applied. By contrast the research produced by cultural studies and performance scholars tends to be more conceptual and abstract. It covers, for example, aspects of liveness, play, and manipulation (Auslander 2008; De Marinis 1987; McConachie 2008); collective engagement and intersubjectivity (Blau 1990; Popovici 1984); suspending disbelief (Schechner 2003); immersion and flow (Csikszentmihalyi 1988; Machon 2013); embodied and enactive spectatorship (Bleeker and Germano 2014; Reynolds and Reason 2011); arousal and reward (Berlyne 1971; Silvia 2005); and catharsis and transformation (Golden 1973). These are the main topics that will shape the structure of the following chapter. They encapsulate and illustrate the myriad psychological, phenomenological, psychobiological, and spiritual elements that comprise audiences’ experiences of the performing arts.

Value and Impact Research One area of audience research that attracts scholars from many different disciplines is what I will refer to here as value and impact research. Studies in this area explore fundamental questions of why audiences engage with the performing arts, what they are seeking, what kind of value and benefits they incur, and how this value might impact both on audiences themselves and on society more broadly. These questions are naturally of

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interest to many different fields—for example, to cultural policy scholars who are investigating cultural value, to management scholars interested in aspects of strategic purpose and evaluation, to arts marketing scholars exploring consumer demands, to performance scholars investigating the role of dramaturgy, etc. This all makes for a rich body of cross-disciplinary research on the value and impact of the performing arts as perceived by audiences. One small but significant strand of this work is research on audience motivation, which explores the artistic/aesthetic, social, and psychological aspirations of audiences. Konijn (1999) refers to these drivers as “the affective benefits of attending performances” and observes that these are underprivileged in performance studies (pp. 170–171). This is an understatement: as many scholars have noted, the vast majority of audience research still focuses on what we could call the micro context—i.e. immediate responses to a particular performance. What is lacking is sufficient research into the meta context—the accumulated longitudinal value incurred by audiences over many years of audiencing. A notable exception here is Janelle Reinelt’s study of theatre spectatorship and value attribution, which demonstrated the longitudinal impact of different types of theatre on audiences, reporting, for example, how theatre encourages audiences to “think or feel deeply about aspects of human life, the current world situation, politics, or social issues” (2014, p. 354). Reinelt’s study revealed how audiences attribute both intrinsic and instrumental value to their theatre-going activity, which they describe in terms ranging from an appreciation of language and acting to developing their world view (p. 354). In a policy and management context where arts organisations have to increasingly justify their very existence, longitudinal value and impact evaluation is of paramount importance, and so Chapter 4 will offer a detailed exploration of this theme. There is also insufficient research into what we know to be significant differences in audiences’ motivations for engaging with different art forms. For example, as we saw in the discussion of jazz, one recurrent theme in the literature on value and impact is audiences’ desire to be in close proximity to performers. However, a tiny minority of audience researchers contend that this desire is inherently futile, in that the dynamic of performance is actually predicated on the distinction, distance and separation, rather than the unity and communion, between performers and spectators (Auslander 2008, pp. 55–56). Or, as Blau puts it: “A discourse on the audience must inevitably move across a spectrum of apprehension between the old fantasy of communion and the divisionary impasse” (1990, p. 25). Empirical

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research generally contests this pessimistic reading of the audience project. My own research with theatre audiences highlights a strong desire amongst certain audience typologies to join the inner circle of actors (Walmsley, forthcoming), and, of course, many audience members are actually performers themselves. Audience members often report feeling part of a communion with performers; they empathise, perceive the chemical buzz of the performance, and are conjoined in moments of collective flow. As Caroline Heim’s work illustrates, there is a necessary reciprocity between performers and audiences that takes the form of an “unlimited symbiosis” wherein both parties “intuitively and consensually collaborate as co-performers and sometimes co-conspirators to create a performance” (2016, p. 53). So in many empirical studies undertaken with both audiences and performers, the communal and collaborative nature of performance emerges as a core component of impact, providing both groups with an empathic human experience that seems to supersede their physical distance. The other significant studies into the value and impact of performance on audiences have been produced by McCarthy et al., Alan Brown, Jennifer Novak, Radbourne et al., Stephanie Pitts, Anne-Marie Hede and Tabitha White. McCarthy et al.’s (2004) Gifts of the Muse aimed to reframe the debate on the benefits of the arts by reviewing the totality of arts-related benefits; illustrating the relationship between private and public benefits; and dichotomising them into intrinsic benefits, including captivation and pleasure, and instrumental benefits, such as social capital and economic growth. A few years later, Brown (2006) provided an extended version of the framework, aimed at providing a kaleidoscopic “architecture of value” (p. 19) to visually articulate the arts experience. Brown’s model maps a range of arts benefits by value cluster, which he delineates as follows: imprint of the arts experience; personal development; human interaction; communal meaning; and economic and social benefits. Brown and Novak’s (2007) research into the intrinsic impacts of live performances moved these findings forwards by focusing on the process of value transfer. Based on extensive primary research of performing arts audiences in the United States, this mixed-methods study indicates that the single best predictor of audience satisfaction is captivation, which itself is generated most effectively by stoking audiences’ sense of anticipation and getting them in the mood, which the authors construct as “readiness-to-receive”. Captivation emerges therefore as the “lynchpin of impact” (pp. 10–11). This research is supported by Radbourne et al.’s (2009) findings, which link prior knowledge to a “richer experience” (p. 20), and by Pitts’ (2005) qualitative research of

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a chamber music festival, which demonstrates how audiences’ anticipation can be enhanced by pre-show activities such as introductory talks, which set the scene, provide a context, and create a sense of empathy between the performers and the spectators, drawing them into the action and opening up the “communication loop” (p. 260). White and Hede (2008) draw on a narrative methodology to explore the various dimensions of the impact of art on individuals. Their model portrays impact as a ripple effect, emanating outwards from the core artistic experience. Unlike the previous models, it combines individual and collective impact, depicting the blurred lines between the personal and social benefits of the arts, and it focuses on the important role that “enablers” such as context, access, and venues can play in maximising impact. The core manifestations of impact again reflect the now familiar themes from the literature—wellbeing, social bonding, aesthetic growth, vision, and empathy.

Young Audiences A significant but sadly still niche subgenre of audience research is dedicated to studying young audiences. As well as constituting a vital audience segment in their own right, young audiences are also of course the future lifeblood of the performing arts; and in a context where they seem to be dying away, at least in some of the more traditional art forms such as classical music and opera, they are ripe subjects for audience development and engagement activity and the focus of much cultural policy. As audience research develops and evolves, scholars are increasingly investigating special subgroups such as prison audiences (e.g. Reason 2019) and intercultural audiences (e.g. Knowles 2010). One of the main achievements of these specialist foci is to shine a spotlight on a microcosm of “the audience”, to provide insights into what we might term hyper-audiencing —highly tailored or specialised experiences of the performing arts designed for niche audience segments. Although there is not an abundant body of literature on young audiences per se, the studies that do exist succeed in providing fresh understanding of how a particular group of people, from a particular generation that shares particular traits and concerns, engages with the performing arts. For example, O’Toole et al.’s (2014) extensive empirical study of young Australian audiences illustrates that for many young people, theatre-going is more of a social experience than a purely cultural experience. It also provides further evidence that theatre-going can strengthen family bonds and

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create shared memories. Young audiences seek “intense” experiences that are “transporting, relevant and connected to their own lives and concerns” (p. 9). Based on the findings of the study, O’Toole concludes that what happens before, during and after a performing arts experience impacts significantly on young audiences’ overall experience (p. 11). Focusing on the significant need for arts education, the research team develops the concepts of “theatre confidence” and “theatre literacy” to describe what enables younger audiences to maximise their enjoyment of their theatre-going (ibid.). It could be argued, of course, that some of these findings are not specific to younger audiences. Many audience members seek social rather than cultural experiences and want to be transported by work that resonates with their lives. Similarly, all audience members are heavily influenced by what happens before, during, and after a performing arts encounter, as we saw in Brown and Novak’s study. Most audience members could also benefit from further contextualisation of and education around a work of art. However, what this study highlights is that younger audiences are particularly receptive to certain types of art and particular kinds of intervention. Many audience development studies emphasise the strong correlation between a positive formative experience of the arts and future arts participation, and so it is particularly important for artists and arts organisations to be mindful of what generally constitutes a positive experience for their younger audiences; and in a context where the creative arts are under pressure in school curricula, educational activity within arts venues themselves is more vital than ever before. Similar findings were derived from a large qualitative study of 40 young audiences of a chamber music concert in the UK (Dearn and Pitts 2017), which concluded that “the emotional, responsive listening of popular music conflicted with the etiquette of the concert hall and the structures of classical music” (p. 43). The study called for a renewed focus on music education to prepare and equip young people for all kinds of live music experiences. Like O’Toole et al.’s study, Dearn and Pitts’ project highlighted the particular significance of the arts venue for younger audiences, who can easily feel conspicuous and alienated when presented with unfamiliar rites and rituals such as hidden dress codes, interval behaviour, and etiquette surrounding applause. Matthew Reason has also conducted a significant body of research into child audiences. As discussed earlier in the chapter, Reason deploys a range of creative methods in his audience research and some of these (such as drawing) work particularly well with children when trying to elicit responses

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to performance. Reason (2008) is careful to point out that his role as an audience researcher is not to try to interpret children’s drawings of performance but rather to use them to stimulate further discussion from the children themselves about their performance experiences. Reason’s research with children has indicated that young audiences are particularly willing to accept illusion as reality and he highlights the extent to which stage characters can stimulate children’s imaginations (pp. 346–347). However, his core conclusion is that children can be highly sophisticated audience members who possess “the ability to juggle contradictory interpretations and to see simultaneously on two levels [and] perform dual readings” (p. 353). This ability, he maintains, enables children “to pursue and preserve the magic of the illusion if they desire, but to do so in an empowered and enfranchised manner” (ibid.). Reason’s work reminds us that the relationship between audience researchers and participants implies an inevitable imbalance of power, a theme we will return to in Chapter 5. It also reminds us to treat audiences with care and respect and to tailor our methods to their specific needs.

Arts Marketing and Management I noted earlier in the chapter that arts management scholars tend to produce more utilitarian research that often seeks to inform management practice regarding audiences. Much of this work is located in the International Journal of Arts Management, The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society and Poetics —journals that explicitly favour empirical research and often specifically request a dedicated focus on management implications. The tone, structure, and purport of this research tend to differ markedly from the audience scholarship produced in arts and humanities journals. This is partly because of the overt influence of business and management scholarship on the field, which tends to favour empirical and deductive research. Arts management is a relatively new academic field, and arts marketing is an even newer branch of it. Both fields suffer from a legitimacy problem as they are often viewed with suspicion from artists and management scholars alike (Colbert 2011); and both face issues of acceptance related to their language and methodologies (Piber and Chiaravalloti 2011, p. 241). This is particularly the case in audience research, where quantitative analyses of audiences tend to dominate and where qualitative research is often dismissed as narrative and anecdotal.

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Arts marketing has probably evolved more notably than arts management over the past few decades, largely because it has managed to attract and embrace a more diverse range of scholars. It has been argued that since the 1980s there has been a shift in focus in arts marketing from product development to audience development but that despite this development scant attention has been paid to “building enduring relationships with existing audiences” to assist the long-term viability of performing arts organisations (Rentschler et al. 2001, p. 118). This criticism of arts marketing gets to the heart of debates about audience engagement and again highlights the urgent need to pour more resources into understanding what fundamentally motivates and moves audiences. Unfortunately, many arts marketers still spend the majority of their time designing publicity materials and segmenting their databases in order to tailor and push their promotional materials in ever more sophisticated ways. As I will argue Chapter 6, arts marketing needs to move beyond this transactional approach and catch up with not only the growing body of scholarship on audience engagement and enrichment but with audiences’ desires themselves. As Hilary Glow (2013) maintains, the “new arts marketing discourse” focuses on audience engagement because arts organisations are “the orchestrators of social interaction with communities who are seeking opportunities for interactivity, participation, access and engagement” (pp. 38–39). Arts marketing scholars have nonetheless enriched the debates about audiences’ experiences. As we shall see in the following chapter, they have dissected and qualified the nature of these experiences and some scholars continue to advocate strongly for the exceptional nature of arts and cultural experiences, which moves them well beyond the traditional foci of marketing.

Audience Engagement and Enrichment One of the core reasons for writing this book was to fill a gap in the literature on audience engagement and enrichment. Although we are witnessing a palpable shift from a culture of marketing to a culture of engagement, with scholars who research on areas related to arts marketing increasingly drawing on the language and tools of audience engagement (Walmsley 2019), as we saw in Chapter 1, engagement remains poorly defined and explicated in the scholarly literature and poorly understood and resourced in the performing arts sector. Considering that this book is dedicated to an exhaustive study of audience engagement, it would be redundant to produce a summary overview of the relevant literature at this stage. But

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it is important to highlight here the seminal studies that have influenced this emerging field and catalysed fresh thinking about audiences and their complex relationships with the performing arts. Lynne Conner and Alan Brown are the two foremost figures in the development of thinking about audience engagement and enrichment. As a theatre and dance historian and cultural policy theorist, Conner has produced a significant body of work dedicated to audience research, including her highly influential monograph, Audience engagement and the role of arts talk in the digital era (Conner 2013). In the course of this groundbreaking book, Conner advocates for a de-sacralisation of the performing arts in favour of a renewed and more democratic engagement with audiences. As a solution to the current state of audience disengagement, where audiences are generally controlled, quietened and pacified, Conner promulgates a new culture of “arts talk”, which she defines as “a spirit of vibrancy and engagement among and between people who share an interest in the arts” (p. 137) and describes as “a metaphor, an ethos, a call to arms and a way of doing business” (p. 167). Drawing on Heidegger, Gadamer, and Habermas, Conner argues that a deeply pleasurable audience experience is reliant on the hermeneutic opportunity to discuss and interpret meaning which, she argues, is in turn dependent on successful facilitation based on principles of social learning. Conner’s call to arms is underpinned by her (2004) essay on audience enrichment, which offered a compelling definition of this new concept: The radical notion here is that a viable philosophy and practice of audience enrichment is centered on the assumption that what an audience really wants is the opportunity to co-author the arts experience. They don’t want to be told what the art means. They want the opportunity to participate — in an intelligent and responsible way — in telling its meaning. They want to have a real forum (or several forums) for the interplay of ideas, experience, data, and feeling that makes up the arts experience.

Conner’s work has undoubtedly shaped the development of audience studies in the context of the performing arts and already left a lasting legacy. Not least, it has helped to position audience engagement at the heart of audience research and explicated its ultimate goal of enrichment. Alan Brown is a leading American arts consultant, speaker, and writer, and I have already cited his work liberally in this literature review because, like Conner, his impact on both scholarship and practice has been hugely

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influential. Alongside his work on value and impact, one of Brown’s most significant contributions to thinking on audiences has been his co-authored study with Rebecca Ratzkin entitled Making sense of audience engagement (Brown and Ratzkin 2011). The authors’ stated aim here was to provide a critical assessment of arts organisations’ efforts to “engage audiences and visitors in deeper and more impactful arts experiences” (p. 1). In the course of this endeavour, Brown and Ratzkin outline a typology of audience members dependent on their propensity for engagement and develop a useful Arc of Engagement model, which depicts five chronological stages through which audience members ideally progress (build-up, intense preparation, artistic exchange, post-processing, and impact echo) to construct “unique experiences around a shared work of art” (pp. 2 and 7). The combined impact of this body of work has been to increase awareness around different modes of audience engagement and to shift the focus slightly away from the quality of art towards the quality of audiences’ engagement with it. This in itself has served to move audiences up the stakeholder management ladder and rebalance the power dynamic with artists and producers. It has also promoted awareness of a “total” audience experience and raised questions about the role and remit of arts marketing, programming, and education.

Conclusion Until relatively recently audience research has been dominated by theoretical studies which have been based largely on assumptions about an ideal and homogenised audience. Audience scholars have traditionally manifested a pernicious fear and suspicion of real audience members and have shied away from empirical enquiries of or with them. In this sense, audience research has lagged behind other social sciences. However, this review has illustrated the diverse interests of audience researchers that are increasingly combining to make the field richer and more coherent. I have argued in this chapter that audience studies is predominantly interested in the how and why of engagement and that it should leave questions of who and who not to sociology and cultural policy studies. In this review, I have attempted to draw out a taxonomy of audience research, and I have developed this typology by highlighting what I perceive to be the complementary subgenres that comprise the emerging field of audience studies. As I intimated in the introduction, academic fields require an underlying paradigm, a coherent set of questions and principles

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around which scholars can cohere. So it is important to delineate what audience studies is, what it does, and how it goes about doing it; such was the underlying aim of this chapter. Based on my analysis of the literature, we can conclude that in the context of the performing arts, audience studies increasingly concerns itself with understanding different kinds of audiences’ diverse experiences with the arts and with artists. This involves exploring the impact of performance genres, places and spaces, as well as underlying traditions and power dynamics. Scholars working in the field increasingly derive from a broad range of disciplines, which in turn is diversifying the range of methods deployed to investigate audiencing, and this cross-disciplinary approach is starting to yield rich results. The extensive review of the extant literature on performing arts audiences was structured thematically rather than chronologically. It is thus easy to appreciate the core themes that emerge in such a review, and I have classified these as outlined in the introduction into thirteen major topics, some of which certainly remain much more established than others. However, the lack of chronology makes it harder to identify the trends that characterise audience research and thus the likely future direction of travel for audience research. Some of these are easier to discern than others. There is obviously a strong correlation between developments in the performing arts themselves and the research that circumnavigates them. So there is clearly a trend towards researching audiences of co-created and immersive performance, for example. As the field of audience studies develops, supported by the rise in interdisciplinary research, there is also a convergence between scholarship from traditionally disparate fields, such as arts management, cultural policy studies, performance studies, psychology, and sociology. Less apparent from a review of the literature is perhaps the steady growth in creative and psychobiological research methods, which we will explore in Chapter 5. Another less visible trend is probably the emergent growth in research of diverse audiences, such as working class and cross-cultural audiences, and in studies of audiences in locations such as prisons and hospitals. As the arts and health agenda gains in prominence and spreads throughout the globe, we are likely to see scholars moving into this new research space to accompany their colleagues in arts therapy and applied performance. What is certain is that although audience studies is gaining traction and momentum as a field, scholars of performing arts audiences still face a complex set of challenges, not least the methodological disparities and gaps which will be explored in greater depth in Chapters 4 and 5.

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As we have seen in the course of this chapter, many audience researchers have highlighted the cynical disempowerment of audiences which has effected a dislocation of the act of audiency from acts of interpretation over the past few centuries. Audiences may have been “enlightened” in terms of their ability to access art, but this enlightenment has not yet culminated in the stable interpretive communities imagined by Stanley Fish. This is certainly a result of calculated alienation and disempowerment; but it has also come about through indifference and because of a lack of understanding about the complex role that audiences actually play in the performing arts process. In the following chapter, we will therefore deconstruct the experiences that audiences have whilst engaging with the performing arts.

References Alston, A. 2016. Beyond immersive theatre: Aesthetics, politics and productive participation. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Arts and Humanities Research Council. 2013. Cultural Value Project [Internet]. London, Arts and Humanities Research Council. Available from: http://www. ahrc.ac.uk/Funded-Research/Funded-themes-and-programmes/CulturalValue-Project/Pages/default.aspx [Accessed 25 June]. Auslander, P. 2008. Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. 2nd ed. Oxon, Routledge. Barker, M. 2006. I have seen the future and it is not here yet …; or, on being ambitious for audience research. The Communication Review, 9(2), pp. 123–141. Barker, M. and Mathijs, E. 2016. Introduction: The World Hobbit Project. Participations [Online], 13(2), pp. 158–174. Barrett, M. 2015. Diversity and social engagement: Cultivating a working class theatre audience. In: ENCACT (ed.) The ecology of culture: Community engagement, co-creation, cross-fertilization. Lecce, ENCACT, pp. 47–61. Baxter, L., O’Reilly, D. and Carnegie, E. 2013. Innovative methods of inquiry into arts engagement. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 113–128. Ben Chaim, D. 1984. Distance in the theatre: The aesthetics of audience response. London, Ann Arbor. Bennett, S. 1997. Theatre audiences: A theory of production and reception. 2nd ed. London, Routledge. Berlyne, D. E. 1971. Aesthetics and psychobiology. New York, Appleton. Blau, H. 1990. The audience. Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press. Bleeker, M. and Germano, I. 2014. Perceiving and believing: An enactive approach to spectatorship. Theatre Journal, 66, pp. 363–383.

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Bourdieu, P. 1991. The love of art: European art museums and their public. Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press. Bourriaud, N. 2002. Relational aesthetics. Dijon, Les Presses du Réel. Brand, G., Sloboda, J., Saul, B. and Hathaway, M. 2012. The reciprocal relationship between jazz musicians and audiences in live performances: A pilot qualitative study. Psychology of Music, 40(5), pp. 634–651. Brown, A. 2013. All the world’s a stage: Venues and settings, and their role in shaping patterns of arts participation. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 49–66. Brown, A. S. 2006. An architecture of value. Grantmakers in the Arts Reader, 17(1), pp. 18–25. Brown, A. S. and Novak, J. L. 2007. Assessing the intrinsic impacts of a live performance. San Francisco, WolfBrown. Brown, A. S. and Ratzkin, R. 2011. Making sense of audience engagement: A critical assessment of efforts by nonprofit arts organizations to engage audiences and visitors in deeper and more impactful arts experiences. San Francisco, The San Francisco Foundation. Brown, D. 2011. The 21st century venue. In: Walmsley, B. (ed.) Key issues in the arts and entertainment industry. Oxford, Goodfellow, pp. 103–121. Burland, K. and Pitts, S. 2012. Rules and expectations of jazz gigs. Social Semiotics, 22(5), pp. 523–543. Butsch, R. 2008. The citizen audience: Crowds, publics, and individuals. New York, Routledge. Colbert, F. 2011. Management of the arts. In: Towse, R. (ed.) A handbook of cultural economics. 2nd ed. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, pp. 261–265. Conner, L. 2004. Who gets to tell the meaning? Building audience enrichment. GIA Reader [Online], 15(1). Conner, L. 2013. Audience engagement and the role of arts talk in the digital era. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1988. The flow experience and its significance for human psychology. In: Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Csikszentmihalyi, I. S. (eds.) Optimal experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 15–35. Dearn, L. K. and Pitts, S. E. 2017. (Un)popular music and young audiences: Exploring the classical chamber music concert from the perspective of young adult listeners. Journal of Popular Music Education, 1(1), pp. 43–62. De Marinis, M. 1987. Dramaturgy of the spectator. The Drama Review, 31(2), pp. 100–114. Ehrenreich, B. 2007. Dancing in the streets: A history of collective joy. London, Granta.

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Fisher, J. W. 2003. Audience participation in the eighteenth-century London theatre In: Kattwinkel, S. (ed.) Audience participation: Essays on inclusion in performance. Westport, CT, Praeger, pp. 55–69. Freshwater, H. 2009. Theatre & audience. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Glow, H. 2013. Challenging cultural authority: A case study in participative audience engagement. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 35–48. Golden, L. 1973. The purgation theory of catharsis. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 31(4), pp. 473–491. Hall, E. 2010. Greek tragedy: Suffering under the sun. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Heim, C. L. 2012. ‘Argue with us!’: Audience co-creation through postperformance discussions. New Theatre Quarterly, 28(2), pp. 189–197. Heim, C. 2016. Audience as performer: The changing role of theatre audiences in the Twenty-First Century. London and New York, Routledge. Jancovich, L. 2011. Great art for everyone? Engagement and participation policy in the arts. Cultural Trends, 20(3–4), pp. 271–279. Kattwinkel, S. 2003. Introduction. In: Kattwinkel, S. (ed.) Audience participation: Essays on inclusion in performance. Westport, CT, Praeger, pp. ix–xviii. Keaney, E. and Oskala, A. 2007. The golden age of the arts? Taking Part survey findings on older people and the arts. Cultural Trends, 16(4), pp. 323–355. Knowles, R. 2010. Theatre and interculturalism. London, Macmillan. Kolesch, D., Schütz, T. and Nikoleit, S. (eds.) 2019. Staging spectators in immersive performance. Oxon and New York, Routledge. Konijn, E. A. 1999. Spotlight on spectators: Emotions in the theatre. Discourse Processes, 28(2), pp. 169–194. Machon, J. 2013. Immersive theatres: Intimacy and immediacy in contemporary performance. London, Palgrave Macmillan. McCarthy, K. F., Ondaatje, E. H., Zakaras, L. and Brooks, A. 2004. Gifts of the muse: Reframing the debate about the benefits of the arts. Santa Monica, CA, RAND. McConachie, B. 2008. Engaging audiences: A cognitive approach to spectating in the theatre. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. O’Brien, D., Brook, O. and Taylor, M. 2018. Panic! Social class, taste and inequalities in the creative industries. London, Arts and Humanities Research Council. O’Toole, J., Adams, R.-J., Anderson, M., Burton, B. and Ewing, R. (eds.) 2014. Young audiences, theatre and the cultural conversation. Dordrecht, Springer. Piber, M. and Chiaravalloti, F. 2011. Ethical implications of methodological settings in arts management research: The case of performance evaluation. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 41, pp. 240–266.

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Pitts, S. E. 2005. What makes an audience? Investigating the roles and experiences of listeners at a chamber music festival. Music and Letters, 86(2), pp. 257–269. Popovici, V. 1984. Is the stage-audience relationship a form of dialogue? Poetics, 13(1–2), pp. 111–118. Radbourne, J. 2013. Converging with audiences. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 143–158. Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. 2010. Measuring the intrinsic benefits of arts attendance. Cultural Trends, 19(4), pp. 307–324. Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) 2013. The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect. Radbourne, J., Johanson, K., Glow, H. and White, T. 2009. The audience experience: measuring quality in the performing arts. International Journal of Arts Management, 11(3), pp. 16–29. Reason, M. 2008. Did you watch the man or did you watch the goose? Children’s responses to puppets in live theatre. New Theatre Quarterly, 24(4), pp. 337–354. Reason, M. 2010. Asking the audience: Audience research and the experience of theatre. About Performance 10, pp. 15–34. Reason, M. 2019. A prison audience: Women prisoners, Shakespeare and spectatorship. Cultural Trends, 28(2–3), pp. 86–102. Reinelt, J. G. 2014. What UK spectators know: Understanding how we come to value theatre. Theatre Journal, 66(3), pp. 337–361. Rentschler, R., Radbourne, J., Carr, R. and Rickard, J. 2001. Relationship marketing, audience retention and performing arts organisation viability. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 7(2), pp. 118–130. Reynolds, D. and Reason, M. (eds.) 2011. Kinesthetic empathy in creative and cultural practices. Bristol, Intellect. Sauter, W. 2000. The theatrical event: Dynamics of performance and perception. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press. Schechner, R. 2003. Performance theory. 2nd ed. London, Routledge. Schoenmakers, H. 1990. The spectator in the leading role: Developments in reception and audience research within theatre studies. In: Sauter, W. (ed.) New directions in theatre research. Stockholm and Copenhagen, Munksgaard, Nordic Theatre Studies, pp. 93–106. Sedgman, K. 2016. Locating the audience: How people found value in National Theatre Wales. Bristol, Intellect. Sedgman, K. 2017. Audience experience in an anti-expert age: A survey of theatre audience research. Theatre Research International, 42(3), pp. 307–322. Sedgman, K. 2018. The reasonable audience: Theatre etiquette, behaviour policing, and the live performance experience. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Sedgman, K. Forthcoming. On rigour in theatre audience research. Contemporary Theatre Review.

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Silvia, P. J. 2005. Emotional responses to art: From collation and arousal to cognition and emotion. Review of General Psychology, 9(4), pp. 342–357. Turner, V. 1975. Dramas, fields, and metaphors: Symbolic action in human society. Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press. Turner, V. 1982. From ritual to theatre: The human seriousness of play. New York, PAJ. Walmsley, B. 2011. Why people go to the theatre: A qualitative study of audience motivation. Journal of Customer Behaviour, 10(4), pp. 335–351. Walmsley, B. 2013a. ‘A big part of my life’: A qualitative study of the impact of theatre. Arts Marketing: An International Journal, 3(1), pp. 73–87. Walmsley, B. 2013b. Co-creating theatre: Authentic engagement or interlegitimation? Cultural Trends, 22(2), pp. 108–118. Walmsley, B. 2016. From arts marketing to audience enrichment: How digital engagement can deepen and democratize artistic exchange with audiences. Poetics, 58, pp. 66–78. Walmsley, B. 2019. The death of arts marketing: A paradigm shift from consumption to enrichment. Arts and the Market, 9(1), pp. 32–49. Walmsley, B. Forthcoming. Theatre fans: A typology of serious leisure seekers. In: Sedgman, K. (ed.) Theatre fandom. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press. White, G. 2013. Audience participation in theatre: Aesthetics of the invitation. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. White, T. R. and Hede, A.-M. 2008. Using narrative inquiry to explore the impact of art on individuals. Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, 38(1), pp. 19–35. Wright, D. 2015. Understanding cultural taste: Sensation, skill and sensibility. London, Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 3

Deconstructing Audiences’ Experiences

Introduction We have already seen that audiences’ experiences of the performing arts are complex, contested, undervalued, and under-researched. This is possibly because performance takes place in multiple contexts that are simultaneously real and imagined, and “there remains an uncertainty around how best to capture that which happens in the hinterlands of performance” (Whalley and Miller 2017, p. 78). As Whalley and Miller note, the act of audiencing does not have “clean edges”, and so audience researchers need to “open up the debate around the terminology available to capture experiences of exchange in performance, and consider terms that might help to communicate the complexity of the relationship between audience and the performance, especially in those instances where roles are flexible and open to negotiation” (2017, p. 77). The core aim of this chapter is therefore to push at the edges of audience research and to open up the field to different terms and concepts that might help to elucidate audiences’ experiences of the performing arts. The chapter is therefore concerned with some of the most fundamental questions of audiency: What is going on when audiences engage or are engaged with performance? How important is the live element of audiences’ experiences? What kinds of experiences do audiences have when they engage with the performing arts? Which elements and phenomena characterise and differentiate these experiences from

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other kinds of experiences? Can audiences’ experiences be truly restorative or even transformative? The chapter will begin with a theoretical discussion of the nature of performing arts experiences. It will then investigate the role that liveness plays within these experiences before moving on to explore the relative agency that audiences have in engaging with performance. This will segue into a discussion on the phenomenology of audiency, including the roles of empathy, intersubjectivity, and immersion. Towards the end of the chapter we will explore the concepts of embodied and enactive spectatorship and discuss how the psychological principles of arousal and reward contribute towards audience engagement. The chapter will conclude with a critical appraisal of the age-old concept of catharsis and assessment of the extent to which audiences’ experiences might be deemed to be transformative.

Qualifying Audiences’ Experiences The conceptual development of arts marketing, and of experiential marketing in particular, has engendered a wide-ranging debate about the nature of audiences’ arts experiences. One of the earliest and most significant interventions in this debate was offered by Hirschman and Holbrook (1982)who famously classified arts experiences as hedonic. Their argument was essentially that audiences engage with the arts primarily to fulfil their personal wishes and fantasies. In their 1982 article, Hirschman and Holbrook described aesthetic experiences as autotelic, which they interpreted as intrinsically motivated and consumed as ends in themselves. This hedonic perspective is now shared by many arts marketers who regard cultural products as symbolic because they believe that “consumers” use them “to construct, sustain, and enact identity projects” (Colbert and St-James 2014, p. 569). This conceptual understanding of cultural products as symbolic reflects the value and impact research which suggests that audiences use the arts to self-actualise (Brown 2006). It also echoes the perspective of relational aestheticians that the arts exist as a means to a greater social end. However, Carù and Cova (2003)claim that the hedonic or experiential approach lacks a solid theoretical foundation and call for a clearer definition of the conceptual domain of experience. Following Abrahams, the authors make an important distinction between memorable or “extraordinary” experiences and more mundane or “ordinary” experiences, describing extraordinary experiences as framed, intense, and stylised (p. 275). In a marketing context (often referred to as the experience economy) where

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consumers are encouraged to expect all of their experiences to be extraordinary, Carù and Cova urge scholars and marketers to take a more critical stance on what actually constitutes the extraordinary. In contrast to arts marketing scholars, many performance theorists focus on the ludic aspects of the audience experience. A classic example of this strand of research is the work of Bruce McConachie, who argues that audiencing is fundamentally a play experience. As the background emotion underlying all theatrical engagement, playing frames and qualifies the sometimes negative feelings that a performance can arouse in audiences, assuring them from the start that any psychological pain they might experience will be temporary and perhaps even purgative. […] While playing, humans and other mammals get an infusion of energy, which they usually attempt to maintain at an optimal level. (2008, p. 51)

In this interpretation of audiencing, play emerges as an ideal state of mind, a necessary mode of engagement for a positive and cathartic experience. In a play state, audience members “frame” their experiences and therefore accept the particular traditions and conventions related to performance (Goffman, cited in McConachie 2008, p. 53). Play therefore emerges in the literature as an enabler of audiency, a mindset required of audiences if they are to engage in and benefit from the quasi-fictional stage-world. This apparent requirement of audiences to enter into a playful state or to willingly suspend their disbelief (as Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously wrote about readers) functions as a form of cognitive estrangement (Buchanan 2010) that enables audiences to sacrifice their sense of realism in order to achieve aesthetic pleasure. As Penny Bundy puts it: “In live theatre the spectator is able to move backwards and forwards between a focus on the fictional world of the play and a focus on the acting and other aspects of stagecraft that have produced it” (2014, p. 119). Influenced no doubt by Coleridge, Richard Schechner (2003) makes a distinction between belief (ritual) and suspension of disbelief (aesthetic drama). However, McConachie rejects both Coleridge’s and Schechner’s theories by developing the notion of conceptual blending, a process whereby, he claims, audiences are able to blend the fluid constructs of actor, character, and identity and also blend reality with fiction to run multiple conceptions of the world simultaneously during their performance experiences (2008, p. 42) and perform dual readings of performance (Reason 2008).

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As we saw in the previous chapter, the extent to which presentational art inculcates ‘passive’ engagement amongst audiences remains contested. McConachie argues that the audiencing can never be passive because “human vision is always selective and discriminating” (2008, p. 56). Indeed McConachie’s advocacy for an empirical approach to audience research—in his case underpinned by cognitive science—serves to capture the breadth and complexity of audiences’ experiences of the performing arts and, in so doing, highlights the historic inability of performance studies to explicate these experiences in scientific terms. Matthew Reason (2010) concurs that audiencing requires a complex combination of different modes of active engagement: The possibility that the theatre audience is engaged in a kind of doing is an interesting one. It might be considered a kind of imaginative doing, as audiences suspend disbelief; or an emotional doing, as spectators invest sympathy with the characters or performance. The audience experience might also be considered an intersubjective doing, through kinaesthetic empathy with the movement and presence of people in space. (p. 19)

Reason’s insistence on the active nature of audiencing is shared by the majority of audience researchers, who accept that sitting quietly in a darkened auditorium does not equate to a passive experience. As is the case with McConachie, Reason’s creative methods enable him to demonstrate and illustrate the embodied nature of audiencing and to move the debate far beyond the tired terminology of spectatorship. Indeed it could be argued that empirical audience research has itself played a role in emancipating the spectator, not merely by giving audiences a voice but by proving beyond all doubt that their cognitive and bodily faculties represent the sine qua non of performance. In that sense, empirical research has proven what certain practitioners knew to be true several decades ago, namely that when audiences “abandon their position as spectators” they can be “drawn into the circle of action that restores collective energy” (Artaud, cited in Machon 2013, p. 117). This collective endeavour of course functions as much as a social and sociological experience as an aesthetic one, and Reason’s emphasis on the intersubjective nature of audiencing reminds us of the very simple fact that many audiences engage with the performing arts primarily to socialise with others.

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Liveness Perhaps the most enticing and differentiating aspect of the performing arts, and, of course, the overriding element that unites them all, is liveness . Indeed liveness represents the main rationale for dedicating this extended study of audience engagement to the performing arts as opposed to the arts in general. Engaging with an exhibit in a museum or a painting in a gallery, for instance, is phenomenologically different from being part of a live audience immersed in a dedicated space alongside artists and fellow audience members for a sustained period of time. We know from existing studies that audiences seek different personal, social and aesthetic goals, and report fundamentally different experiences, when walking into a museum or gallery from those who venture into performing arts venues. Slater (2007), for example, highlights the peace and solace sought by gallery visitors, whilst a large scale study of museum-going by Morris Hargreaves McIntryre (2007) reveals contemplation as a core driver of attendance. It goes without saying that audiences of theatre, opera, music and dance are not primarily motivated by peace and solace (although classical music can of course offer a contemplative experience). Indeed as Iain Mackintosh observes, performing arts audiences often find themselves in a situation which is “essentially anarchic” and where “anything might happen” (1992, p. 2). Mackintosh continues to argue that it is the sense of danger, community and shared experience that demarcates live theatrical occasions from cinematic performances. Many of these differentiators are picked up also by Martin Barker (2013, p. 20), who identifies seven core aspects of liveness: 1. Physical co-presence with performers and performance 2. Simultaneity with performance 3. Direct engagement and absence of intervening (technological) mediation 4. Sense of the local within the experience 5. Sense of interaction with performers 6. Sense of interaction with others in the audience 7. Intensified experiences/participation through sensing any of the above. We might easily add to this list the following elements of live performance: audiences’ sense of precarity and risk; their freedom to set their own gaze

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and curate their own personal viewing experience; the multisensory impact of production elements; the sense of chemistry and buzz; the venue or location and its wider opportunities for (enhanced) socialisation, etc. This again highlights the fact that the audience experience is fundamentally different in a performing arts setting from that of many other mediated arts and leisure activities. However, it is noteworthy that in Barker’s study, even audiences for live-streamed events appreciated the sense of simultaneity with performers and enjoyed the “sense of danger” generated by this awareness, seemingly inured to the fact that live editing is regardless an act of mediation (p. 26). Along with the other scant research into live streaming (e.g. Bakhshi and Whitby 2014; Nesta 2010), this suggests quite strongly that the live element of simulcasts is more important that the filmed or streamed element, and that the various advantages proffered by this relatively new format can actually enhance the audience experience of live performance. As Barker concludes, “liveness is a complex phenomenon, with many separable components” (p. 31). Liveness emerges as both a driver for and benefit of performing arts attendance in a wide range of empirical studies. Caroline Heim (2016), for example, reports that in over half of the 106 audience interviews she conducted for her Audience as performer book, participants spontaneously used the word “live” to explain either their experience of theatre, their motivations for attending or to distinguish their theatre attendance from their cinema-going (p. 146). Similarly, Reinelt et al.’s study revealed liveness to be one of the core values that audiences ascribe to theatre-going (Reinelt 2014, pp. 353–354). The huge significance of the live experience was reflected also in O’Toole et al.’s (2014) study, which found that younger audiences are particularly attracted to the “liveness and immediacy” of theatre (p. 9), principally because of the physical co-presence it offered them with performers: Young people enjoyed anything that occurred on stage which heightened their awareness of the actors being ‘real people’. For instance, they delighted in commenting on actor sweat and spit. […] Being physically present in the same space as the performers either increased emotional response to the work or heightened spectator awareness of their own emotional response. (p. 122)

Likewise, Burland and Pitts’ (2012) study of jazz club members characterised the live performance of jazz as a fundamentally different experience from recorded jazz, largely as a result of its risky and co-creative potential:

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“Spontaneity and uncertainty offer a sense of excitement as does the immediacy of the event: the sense that the music is being formed ‘in the moment’ and that the audience is part of that process resonates with research on jazz musicians and audiences” (p. 527). So live performance is often described by audiences as delivering an almost intoxicating sense of liveness. This liveness can manifestly heighten audiences’ emotions and offer them a sense of ownership of their chosen art form. However, certain theorists refute this differentiating condition of live performance. Auslander is the chief detractor here, claiming essentially that the inevitable distance, both literal and metaphorical, between performers and audience members inherently thwarts the latter’s apparent desire for communion: Live performance places us in the living presence of the performers, other human beings with whom we desire unity and can imagine achieving it, because they are there, in front of us. Yet live performance also inevitably frustrates that desire since its very occurrence presupposes a gap between performer and spectator. […] By reasserting the unbridgeable distinction between audience and performance, live performance foregrounds its own fractious nature and the unlikelihood of community in a way that mediatized representations, which never hold out the promise of unity, do not. (2008, p. 66)

Auslander’s assumptions regarding audiences desiring a “unity” with performers is very rarely reflected in empirical studies. However, audience research is replete with testimonies of the visceral pleasure audiences derive from the liveness and proximity of performers performing in front of them as a synchronous and unmediated presence. The audience participants in Burland and Pitts’ (2012) study, for example, make a distinction between the “intimacy” of their jazz club and the “sterility” of larger venues, where they can’t see artists “up close and personal” (p. 528). Meanwhile, other studies (e.g. Konijn 1999) highlight the importance that audience members ascribe to watching artists and stagecraft first-hand and appreciating technical skill in-the-moment and before their own eyes. As an antithesis to Auslander’s thesis that live performance offers scarcely more “spontaneity, community, presence, and feedback between performers and audience” than mediatised performance (2008, p. 63), I would cite the extraordinary rise of immersive and one-on-one performance, which

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suggests to me that both performers and audiences are becoming increasingly aware of and hungry for the unique communal and dialogic opportunities afforded by these emerging genres. The phenomenal success of companies such as Punchdrunk also attests to the rise of a type of spontaneous, intimate, social and self-curated performance that lies well beyond the reach of even gaming and virtual reality; and the year-on-year rise in live audiences witnessed on Broadway, in London’s West End, at the Edinburgh Festivals and across China appears to challenge Auslander’s ultimate conclusion that “any change in the near future is likely to be toward a further diminution of the symbolic capital associated with traditional live events” (ibid., p. 187). Despite audiences’ abounding thick descriptions of what we might regard as an almost animalistic engagement with performers, Blau continues to assert that the tangible benefits of live proximity to performers are actually null. The audience can be made to see, as Grotowski once insisted they see, the actors sweat. Even so, the ontological distinctions between, say, theater and film are often superficially made, and made superficial by much of what we see on stage, where the actor may very well be sweating, though for all its affective and ideational substance, it could just as well be on film. (p. 142)

As often, Blau’s theoretical cynicism is not borne out in audience testimony, where the affect (and effect) of live creative labour appears to be especial. Daphna Ben Chaim (1984) also explores live performance from the ontological perspective of “distance”, the manipulation of which she lists as one of the distinctive features of twentieth-century theatre (p. 78). In her rigorous overview of different theoretical perspectives of distance provided by leading philosophers, dramatists, and performance and film scholars from the past century, Ben Chaim argues that dramatists’ manipulation of distance requires heightened awareness amongst audiences. She concludes that although a unified theory of distance remains ultimately elusive, the most basic principle of distance lies in audiences’ tacit awareness of the fictitious nature of their experiences, which enables them to “experience emotions without danger” (p. 74). This is a significant point that sheds fresh light on the concept of catharsis by suggesting that the arts offer a safe haven for audiences to play out and expunge their emotions. As Norman Holland has argued:

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Our emotions in the literary situation seem stronger than in everyday life… Within the literary ‘as if’, because consciously we know we need only fantasy in response, we sink down to deeper levels of our mind. The aesthetic stance inhibits our motor activity; it therefore engages our moral and intellectual selves, not in suppressing or judging our deeper feelings, but in accepting and transforming them. Our ‘rind’ of higher ego-functions, our ‘core’ of deeply repressed ego – these make up a richer, longer kind of self than our ordinary one. (1968, p. 102)

We will revisit the concept of catharsis later in the chapter; what is intriguing in Holland’s thesis here is the connection of audiencing with a super ego or “extraordinary self”. Although it might appear somewhat counterintuitive to suggest that the fictional worlds created by the performing arts can enable audiences to experience emotions in deeper and more powerful ways than in real life, this hypothesis could well explain the growing consensus that emotional engagement is actually audience members’ biggest driver of attendance (Heim 2016; Walmsley 2011). So whatever theorists make of the ontological properties of liveness in live performance, it is incontrovertibly something that is tangible and that matters, and matters deeply, to audiences.

Reception and Manipulation The debates around liveness expose deeper underlying tensions about how audience research is conceived and conducted. For example, in his musings on dramaturgy and semiotics, Marco De Marinis (1987) argues that we should consider the audience as an active subject of dramaturgy rather than as an object of the writer, director, or dramaturg. De Marinis highlights the various “receptive operations” that audiences carry out, including perception, interpretation, aesthetic appreciation, memorisation, emotive, and intellectual response, and considers that it is only through these activities that the performance text or score “achieves its fullness, becoming realized in all its semantic and communicative potential” (p. 101). This is an interesting theoretical development, which casts audience members in the role of dramaturgs who can exert at least some element of control over the otherwise manipulative processes of performance which, according to De Marinis, “seeks to induce in each spectator a range of definite transformations, both intellectual (cognitive) and affective (ideas, beliefs, emotions, fantasies, values, etc.)” (ibid.). The potential of performance to

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manipulate audiences, both emotionally and morally or politically, is relatively uncontested by theoreticians; indeed entire movements and genres such as Brecht’s Epic Theatre have been built upon the critique of “bourgeois’ theatre captivating audiences emotionally rather than transforming them politically (Sartre 1961). As Helen Freshwater observes, audiences have even been subjected to direct abuse in the theatre, with companies such as Forced Entertainment castigating them as “voyeurs” (2009, p. 52). This kind of assault constitutes the kind of shock that Artaud envisaged in his Theatre of Cruelty, designed to engender an intense emotional response amongst the audience (Ben Chaim 1984, p. 46). As we saw in the previous chapter, Willmar Sauter’s work is particularly useful in distinguishing reception theory from semiotics. In focussing on the primary role of performance (and indeed culture more broadly) as a “communicative event” (2000, p. 20), Sauter manages to shift the focus of audience research away from the hackneyed communication science of encoding and decoding towards a phenomenological understanding of meaning-making and engagement: The field of semiotics, which was in vogue at the time, was not very useful in empirical reception studies: spectators do not perceive ‘signs’ which they describe and interpret for a scholar; they perceive ‘meaning’ – and they have fun! Semiotics had no way of accounting for the pleasure and the enjoyment which spectators experience in the theatre.

For Sauter, then, audiencing represents an interpretive interaction that ultimately constitutes “a joint act of understanding” between audiences and performers (p. 2). This focus on the interpretive mode of audiency aligns Sauter with De Marinis and also with Susan Bennett (1997), who observes that the traditional reader-response approach to audience studies was severely compromised by the development of post-structuralist theory (p. 34). Sauter identifies four main categories of audience response: describing, interpreting, evaluating, and expressing emotions (p. 180). However, he goes on to assert that the only “crucial” factor that determines whether audiences evaluate performance in a positive light is the quality of the acting, regardless of the nature of the performance or the genesis of the spectator. This is a curious and spurious conclusion, which once again reduces the audience experience and completely negates the semioticians’ perspective of audiences as interpreters of texts and signs. It therefore counters De Marinis’s useful categorisation of audiences as active dramaturgs in their

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own right and ignores the significant roles played by lighting, sound and scenography. This appears particularly odd in light of Sauter’s earlier argument that the communicative field between presentation and perception constitutes three aspects: “the sensory, artistic, and symbolic modes of communication” (p. 6).

A Phenomenological Project Despite his debatable views on acting, Sauter’s prioritisation of perception over reception has made a significant impact on audience research, partly because perception “carries connotations that tie it to phenomenology” (Sauter 2000, p. 5). Sauter has undoubtedly influenced a whole new generation of audience scholars, including Kirsty Sedgman, who maintains that “phenomenology has the capacity to reveal how audiences’ responses are creative acts in themselves [because] emotional and embodied responses have a significant and legitimate role in the analysis of performance” (2016, p. 9). As we shall see in the following chapter, phenomenological approaches are starting to dominate the discourse on cultural value and it is both appropriate and necessary, therefore, that audience research develops in a way such that it enables further explication of audiences’ actual experiences of performance. Phenomenologists’ long-held fascination with performance is perhaps explained by performance’s “addiction to otherness” (Blau 1990, p. 52). A perfect example of this synergy is Jean-Paul Sartre, who as an accomplished playwright went so far as to actually explore phenomenology through performance, and vice versa. Sartre dedicated almost a third of his major tome Being and nothingness, which he described as a “phenomenological ontology”, to an exploration of “being-for-others”, the sometimes hellish battles of the self to (co-)exist in a world with others whose “self” it can never fully understand or capture. For example, Sartre argues that: “In the phenomenon of the look, the Other is in principle that which cannot be an object” (cited in Blau 1990, p. 275). Blau applies Sartre’s theory to the field of performance and interprets this particular theorem as the audience’s doomed attempt to objectify the performer through its gaze. For Blau, the Other presents as “an absent cause” and the performer’s presence is “always in jeopardy” (p. 52). Following this logic, audiences’ hunger for a meaningful communion with performers is what Sartre might have labelled an ontological act of bad faith, because audiences can never fully get what they desire from performers and their ultimate project (namely to capture

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or possess the performer) is thus doomed to fail with the audience cast as Tantalus endlessly trying to reach his unattainable fruit. This cynical reading of the audience project might sound negative enough, but Blau goes on to argue that audiences actually act in a dual manifestation of bad faith: If the audience is moved, it is moved by a curious twist of empathy that involves a double loss. For in identifying with the actor who ‘becomes’ the character, the members of the audience neither complete the self nor identify with each other. (p. 256)

This somewhat nihilistic reading of audiences’ phenomenological drivers for engaging with performance challenges the increasingly prevalent trope in audience studies regarding the transformative nature of the performance experience. Indeed a few recent studies (e.g. Radbourne 2013; Radbourne et al. 2010) have heralded self-actualisation as primary to the audience project. This dissonance represents another instance of theoretical scholars disregarding or even disparaging the lived experiences of audiences. It is perhaps no surprise therefore that Bennett (1997) concurs with Blau on this point, drawing on Ubersfeld to argue that the audience experience can only ever be dissatisfying. The spectator cannot arrest or touch the object of desire. Indeed desire moves from object to object and should it stop and fix on a particular object, then the role of the spectator is relinquished, the theatrical experience denied. Pleasure is thus limited by the essential situation of spectatorial dissatisfaction; not only because the spectator is not able to possess the object of desire but because, if he or she did, it would be something other than that which was desired. The spectator cannot experience pleasure without experiencing its limits. (p. 73)

Bennett is intimating here that the only role played by the audience is that of spurned lover, perhaps because she is using the visual terminology accorded to the spectator, who gazes at the stage like an impotent voyeur. A possible route out of the apparent impasses established by theories of reception and perception is offered by Sartre himself, who argues that aesthetic experiences can only occur when audiences shift from the perceptual to the imaginative mode of consciousness (cited in Ben Chaim 1984, p. 15). Ben Chaim maintains that audiences’ engagement during a performance experience may well be intense, but that they differ from the kind of engagement that occurs in life experiences because of the function of distance (1984, p. ix). This is because the gaze that the Self fixes on the Other

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is exacerbated in the performance arena because of the distance (or fourth wall) that is imposed between audiences and performers by traditional performance spaces. This distance is both literal and ontological, and it creates a very specific relationship between spectators and performers. So there appears to be something fundamentally different about the distance and otherness that exists between audiences and performers from that which exists in real life or even between audiences and other audience members. Ben Chaim suggests that the difference is established by the heightened emotional state of audiences, which effects what Sartre calls “a magical potency” (1984, p. 16). As we shall observe in the following section, many scholars explicate this magic in terms of empathy.

Empathy As noted earlier, the potential for emotional engagement offered by “bourgeois” performance presented Brecht with a dramaturgical problem because it developed empathy between audience members and stage characters that apparently inhibited the former from thinking objectively. Empathy has always been a significant and contested phenomenon for performance theorists, some of whom go so far as to categorise it as audiences’ strongest aesthetic experience (Konijn 1999, p. 187). The concept of empathy arises in both intrinsic and instrumental approaches to audience research, because it emerges as both an integral part of a performing arts experience and a knock-on benefit that audiences apparently develop as they learn to identify with stage characters. Empathy is therefore a regular feature in value and impact research and in related models and frameworks of cultural value. The focus in audience research on audiences’ motivations for attending the performing arts and for the ensuing benefits that they derive from this engagement was introduced in the previous chapter. A synthesis of this body of literature indicates strongly that the overriding driver of attendance, and by far the most significant impact that the performing arts have on audiences, is emotional engagement. In the context of deconstructing audiences’ experiences, it is important to note the primary sources of this impact, and several studies (e.g. Burland and Pitts 2012; Konijn 1999; Walmsley 2011) conclude that one of these is the technical or performance skills of the artists, which generally dictate audiences’ levels of involvement, identification, engagement and empathy, and influence the longitudinal impact of a given performance. As Konijn expresses it, “the audience does

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not only come to witness events full of suspense, emotion, and interesting trials and tribulations that appear as real as possible but also to enjoy the skill with which the illusion is produced” (1999, p. 188). As I noted earlier in the chapter, Matthew Reason characterises audiencing as a kind of “intersubjective doing” which involves an element of what he calls “kinaesthetic empathy with the movement and presence of people in space” (Reason 2010, p. 19). Kinaesthetic empathy is an interesting and complex concept, which we will return to in due course when we explore the notion of embodied spectatorship. What is significant here is the relationship between intersubjectivity and empathy—with performers, with stage characters, and with other audience members. Audiencing emerges therefore as a deeply empathic activity because it involves three levels (as well as different modes) of empathy. Vasile Popovici supports Reason’s perspective on intersubjectivity, highlighting the dialogic nature of the stage–audience relationship (1984, p. 114). Similarly, Whalley and Miller interpret what they refer to as the “affective transmission” from performers to audiences as an “intersubjective exchange” (2017, p. 78). But as these somewhat narrow foci reveal, the intersubjectivity between audience members themselves often gets lost in the literature as scholars focus almost obsessively on the dyadic audience–performer relationship—and this despite the profound influence of relational aesthetics, which effectively foregrounded human relations and the social context of arts experiences. Audiences appear to have an ambivalent attitude towards other audience members, and based on my own research with audiences, this seems to be because they can either hinder or enhance engagement. Noise produced from fellow audience members is of course a classic disrupter of engagement. But when audience members empathise and engage with the people around them, they can actually develop close social bonds. This is illustrated beautifully in Burland and Pitts’ (2012) study of a jazz club, where a participant reported sharing “feelings of intimacy, connectedness and despair and joy” with fellow audience members and experiencing sensations of “connectedness and belonging” because they “knew the players”, were “with friends” and “surrounded by a like-minded crowd” (pp. 534–535). These empirical insights support the triadic model of empathy explored above and promote this as a core source of audience satisfaction and impact. Bruce McConachie explains how this process happens in action: Put us together in an auditorium and our bodies and minds are like the inside of a good violin; we resonate and amplify emotions with each other.

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Emotional contagion in a theatre is automatic and usually very quick. Audiences will tend to laugh, cry, and even gasp simultaneously. The more spectators join together in one emotion, the more empathy shapes the emotional response of the rest. (2008, p. 97)

Or, as Hatfield et al. explain it, as a consequence of mimicry, people tend to “catch” each other’s emotions (cited in Heim 2016, p. 21). Heim’s own studies also reveal how audience members “catch or are infected by the contagion of laughter, crying and even applause” (p. 22) and illustrate how this positive type of contagion can actually merge them into a community (p. 112). This evidence of the potential for audiency to develop a sense of communion and communitas is borne out by biometric research, which provides a psychobiological illustration of how the brainwaves and heartbeats of live audiences start to sync as they become collectively immersed in live performance. So empathy and intersubjectivity emerge as physiological and biological as well as psychological and sociological phenomena—phenomena whose true cultural significance remain seriously undervalued. McConachie (2008) also draws on cognitive science to investigate empathy via processes of neurological mirroring, and determines that: spectators paying attention to performers will automatically mirror their rhythms, whether the performers express them in movement or sound […]. Both visual and aural mirroring operations link neurological response directly to the motor system, which, in turn, is mostly hardwired to our emotions. Spectatorial empathy appears to be strongest when combinations of sound and movement entrain our bodies. (p. 71)

McConachie insists that empathy is not an emotion in its own right, but that it “readily leads viewers to emotional engagements” (p. 75). His argument that the generation of empathy is heightened when sound and movement are combined suggests that the performing arts are ideally placed to invoke empathetic engagement amongst audiences. This of course reflects our earlier discussion of performance as ritual and again highlights its potential to invoke a state of liminality and/or communitas.

Immersion and Flow Earlier in the chapter, we qualified arts experiences as hedonic. Santoro and Troilo describe hedonic experiences as “a combined response from

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the emotions, senses, imagination, and intellect” and claim that consumers engage in hedonic activity to create an “absorbing experience” (Radbourne et al. 2009, p. 18). Indeed postmodern consumption more broadly has been described as “an immersion into experiential moments of enchanted, multifaceted and spectacular encounters” (Firat and Dholakia 1998, p. 101). If this holds for consumption in general, then it is certainly a powerful driver for engagement in the performing arts, where research has demonstrated an overriding audience motivation for meaningful emotional encounters (Walmsley 2011). Boehner et al. (2008) note that aesthetic experiences are “bound by the ineffable: indescribable and irreducible aspects of being”. The authors contend that aesthetic experiences are “tied to the particular, invoke the senses, command an immersion of the whole self, and result in a heightened form of engagement” (n.p.). The aim of this section is to shed some fresh light on these ineffable experiences by focussing in depth on the aspect of immersion. Immersion in a piece or work of art is variably referred to as captivation or ‘flow’. Flow is a psychological concept that was discovered and coined by the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and it essentially refers to a state of total captivation and absorption in the task at hand. Although it has never actually been applied to the act of audiency by Csikszentmihalyi himself, flow has been drawn on effectively by commentators such as Alan Brown (2006) to encapsulate audiences’ recurrent accounts of being “lost in the moment” or “losing track of time”. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as an autotelic, optimal experience, which is “rewarding in and of itself” (1988b, p. 8). He provides a range of phenomenological explanations to qualify this claim, including the links between flow and self-improvement, self-congruence, self-harmony, happiness, escapism, and timelessness. Because self-congruence is heightened during moments of optimal experience, Csikszentmihalyi maintains that the pursuit of flow becomes “one of the central goals of the self” (1988a, p. 24), the apotheosis of its strivings and pursuit of wellbeing. The concept of flow is reflected and referenced in a wide body of literature exploring the value and purpose of arts and leisure experiences. For example, John Dewey credits the arts with providing exemplary, “clarified and intensified” experiences, free from the distractions of everyday life (1980, p. 46). Belfiore and Bennett go even further, framing flow as the very pinnacle of value: “the value of the arts resides in our complete commitment and absorption when creating or enjoying a work of art” (2008, p. 97). This

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hypothesis was seemingly confirmed in Brown and Novak’s (2007) deductive analysis of the intrinsic impacts of live performance, where captivation correlated most highly with satisfaction, representing therefore what the researchers referred to as “the lynchpin of impact” (p. 11). Immersion and flow thus emerge as relatively reliable proxies for impact in the performing arts, at least for concurrent or immediate impact; and to the delight of producers, programmers, ethnographers and sometimes even audiences themselves, flow is often visibly manifest in the audience: Through their facial expressions, body language and audible reactions, audiences communicate impact as it is happening. There is no mistaking the silence of rapture during a concert, the moments of shared emotion in a theater when the plot takes a dramatic twist or the post-performance buzz in the lobby. All are reliable evidence of intrinsic impact. (Brown and Novak 2007, p. 5)

De Marinis too notes that audiences’ engagement can be physically manifest in various ways, including sweating, changes in heartbeat, muscular tension, and pupil dilation, and claims that this state of heightened interest is itself aroused by the more basic psychophysiological states of amazement or surprise (1987, p. 109), which Artaud might well have articulated as “shock”. One of the problems with the theoretical explorations of flow is that it tends to focus on the individual audience member. In light of our recent discussion regarding the empathy and intersubjectivity that can emerge between audience members, it is interesting to speculate whether flow might be understood as a collective phenomenon, reflecting, for example, moments that audiences often describe as those where they could “hear a pin drop”. In his educational study of the Montessori classroom, Keith Sawyer (2007) offers some useful insights in this context by defining the spontaneous collaboration of group creativity as group flow. Sawyer establishes a range of ideal conditions for this phenomenon of group flow, including close listening, complete concentration, good communication, and equal participation. It is easy to appreciate from this analysis how performance might offer the optimal conditions for group flow, and how these might also facilitate the emotional contagion that we explored earlier. We can’t really conclude a discussion of immersion without making at least scant reference to immersive performance itself. Machon (2013) argues that immersive practice earns its name because its multisensory form

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facilitates audiences’ immersion and generates an embodied and lasting memory of the event (p. 43). Indeed in describing immersive performance as “an embodied event” (p. 83), Machon expresses the need for audience researchers to acknowledge “the combination of sensation and sentience that impacts on cognition, proprioception and kinaesthesia” and to focus on audiences’ “somatic modes of attention” (p. 112). In the following section, we will therefore hone in on theories of embodiment and enaction in order to highlight uncognitive responses to performance.

Embodied and Enactive Spectatorship Performance studies research is increasingly challenging the conception of audiencing as a passive form of engagement as part of what has been labelled a “corporeal turn” (Reynolds and Reason 2011). For example, Reason (2010) argues that the audience experience is embodied because audiences do not just watch and listen to a performance but experience it with their whole bodies (p. 19). In her exegesis of immersive performance, Machon provides a helpful contextualisation of Reason’s notion of intersubjectivity by highlighting what she refers to as “the shared milieu of subjectivities of sensory engagement within and between our own individual body and the bodies of others directly around us” (2013, p. 112). So there is a strong connection between embodiment and empathy, which demarcates embodiment as another aspect of live performance that conjoins audience members with performers and with one another. Embodied responses to the performing arts remain woefully under-researched, partly because of the cognitive bias in Western thinking and scholarship but largely because of methodological skills gaps. However, there are increasing indications that this particular avenue of research will prove fruitful in deconstructing audiences’ experiences in a robust and scientific way.1 This notion of the performing arts audience as active and bodily engaged is an important one, and it adds further weight to the re-categorisation of performance as a process or experience rather than a product. As McConachie notes, embodied emotions shape cognitive processing and generate meanings (2008, p. 68). Embodied engagement signifies that

1 See Chapter 5 for a discussion of the neuroscientific and biometric techniques that led to these particular findings.

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audiencing is far removed from a simple act of consumption, which is fleeting and primarily cognitive. Audiencing, on the other hand, can function on an instinctive, irrational, and even atavistic level. Rational reflection becomes part of, or is secondary to, the visceral experience. Often, this results in a comprehension of the work that does not engage logical sense, but instead understands the work on a deeper level without necessarily being able to describe or explain this. (Machon 2013, p. 106, original italics)

Many researchers have described audiences’ experiences as ineffable. Whilst this hyperbolic assessment of audiencing does seem to run contrary to the many rich and nuanced articulations of the audience experience that we have already explored, it does convey the limitations of language for encapsulating the entirety of the audience experience that I have identified elsewhere (see Walmsley 2018). One of the reasons behind the limitations of linguistic and rational or cognitive responses to performance is of course the multisensory nature of the genre. The domination of the role of performers (i.e. speech, movement, and/or song) in the literature obscures the other audio-visual, olfactory, and tactile elements of performance, which are therefore neglected in audience research. Fortunately, the growing body of work on immersive performance, lighting and scenography is starting to address this gap, partly under the influence of Joslin McKinney (2013), who rightly acknowledges that scenographic spectacle can make a direct appeal to audience members’ bodies, and communicate images and ideas that they hold in common (p. 74). Evidence of the embodied nature of the performing arts experience is also presented in numerous empirical studies. For example, surveys conducted as part of Reinelt et al.’s Theatre spectatorship and value attribution project found “ample evidence of an embodied act of receiving and processing the experience” (Reinelt 2014, p. 349). Reason and Reynold’s (2010) study of dance audiences probed these embodied acts further, discovering that many audience members imagined themselves dancing whilst watching dance and even tried to ‘invest’ themselves into the dancers’ bodies. The study captured audiences’ “sensual”, “escapist”, and “multisensory” responses to dance, which in turn affected their breathing, posture, and energy (p. 71). The authors concluded that this variety of audience response

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establishes kinaesthetic engagement as “a key source of pleasure and motivation for many dance spectators” (ibid.). In their subsequent book, however, Reynolds and Reason (2011) rightly acknowledge the potentially harmful nature of kinaesthetic empathy when it is manipulated by adverse power networks. As we saw in the previous chapter, Adam Alston’s (2016) research into audiences of immersive performance provides some telling examples of the negative aspects of this particular type of engagement. Theories of embodiment (or embodied cognition) are closely related to those of enaction since both traditions accept the role of the unconscious and focus on how experiences are felt by the human body. It is worth, therefore, pausing to reflect on the insights that audience research can glean from theories of enaction. Enaction can be interpreted as a response to the “explanatory gap” of cognitivism, which perpetuated the mind–body dualism established by Descartes and resurfaced the “phenomenological mindbody problem” of how the brain can have experiences (Thompson 2007, p. 3). Thompson argues convincingly that cognitive science is incomplete: by focussing on cognition, he claims, it has neglected emotion, affect, and motivation. In its insistence that humans construct and co-construct knowledge and meaning through their “sensorimotor interactions” with their environments (ibid.) enaction offers an alternative perspective from theories of cognition that is more closely aligned with the empathic, embodied and intersubjective nature of performance and audiency. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that Bleeker and Germano (2014) have led the call for an “enactive approach to spectatorship” that could help us to understand performance as a process “that is both profoundly embodied and deeply cultural” (p. 383). Enaction implies audience immersion; it situates audiences at the heart of artistic experiences and acknowledges that they are engaged in performance in a deeply phenomenological way. An enactive approach to audiency is holistic in that it embraces the cognitive, the embodied and the social. From an Enaction perspective, perception, like the rest of cognition, is not only embodied and embedded, it is also ecologically extended. Spectators use their material and social surroundings as well as their bodies and brains to take action and make meaning during a performance. (McConachie 2013, p. 186)

Embodied and enactive perspectives thus establish a useful theoretical framework for audience research. They not only speak to developing trends

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in performance such as immersive practice but also underpin the hermeneutic and co-creative processes that lie at the heart of the audience project itself.

Arousal and Reward Philosophers and psychologists have always been interested in questions of artistic production and appreciation. But as Berlyne (1971) claims in his monograph Aesthetics and microbiology, epistemological progress in this area has been hampered by weak theorisation and by the reduction of complex phenomenological questions to simplistic lines of enquiry such as what motivates artists to produce art; what might constitute an “artistic personality”; and how we might measure creative or aesthetic potential. This suggests that like arts marketing, the field of psychology has historically neglected to focus on complex notions of cultural engagement. As Paul Silvia (2005) contends, the study of art and emotions “languished during much of the last century”, and as a result “the study of emotional responses to art has remained curiously detached from the psychology of emotions” (p. 342). This disciplinary divide remains a significant problem for audience research and it is therefore important to devote some space here to investigating emotion psychology. One of Berlyne’s major contributions to this field was to foreground the hedonic qualities of art by highlighting what he called its ‘arousal modifying collative properties’, namely: complexity, novelty, uncertainty, and conflict. Berlyne’s theory was essentially that these four apparently divergent properties had two core similarities: firstly, their dependence on comparing (or collating) incoming information with expected information (e.g. the potential gap between audiences’ expectations and the live event); and secondly, their common ability to affect the intensity of arousal. In summary, Berlyne claimed that stimuli that were either low or high (but not moderate) in complexity, novelty, uncertainty and conflict were likely to increase arousal, and that people’s preferences for art could be framed in terms of “how collative properties of art affect the arousal systems of reward” (Silvia 2005, p. 344). Berlyne’s work notably influenced the theories of hedonic consumption that we explored at the beginning of the chapter and that have been defined as the “multisensory, fantasy and emotive aspects” of audience experience (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982, p. 92).

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Despite these theoretical advances, it is important to note that Berlyne’s work has been critiqued for overemphasising the role of arousal as a mechanism of reward and preference as well as for advocating a single system of arousal and reward (Silvia 2005). New approaches to the experimental aesthetics movement of the 1970s have demonstrated that emotional responses to art are much more differentiated than simply arousing or rewarding, and emotion psychologists have discovered that emotions are much more complex than simply states of high arousal. However, although the psychobiological assumptions behind Berlyne’s arousal model have now been widely discredited, three of his four original core properties (novelty, complexity, and uncertainty) have been positively correlated by psychologists with feelings of aesthetic interest and enjoyment (Silvia 2005, p. 345). Silvia’s own research has indicated that audiences have a more enjoyable experience of art when they feel that they have grasped its meaning; but Silvia cautions against a simplistic view of positive affective responses to art, which are likely to champion global, undifferentiated emotional concepts (p. 351). Instead he calls for aestheticians to adopt the “appraisal theories” developed by emotional psychologists—theories which, he argues, offer “an expansive set of new ideas, hypotheses, and research directions” (p. 354). These appraisal theories find consensus in their acceptance of audiences’ subjective evaluations of their aesthetic experiences and in their acknowledgement of the complexity of emotions involved.

Catharsis and Transformation Let us now return to the notion of catharsis, which we mentioned briefly earlier in the chapter in relation to play and distance in order to ascertain how these qualities might effect a safe space for audiences to experience heightened emotions. Catharsis is a complex concept, the precise interpretation of which has of course triggered centuries of critical debate, not least amongst philosophers and performance theorists. The dominant view of catharsis remains the so-called “purgation theory”, which holds that tragic drama can arouse emotions of pity and fear in an audience, which it then quells or purges in the resolution. Butcher (cited in Bennett 1981, p. 207) elucidates the concept further, describing the “emotional cure” wrought by the alleviation of pity and fear, which are “artificially stirred” in the audience and then “universalized” to lift spectators out of themselves into a state of “sympathetic ecstasy”. There is a strong resonance here with the notion of enthousiasmos, the ritualistic possession trance (Ehrenreich 2007, p. 35)

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that we explored in the previous chapter. The purgation theory of catharsis also reflects Falassi’s typologies of ritual, which identify the “rite of purification” as “a cleansing, or chasing away of evil” (1987, pp. 4–6). It is clear to see here how notions of arousal, embodiment and enaction are also implicated in this particular interpretation of catharsis, which again illustrates their centrality to the theoretical framework of audiency. But there remains strong opposition to the purgation theory. According to Golden (1973, p. 473), there are three main schools of thought in this category: those who see catharsis as a “moral purification”; those who perceive it as a “structural purification in which the development of the plot purifies the tragic deed of its moral pollution”; and a third group who recognise the concept as “a form of intellectual clarification in which the concepts of pity and fear are clarified by the artistic representation of them”. Nussbaum (1986) promulgates this third interpretation, although she rejects Golden’s focus on the intellect, arguing that clarification derives from emotions. With the possible exception of Nussbaum, these critiques of the purgation theory all neglect the increasing evidence of audiences embodying their responses to performance; so whether or not there is a “purging”, it appears that the purgation theory remains the closest to the enactive perspective explored earlier. McConachie (2008) appears to concur with this analysis, claiming that audiences want to be moved to emotional extremes that “provide a kind of catharsis that is good for our bodies” (p. 65). He goes on to assert that emotional purging in the form of laughing and crying helps to regulate audiences’ “homeostasis” or “physiological thermostats” and that this “may be the closest that cognitive science can come to the Aristotelian notion of catharsis” (p. 111). The notion of “regulation”, or perhaps “resetting”, is an interesting development in the theorisation of catharsis, and it challenges the dominant interpretation of catharsis as effecting some kind of transformation. This tension between the restorative versus the transformative properties of the arts has marked debates about audiences and performance since Aristotelian times. As we have seen, it notably preoccupied Brecht and fellow proponents of his Epic Theatre, and it continues to divide audience researchers to this day. Whalley and Miller (2017) articulate the contemporary terms of the debate perfectly in their synopsis of Rancière’s theory of emancipation:

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What remains in question is whether the spectator is transformed through this moment of emancipation or whether the specific exchanges are contingent, tied to the room or the location in which they are enacted. (p. 25)

Arts and cultural organisations pepper their mission statements with claims of transforming audiences and communities. But although there is growing narrative evidence of this transformation, the ability of the performing arts to effect any tangible or durable transformation on its audiences remains uncertain.

Conclusion We have seen in the course of this chapter that audiences’ experiences of the performing arts have been classified as framed, intense, hedonic, autotelic, stylised, and playful. This is essentially because they are based on cultural “products” that are aesthetic, symbolic, and live. This complexity can often make audiences’ experiences appear noumenal and ineffable, and many audience researchers have indeed described them as such. However, we have seen in this chapter that it is possible to deconstruct audiences’ experiences into their constituent parts; and although the sum of these experiences will always be greater than their parts, if we are ever to make real progress in audience studies then it is vital to understand the properties of the experiences that motivate audiences to engage with the performing arts and that generate the impacts they incur from them. Artistic experiences can certainly be “extraordinary” but we must heed the critique offered by Carù and Cova (2003) that any claims to the extraordinary must be carefully qualified. Audiences’ experiences of the performing arts combine cognitive, sensual, aesthetic, kinaesthetic, emotional, social, intellectual, imaginative, enactive, and spiritual responses to performance. Many of these responses appear to be linked to the proviso that performance is experienced live by audiences who can feel close to artists and witness art-making and stagecraft up-close and personally. Despite what the theorists might say, the empiricists have revealed the exceptional qualities of live performance in myriad studies of different art forms; and there seems to be growing consensus that live performance can create fictional worlds that enable audience members to locate their super egos, or their extraordinary selves, and undergo an emotional or spiritual restoration or even transformation. However, there is another notable dichotomy between theoretical and empirical

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researchers regarding the transformative nature of audiency and the role that performers play therein. Whilst the theoreticians perceive the audience project to be ultimately disappointing and irretrievably doomed, the empiricists, informed by audiences themselves, bear witness to the sometimes cathartic and transformative potential of performance that can enable audiences to self-actualise. Theories of distance and catharsis suggest that this transformation might be a result of the magical quality of emotion. Empathy emerges as a prerequisite of audiencing, and as a condition of intersubjectivity, it must be acknowledged as a core aspect of relational art. Empathy appears to lead to mirroring and emotional contagion, which can restore collective energy, effect a state of communitas, and ultimately develop a sense of community amongst a regular audience. Processes of amazement, shock, arousal, group flow, embodiment, enaction, and catharsis seem to feed into and enable this process and demarcate performance as a multisensory cultural experience rather than a creative product. Audience research thus needs to move beyond cognitive theory and embrace perspectives offered by these emerging theories. However, even then, the potential of these processes to effect any durable kind of emancipation or transformation amongst audiences remains decidedly uncertain.

References Alston, A. 2016. Beyond immersive theatre: Aesthetics, politics and productive participation. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Auslander, P. 2008. Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. 2nd ed. Oxon, Routledge. Bakhshi, H. and Whitby, A. 2014. Estimating the impact of live simulcast on theatre attendance: An application to London’s National Theatre. London, Nesta. Barker, M. 2013. ‘Live at a cinema near you’: How audiences respond to digital streaming of the arts. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 15–34. Belfiore, E. and Bennett, O. 2008. The social impact of the arts: An intellectual history. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Ben Chaim, D. 1984. Distance in the theatre: The aesthetics of audience response. London, Ann Arbor. Bennett, K. C. 1981. The purging of catharsis. British Journal of Aesthetics, 21(3), pp. 204–213. Bennett, S. 1997. Theatre audiences: A theory of production and reception. 2nd ed. London, Routledge.

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Berlyne, D. E. 1971. Aesthetics and psychobiology. New York, Appleton. Blau, H. 1990. The audience. Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press. Bleeker, M. and Germano, I. 2014. Perceiving and believing: An enactive approach to spectatorship. Theatre Journal, 66, pp. 363–383. Boehner, K., Sengers, P. and Warner, S. 2008. Interfaces with the ineffable: meeting aesthetic experience on its own terms. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction [Online], 15(3), pp. 1–39. Brown, A. S. 2006. An architecture of value. Grantmakers in the Arts Reader, 17(1), pp. 18–25. Brown, A. S. and Novak, J. L. 2007. Assessing the intrinsic impacts of a live performance. San Francisco, WolfBrown. Buchanan, I. 2010. A dictionary of critical theory. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Bundy, P. 2014. Engagement and liveness. In: O’Toole, J., Adams, R.-J., Anderson, M., Burton, B. and Ewing, R. (eds.) Young audiences, theatre and the cultural conversation. Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 115–127. Burland, K. and Pitts, S. 2012. Rules and expectations of jazz gigs. Social Semiotics, 22(5), pp. 523–543. Carù, A. and Cova, B. 2003. Revisiting consumption experience: A more humble but complete view of the concept. Marketing Theory, 3, pp. 267–286. Colbert, F. and St-James, Y. 2014. Research in arts marketing: Evolution and future directions. Psychology and Marketing, 31(8), pp. 566–575. Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1988a. The flow experience and its significance for human psychology. In: Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Csikszentmihalyi, I. S. (eds.) Optimal experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 15–35. Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1988b. Introduction. In: Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Csikszentmihalyi, I. S. (eds.) Optimal experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–14. De Marinis, M. 1987. Dramaturgy of the spectator. The Drama Review, 31(2), pp. 100–114. Dewey, J. 1980. Art as experience. New York, Perigee Books. Ehrenreich, B. 2007. Dancing in the streets: a history of collective joy. London, Granta. Falassi, A. 1987. Time out of time: Essays on the festival. Albuquerque, NM, University of New Mexico Press. Fırat, A. F. and Dholakia, N. 1998. Consuming people: From political economy to theaters of consumption. London, Routledge. Freshwater, H. 2009. Theatre & audience. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Golden, L. 1973. The purgation theory of catharsis. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 31(4), pp. 473–491. Heim, C. 2016. Audience as performer: The changing role of theatre audiences in the Twenty-First Century. London and New York, Routledge.

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Hirschman, E. C. and Holbrook, M. B. 1982. Hedonic consumption: emerging concepts, methods and propositions. Journal of Marketing, 46(3), pp. 92–101. Holland, N. 1968. The dynamics of literary response. New York, Oxford University Press. Konijn, E. A. 1999. Spotlight on spectators: Emotions in the theatre. Discourse Processes, 28(2), pp. 169–194. Machon, J. 2013. Immersive theatres: Intimacy and immediacy in contemporary performance. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Mackintosh, I. 1992. Architecture, actor and audience. London, Routledge. McConachie, B. 2008. Engaging audiences: A cognitive approach to spectating in the theatre. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. McConachie, B. 2013. Introduction: Spectating as sandbox play. In: Shaughnessy, N. (ed.) Affective performance and cognitive science: Body, brain and being. London, Bloomsbury, pp. 183–198. McKinney, J. 2013. Scenography, spectacle and the body of the spectator. Performance Research, 18(3), pp. 63–74. Morris Hargreaves McIntyre 2007. Audience knowledge digest: why people visit museums and galleries, and what can be done to attract them. Manchester, Morris Hargreaves McIntyre. Nesta 2010. Beyond live: Digital innovation in the performing arts. London, Nesta. Nussbaum, M. C. 1986. The fragility of goodness: Luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. O’Toole, J., Adams, R.-J., Anderson, M., Burton, B. and Ewing, R. (eds.). 2014. Young audiences, theatre and the cultural conversation. Dordrecht, Springer. Popovici, V. 1984. Is the stage-audience relationship a form of dialogue? Poetics, 13(1–2), pp. 111–118. Radbourne, J. 2013. Converging with audiences. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 143–158. Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. 2010. Measuring the intrinsic benefits of arts attendance. Cultural Trends, 19(4), pp. 307–324. Radbourne, J., Johanson, K., Glow, H. and White, T. 2009. The audience experience: Measuring quality in the performing arts. International Journal of Arts Management, 11(3), pp. 16–29. Reason, M. 2008. Did you watch the man or did you watch the goose? Children’s responses to puppets in live theatre. New Theatre Quarterly, 24(4), pp. 337–354. Reason, M. 2010. Asking the audience: Audience research and the experience of theatre. About Performance, 10, pp. 15–34. Reason, M. and Reynolds, D. 2010. Kinesthesia, empathy, and related pleasures: An inquiry into audience experiences of watching dance. Dance Research Journal, 42(2), pp. 49–75.

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Reinelt, J. G. 2014. What UK spectators know: Understanding how we come to value theatre. Theatre Journal, 66(3), pp. 337–361. Reynolds, D. and Reason, M. (eds.). 2011. Kinesthetic empathy in creative and cultural practices. Bristol, Intellect. Sartre, J.-P. 1961. Beyond bourgeois theatre. The Tulane Drama Review, 5(3), pp. 3–11. Sauter, W. 2000. The theatrical event: Dynamics of performance and perception. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press. Sawyer, K. 2007. Group genius: The creative power of collaboration. New York, Basic Books. Schechner, R. 2003. Performance theory. 2nd ed. London, Routledge. Sedgman, K. 2016. Locating the audience: How people found value in National Theatre Wales. Bristol, Intellect. Silvia, P. J. 2005. Emotional responses to art: From collation and arousal to cognition and emotion. Review of General Psychology, 9(4), pp. 342–357. Slater, A. 2007. ‘Escaping to the gallery’: Understanding the motivations of visitors to galleries. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 12, pp. 149–162. Thompson, E. 2007. Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Walmsley, B. 2011. Why people go to the theatre: A qualitative study of audience motivation. Journal of Customer Behaviour, 10(4), pp. 335–351. Walmsley, B. 2018. Deep hanging out in the arts: An anthropological approach to capturing cultural value. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 24(2), pp. 227–291. Whalley, J. and Miller, L. 2017. Between us: Audiences, affect and the in-between. London, Palgrave.

CHAPTER 4

Capturing, Interpreting, and Evaluating Cultural Value

Introduction Questions pertaining to cultural value are notoriously complex, and the aim of this chapter is certainly not to provide any reductive resolutions to what is not only a live and endless debate but one which might justifiably be labelled a “wicked problem” (Rittel and Webber 1973). By this I imply, following Rittel and Webber’s characterisation, that questions of cultural value lack a definitive formulation; exist as symptoms of other problems; evade testable solutions; and have no “stopping rule”. In other words, many questions of and about cultural value are more than intractable; they are ultimately irresolvable. Once that this uncomfortable truth has been established, discussions around and about cultural value counter-intuitively become more interesting and fruitful. The main reason that questions pertaining to cultural value are irresolvable is probably that the concept itself comprises two of the most slippery and subjective terms in the human lexicon: “culture” and “value”. It lies well beyond the project of this chapter to attempt to explicate the concept of culture, and in any case, this monograph is predominantly concerned with how culture is experienced by audiences within the performing arts. “Value”, however, is of primary concern to this book, because it is a highly contested notion that lies at the heart of questions of audience engagement and enrichment. So the core aim of this chapter is to critically explore the contested notions of value that are relevant to the performing arts and to © The Author(s) 2019 B. Walmsley, Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts, New Directions in Cultural Policy Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26653-0_4

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ascertain what insights these might provide into capturing and interpreting the impact of the performing arts on audiences. The reason this chapter focuses on cultural value rather than on the value or impact of the performing arts for audiences more narrowly is because there are age-old debates about cultural value which establish a clear philosophical and epistemological context for an informed discussion about the role that the arts play in audiences’ lives. Most recently, these debates have been influenced by the rise of the so-called cultural economy, which, amongst a wider raft of arguments about the positive role that culture can play in the economy, has encouraged polity to occasionally locate meaning beyond consumerism (Taylor 2015). It has been argued, for example, that “art is the currency of experience” that drives the new “economy of meaning” and that this economy is governed by “inalienable value” (Sharpe 2010, p. 2). In other words, human beings have a sacrosanct right to artistic experiences that cannot be denied even by utilitarian approaches to polity. This right is of course enshrined by the United Nations as a basic human right under Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declares that “everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community” and “enjoy the arts” (United Nations 1948, p. 77). This is clearly a vague aspiration, which fails to qualify “participation” and to provide any evaluative framework for what “enjoying the arts” might entail. Based on these historical, philosophical, theoretical, and political contexts, the research agenda for this chapter can be summarised around a series of core questions: 1. What do we know about cultural value and what is the purpose of asking questions about it? 2. Who wants to know what about cultural value? Why and how do they want to know? 3. In what sense are experiences of the performing arts significant to audiences? 4. What are the most effective ways to evaluate these experiences? 5. What are the implications of this for arts organisations and for cultural policy more broadly? These questions will shape the structure of the chapter, which will begin with a critical summary of the existing debates about cultural value.

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The Cultural Value Debates At the heart of the philosophical debates into cultural value lies over two centuries of “abstraction” evident in the dualistic separation between economics and aesthetics which was influenced by utilitarianism (Taylor 2015). At the heart of the policy debates lies the age-old tension between intrinsic and instrumental value (Belfiore and Bennett 2008). And at the heart of the political debates lies a seemingly intractable hierarchy of knowledge, where qualitative insights are generally subordinated to quantitative data, which are widely deemed to constitute the only suitable and sufficient “evidence” to measure the policy impact (or cost-benefit) of arts and cultural activity (EPPI Centre 2010). In many Western societies, this is perhaps the natural culmination of several decades of neoliberal attempts to co-opt economic logics into the public policy case for the arts (Taylor 2015). So although debates about cultural value are certainly not new, what is relatively new is the attempts of politicians, civil servants, policymakers, and academics to measure cultural value for the purposes of calculating return on public investment and informing future funding decisions. Despite this political pressure to measure cultural value, myriad academic studies have challenged the premise of trying to quantify the impact of the arts (e.g. Matarasso 1996; Vuyk 2010; Walmsley 2012), whilst others have noted the dominant rationalist and successionist models of causation on which many cultural policy analyses are predicated (e.g. Galloway 2009; Sanderson 2000). Even cultural economists such as David Throsby (2006) concede that certain expressions of cultural value transcend valuation as they are rooted in shared social experiences. A broad conclusion of the growing number of critical qualitative studies on this topic is that attempts to quantify the effects of the arts at the level of social impact (e.g. through Subjective Wellbeing or Social Return on Investment methods) are flawed and deeply problematic, essentially because they are not sophisticated or reflexive enough to account for notions of context and praxis (Oliver and Walmsley 2011) nor for the immensurable realms of emotion and spirituality (Holden 2012). As Calvin Taylor argues, in its attempts to avoid a descent into self-reflexivity, the aesthetic runs the risk of sacrificing its “specificity to utilitarianism by finding an external logic – social value and economic value being two conspicuous contemporary examples” (2015, p. 17). The benefits of a more reflexive approach to exploring the value and impact of the arts are further elucidated by Carol Scott, who warns that when public funding decisions rely on measurable results rather

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than valuable outcomes, cultural policy risks falling back into “the bind of instrumentality” (2010, p. 2). I will return to these arguments later in the chapter when I explore the relative strengths and weaknesses of the diverse methodological approaches to explicating cultural value. Qualitative research into the impact of the arts has certainly succeeded in elucidating the multiple dimensions of the audience experience outlined in Chapter 3, but it still struggles to close the epistemological gap between perceived and actual cultural experiences. One reason for this is that “the how of the cognitive processes that occur while audiences are watching a performance is largely out of reach to audience research that by definition takes place after the event. In some sense, therefore, the primary experience is available only through the refraction of conscious reflection” (Reason and Reynolds 2010, p. 71). So the more fruitful avenue for cultural value scholars and audience researchers is perhaps not to investigate what value is, but rather how it might be reliably expressed, reflexively and intersubjectively. What else is lacking, it seems, is a deeper understanding of the processes (rather than the outcomes ) of arts engagement (cf. Hewison 2014). Mindful of the fact that none of the recent attempts to capture cultural value “commanded widespread confidence”, the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) put out a call in 2013 to fund “ambitious research projects” that might cumulatively “establish a framework that will advance the way in which we talk about the value of cultural engagement and the methods by which we evaluate that value” (Arts and Humanities Research Council 2013). The call particularly targeted projects that aimed to explicate the phenomenology of cultural experiences and encounters. In foregrounding the subjective and intersubjective experiences of cultural audiences and participants, the project represented an open challenge to the Green and Magenta Book approaches1 that had been championed and/or adopted in recent UK studies on cultural value (e.g. EPPI Centre 2010; O’Brien 2010). Indeed by calling for proposals that would consider the “actual experience” of culture and the arts rather than their “ancillary effects”, the Cultural Value Project seemed to cast aspersions on Government-backed research such as the Culture and Sport Evidence

1 The Green Book is produced for the UK Government by HM Treasury to provide guidance for public sector bodies on how to appraise proposals before committing funds to a policy, programme, or project. The Magenta Book provides complementary guidance on the evaluation of ensuing policies, programmes, and projects.

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(CASE) programme and question its reliance on instrumental public policy methods such as cost-benefit analysis and subjective wellbeing, which are apparently used to great effect in transport and even health (O’Brien 2010). This highlights one of the core underlying tensions in cultural policy and management—namely the often implicit calls for exceptionalism that are well established on a supra-governmental level in France’s successful negotiation of the exception culturelle, which considers cultural goods and services as exceptions to commercial entities in international treaties and agreements. So the precedent exists on a policy level to treat (and therefore value) the arts and culture in a different way from other, more tangible, areas of government. Cognisant of the epistemological vacuum in credible research on audiences’ lived experience of the arts and culture, the Cultural Value Project aimed to “articulate a set of evaluative approaches and methodologies suitable to assessing the different ways in which cultural value is manifested” (Arts and Humanities Research Council 2013). The diverse and comprehensive responses that this call produced comprised a rich, polyvocal and critical account of the impacts of the arts on individuals and communities. In their reflections on the 70 original studies that comprised the project, the authors of the summative report noted that: “Academic research on the effects and impacts of the arts is fragmented and fractured, something reflected in the dichotomies that underpin the debate and often distort it” (Crossick and Kaszynska 2016, p. 15). The key findings from this national multi-methods study were that arts and cultural engagement can help to develop reflective individuals and more highly engaged citizens; promote healing, health, and wellbeing; and underpin learning, creative thinking and cognitive development. However, the report called for further research into claims regarding the ability of the arts and culture to build peace and resolve conflict; regenerate communities and cities in a sustainable way; and generate economic impact. Ultimately, the report advocated for more mixed-methods and longitudinal studies of value and impact to support or challenge existing claims of cultural value. One of the Cultural Value Project’s studies that is of particular relevance here is the British Theatre Consortium’s Theatre Spectatorship and Value Attribution research, which aimed to “reopen the question of what cultural engagement does for people” (Reinelt 2014, p. 340). The following statement of aims captures the tensions between different approaches to exploring cultural value in a clear and illuminating way:

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We advocate a multivalenced approach to cultural value which, while not dismissing economic and instrumental approaches, rests on a comprehensive understanding of the processes of value attribution based on individual appropriation of the phenomenal experience of ‘being there’. We seek to understand how these experiences coalesce and intermingle with the experiences of others to produce additional values, thus going beyond the ‘aggregate of individuals’ to highlight how cultural activity might contribute to public value. By emphasizing the processual aspects of value attribution, we hope to bypass the problems associated with the agon of ‘intrinsic’ and ‘instrumental’ values. Value emerges in the relationship between the performance, the spectator, and the network of associations which the experience triggers. (pp. 346–347)

What is significant here is the foregrounding of a “multivalenced” approach to cultural value that combines an instrumental focus on outcomes with an intrinsic focus on subjective experience and an acknowledgment of the processual and emergent nature of aesthetic value.

A Third Way: Embracing Complexity These kinds of study demonstrate that there exists a third way between the dichotomous poles of self-reflexivity and utilitarianism that have divided scholars of cultural value for centuries: namely to accept that art and culture has its own internal logic (or value) and try to capture both the particular and the universal nature of this through reflexive (as opposed to self-reflexive) phenomenological or anthropological enquiries into both intrinsic and instrumental value and their related impact. Taylor (2015) links the particular with a naïve pursuit of authenticity and the universal with reification, and, following the Japanese philosopher Kojin Karatani, argues that what is actually required is “the ability to read both simultaneously as dynamic polar but mutually conditioning opposites. This is abstraction and moreover it is real” (p. 18). This suggests that a possibly fruitful avenue of research lies in a simultaneous investigation of the particular (or individual) and general (or universal) value of the arts, and ideally of the crossover between the two. Taylor intimates that Aristotle’s call for people to strive to “live well” in their communities might also provide not only an escape from the predominance of utilitarian conceptions of value but also a possible third way between the individual and the universal. With this in mind, scholars might benefit from exploring which narratives or manifestations of value might “cut through” the morass of personal

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and anecdotal stories about the impact of the arts and gain the traction and longevity that quantitative data often attracts, especially amongst managers, civil servants, politicians, and policymakers. Like Aristotle, they might also do well to focus more on how the arts might help people to live sustainably and live well. This third way would require a nuanced and assuredly postmodern approach to cultural value that embraces rather than eschews the complex and often paradoxical nature of its constituent parts. Theories of complexity are becoming ever more popular as ways of conceptualising the impacts of policy initiatives (Burns 2007). This shift has been gradually effected as growing numbers of researchers have accepted the severe limitations of identifying any simple, linear causality within complex systems and contexts. As we have seen already in this chapter, the arts have been regarded by philosophers as a particularly complex and ambiguous pursuit for centuries—perhaps, as White and Hede argue, because “the impact of art is a complex and multilayered concept that is experienced and understood in a variety of ways contingent on each individual’s experience and perspective” (2008, p. 32). This focus on the contingent nature of cultural experience reinforces the epistemological challenges described earlier and serves to strengthen the case for a more reflexive and phenomenological approach. Further evidence of the complexity involved in exploring the value of the arts can be found in the increasingly prevalent reference to the arts sector as an “ecology” (e.g. Giannachi and Stewart 2005; Holden 2015; Knell 2007; Sharpe 2010). There is something primal and inherently relational about this metaphor, which reflects not only the key social role that the arts have always played in human lives, whether for mimetic or liminal purposes (Schechner 2003; Turner 1969), but also their inherent fragility and inter-dependence. John Holden’s description of culture as “temporary phenomena with deep roots and complex enabling factors” (2015, p. 3) encapsulates not only the ephemeral nature of culture and cultural experiences (which of course pose their own methodological problems for audience researchers) but also the diverse and convoluted ecosystem required to produce and facilitate them. Bill Sharpe (2010) also draws on the ecology metaphor to illustrate his claim that the “economy of experience […] is properly understood within an ecological context” (pp. 32–33). Sharpe’s thesis is highly significant in this context, not only because it contributes to the cultural value debates by reasserting the primacy of artistic over economic impact, but more importantly because it once again shifts the very terms of the debate away from the utilitarian concern with the relative value

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of commensurable objects and towards an enactive focus on interpersonal experience: since our cultural systems are inherently social and historical, individual experience always arises in the extended interaction of the members of a community amongst themselves and within their wider context. (Sharpe 2010, p. 31)

Although this assertion is helpful in once again highlighting the allimportant role of context, it nevertheless exposes one of the most problematic aspects of the cultural value debates in its reliance on assumptions about the audience experience. Indeed the voice of the audience is all too often missing not only from discussion on cultural value but, perhaps even more worryingly, from audience research itself. The remainder of this chapter and the whole of the following chapter will therefore focus on how to capture and interpret cultural value from the perspective of audiences themselves, placing them at the heart of the cultural value debates in line with the book’s overall philosophy of audience-centricity.

The Audience Voice As we saw in the introduction to this book, audiences are often deliberately or mistakenly underprivileged in audience research. There are many political, philosophical, and methodological reasons for this somewhat counterintuitive state of affairs, but one of the net results is that all sorts of problematic assumptions and extrapolations are made by researchers, who often frame themselves as a proxy for the audience voice. One such example is Herbert Blau (1990), who towards the end of his seminal monograph The Audience highlights the complexities inherent to interpreting the audience experience, which he characterises as “disparate, cross-purposed, alienated, and incalculable” (p. 355). Although audience research agencies, and even many marketing departments in performing arts organisations, often bemoan the challenges of locating their audiences beyond those who actually buy tickets, from the perspective of qualitative researchers, the notion that audiences are hard to find and alienated is nonsensical. The additional charge that audiences’ arts experiences are “incalculable” is clearly anathema to anyone who spends their time trying to capture and interpret them. A primary focus for empirical audience researchers is of course to understand what makes audiences engage with the performing arts in the first place. One of the most comprehensive qualitative studies into audience

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motivation is presented in Bergadaà and Nyeck’s (1995) comparative review of the underlying motivations of theatre-goers and -makers. This groundbreaking research identified four motivational typologies behind theatre-going: escapism and entertainment; edutainment; personal enrichment; and social hedonism. The researchers then matched these motivations against the underlying personal values of hedonism, social conformism, personal development, and communal pleasure, respectively. These findings were broadly confirmed by my own extensive qualitative study of theatre-going, which concluded that the key driver for attendance was the pursuit of emotional experiences and impact, followed by edutainment, escapism, and spending quality time with partners, friends, and family (Walmsley 2011). There is increasing evidence that audiences are seeking meaningful, and even spiritual, experiences when engaging with the performing arts. In my study, for example, an audience participant talked about going on “pilgrimages” to see certain actors (Walmsley 2013, p. 83) whilst others also described their experiences in religious terms: “I love undergoing the communion thing – it’s more of a religious experience, it’s sacred to me”. This trend may partly explain the current popularity of site-specific, site-sensitive and immersive forms of theatre, which all bring audiences into closer proximity and intimacy with performers (and, indeed, with each other). These empirical findings serve to contest Blau’s theoretical claim that audiences’ perceptions are alienated and incalculable.

The Impact of the Arts on Audiences As we shall see in Chapter 6, the ultimate goal of marketing has been described as creating value for customers and capturing value from them in return (Kotler and Armstrong 2010, p. 26). Unlike many definitions of marketing, this particular definition is useful for arts marketers as it places value and audiences at the heart of marketing activity and therefore broadens traditional perceptions of what marketing entails to include aspects of audience engagement. But like the cultural value debates, it inevitably raises questions about how audiences perceive the value they derive from the arts and what reciprocal value performing arts organisations can capture from their audiences in return. Derrick Chong (2010) also raises the issue of value, questioning whether arts marketers are perceived as image promoters or value creators. This is a contentious issue for both arts professionals and scholars, as it exposes tensions between traditional marketers, who

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champion a product-led and/or transactional approach, and progressive marketers, who favour an audience-led or relational approach. Despite these philosophical and professional tensions, more innovative forms of audience research and arts evaluation are starting to provide fresh insights into audiences’ own perceptions of value. For example, various recent empirical studies into the audience experience (e.g. Brown and Novak 2007; Foreman-Wernet and Dervin 2013; Heim 2016; New Economics Foundation 2008; O’Toole et al. 2014; Radbourne et al. 2010; Walmsley 2013; White and Hede 2008) have articulated value in the following terms: emotional impact, stimulation, and flight; engagement and captivation; knowledge and risk; authenticity, beauty, and truth; aesthetic growth, learning, and challenge; energy and tension; happiness and improved wellbeing; shared experience, co-creation, and atmosphere; community immersion; personal resonance and inspiration; empowerment and renewal; self-expression, self-awareness, and self-actualisation; improved social skills, better relationships, and family cohesion. As we have seen, some studies (see, for example, Burland and Pitts 2012; Pitts 2005; White and Hede 2008) also highlight the significant role played by performance spaces, places and venues in “enabling” impact to occur and enhancing or diminishing its effect on audiences. These and similar qualitative studies of the audience experience have revealed how the arts are perceived to function as a vehicle towards self-identification and self-actualisation, especially for young audiences; they are believed by many audience participants to facilitate acculturation, socialising, relationship-building, and meaningmaking. It is interesting to note here that audiences tend to discuss their arts experiences in holistic terms, transcending the reductive dichotomy between intrinsic and instrumental value that has long characterised debates into cultural value. So there is a significant (and ever-growing) body of qualitative and quantitative “evidence” regarding the value (both intrinsic and instrumental) that audiences place on their arts experiences, which reveals the terms in which audiences conceive of and articulate this value. These qualitative insights into the value and impact of the arts provide much fertile ground for cultural policymakers, artists, producers, and arts marketers. On a strategic level, they indicate perhaps what kinds of epithets might yield the best results in marketing copy—for example, “emotional”, “stimulating”, “captivating”, “authentic”, “tense”, “atmospheric”, “inspiring”, etc. might all persuade audiences that their conscious and unconscious artistic goals will be realised. On a higher plane, these insights suggest that artists, producers, and marketers could enhance and enrich

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the impact of the performing arts by facilitating captivation (through a tailored use of venue atmospherics, for example); by providing richer background context (e.g. via a pre-show talk); and by maximising audiences’ collective experience (e.g. by facilitating a post-show discussion). But above all, these findings highlight the need for a fresh conceptualisation of the value exchange at the heart of the marketing concept and for a new form of relationship marketing that is “interactive, longitudinal, individual and contextual” (Payne et al. 2008, p. 93). We will return to this contention at length in Chapter 6. For now, it is just worth noting two things: 1. We already know the benefits and impacts that audiences claim to derive from the arts, as the summary of the impact research above demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt; 2. What we lack are robust and uncontested ways of evaluating them. Over and above the methodological issues that plague audience research that have already been discussed in this chapter, the problems that beset arts evaluation are partly caused by funders’ obsession with instrumental value and partly caused by arts organisations’ mistaken obsession with hitting marketing targets and maximising financial value. These utilitarian biases are compounded by the inherent complexities of evaluating artistic value, which encourages organisations to take paths of lesser resistance and evaluate proxies for artistic value. Some scholars (e.g. Boorsma and Chiaravalloti 2010; Walmsley 2012) are now therefore calling on arts organisations to evaluate their activities according to artistic, rather than predominantly financial, objectives and to give audiences an active voice in this artistic evaluation. This culture shift will require a fundamental reconceptualisation of value, from the traditional dominance of quantifiable metrics such as ticket price and yield towards a broader focus on aesthetic and social (i.e. cultural) value.

Arts Evaluation As intimated throughout the course of this chapter, there are a number of significant challenges faced by researchers who try to evaluate the value and impact of the performing arts. Arguably the main challenge is to develop and deploy nuanced, multidimensional evaluation frameworks that are sensitive enough to capture the subtle complexities of the multisensory audience experience and interpret them in a meaningful and appropriate way

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for multiple stakeholders. Although this can appear at first sight to constitute an impossible endeavour, as O’Toole et al.’s discussion of theatre indicates, this really means in essence that we need to deploy audience research methods that can capture and account for diverse manifestations of value such as cognitive development, sensual engagement, embodied experience, mimesis, and hyper-emotion. Theatre […] engages the intellect, the emotions and the senses. It invites its audience to peer into the private worlds of others where emotions, ideas, relationships are laid bare. In response, engaged spectators claim that they experience more intense emotion than is available to them in their everyday lives. (O’Toole et al. 2014, p. 115)

This depiction of the multifarious nature of the performing arts encapsulates the significant methodological challenges faced by evaluators and once again highlights the inability of econometric or utilitarian approaches to shed any meaningful light on questions of cultural value, particularly from the audience perspective. In an attempt to circumnavigate this issue and develop more sensitive quantitative measures of audiences’ cultural experiences, in recent years, several countries (including Australia, Scotland, England, Singapore, and China) have experimented with a new artistic evaluation tool referred to variously as Culture Counts, Quality Metrics, Consumer Insight Toolkit, and Impact and Insight Toolkit. The core aim of this tool(kit) is apparently “to establish a deeper conversation between an organisation and its audiences” (Nicholas Serota, cited in Hemley 2018)2 via a nuanced metrics framework involving the triangulation of assessments of self, peer and public. The current version of the framework (see Arts Council England 2018) comprises the following nine core metrics: • • • • • • •

Presentation: it was well produced and presented Distinctiveness: it was different from things I’ve experienced before Rigour: it was well thought through and put together Relevance: it had something to say about the world in which we live Challenge: it was thought-provoking Captivation: it was absorbing and held my attention Meaning: it meant something to me personally

2 Sir Nicholas Serota is currently the Chair of Arts Council England.

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• Enthusiasm: I would come to something like this again • Local impact: it is important that it’s happening here. A further three metrics are available for self and peer assessment only (i.e. not for audiences): • Originality: it was groundbreaking • Risk: the artists/curators really challenged themselves • Excellence: it is one of the best examples of its type that I have seen. Although this evaluation framework has been championed by a small number of academics and indeed by the national arts funder Arts Council England and regional funding body Western Australia, it has equally been subjected to fierce criticism and rejected by the Canada Council as well as the Australian state funding body Creative Victoria. The main critique levelled at the framework is that it represents a time-consuming and reductive proxy for artistic value that is open to political abuse: Metrics-based approaches to understanding the value of culture imply homogeneity of artistic purpose, invite political manipulation and demand time, money and attention from cultural organisations without proven benefit. (Phiddian et al. 2017, p. 174)

The framework was developed over time from significant empirical research with both arts organisations and audiences, and it therefore offers a relatively complex and multidimensional evaluation system that triangulates the perspectives of three core stakeholder groups. However, over and above the significant academic critique, the framework has been criticised by audiences for its unemotional and cognitive bias. For example, one participant in the Manchester Metrics pilot project fed back that: “The questions/measures were all very dry and didn’t give an opportunity to rate things within the arts that are important to me – excitement, wonder, joy” (Bunting and Knell 2014, p. 59). Another participant reflected that: “I was invited to explore how the piece made me think, but not how it made me feel” (ibid.). This, and the obvious reality that as a survey it circumnavigates any direct dialogue between artists, arts organisations, and audiences, challenges Serota’s claim that it can establish deeper conversations with audiences.

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It is perhaps understandable that some performing arts organisations and funding bodies are keen to find the “holy grail” of artistic evaluation, and at first sight, multidimensional frameworks like this one do seem to offer a sensible step forward and some kind of compromise between qualitative and quantitative enquiry. But to reduce the complexity of performing arts experiences to a small number of metrics can only ever be self-defeating in that it reduces these experiences to the quantifiable level of products, which denies the potential for emotional and spiritual escapism that most audiences report seeking primarily from the performing arts in the first place. By focussing exclusively on the outcomes of the creative process, the tool fails to address questions of artistic process or engagement and is therefore particularly inadequate in evaluating co-created or participatory work. Moreover, the framework as it stands denies audiences the opportunity to reflect on a performance’s originality, excellence or risk, presumably because audiences are deemed to be insufficiently qualified to comment on questions of overall quality and innovation. So despite its stated attempt to include audiences in artistic evaluation and deepen conversations with them, the framework actually perpetuates a hierarchy of cultural value by excluding them from what might be deemed to be the higher echelons of arts evaluation. Worse, perhaps, it opens the door for nepotism by enabling organisations to select their own peers, thus compromising any notion of objectivity; and if strategic decisions such as programming, commissioning or funding are ever to be informed by such a framework then transparency and objectivity are key. As might be gleaned from the discussion thus far in this chapter, the main problem with any given arts evaluation tool is that it denies any space for praxis or context (qualities that were earlier demonstrated to be vital to cultural valuation) and inevitably reduces the act of evaluation to a crude, one-size-fits-all approach that fosters artistic homogeneity. On a simple and pragmatic level, the existence of such a tool raises the question of whether performing arts organisations should judge their Christmas shows, musicals and comedies in the same way that they judge their new work, existential dramas, and tragedies: can a pantomime ever be as challenging or meaningful as a Shakespearean history play? In the final analysis, even complex evaluation tools like the one explored here fall victim to one of the most common errors of research methods.

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Most approaches […] fail to make sense of the contextual complexity of artistic activities, overestimating the general validity of methods and underestimating the richness and diversity of the contexts in which they might be applied. (Piber and Chiaravalloti 2011, p. 242)

Like the wider field of arts management, audience research faces the “twofold legitimacy problem” of being viewed with suspicion by the arts world whilst being derided by management scholars (Colbert 2011, p. 261). This often leads scholars, practitioners, and consultants working in the field to deploy quantitative and econometric methods that they don’t fully understand in the hope of appearing scientific (Oman and Taylor 2018). This growing trend, often encouraged and even endorsed by policymakers in desperate search of advocacy data, represents a huge disservice to the arts and cultural sector and risks challenging its very credibility. Arts evaluation must be values-driven and as François Matarasso reminds us, the art of evaluation therefore lies in ensuring that the measurable never drives out the immeasurable (1996, p. 15).

Conclusion This chapter has traced the history of the debates surrounding cultural value and explored how cultural value has been and can be captured, interpreted, and evaluated. We have seen that approaches to and conversations about both cultural value and arts evaluation are fraught, imbued with disciplinary bias, and influenced by political perspectives. Cultural value is an intractable concept and I have labelled it a “wicked problem”—both because it is a symptom of many other intractable problems (such as how to interpret and fund “culture” and how to capture intangible value) and because it is never very far away from discussions about the impact of the arts on audiences. Despite the significant challenges posed by the ever-present spectre of cultural value, I have argued here that questions about and around cultural value are fruitful in and of themselves, as long as they don’t culminate in yet another failed attempt to “solve” or resolve the Cultural Value debate itself. For artists, creative teams, producers, marketers, outreach workers, and audiences, questions about the value and impact of the arts are primary and these stakeholders are rarely interested or even included in academic debates about cultural value. There is a thirst in the arts and cultural sector globally for standardised evaluation methods and frameworks, and it is arguably the responsibility of audience researchers to work with all of these

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stakeholders to strive towards developing evaluation methodologies that are tailored towards their needs and fit-for-purpose. This is ostensibly the aim of toolkits such as Quality Metrics etc.; but as we have seen, these kinds of metrics-based tools fail from the outset because they restrict (and some might say prevent) a deeper engagement with audiences and thus fail to capture the primary goals of audiency. What is needed, then, is a genuinely nuanced, multidimensional, and reflexive evaluation methodology. A reflexive approach to evaluation would reject the utilitarian conception of value as quantifiable, fixed, and given, and regard it instead as emergent, “constantly under negotiation and inthe-making” (Oliver and Walmsley 2011, p. 88). It would also reflect and articulate cultural value in the authentic language of artists, practitioners, and audiences (Walmsley 2012). An evaluation framework based on reflexivity would leave room for both Raymond Williams’ (1958) conception of culture as ordinary and “everyday” and Matthew Arnold’s (1869) perception of culture as the pursuit of perfection, thus embracing what we might describe as the three pillars of cultural policy: artistic excellence, audience participation, and public accessibility. It would also foster discussion about how the arts might promote Aristotle’s “good life” and call to “live well”. In a context where the role of the arts in enhancing health and wellbeing is rapidly moving up the political and social agenda, largely due to ageing and fractured populations, the therapeutic potential of the arts is perhaps more urgent than ever before. Whatever the policy goal, what has become clear in the course of this chapter is the imperative for effective and appropriate artistic impact assessment to embrace the complexity of the creative process and the audience experience; to put the value back into evaluation; and to ensure that the measurable never drives out the immeasurable. Large national studies such as McCarthy et al.’s (2004) Gifts of the Muse study in the United States and the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Cultural Value Project in the UK have advocated for more mixed-methods and longitudinal studies of value and impact to support or challenge existing claims of cultural value. These calls reinforce the conclusion noted above that the most fruitful explorations into the value and impact of the arts will be those that foster open enquiry amongst the core potential beneficiaries of the arts. Although there is certainly no holy grail to find when seeking to capture and interpret cultural value or assess the impacts of the performing arts, it seems that ultimately only radically interdisciplinary and multi-perspectival approaches will ever be robust and nuanced enough to

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capture the contingency and contextual complexity of the creative process and the multidimensional complexity of the ensuing audience experience. We have seen in this chapter that the empirical imperative for audience researchers is to investigate how the value and impact of the arts might be reliably expressed by audiences, rather than to engage in the more abstract debate about what this value actually is. Ultimately, this might offer a much needed third way between the dichotomous poles of self-reflexivity and utilitarianism that have hampered debates on cultural value for centuries. Existing studies in the field indicate that reflexive, intersubjective, and polyvocal accounts of value are more grounded and enactive than quantitative measures, which reduce what is indisputably a complex and multidimensional phenomenon to an inappropriate set of metrics. Having said this, audience researchers also need to effect a methodological shift from anecdotes or “casual stories” to meaningful, potent and universal stories that will gain more traction than the widely discredited and often meaningless econometric data that they will supplant. In the following chapter, I will therefore hone in on the diverse array of methods deployed by audience researchers to elucidate the audience experience.

References Arnold, M. 1869. Culture and anarchy: An essay in political and social criticism. Oxford, Project Gutenberg. Arts and Humanities Research Council. 2013. Cultural Value Project [Internet]. London, Arts and Humanities Research Council. Available from: http://www. ahrc.ac.uk/Funded-Research/Funded-themes-and-programmes/CulturalValue-Project/Pages/default.aspx [Accessed 25 June]. Arts Council England. 2018. Quality Metrics [Internet]. London, Arts Council England. Available from: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/quality-metrics/ quality-metrics [Accessed 22 May]. Belfiore, E. and Bennett, O. 2008. The social impact of the arts: An intellectual history. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Bergadaà, M. and Nyeck, S. 1995. Quel marketing pour les activités artistiques: une analyse qualitative comparée des motivations des consommateurs et producteurs de théàtre. Recherche et Applications en Marketing, 10(4), pp. 27–46. Blau, H. 1990. The audience. Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press. Boorsma, M. and Chiaravalloti, F. 2010. Arts marketing performance: An artisticmission-led approach to evaluation. The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, 40(4), pp. 297–317.

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Brown, A. S. and Novak, J. L. 2007. Assessing the intrinsic impacts of a live performance. San Francisco, WolfBrown. Bunting, C. and Knell, J. 2014. Measuring quality in the cultural sector: The Manchester Metrics pilot: Findings and lessons learned. London, Arts Council England. Burland, K. and Pitts, S. 2012. Rules and expectations of jazz gigs. Social Semiotics, 22(5), pp. 523–543. Burns, D. 2007. Systemic action research. Bristol, Polity Press. Chong, D. 2010. Arts management. 2nd ed. London, Routledge. Colbert, F. 2011. Management of the arts. In: Towse, R. (ed.) A handbook of cultural economics. 2nd ed. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, pp. 261–265. Crossick, G. and Kaszynska, P. 2016. Understanding the value of arts & culture. The AHRC Cultural Value Project. Swindon, Arts and Humanities Research Council. EPPI Centre 2010. Understanding the drivers, impact and value of engagement in culture and sport: An overarching summary of the research. London, DCMS. Foreman-Wernet, L. and Dervin, B. 2013. In the context of their lives: How audience members make sense of performing arts experiences. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 67–82. Galloway, S. 2009. Theory-based evaluation and the social impact of the arts. Cultural Trends, 18(2), pp. 125–148. Giannachi, G. and Stewart, N. (eds.) 2005. Performing nature: Explorations in ecology and the arts. Bern, Lang. Heim, C. 2016. Audience as performer: The changing role of theatre audiences in the Twenty-First Century. London and New York, Routledge. Hemley, M. 2018. Arts Council to roll out toolkit to help theatre companies understand their audiences. The Stage, 5 July. Available from: https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2018/arts-council-toolkit-theatrecompanies-audiences/ [Accessed 5 July]. Hewison, R. 2014. Cultural capital: The rise and fall of creative Britain. London, Verso. Holden, J. 2012. New Year, new approach to wellbeing? Available from: http:// www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionalsblog/2012/jan/03/arts-heritage-wellbeing-cultural-policy [Accessed 5 January]. Holden, J. 2015. The ecology of culture. Swindon, Arts and Humanities Research Council. Knell, J. 2007. The art of living: A provocation paper. London, Mission Models Money. Kotler, P. and Armstrong, G. 2010. Principles of marketing. 13th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ., Prentice Hall.

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Matarasso, F. 1996. Defining values: Evaluating arts programmes. Stroud, Comedia. McCarthy, K. F., Ondaatje, E. H., Zakaras, L. and Brooks, A. 2004. Gifts of the muse: Reframing the debate about the benefits of the arts. Santa Monica, CA, RAND. New Economics Foundation 2008. Capturing the audience experience: A handbook for the theatre. London, New Economics Foundation. O’Brien, D. 2010. Measuring the value of culture: A report to the Department for Culture Media and Sport. London, Department for Culture Media and Sport. O’Toole, J., Adams, R.-J., Anderson, M., Burton, B. and Ewing, R. (eds.) 2014. Young audiences, theatre and the cultural conversation. Dordrecht, Springer. Oliver, J. and Walmsley, B. 2011. Assessing the value of the arts. In: Walmsley, B. (ed.) Key issues in the arts and entertainment industry. Oxford, Goodfellow, pp. 83–101. Oman, S. and Taylor, M. 2018. Subjective well-being in cultural advocacy: A politics of research between the market and the academy. Journal of Cultural Economy, 11(3), pp. 225–243. Payne, A. F., Storbacka, K. and Frow, P. 2008. Managing the co-creation of value. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36, pp. 83–96. Phiddian, R., Meyrick, J., Barnett, T. and Maltby, R. 2017. Counting culture to death: An Australian perspective on Culture Counts and Quality Metrics. Cultural Trends, 26(2), pp. 174–180. Piber, M. and Chiaravalloti, F. 2011. Ethical implications of methodological settings in arts management research: The case of performance evaluation. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 41, pp. 240–266. Pitts, S. E. 2005. What makes an audience? Investigating the roles and experiences of listeners at a chamber music festival. Music and Letters, 86(2), pp. 257–269. Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. 2010. Measuring the intrinsic benefits of arts attendance. Cultural Trends, 19(4), pp. 307–324. Reason, M. and Reynolds, D. 2010. Kinesthesia, empathy, and related pleasures: An inquiry into audience experiences of watching dance. Dance Research Journal, 42(2), pp. 49–75. Reinelt, J. G. 2014. What UK spectators know: Understanding how we come to value theatre. Theatre Journal, 66(3), pp. 337–361. Rittel, H. W. J. and Webber, M. M. 1973. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4, pp. 155–169. Sanderson, I. 2000. Evaluation in complex policy systems. Evaluation, 6, pp. 433–454. Schechner, R. 2003. Performance theory. 2nd ed. London, Routledge. Scott, C. A. 2010. Searching for the “public” in public value: Arts and cultural heritage in Australia. Cultural Trends, 19(4), pp. 273–289.

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Sharpe, B. 2010. Economies of life: Patterns of health and wealth. Axminster, Triarchy Press. Taylor, C. 2015. Cultural value: A perspective from cultural economy. Swindon, Arts and Humanities Research Council. Throsby, D. 2006. The value of cultural heritage: What can economics tell us? In: Clark, K., ed. Capturing the public value of heritage: The proceedings of the London Conference 25–26 January 2006. London, English Heritage, pp. 40–44. Turner, V. W. 1969. The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. London, Routledge & K. Paul. United Nations 1948. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Paris, United Nations. Vuyk, K. 2010. The arts as an instrument? Notes on the controversy surrounding the value of art. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 16(2), pp. 173–183. Walmsley, B. 2011. Why people go to the theatre: A qualitative study of audience motivation. Journal of Customer Behaviour, 10(4), pp. 335–351. Walmsley, B. 2012. Towards a balanced scorecard: A critical analysis of the Culture and Sport Evidence (CASE) programme. Cultural Trends, 21(4), pp. 325–334. Walmsley, B. 2013. ‘A big part of my life’: A qualitative study of the impact of theatre. Arts Marketing: An International Journal, 3(1), pp. 73–87. White, T. R. and Hede, A.-M. 2008. Using narrative inquiry to explore the impact of art on individuals. Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, 38(1), pp. 19–35. Williams, R. 1958. Culture and society. London, Chatto & Windus.

CHAPTER 5

Researching (with) Audiences

Introduction Audience research is inherently and inevitably cross-disciplinary. This is because any deep and rigorous understanding of audiences’ experiences of the performing arts needs to draw on a range of complementary methods drawn from different theoretical and empirical traditions and perspectives. As we saw in the previous chapter, one of the core objectives of any organisational or policy-level approach to audience research must be to strike a balance between measurable impact and immeasurable value. This implies that audience research must strive to capture, illustrate, and interpret the value and impact of audiences’ experiences of the arts from a diverse range of disciplines, including positivist techniques that are primarily geared towards the statistical analysis of audiences’ behaviours and experiences as well as those whose objectives are more anthropological and interpretivist. The core aim of this chapter is therefore to provide a critical overview of the most common quantitative, qualitative and bioscientific audience research methods, before exploring and illustrating how these different methods can be fruitfully combined and even systematically triangulated to provide a multiperspectival approach to audience research. We have seen in the earlier chapters of this book that audiences are slippery and heterogeneous, and that their experiences are often described as ineffable. These structural and methodological challenges impact on

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anyone who tries to engage in audience research and they can sometimes leave the field of audience studies feeling compromised and illegitimated. As an emerging academic field, audience studies is still struggling to cohere around a set of agreed methods and approaches that might lend it greater credibility not only amongst researchers from cogent fields, but also amongst arts workers and policymakers and, most importantly, with audiences themselves. As Katya Johanson (2013) acknowledges, audience research has been consistently criticised for its “lack of attention to issues of methodology”, and its corresponding “lack of rigour”, which suggests that “more comprehensive attention to appropriate data collection methods is at least one of the requirements for improving the rigour, quality and extent of research on audience engagement” (p. 162). One of the core objectives of this chapter is therefore to draw together a set of methods that have been tried and tested by audience researchers and to place them into dialogue with newer, emerging methods that are starting to be adopted in the field in order to harness a comprehensive and complementary toolkit of rigorous audience research methods. In the previous chapter, I provided a critical summary of the Cultural Value debates, which culminated in a call for audience researchers to investigate how audiences express the value and impact of the arts rather than to continue to engage in more abstract and interminable debates about what this value actually is. Correspondingly, this chapter will focus on the empirical aspects of audience research. It will begin with a critical summary of quantitative audience research methods, including surveys, questionnaires, big data, stated and revealed preference techniques, and subjective wellbeing. It will then move on to explore qualitative approaches and methods, ranging from interviews and focus groups to narrative enquiry, ethnography and anthropology, deep hanging out, and participatory methods such as drawing, creative writing, cognitive mapping and guided visualisation. The chapter will conclude with a brief discussion of the rise of neuroscientific methods and biometrics, which will lead to a broader discussion of mixed-methods and triangulated approaches to audience research. The chapter is not intended to capture all of the methods deployed in audience research; nor does it aim to replicate the many excellent research methods sources available to empirical researchers working across the arts and social sciences. Instead the chapter seeks to understand the relative pros and cons of deploying different methods in the quest of elucidating the audience experience and to highlight the potential of fruitfully combining

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these to overcome the pernicious limitations of individual methods and approaches.

Quantitative Methods Despite the fact that statistical data analysis is often the favoured form of impact evaluation amongst key stakeholder groups such as politicians, civil servants, policymakers and arts funders, it is important to acknowledge that quantitative research often receives short shrift amongst artists, arts practitioners, and audience researchers. There are many valid and invalid reasons for this, and many of these were elucidated in the previous chapter. A valid source of distrust in quantitative research lies in the age-old adage that one can prove anything with statistics, and much of the advocacydriven evaluation in the arts provides testimony to this fear. As Blau argues: “Statistical approaches to the sentiments and attitudes of an audience […] – which mostly ascertain what they are looking for – make a mockery of it” (1990, p. 356). Some of the critiques levelled at Quality Metrics reflect this disdain for reducing audiences’ emotional responses to relatively meaningless graphs. Research methodologists have established that attitudinal data is best served by qualitative research, whilst quantitative research is best deployed to identify patterns and trends in significant data sets and analyse potential relationships between variables (Creswell 2014). So an invalid reason for dismissing quantitative research is the false belief that it can’t shed any useful light on audience engagement. For example, significant headway has been made in recent years in understanding evolving patterns of arts attendance, which can now be segmented by a number of key geo-demographic and psychographic variables. These insights can in turn inform marketing and audience development activity, although skills gaps in interpreting box office data, sometimes brought about by an artistic fear or suspicion of numbers, often compounds the poor standing of quantitative research in the arts and cultural sector. By far the most common audience research methods deployed by arts organisations are surveys and questionnaires. Although these tools are often poorly conceived and articulated and often suffer from poor response rates as a result of audiences’ “survey fatigue”, as core primary research methods, surveys, and questionnaires can provide organisations with timely, relevant data that is specific to their own audience groups. Although they too have been widely critiqued (see for example Taylor 2016), national

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cultural engagement surveys such as the UK’s annual Taking Part survey, can nonetheless provide useful macro and baseline data that help to identify changing patterns and trends. So rather than be seen in oppositional terms, quantitative and qualitative research should actually be seen as a “continuum” (Alasuutari 1995, p. 7)—often one where the former can provide the “what” and the latter can explain the “why”.

Big Data Big data, in particular, has proven invaluable in helping audience researchers and marketers understand arts attendance on national scales. Big data is a generic term used to denote data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing software. When gathered and analysed effectively, big data has the potential to deliver significant strategic benefits to performing arts organisations, not only in obvious areas of activity such as marketing and audience development but also potentially in producing and programming, and even in generating new business models (Lilley and Moore 2013). This strategic deployment of big data is referred to as “data-driven decision-making” or “DDD”; but, as Lilley and Moore point out, the arts and cultural sector is not yet reaping the benefits of DDD: The sector currently largely addresses data from too limited a perspective. Too often, the gathering and reporting of data is seen as a burden and a requirement of funding or governance rather than as an asset to be used to the benefit of the artistic or cultural institution and its work. This point of view is in danger of holding the sector back. It arises partly from the philosophy of dependence, subsidy and market failure which underpins much of the cultural sector including the arts and public service broadcasting. (2013, p. 3)

A good example of big data being used on a national scale is provided by the Audience Finder platform, which its developers and managers describe as follows: Audience Finder is the free national audience data and development tool, enabling cultural organisations to understand, compare and apply audience insight. Audience Finder brings together data on all UK households with data from over 800 cultural organisations: over 170 million tickets, 59 million transactions, approximately 280,000 surveys and web analytics from all the UK’s major arts and cultural organisations. (The Audience Agency 2018)

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Audience Finder relies on box office systems running on compatible technology to enable analysts to aggregate cultural consumption data on a national scale. It is now in operation across England, Scotland, and Wales and thus constitutes one of the largest cultural data sets in the world. Thanks to the increasingly sophisticated analysis and segmentation conducted by The Audience Agency and by its affiliate researchers, Audience Finder is starting to effect a step change in the way that arts and cultural organisations across the UK draw on their data in a strategic and comparative way to use it as an asset rather than a reporting tool. When cross-referenced against other large data sets, the platform can also provide nuanced comparative insights into audience behaviour in different genres across the sector. A perfect example of this nuance emerges in a recent study by Hanquinet et al. (2019), which found that ballet audiences were much more socially stratified than those for contemporary dance. It is easy to see how this kind of evidence-based sector-level insight might in future influence cultural policymaking in aspects of audience development and funding. However, as sophisticated as Audience Finder undoubtedly is (and it is certainly the envy of many other national arts marketing and audience development agencies), it only really provides a snapshot in real time (a now-cast) of what arts audiences are doing and how they are behaving as consumers; as a blunt quantitative tool, it can’t provide answers as to why audiences are buying or behaving in a certain way. For example, the platform has highlighted the fact that UK arts audiences aren’t as loyal to specific venues as previously thought (i.e. they are more mobile, omnivorous and production-led) and that members of the public who identify their religious beliefs as atheistic or Jewish are significantly more likely to attend the arts than those who identify in other categories. Only qualitative research can provide meaningful explanations for these findings. So whilst big data platforms like Audience Finder can help arts organisations and policymakers to fund, plan, programme, market, and even operate in a more strategic way, the insights that they provide into audience behaviour and into questions of value and impact are inevitably blunt: big data can only ever produce meaning in tandem with other audience research methods.

Stated Preference Techniques A more controversial and contested application of quantitative research comes in the form of stated preference techniques, which are increasingly used by government departments to provide cost-benefit analyses of public

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policies and spending. The main methods of stated preference techniques are contingent valuation and choice modelling. Contingent valuation is the most common stated preference technique, although it is used mainly for valuing environmental goods and services rather than the arts and culture. Contingent valuation (or willingness to pay) is based on asking people what they would be willing to pay for non-market goods or services. It relies on constructing a hypothetical market and then attaching hypothetical prices to these goods or services by asking people directly about their willingness to pay or to accept compensation for them (O’Brien 2010, p. 24). For example, a contingent valuation survey might ask participants how much they value the services provided by their local theatre and then aggregate this monetary value to calculate the overall cost-benefit to the taxpayer. Another common stated preference technique is choice modelling (or conjoint analysis), which asks research participants to choose between prospective policy options by describing their relative characteristics and attributes. Instead of being asked directly about their willingness to pay for a good or service, as they would be under the contingent valuation method, participants’ relative valuations are derived from their responses to a choice of options—for example whether a local arts venue should present more matinee performances or include a pre-theatre menu. Both of these methods have been proposed at some point as reliable methods for assessing the value of the arts and culture, particularly by cultural economists. However, as Dave O’Brien points out, although stated preference techniques can capture option and “non-use” values, these techniques are costly; require significant expertise to implement correctly; and, if executed poorly, can produce misleading results (2010, pp. 26–27). They also assume that people are honest and reliable judges of their own wants and needs, and able to compare fundamentally different goods, services, and experiences. Another problem with these methods is that they aim to measure cultural value from the perspective of the general public rather than from audiences (or “users”) themselves. Like much of the current scholarship in cultural policy, they therefore cast their gaze predominantly on people who choose not to engage with the subsidised arts as opposed to those who do. They are based, therefore, largely on hypotheticals and so fail to capture and interpret value and impact in any meaningful way from the perspective of engaged audiences.

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Revealed Preference Techniques Another accepted approach to providing a quantitative value for the arts and culture comes in the form of revealed preference techniques. Unlike contingent valuation methods, which are hypothesis based, revealed preference techniques assess how people actually behave in markets—for example whether the opening of a new arts centre makes a neighbourhood more or less attractive for house buyers to live in. There are two main methods used to reveal consumers’ actual preferences: hedonic pricing and travel costs. Hedonic pricing captures the relationship between a good or a service and related market prices. So to refer back to the earlier example, the researcher would calculate the impact of the arts centre on house prices in the area. The travel costs method assesses the extent to which people value something based on the amount of time they are willing to spend travelling to consume or engage with it, and infers monetary values from standard travel costs. At first sight, this is a useful method for the arts sector to adopt, as we know from existing audience research that drive time is a significant determinant of attendance at a given venue and is used therefore for the purposes of geographic segmentation (Hill et al. 2003). However, the method lacks sophistication and can significantly undervalue audiences who benefit randomly from a naturally short travel time to a given venue. The main advantage of revealed preference methods is that they are based on real, rather than hypothetical, markets and thus on what people actually do rather than what they claim they might do. The main drawbacks, however, are that they require a significant amount of complex primary research and rely on a highly questionable relationship between cause and effect.

Subjective Wellbeing A more prevalent, if equally controversial and contested, approach to capturing cultural value is the method of subjective wellbeing. Subjective wellbeing (SWB) aims to calculate people’s own internal judgements of what enhances their own wellbeing. Valuations of SWB are generally derived by evaluating the impact of an event or activity on wellbeing and then calculating the level of additional income that would be required for an individual to achieve the same change in wellbeing (O’Brien 2010). This technique of calculating SWB is referred to as income compensation. It is a highly contested method that has been deployed (some might argue manipulated) by

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academics, civil servants, and policymakers to make the financial case for arts funding, as demonstrated in the following citation: Headlines such as ‘Dancing makes people as happy as a £1,600 pay rise’ in the Telegraph emerge from the commissioning of language to tell a simple and selective story of cultural value. (Swinford 2014, cited in Oman and Taylor 2018, p. 230)

As illustrated here, the income compensation methodology is manifestly trite and it is based on two false premises: firstly, that the public is capable of isolating the value and benefits of complex, multidimensional cultural experiences; and secondly, that this value can (or indeed should) be expressed in monetary terms (Walmsley 2012). The main advantage of SWB is that it reflects wider topical debates about the relationships between the arts and health and about how to evaluate the general state of a nation in uneconomic terms. However, the problem with attempts to measure wellbeing as a proxy for cultural value is that there remains “no definite set of indicators which can measure the contribution of culture and sport to quality of life and wellbeing, regardless of how these terms are defined” (Hamilton and Scullion, as cited in Galloway et al. 2005, p. 155). Perhaps precisely because they cannot be easily measured, the UK’s Office of National Statistics recently decided to omit the arts, culture, and heritage from the headline measures of national wellbeing (Holden 2012). Evidence from other sectors too indicates that SWB is a highly affective construct that is strongly influenced by individual personality traits (Moum 2007). This might well have validity implications for adopting the methodology in the arts sector: for example, when interviewing generally positive people immediately after an emotional opera (Walmsley 2012). In this sense, then, SWB is subject to some of the same limitations as qualitative methods, in particular regarding questions of reliability and generalisability. The other main methodological problem is that there are literally hundreds of scales that claim to measure SWB despite the absence of a widely accepted definition of the term (Davern et al. 2007). The ultimate death knell for the method, though, is surely the now public indications that senior civil servants consider wellbeing econometrics a “dud technique” that is decades away from being robust enough for policymaking (Oman and Taylor 2018, p. 238). Subjective wellbeing is perhaps an exemplar of the impossible environment that plagues arts and cultural evaluation. Oman and Taylor (2018)

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argue that the arts and cultural sector currently finds itself in “a doublebind: increasingly expected to look to new models and complicated quantitative techniques to prove its value and impact, while under-resourced to knowledgeably commission and evaluate these forms of research” (p. 230). They are half right in this assumption: most artists and arts organisations do not have the requisite expertise to commission econometric research— and why should they? But the rhetoric around the need to prove value and impact in econometric terms is overblown. Whilst in certain Western polities governmental culture departments do seem to want more parity with other departments in how they make evidence-based funding decisions, arts councils and regional governments seem to be increasingly interested in qualitative methodologies that might generate stories that are potent and universal, rather than figures that often become little more than a stick to beat the sector with. Even in the UK, the arts and culture have actually not been cut on the frontline as severely as they might have been since the financial crisis of 2008–2009, which suggests that the ongoing threats of “if you treasure it, measure it” remain somewhat hollow. Quantitative methods certainly have their place in audience research but as Katya Johanson points out, quantitative studies “have lent themselves to measuring levels of impact or engagement, but have not necessarily been able to establish the factors that contribute to that engagement” (Johanson 2013, p. 169). In order to explore the potential of different qualitative methods to offer fresh insights into audience engagement, we will now turn our attention therefore to qualitative research.

Qualitative Methods Qualitative approaches to research are widely credited with the potential to provide rich, nuanced and context-dependent analysis of phenomena that preclude a standardised or uniform approach (Rubin and Rubin 2005, p. 242). Unlike quantitative researchers, qualitative researchers are interested in depth rather than breadth; they seek to probe their interlocutors in order to unearth often hidden or unconscious values and beliefs; they aim to observe, engage with and get under the skin of their participants to better understand what makes people behave in the way they do, whilst striving to maintain a critical distance. Sometimes, qualitative researchers even cast their participants in the role of co-researchers, and explore research questions with them.

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One of the core aims of qualitative research is to elicit what is generally now referred to as “thick description”. According to Geertz (1973), thick description is microscopic and interpretive; it should interpret “the flow of social discourse”; and the goal of interpretation “consists in trying to rescue the ‘said’ of such discourse from its perishing occasions and fix it in pursuable terms” (pp. 20–21). So one of the strengths of good qualitative research is that it can interpret cultural activity in fine, granular detail and make the interpretation transferrable from one individual example to another. In other words, it can combine the particular with the universal, perhaps in the way that great literature or drama can. Despite all of these potential strengths, it is important to note that qualitative audience research is plagued by a whole host of ethical and methodological challenges, including: vested interests of evaluators and commissioners of evaluation; a defensive tendency towards advocacy rather than objective evaluation; the lack of sufficiently affective language to describe artistic experiences; audiences’ sense of responsibility for their own cultural experiences; their tendency to empathise with audience researchers; and their conflation of cultural value with other sociopolitical values (Johanson and Glow 2015). Qualitative research also struggles to address pernicious problems related to bias, contagion, memory, social class, and reliability. There are two main forms of bias that impact on audience research: confirmation bias and positive bias. Confirmation bias is a form of cognitive bias whereby researchers search for, interpret or remember information in a way that confirms their preconceptions or working hypotheses (Miller et al. 2009). In audience research, this can manifest in a lack of scientific objectivity regarding the value and impact of the arts and culminate in an overly positive analysis of findings. As noted by White and Hede (2008), this is a problem that plagues entire fields such as cultural policy studies, which are “predisposed to homogeneity” and therefore shape a research culture that attempts “to prove that positive impacts exist rather than trying to reach a deeper understanding of what they may be” (p. 22). This issue is merely compounded by what Bourdieu (1984, p. 53) might well label an “interminable circuit of inter-legitimation”—namely, in this case, a research context where “researchers rich in cultural capital study audience members who are equally rich in cultural capital” (Johanson 2013, p. 165). This highlights the need for audience researchers to be open and reflexive about their own positionality and to sample audience participants in a scrupulously rigorous way, to include seemingly “incompetent” and “reluctant” audience members (ibid., p. 166).

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Positive bias occurs as a result of audiences’ tendency to overstate their positive aesthetic experiences.1 This positive bias is compounded by the socalled “peak-end effect”, whereby audiences’ post-performance accounts of their experiences are overly influenced by their peak emotion during performances and the heightened emotion they may experience at the end, which may be impacted even further by the “contagion” of applause (Latulipe et al. 2011, p. 1836). Audience participants are therefore not always the most reliable of research participants, especially because those who selfselect to partake in audience research tend to show too willing and often fulfil the role of fans. Moreover, audiences sometimes struggle to remember accurately how they felt or responded to moments in a performance that may have happened only an hour previously, never mind several years or decades ago.

Interviews and Focus Groups Following the post-performance questionnaire and audience surveys, interviews and focus groups are by far the most common form of audience research. Although subject to all of the limitations described above, interviews provide manifold opportunities for “guided introspection”, where audience participants are encouraged to “introspect or think aloud about themselves and their actions” (Wallendorf and Brucks 1993, p. 341). Whilst structured interviews are rare in audience research, they are useful for email interviews, for example, and have the advantage of producing more directly comparative data. In semi-structured, unstructured or open-ended interviews, questions can be nuanced, tailored and enhanced by probes and follow-ups to obtain the required detail, depth and thick description. Rubin and Rubin have characterised depth interviews as “a window on a time and on a social world that is experienced one person at a time” (2005, p. 14). As such, individual interviews offer ideal opportunities to capture and interpret cultural value and they therefore represent the backbone of qualitative audience research. The inevitable challenge, however, is deciding on what terms to code (or decode and recode) the often abundant (and sometimes redundant)

1 Indeed during a scoping event for the AHRC-funded International Network for Audience Research in the Performing Arts in April 2017, a recurrent issue raised by scholars and practitioners was the need to capture neutral and negative audience responses such as boredom.

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qualitative data produced via interviews in order to analyse it and decipher recurring themes. Alongside qualitative software analysis tools such as NVivo, established analytical techniques such as discourse, thematic and conversation analysis can prove helpful to audience researchers. Despite these methodological crutches, it is at the analysis stage that limitations such as confirmation bias are often most prevalent, as researchers make sometimes arbitrary (or subconsciously biased) decisions about which participants, ideas, stories and quotations to privilege. Audience researchers are starting to develop ever more creative approaches to the standard participant interview. For example, the past two decades have witnessed a flurry of interest in walking interviews, particularly amongst cultural geographers. Mobile conversations or walking interviews have proven particularly adept not only at deconstructing participants’ relationships with spaces, places, and cities, but also at encouraging them to respond in a significantly different way (Jones et al. 2008). Moreover, conducting interviews outdoors or in a neutral space can shift the power dynamic often skewed by researchers being on their home turf, especially when this is in an ‘ivory academic tower’ or a potentially intimidating sparkling new arts centre. Focus groups also have an important role to play in audience research, and particularly in organisational life, where busy marketing and audience development staff may not always have the time to conduct a series of individual interviews. Although compromised on occasion by manifestations of social dominance, shyness, and groupthink, focus groups can empower engaged audience groups by giving them an active voice in an arts organisation. They can also be useful in generating collective interpretations in situations where a rapid consensus is required—for example to “test the pulse” of small audience segment groups or to sound out audiences’ views on a proposed artistic or operational change. Like interviews, focus groups require researchers to have strong listening, communication, and interpersonal skills; but in addition to the skills required to conduct an interview, focus groups also demand excellent facilitation and moderation skills to ensure that the discussion flows in a structured way and is not dominated by a small number of individuals. Post-show discussions or talk-backs could arguably be considered as a certain type of focus group, but in reality, these events are often poorly facilitated (see Conner 2013) and used more as a marketing incentive than to generate any research findings or co-create value with audiences. The role of post-show discussions as a form of audience engagement will be elaborated upon in Chapter 7.

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Narrative Enquiry Despite the fact that narrative accounts provide an important framework for understanding cultural value and “remind us of the need to make the case for culture in a variety of ways” (O’Brien 2010, p. 8), narrative enquiry is under-utilised in audience research. According to Susan Chase (2005), narrative provides a structured method to organise events into a meaningful whole and to see the consequences of events and actions over time (p. 656). This can clearly pay rich dividends in the context of cultural value, particularly when we consider the insight from cognitive psychology that stories can be up to 22 times more powerful than facts alone (Bruner 2009). This is an adage well known to PR practitioners and scholars, and one that is deployed to great effect of course in activities such as advertising and propaganda. But in the context of the arts and culture, scholars and practitioners often shy away from stories in the belief that they are purely anecdotal, and therefore lack rigour or transferability. This takes us back to the discussion in the previous chapter regarding the need to capture stories that “cut through” the noise and approach the universal. Considering that this is one of the ultimate goals of playwrights, composers, directors, and choreographers, it is clearly an activity that the performing arts sector should excel at. Narrative accounts generally take the form of stories, journal entries, diaries, and even life stories, autobiographies, photographs and performances (Seale 2012, p. 442). They therefore tend to present subjective accounts generated by individuals, usually in a less immediately mediated way that via other forms of qualitative research, where the researcher is more in control of the narrative. As McCormack maintains, narrative enquiry can prevent the nuances and complexity of the participant’s experience from being simplified and fractured into smaller components or themes (cited in White and Hede 2008, p. 26). In their own narrative study of the impact of art on individuals, White and Hede (2008) respond to McCormack’s theory by calling for a paradigm shift in modes of enquiry, highlighting the uncomfortable truth that impact is complex, subjective and contingent. By fostering deeply personal insights into impact, narrative accounts can capture effectively the subjective and contingent nature of impact and they thus offer rich possibilities for thick, microscopic description as well as more creative and reflexive manifestations of impact. In other words, they can capture impact on its own terms.

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Ethnography and Anthropology There is much debate as to what actually distinguishes anthropology from ethnography and it is therefore sensible to regard them concurrently and in a holistic way. In his heralded lecture on the topic, Tim Ingold argues that the aim of anthropology is “to seek a generous, comparative but nevertheless critical understanding of human being and knowing in the world we all inhabit” (2007, p. 69). Unlike ethnography, which Ingold characterises as describing the lives of people with “an accuracy and sensitivity honed by detailed observation and prolonged first-hand experience” (ibid.), the main objective of anthropology is to engage in “participatory dialogue” (p. 87). A good example of the former approach is Penelope Woods’ (2015) study of audience members at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, which provides a number of meticulous insights into audiences’ “skilful” viewing strategies. At their best, ethnographic and indeed auto-ethnographic accounts of audiency can provide rich and thick descriptions of audience engagement, replete with observational detail that is often lost in surveys, focus groups and interviews. At their worst, however, they can descend into banal description and assumption and certainly in the past have given audience research a reputation for being superficial and overly speculative. Ingold clarifies the difference between ethnography and anthropology further by highlighting the immersive role of anthropologists, who function most effectively when they work and study with people: Immersed with them in an environment of joint activity, they learn to see things (or hear them, or touch them) in the ways their teachers and companions do. […] anthropology, therefore, does more than furnish us with knowledge about the world […]. It rather educates our perception of the world, and opens our eyes and minds to other possibilities of being. The questions we address are philosophical ones; of what it means to be a human being […] and the balance of freedom or constraint in people’s relations with others […], of the connections between language and thought, between words and things […]. (Ingold 2007, pp. 82–83, original italics)

So anthropological methods generally involve engaging actively with participants rather than observing from a distance how they behave. Ingold contends that anthropology thrives on what he calls “the sideways glance” (2007, p. 83); front-of-house staff in performing arts venues might well benefit from acting more like anthropologists by observing and discussing with audiences rather than providing touchpoints of effective customer service.

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Netnography A significant variant of ethnography is “netnography”—an emerging method which involves studying people’s online interactions. Robert Kozinets defines netnography as “participant-observational research based in online fieldwork [which] uses computer-mediated communications as a source of data to arrive at the ethnographic understanding and representation of a cultural or communal phenomenon” (2010, p. 60). Netnography generally involves the detailed content analysis of participants’ digital communications to provide a comparative and systematic textual analysis (Seale 2012). Kozinets maintains that netnography can help to generate new theories about emerging ideas and practices. This is particularly the case for digital engagement projects, where audiences may be engaged in and feeding back on innovative platforms and tools. A case study of digital engagement that involved an element of netnography is provided in Chapter 8, and it provides some insights into how the method can effectively respond to Martin Barker’s call to investigate how audiences belong to interpretive communities, how researchers might begin to “draw boundaries” around such communities and how we might measure audience members’ “degrees of commitment” to a community (2006, p. 130).

Deep Hanging Out An anthropological audience research method that is gradually starting to gain traction in the field is “deep hanging out” (Geertz 1998; Walmsley 2018). There is very little literature available on deep hanging out, despite the fact it has been described as “the future of localized, long-term, closein, vernacular field research” (Wogan 2004, p. 130). The term was coined (albeit disparagingly) by James Clifford in 1997 and rehabilitated by Geertz (1998) in the title of a book review he authored for The New York Review of Books to describe the fieldwork method of immersing oneself in a cultural, group or social experience on an informal level. Deep hanging out is best understood as a research approach or umbrella method rather than a singular method in its own right. Like action research, it adopts and relies on more established qualitative methods such as mobile conversations, walking interviews, guided introspection and “interactive introspection” (Ellis 1991). In interactive introspection, although the researcher still encourages the participant to introspect, the ultimate focus becomes “the emergent experiences of both parties” (Ellis 1991, p. 30). In

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this sense, deep hanging out can be understood as a form of participatory action research (Burns 2007) because it can account for multiple realities and sometimes even liberate subjugated knowledge (Yu 2004). The aim of deep hanging out is to make the experiences and ideas of participants the primary material through which knowledge is generated in situ. To this end, participants are often treated as “co-researchers” in deep hanging out, following Moustakas’s (1990) model of “heuristic research”. Hartley and Benington argue that co-research “establishes a dialectical process of enquiry by drawing on the complementary perspectives, interests, skills, and knowledge bases of academics and practitioners” (2000, p. 463). This sometimes implies that a grounded theory approach provides the most suitable methodological framework for deep hanging out, because research questions can be co-designed according to the backgrounds and interests of all parties. Regardless, collaborative research approaches such as deep hanging out can bring a more democratic perspective to politically loaded topics like cultural value and help to circumnavigate confirmation bias. In order to illustrate how deep hanging out works in practice and the kind of personal accounts of cultural value that it can solicit, I will now share a very short case study from a published article on cultural value (Walmsley 2018). This case study focuses on Gillian, one of ten co-researchers in a project which took place in Leeds (UK) in 2013–2014. Gillian has a longstanding interest in the arts, especially in creative writing. She regularly attends creative workshops, has sung in a choir, and regularly participates in and/or volunteers at arts festivals. Gillian’s participation in the arts connects many aspects of her life, and having worked in several unfulfilling jobs in the past, she is now keen to focus her future employment prospects on the arts. Being involved in a research project on cultural value encouraged Gillian to reflect on the value that the arts bring to her life: I’d never really thought about why the arts are important to me until I was involved in this research. Being asked the question made me realise how much of my life has an arts or cultural link […] and I’ve been inspired by people and institutions […]. I’ve realised that this is where I’m happiest – being creative, being inspired by the arts and culture of the city and region.

It is plain to see even from this short excerpt that the simple act of participating in audience research can enhance the perceived value that participants derive from the arts. Indeed it is only through conscious reflection that individuals make sense of and invest meaning in their experiences (Reason

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2010, p. 21). This is perhaps the core rationale behind audience engagement itself, and it illustrates how important methodological considerations are to both the academic field and the professional practice of audience engagement. One of the advantages of deep hanging out over shorter-term qualitative methods such as depth interviews and focus groups is that it allows for a multiplicity of modes and moments of communication, and encourages the development of a longer-term, more honest and equal relationship between co-researchers. However, this type of co-research is intensive and time-consuming; it inevitably generates some significant ethical considerations; and it is certainly not without its limitations. The overriding consideration is perhaps to what extent deep hanging out constitutes a genuinely democratic or bidirectional process. This in turn raises questions of power and control between academic researchers and so-called co-researchers. My personal reflection on this is that deep hanging out generated the most equal power dynamic of any research process I have ever taken part in, as it genuinely realised Ingold’s call for anthropologists to “immerse” themselves with participants “in an environment of joint activity” (2007, p. 82) following a process perhaps akin to what Margaret Ledwith (2007) has labelled “emancipatory action research” and “critical praxis”.

Participatory Methods With praxis in mind, one of the downsides of all of the qualitative methods explored thus far is that they rely on language as the predominant mode of communicating value and impact. Nobody can fully capture their aesthetic experiences in language and as any audience researcher will concede, some participants find it particularly challenging to articulate their responses to the performing arts in words. In the course of the project described above, several of our participants expressed frustration about the limitations of verbal communication and stressed the importance of artistic or aesthetic expressions of value. This means that audience researchers need to sometimes draw on methods that circumnavigate the limitations of the semantic. Participatory methods such as sketching, painting, and singing provide opportunities to express cultural value and impact in its own terms, in nonverbal formats that are in keeping with the object of research. As Matthew Reason (2010) argues, the creative responses to a performance can create a dialogue between an audience member and his or her own artistic experience: for example, drawing can be disruptive, creative and intuitive.

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Cognitive mapping is another creative method (used predominantly by cognitive psychologists) that has been used by impact evaluators to provide non-verbal insights into questions of belonging and empowerment. For example, Tomke Lask, one of the researchers on Liverpool’s Impacts ’08 project, was interested in how citizens perceived and lived in their cities before and after the city’s year as European Capital of Culture. Lask (2011) was interested in exploring to what extent people’s cognitive images of the city might change because of an artistic intervention, so she asked her participants to draw personal maps of Liverpool before the Capital of Culture year began and then about six months after the event. This creative method produced some visually arresting insights into the impact of culture and tapped into participants’ subconsciousness in a way that language rarely does. Guided visualisation is another participatory approach to audience research that has been used to positive effect. Guided visualisation is a form of creative facilitation that has been described as “an evocative technique that guides participants to a different state of mind” (Baxter et al. 2013, p. 118). In a guided visualisation process, research participants are taken on a short guided journey during which the researcher uses specific word prompts to “attune participants to the sensory, emotional, and other intangible elements of experience” in order to help them to re-experience a specific arts event in an immersive way (ibid.). Following the guided visualisation, participants are encouraged to note down, draw or discuss whatever immediately comes into their minds, which can evoke forgotten feelings, sensations and memories, and unlock hidden meanings. By re-immersing participants in a given context or environment, this experiential process can counteract some of the limitations and imperfections of conscious memory. Guided visualisation has been used in various arts settings, perhaps most notably as a form of arts therapy with dementia patients. The visual matrix offers a similarly creative attempt to facilitate the postexperience sense-making of audiences. Visual matrix methodology is an image-led, group-based method that enables researchers to study “the aesthetic and affective aspects of audience experience” that “arise in the interaction between” artistic events and the cultural imaginaries of different audience groups (Froggett et al. 2019, p. 162). In a visual matrix, between 6 and 30 participants are assembled in a snowflake formation to enhance democratic group discussion as free from power imbalances as possible. Participants are encouraged by facilitators to offer images, thoughts and feelings aroused by the artistic event and/or by each other’s associations

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(ibid., p. 166). The advantage of this method is that it is “group sensitive”: because it is “attuned to affective and aesthetic impacts” (ibid., p. 162), the method enables groups to articulate lived experiences in a collective social setting, which to date remains relatively rare in audience research. Participatory methods such as guided visualisation and visual matrices can not only circumnavigate the limitations of language to capture the collective, multisensory and spiritual dimensions of the audience experience; they can also “take the research inquiry beyond ‘harvesting’ conscious information to ‘mining’ for beyond conscious insights” (Baxter 2010, p. 132). Moreover, they can also help arts organisations to develop fundamentally different kinds of relationships with their audiences: if audience research participants are treated as active partners rather than simply sources of data, organisations can reimagine the role of their audiences and create “peoplefocused enrichment strategies” that achieve the dual objective of fulfilling their artistic missions and delivering lasting value to their audiences (Baxter et al. 2013, p. 127). This provides further support for the recurrent theme in this book that audience research can engage audiences and be enriching in and of itself.

Neuroscience and Biometric Methods The aim of biometric research is to investigate physiological signals, or what we might call embodied experiences, in order to reveal otherwise hidden human reactions and responses related to emotion, attention, cognition, and arousal. Like the participatory and creative research methods explored above, a key advantage of biometric methods is that they circumnavigate the traditional reliance on language and are in effect “semantically blind” (Vincs 2013, p. 138). Despite this clear benefit, it is therefore surprising to note that to date, very little biometric research has been carried out with arts audiences. However, thanks largely to the rapid development of cheaper technology such as smartwatches, biometric enquiries are gradually starting to supplant researchers’ traditional reliance on hand-held devices, which required audiences to report their own perceptions of their neural activity and response and therefore seriously limited their reliability. The few biometric studies that do exist suggest that the collective experience of being in a live audience can cause audiences’ hearts to beat in synchrony and their brainwaves to sync. There is thus emerging evidence that a collective live arts experience can produce “common physiological

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reactions” in audience members which synchronise them as a group (University College London 2017). However, other neuroscientific studies (e.g. Gaser and Schlaug 2003; Seung et al. 2005) have indicated structural differences in how professional artists react as audiences, indicating, for example, that performers who listen to music exhibit different brain responses and auditory processes from those without musical training (Pitts 2013). As a result of generally small sample sizes and the fact that biometric equipment is not yet sophisticated enough to produce holistic neuroscientific data, the most reliable results are achieved when biometric data from a variety of measures are combined. However, one of the few existing performance studies incorporating biometric data demonstrated that it is impossible to treat live performances as controlled laboratory experiments and highlighted the myriad challenges to contend with, including the risk of technology providing a distraction from the performance itself (Latulipe et al. 2011). This study also outlined the methodological benefits of evaluating audience engagement rather than the much more subjective and contentious variable of enjoyment. Although audience researchers who engage with neuroscientific methods are few and far between, those who do so testify to their far-reaching implications, which, as Kim Vincs maintains, extend far beyond the arts themselves: Knowledge generated by contemporary neuroscience about how the brain perceives and understands patterns in sensory input through art is […] simply another way of understanding the cultural forces that shape us, because brain function and cultural influence exist in a mutual relationship in which each shapes the other. (2013, p. 134)

Neuroscientific approaches to audience research can thus offer privileged insights into how our brains have evolved per se, and this is why teams of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists (such as colleagues at UCL) are starting to become interested in audience research. Ultimately, however, although neuroscientific approaches to audience research such as biometric methods can help to circumnavigate the limitations of qualitative research such as bias, contagion, memory loss, peak-end effect, and reliability, they can only ever really prove how audiences’ minds and bodies are responding to an external influence; they can’t capture why given physiological responses are provoked. Like quantitative methods, therefore, they need

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to be used in tandem with qualitative methods in order to produce meaningful insights into audience behaviour.

Mixed-Methods Research Quantitative and qualitative methods can be effectively deployed in combination to analyse the same data (Alasuutari 1995, p. 6). Mixed-methods research (MMR) provides a robust alternative to the false dichotomy between qualitative vs. quantitative and constructivist vs. positivist research that culminated in the so-called paradigm wars of the 1900s (Flick 2016). MMR can be understood as: research in which more than one paradigmatic or methodological approach, method of data collection, and/or type of analysis strategy is integrated during the course of undertaking the research, regardless of how those approaches or methods might individually be classified, and with a common purpose that goes beyond that which could be achieved with either method alone. (Bazeley and Kemp 2012, p. 55)

Considering the overwhelming theoretical evidence that mixed-methods approaches to value and impact evaluation produce the most robust, nuanced and holistic results, it is astonishing how scarce mixed-methods studies actually are in the arts. As Kirsty Sedgman points out, there exists “a methodological lacuna within the discipline, which has not traditionally offered training in those analytical methods that study the interplay between qualitative and quantitative data” (2017, p. 310). However, certain high profile studies have successfully combined quantitative and qualitative methods to provide rich insights into the drivers, impact, and value of cultural engagement. For example, the diverse and innovative methods deployed by the evaluation team explored the impact of Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008 in a holistic, longitudinal way before, during and after the event. The mixed-methods approach provided a genuine voice to the lived experiences of Liverpool residents; succeeded in exploring processes as well as outcomes; and contextualised impact data by assessing the surrounding narratives (Garcia et al. 2010, p. 5). The Impacts ’08 evaluation comprised over 30 qualitative and quantitative research projects and incorporated a range of longitudinal evaluation methodologies, including stakeholder analysis, economic impact analysis, media impact analysis, business impact analysis, demographic analysis,

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and social anthropology. Specific research methods deployed by the team included depth interviews, focus groups, participant observation, cognitive mapping, surveys, questionnaires, and community workshops. Mixed methods approaches currently appear to be more common in the visual arts and museums sector, perhaps because audiences in these kinds of spaces are more fluid and benefit from higher “dwell times” than their counterparts in the performing arts, who tend to be herded en masse into darkened performance spaces and then herded out again to the bar or the car park, with remarkably limited opportunities for meaning-making. So to a large extent, the growing field of visitor studies has succeeded where audience studies has thus far failed—namely in applying a range of empirical methods to deconstruct the audience experience. An excellent example of mixed-methods enquiry in museums are Dirk vom Lehn’s studies of museum visitors’ embodied and interactive responses to exhibitions (vom Lehn 2010; vom Lehn and Heath 2016). These innovative studies draw on a combination of video ethnography, sociological workplace studies, and conversation analysis to investigate the social role of museums in the situated context of the museum floor. Vom Lehn highlights the relative scarcity of audiences’ individual and collective engagement with art and describes the process and benefits of his analytical approach as follows: The analysis of audiovisual data elaborates on the ways in which participants produce and make sense of particular actions. The analytical work focuses on the practices and reasoning that inform the practical accomplishment of every day, emergent, context embedded activities. (2010, p. 36)

This explanation of a complex methodological approach highlights the potential of mixed methods approaches to capture the complexity of situated engagement and the processes, rather than the outcomes, of audiences’ meaning-making activities. It also confirms Johanson’s affirmation that “[t]he challenge for the researcher of the audience experience is perhaps not to select the most appropriate technique, but to identify an appropriate combination of techniques” (2013, p. 170).

Triangulation Triangulation has been proposed by many scholars as a robust framework for a critical and reflexive approach to MMR. For example, Flick (2016) argues that we need to integrate mixed methods and triangulation into

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“a more comprehensive and more adequate concept of using multiple approaches in social research” (p. 46). Even within the narrow field of audience research itself, scholars such as Willmar Sauter have advocated for “systematic inquiries into the concepts we apply”, arguing that a plural approach to the application of audience research methods “is part of the epistemological foundations of our discipline as well as the basis of the empirical work we accomplish” (2000, pp. 48–49). Although triangulation was originally conceived as a means of validation (e.g. between individual methods, data sets, and researchers) it has now broadened out into a quest for “broader, deeper, more comprehensive understandings of what is studied”, including the isolation of discrepancies and contradictions in the findings (ibid., p. 53). The aim of triangulation is not to pragmatically combine different methods, but rather to take into account their theoretical perspectives (ibid., p. 54). A triangulation approach must therefore be holistic and embedded in the research design; it must accept (and indeed celebrate) cross-disciplinary tensions and embark from a position of empirical transparency and openness. There are different forms and schools of triangulation, however, and Flick (2016) advocates for “systematic triangulation”. He outlines the core principles of this systematic approach as follows: 1. Investigator triangulation: collaboration between several researchers from different theoretical, epistemological, and methodological backgrounds; 2. Theory triangulation: explicitly using differing theoretical perspectives to generate research methods that approach an issue from several angles; 3. Methodological triangulation: not just the combination of methods but the triangulations of methodologies including appropriate methods and their theoretical, epistemological, and conceptual backgrounds; 4. Data triangulation: integrating the various theoretical and methodological perspectives into the research design so that the data generated offer a rich, meaningful and complex understanding of the research issue; 5. Systematic triangulation of perspectives: the integration of the diverse perspectives of all of the study’s key stakeholder groups. (Flick 2016, pp. 54–55)

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We can see here how systematic triangulation is fiercely inter- (rather than cross-) disciplinary, relying on interventions from a diverse range of investigators embarking on shared research questions from diverse theoretical perspectives. One key advantage of interdisciplinary research is that it can cope with the complexity of wicked problems such as cultural value, and it therefore represents an appropriate methodological approach to explore questions of audiences’ multisensory experiences of the performing arts. In the case of audience research, systematic triangulation might also embrace the positions and perspectives of artists, composers, directors, choreographers, producers, programmers and audiences to produce a complex polyvocal account of the act of audiency. Considering the complexity of the research questions involved in audience research and the significant limitations of any single method, it is hardly surprising that many empirical studies into the audience experience culminate in familiar findings and fail to attract the attention and legitimisation of key stakeholder groups such as policymakers. The advantage of mixed-method approaches, especially when they are embedded systematically into the research design, is that they can circumnavigate the biases and limitations of single methods and triangulate data in a way that offers a meaningful and complex response to the underlying problems and questions.

Conclusion In the course of this chapter, I have provided a critical overview of the main research methods deployed by researchers to explicate the audience experience and endeavour to capture fresh insights into questions of cultural value and impact. This is an exciting time for audience research, partly because the drive towards interdisciplinary collaboration in the academy is encouraging audience scholars to pool their respective methodological traditions and methods, and this is starting to pay dividends in terms of triangulating what have traditionally been perceived to be competing and incompatible approaches to research. What is starting to emerge is a complementary toolkit of rigorous audience research methods that will support the emerging field of audience studies and hopefully increase its perceived legitimacy. There remains a tension between theoretical and empirical approaches to audience research, both within the academy and between academics and arts practitioners. But with the rise of participatory culture, co-creation

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and co-research, audiences’ voices are finally getting stronger and more potent, and this is effecting a step change in the role that audiences play in the research that is conducted about them. As we have seen in the course of this chapter, econometric methods such as preference techniques and Subjective Wellbeing are on the wane, whilst audience-centred, participatory and biometric research is in the ascendance. It seems, then, that the traditional fear and suspicion of audiences as active participants in their own phenomenon that characterised a significant amount of audience research in the last century is finally starting to dissipate. However, audience researchers often find themselves embedded in disciplinary or departmental silos and demarcated as either qualitative or quantitative researchers. As with scholars of cultural value, they often struggle to find a third way between a quest for the particular and findings that are statistically valid and therefore scalable and generalisable. If audience researchers synthesised the ethnographic and anthropological philosophies of Geerz and Ingold, they might conclude that the ultimate role of the audience researcher is to generate a microscopic, generous and critical understanding of the value and impact of the arts from audiences’ own perspective and then to interpret this in a comparative and transferrable way, which might succeed in combining the particular with the universal, in capturing both measurable impact and immeasurable value. To achieve this effectively, they may well need to draw in researchers from other disciplines and embrace established and emerging methods such as big data and biometrics. This chapter has demonstrated how researching with audiences can in and of itself provide a powerful means of engagement, and in the following chapter, I will develop this idea by exploring the rise of audience engagement at the expense of arts marketing and by investigating the correlation between audience engagement and enrichment.

References Alasuutari, P. 1995. Researching culture: Qualitative method and cultural studies. London, Sage. Barker, M. 2006. I have seen the future and it is not here yet …; or, on being ambitious for audience research. The Communication Review, 9(2), pp. 123–141. Baxter, L. 2010. From luxury to necessity: The changing role of qualitative research in the arts. In: O’Reilly, D. and Kerrigan, F. (eds.) Marketing the arts: A fresh approach. London, Routledge, pp. 121–140.

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Baxter, L., O’Reilly, D. and Carnegie, E. 2013. Innovative methods of inquiry into arts engagement. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 113–128. Bazeley, P. and Kemp, L. 2012. Mosaics, triangles, and DNA: Metaphors for integrated analysis in mixed methods research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 6, pp. 55–72. Blau, H. 1990. The audience. Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press. Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Harvard, Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. S. 2009. Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Burns, D. 2007. Systemic action research. Bristol, Polity Press. Chase, S. E. 2005. Narrative inquiry: Multiple lenses, approaches, voices. In: Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, Y. S. (eds.) The Sage handbook of qualitative research. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage, pp. 651–679. Conner, L. 2013. Audience engagement and the role of arts talk in the digital era. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Creswell, J. W. 2014. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. 4th ed. London, Sage. Davern, M. T., Cummins, R. A. and Stokes, M. A. 2007. Subjective wellbeing as an affective-cognitive construct. Journal of Happiness Studies, 8, pp. 429–449. Ellis, C. 1991. Sociological introspection and emotional experience. Symbolic Interaction, 14(1), pp. 23–50. Flick, U. 2016. Mantras and myths: The disenchantment of mixed-methods research and revisiting triangulation as a perspective. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(1), pp. 46–57. Froggett, L., Muller, L. and Bennett, J. 2019. The work of the audience: Visual matrix methodology in museums. Cultural Trends, 28(2–3), pp. 162–176. Galloway, S., Hamilton, C., Scullion, A. and Bell, D. 2005. Quality of life and well-being: Measuring the benefits of culture and sport—Literature review and thinkpiece. Edinburgh, Scottish Executive Social Research. Garcia, B., Melville, R. and Cox, T. 2010. Creating an impact: Liverpool’s experience as European Capital of Culture. Liverpool, University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University. Gaser, C. and Schlaug, G. 2003. Brains structures differ between musicians and non-musicians. Journal of Neuroscience, 23(27), pp. 9240–9245. Geertz, C. 1973. The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. New York, Basic Books. Geertz, C. 1998. Deep hanging out. The New York Review of Books, 45(16), p. 69.

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Hanquinet, L., O’Brien, D. and Taylor, M. 2019. The coming crisis of cultural engagement? Measurement, methods, and the nuances of niche activities. Cultural Trends, 28(2–3), pp. 198–219. Hartley, J. and Benington, J. 2000. Co-research: A new methodology for new times. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 9(4), pp. 463–476. Hill, L., O’Sullivan, C. and O’Sullivan, T. 2003. Creative arts marketing. 2nd ed. Oxford, Butterworth Heinemann. Holden, J. 2012. New Year, new approach to wellbeing? Available from: http:// www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionalsblog/2012/jan/03/arts-heritage-wellbeing-cultural-policy [Accessed 5 January]. Ingold, T. 2007. Anthropology is not ethnography. In: Proceedings of The British Academy 2008. London, The British Academy, pp. 62–92. Johanson, K. 2013. Listening to the audience: Methods for a new era of audience research. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 159–171. Johanson, K. and Glow, H. 2015. A virtuous circle: The positive evaluation phenomenon in arts audience research. Participations, 12(1), pp. 254–270. Jones, P., Bunce, G., Evans, J., Gibbs, H. and Hein, J. R. 2008. Exploring space and place with walking interviews. Journal of Research Practice [Online], 4(2). Kozinets, R. 2010. Netnography: Doing ethnographic research online. London, Sage. Lask, T. 2011. Cognitive maps: A sustainable tool for impact evaluation. Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 3(1), pp. 44–62. Latulipe, C., Carroll, E. A. and Lottridge, D. 2011. Evaluating longitudinal projects combining technology with temporal arts. In: International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Vancouver, BC. Ledwith, M. 2007. On being critical: Uniting theory and practice through emancipatory action research. Educational Action Research, 15(4), pp. 597–611. Lilley, A. and Moore, P. 2013. Counting what counts: What Big Data can do for the cultural sector. London, NESTA. Miller, F. P., Vandome, A. F. and McBrewster, J. 2009. Confirmation bias. Saarbrücken, VDM Publishing. Moum, T. 2007. A critique of “Subjective Wellbeing as an affective cognitive construct” by Davern, Cummins and Stokes. Journal of Happiness Studies, 8, pp. 451–453. Moustakas, C. 1990. Heuristic research: Design, methodology, and applications. London, Sage. O’Brien, D. 2010. Measuring the value of culture: A report to the Department for Culture Media and Sport. London, Department for Culture Media and Sport.

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CHAPTER 6

From Consumption to Enrichment: The Long Slow Death of Arts Marketing

Introduction The aim of this chapter is to present a critical analysis of the main questions and issues pertaining to the marketing of the performing arts to audiences. Building on the conclusions of the previous chapters, and particularly on the insights into the audience experience explicated thus far in the book, this chapter will serve as a provocation to fundamentally reconfigure the arts marketing concept in order to reflect the conceptual evolution of the field towards notions and processes of audience engagement and enrichment. The chapter will expose the limitations of the traditional marketing mix for contemporary philosophies, modes and techniques of audience engagement and suggest an alternative, audience-centred paradigm fit for contemporary arts marketing scholarship and for twenty-first-century performing arts organisations. I will argue in the course of the chapter that we are currently witnessing a paradigm shift, as performing arts organisations and scholars continue to reject the outmoded principles of marketing and adopt a more engagement-based approach. As an emerging academic field, arts marketing owes much to complementary, if exceptionally cross-disciplinary, academic disciplines such as arts management, business studies, cultural policy studies, cultural economics, museology, musicology, performance studies, psychology, sociology, semiotics, strategic management, and consumer behaviour (Dennis et al. 2011; O’Reilly 2011). The problem that will be elucidated in the course of this © The Author(s) 2019 B. Walmsley, Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts, New Directions in Cultural Policy Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26653-0_6

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chapter is that traditionally, the focus has tended to fall on the marketing rather than the arts; that seemingly entrenched cross-disciplinary tensions have prevented the fully interdisciplinary approach required by this inherently hybrid discipline. So the underlying thesis behind this chapter is that it is time to redress the balance and reassert the primal role that arts and humanities research can play in tailoring the discipline back to its creative and not-for-profit origins. Ultimately, I will argue that as a term and as a concept, arts marketing has passed its sell-by date: having alienated artistic and audiences for decades, it is now finally being supplanted by the advent of socio-cultural phenomena such as co-creation and by the technological advancements that facilitate these developments. As processes of audience engagement start to eclipse the tired tactics of promotion, there is compelling evidence that we are finally witnessing a paradigm shift in arts marketing.

The History of Arts Marketing The idea of extending the marketing concept to the not-for-profit sector was first advocated in the late 1960s by Levy and Kotler, who argued that marketing activities can no longer be “confined to the traditional economic units that have held them as their function” (1969, p. 67) because they are “everyone’s business” (p. 68). This broadening of the concept was supported by other scholars such as Shapiro (1973), who confirmed just a few years later that marketing was recognised as an intrinsic element of notfor-profit organisations. By the end of the 1970s, what Hirschman (1983) refers to as “the intellectual battle for the acceptance of the broadened perspective of marketing” seemed to have been decisively won (p. 45), perhaps reflecting Debord’s foreboding about the “autocratic reign of the market economy” (1992, n.p.). In the arts, this somewhat pyrrhic victory of the market economy manifested in organisations adopting generic marketing tactics, while remaining highly sceptical about the supposed benefits of either an arts-led or holistic approach: There was no evidence of arts organisations embracing a marketing philosophy due to a fear of perceived complex administrative requirements, antimanagement sentiment, not wishing to upset the status quo and the desire to keep a small but satisfied audience. There was also no indication of the need for a form of marketing which acknowledged the specific requirements

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of the industry. Instead, the implementation of aspects of mainstream marketing was prevalent. (Fillis 2011, p. 12)

Supported both socially and philosophically by high profile movements such as the Frankfurt School and Debord’s Situationists, the not-forprofit sector has long resisted the encroachment of neo-liberal terms and concepts. Steven Hadley’s (forthcoming) comprehensive analysis of the advancement of audience development in Arts Council England testifies to the deep-seated resistance to marketing at a senior national policy level, bearing out Levy and Kotler’s acknowledgement that “nonbusiness groups, institutions and organizations resist the term ‘marketing’ applied to their activities, feeling that it stigmatizes them by implying they value and seek money or success instead of less meretricious goals of social and professional kinds. This means there is a semantic and conceptual problem” (1969, p. 70). If there was a semantic and conceptual problem back in 1969, there is a conceptual crisis in the second decade of the Twenty-First Century where consumers are demanding an increasingly participatory and co-creative role in both production and meaning-making processes. Kotler and Armstrong tried to circumnavigate this problem by redefining marketing in broader, less profit-focused terms, as an activity that involves “determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors do” (2010, p. 55). Kotler and Armstrong go on to describe the aim of marketing as creating value for customers and capturing value from them in return (p. 26). This definition of marketing is useful for arts marketers as it places value and audiences at the heart of marketing activity. But it inevitably raises questions about how audiences perceive the value they derive from the arts and what reciprocal value arts organisations can obtain from their audiences. Chong (2010) also raises the issue of value, questioning whether arts marketers are perceived as image promoters or value creators. This is a fundamental question, which goes to the heart of the debate that frames this chapter. But Chong’s rhetorical question doesn’t go far enough: perceptions are important, but what underlies these perceptions is how arts marketers perceive of themselves and, more fundamentally, which activities they actually prioritise. Hill et al. (2003) define arts marketing as “an integrated management process which sees mutually satisfying exchange relationships with customers as the route to achieving organizational and artistic objectives” (p. 1). This definition succeeds in avoiding the supposition of profit and

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incorporates the realisation of artistic objectives; but although it incorporates the vital aspect of developing mutually beneficial relationships with audiences, it lacks the helpful focus on value evident in Kotler and Armstrong’s and Chong’s definitions. However, Hill et al. go on to develop their vision of arts marketing by articulating it as a process that seeks an interactive relationship with audiences via an integration of artistic objectives and management strategies. We can appreciate in this definition how scholars are now starting to critically apply marketing and management theory to the context of the arts, and how they are increasingly conceptualising arts marketing as an integrated process based on interactive relationships with audiences. The conceptual development of arts marketing is the core focus of this chapter and it has been traced most effectively by Ruth Rentschler (1998) who provided a useful historical framework at the turn of the millennium. Based on a content analysis of journals covering topics related to arts marketing over the past few decades, Rentschler demarcated the field’s conceptual development into three distinct eras: the Foundation Period (1975–1984); the Professionalization Period (1985–1994); and the Rediscovery Period (from 1995). Rentschler demonstrates how during the Foundation Period the arts sector (led by North America) started to diversify its offer; engage in audience analysis; and think more strategically about the potential benefits of marketing. The Professionalization Period witnessed arts organisations recruiting dedicated marketing staff and even establishing whole marketing departments as they strove to operate in a more tactical, strategic, and financially viable way and respond to their funders’ increasing demands for stronger management and greater accountability. Over this period, they began to invest in strategic audience research in order to segment their audiences and differentiate between different stakeholder groups. It was also during the Professionalization Period that arts marketing began to come of age as an academic field: Rentschler recounts how from 1985 to 1994 five journals ran a combined total of six special issues on arts marketing and how towards the end of this phase, a wider interest in behavioural and social sciences began to manifest (1998, p. 92). As Rentschler somewhat presciently anticipated back in 1998, the trend for a more strategic approach to arts marketing practice has continued into the new millennium, with audience analysis and segmentation gradually becoming standard practice in certain parts of the world. However, at the end of her analysis Rentschler also mused whether we might be on the cusp

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of a new era of arts marketing characterised by a wholesale adoption of relationship marketing based on a more collaborative approach. She called this potential new phase the Rediscovery Period, and in hindsight, it certainly does appear that the period from 1995 to around 2010 was marked by a rediscovery of what arts marketing actually entails, a time when performing artists and organisations started to play, collaborate, co-produce and co-create with audiences and wider communities. This is perhaps demonstrated most explicitly by the rise of live streaming and by the phenomenal popularity of immersive and site-specific or site-responsive work mastered in the UK by “new wave” companies such as Grid Iron, Punchdrunk, National Theatre of Scotland, and National Theatre Wales. I would contend that these kinds of approaches have now in their turn also become mainstream. Marketing has become more about people than data; it is increasingly relational in that it takes place through various forms of dialogue with audiences; and in the context of the performing arts, it involves more than “anticipating customers’ needs”: it requires the inspiration to delight audiences by communicating the potential for lasting and meaningful experiences, pulling emotions and intelligence from people rather than pushing products into an increasingly saturated market. As Jennifer Radbourne (2013) argues, arts marketing has reached a state of “convergence” between creators and consumers, artists and audiences. This development is so marked, Radbourne suggests, that it demands a reconceptualisation of the entire arts marketing paradigm: Relationship marketing theory has been challenged by the new arts consumer who is on a quest for self-actualization where the creative or cultural experience is expected to fulfil a spiritual need that has very little to do with the traditional marketing plan of an arts company or organization […] and who is changing the marketing paradigm. (2013, p. 146)

My argument here is therefore that arts marketing has now entered a fourth era, once which I will label the “Enrichment Period” (2007 to date). Semantically, this new era has once again been led by the United States, where Lynne Conner (2004) first introduced the phrase “audience enrichment”; but although audience enrichment programmes are now commonplace in the USA, the UK, and Australia are also at the forefront of this new approach to arts marketing in terms of both theory and practice. Beginning with the fundamental principles of marketing, I will now trace the development of this new phase, demonstrating how arts marketing has

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transformed from the tactical application of strategic tools to a new conceptual paradigm characterised by the sociological processes of engagement discussed in Chapters 1 and 2.

The Marketing Concept As a discreet discipline, arts marketing has struggled thus far to establish consensus around a coherent and compelling definition of its primary aims and objectives. It therefore suffers from charges of incoherence and illegitimacy (Colbert and St-James 2014). To date, its conceptual paradigm constitutes little more than a palimpsest of McKitterick’s first definition of the marketing concept in 1957, which basically championed the production of products in response to the expressed or latent needs and desires of consumers to maximise profitability (Hirschman 1983, p. 46). The most persistent attempt to differentiate arts marketing conceptually has come from François Colbert (2007), who has repeatedly rejected a consumercentric model in favour of a product-led approach. However, in recent years Colbert and other arts marketing scholars have acknowledged a shift away from “supply-side marketing” in the arts (Colbert and St-James 2014, p. 569) based predominantly on the still emerging cultures of co-creation and audience-centricity. Marketing theory and practice are still essentially based around what is generally referred to as the “marketing mix”. Marketing scholars and practitioners traditionally reference the 4Ps of marketing: the elements of product, place, price, and promotion (McCarthy 1964). “Product” refers to an organisation’s market offering, which it tailors to meet the needs and desires of its customers. Products are affected by their features, quality, variety, design, branding, and related services. In the arts sector, this focus on products is highly problematic, as much of the sector exists to produce memorable experiences rather than tangible products. The second element of the marketing mix is “place”, which defines where the product or experience is available to buy and/or be presented to the audience. As the performing arts are characterised predominantly by live performances, this element is hugely important, as it covers the significant experiential role played by venues: stadia, theatres, museums, art galleries, cinemas, concert halls, etc. In the performing arts sector, “place” is also markedly impacted by strategies and logistics of touring. The third element of the marketing mix is “price”. Pricing strategies are developing apace in the performing

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arts, with strategies such as dynamic pricing becoming increasing popular; but it is worth noting here that in the predominantly non-profit and creative sector of the performing arts, profit and price are often secondary to artistic impact, audience development and accessibility. The fourth and final element of the mix is “promotion”—the mechanisms and activities which promote or advertise the product or experience to audiences and persuade them to buy or engage with it. An updated version of the marketing mix is provided in the 7P model (Booms and Bitner 1981), also referred to as the Services Marketing Mix. This extended version of the mix includes the extra three elements of people, process and physical evidence. The “people” element covers customer service and any personal interaction between the product or experience and the customer or audience member. Its inclusion in the marketing mix represents an acknowledgement of the significant role that people play in selling and promoting products and augmenting experiences. In the performing arts, this could refer to a whole host of workers, from front-ofhouse staff to actors, producers and musicians, although arguably these are an essential part of the product or experience itself. The inclusion of the “process” element highlights the importance of the marketing process described above—the integrated range of marketing activities that comprise the ongoing dialogue between an organisation and its audiences. The final element is “physical evidence” (sometimes called the “physical environment”). This refers to buildings, packaging, flyers, uniforms, tickets programmes, and logos. Although these elements are important in positioning, promoting and enhancing a product or event, it could be argued that they are covered in the product, place, and promotion elements of the mix and therefore do not require their own separate element. It is important to note here that both of these models have been widely critiqued by many marketing scholars. Constantinides (2006), for example, argues that the marketing mix fosters a normative, unstrategic approach, an internal orientation and a lack of interaction and personalisation that ignores the opportunities offered by digital marketing. He outlines the main areas of controversy surrounding the marketing mix as follows: Despite the background and status of the Mix as a major theoretical and practical parameter of contemporary marketing, several academics have at times expressed doubts and objections as to the value and the future of the Mix, proposing alternatives that range from minor modifications to total rejection. It is often evident in both the academic literature and marketing

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textbooks that the mix is deemed by many researchers and writers as inadequate to address specific marketing situations like the marketing of services, the management of relationships or the marketing of industrial products. (Constantinides 2006, p. 409)

With the advent of services marketing in the 1970s and its rapid development into a major sub-discipline of marketing in the 1980s and 1990s, focus started to shift away from production and the traditional predominance of the “product” towards aspects of consumption. This in turn effected a renewed appreciation of consumers and their different needs. Services, it was claimed, differed fundamentally from goods as a result of four key features: intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability, and perishability—the socalled IHIP paradigm (Fisk et al. 1993). It was further argued that services offered no transfer of ownership (Lovelock and Gummesson 2004). There are self-evident synergies here with performing arts experiences, which are generally intangible, heterogeneous and perishable, if not inseparable, and whose ownership (at least legally) remains with the provider. The services marketing paradigm is therefore particularly apposite to the performing arts: as Rentschler puts it, “performing arts organisations are in a service industry in which the focus has shifted to meeting the needs of people […] rather than a static relationship between the market and what can be taken out of it” (1998, p. 86). Within this new context of service, Bernstein (2006) argues that modern consumers are principally concerned with satisfying their own requirements. The 4Ps focus on the seller’s position, she claims, whereas a customer-focussed approach should reflect the buyer’s mindset. Bernstein thus advocates replacing the 4Ps with 4Cs: customer value, customer costs, convenience, and communication. As discussed earlier, the focus on value is highly fitting from the arts marketing perspective; and although the inclusion of communication is potentially valuable, the persistent dominance of cost remains problematic and there is no mention here of the object or nature of any potential customer value. It is also important to distinguish service experiences from aesthetic experiences (Colbert and St-James 2014), because although aspects of service can impact significantly on arts experiences (Maher et al. 2011), they essentially define the surround or augmented product rather than the core aesthetic experience itself. In an attempt to explicate the true nature of the arts exchange, other arts marketing scholars and audience researchers have recently incorporated aspects of hosting and hospitality. For example, Lynne Conner claims that

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we are now living in “the age of the hospitality economy” which requires arts spaces to “desacralize the normative etiquette” in an attempt to feel welcoming and inclusive (2004, pp. 156–157). As apposite as this provocation may appear, particularly in the domain of new audience development, the hospitality metaphor ultimately poses the same conceptual challenges as the service paradigm in that it fails to capture the specific nature of the core product or experience afforded by the arts. I would like to argue here, therefore, that the theoretical assumptions and traditions supporting arts marketing need to be rooted in the arts. This supports Fillis’s view that “a contemporary interpretation of arts marketing should acknowledge its foundations in the application of the marketing mix but it needs to move forward on its own terms” (2011, p. 13). Let’s now move on to consider on what bases we might make the case for what is commonly (and often disparagingly) termed “exceptionalism”.

The Case for Exceptionalism Like marketing, the performing arts are fundamentally based on a threeway process of interactive communication (B2C, C2B, and C2C, or artist/organisation to audience, audience to artist/organisation, and audience to audience). At face value, these commonalities make the performing arts an ideal “product” to market. However, the live and inherently interactive nature of the performing arts, the mystique surrounding their creative processes, the sociological complexities of cultural capital and taste, the diversity of the rapidly developing subgenres, and the complex psychology behind the audience experience actually make the performing arts one of the hardest “products” to market of all. Indeed many audiences and artists feel alienated by the application of generic marketing terminology such as “product” and “consumption” to something they perceive as profoundly experiential and even deeply spiritual. So if the performing arts offer an atypical product for an atypical market, how can we define them in marketing terms and what implications might this have for arts marketers? We could borrow the cultural studies term “symbolic product” (Williams 1958), used to denote “prestige, pride and identity goods” (Khalil 2000). We could employ the more traditional marketing nomenclature of “intangible product”, employed to describe products which can’t be inspected or tried out in advance (Levitt 1981). We could argue that art is a “merit good”, which civilised societies should provide in quantities greater than consumers actually demand

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(Musgrave and Musgrave 1989). Or we could acknowledge the experiential nature of the arts and the autotelic, multisensory experiences that they offer, and opt for “hedonic products” (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982). In the creative industries, consumption is increasingly regarded as a nonutilitarian endeavour to fulfil personal wishes, feelings, and fantasies. This hedonic or experiential perspective on consumption takes account of the symbolic meanings of creative products alongside more subjective consumption goals such as fun, cheerfulness, sociability, and elegance (ibid.). Pertinently for this chapter, Hirschman (1983) goes on to argue in a subsequent article that as a normative framework, the marketing concept is not applicable to art because of art’s intrinsically motivated production values related to aspects of beauty, emotion, and aesthetics. For example, Hirschman maintains that artists prioritise audience groups (e.g. self, peers, experts, and the general public) whose desires they themselves seek to fulfil and that the arts sector often actually disfavours commercial creativity (p. 50). Such propositions would appear to be utterly reasonable in what is essentially a not-for-profit sector (but of course completely unreasonable in the commercial arts). Synthesising the earlier literature on the topic, Hirschman identifies five characteristics that differentiate artistic products: abstraction, subjectivity, non-utilitarianism, uniqueness and their holistic nature; she concludes that these distinctions demand a re-examination of the core theoretical premises of marketing and acknowledgement of its inherent scientific limitations. In a similar vein, O’Sullivan (2013) argues for an egalitarian and emancipatory approach to arts marketing, calling for the adoption of an ethical framework which would champion audiences’ “freedom to respond and participate fully and critically, untrammelled by manipulation or illusion” (p. 30). O’Sullivan ponders at length what the matter is with marketing and speculates what a more critical, co-operative and philosophical approach might render. He concludes, quite justifiably, that arts marketing “may have to find a new way of understanding what marketing means in order to be ethically consistent with its own aims” (ibid., p. 39). An example of what this new approach might look like, O’Sullivan suggests, is the potential for arts marketing to counteract marketing’s inherent “distributive injustice” (Hansen 1981)—the strategic targeting of only the most attractive market segments—a practice that can only be judged as both unethical and antithetical for a public (and publicly funded) good. Like Hirschman and O’Sullivan, Belfiore and Bennett (2008) also highlight the gap between the creative drivers of artists and the consumer

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demand that fuels the traditional marketing concept. This rejection of the utilitarian marketing ethos reflects the Marxist argument that consumption both implies and effects commodification (Blau 1990, p. 323). Following this line of argument, if arts marketing fell into the “broadening” trap and became too consumer-driven, it would defeat its own raison d’être and destroy the very uniqueness that makes the arts marketable in the first place. This paradox is what Debord (1992) might have referred to as “commodity logic”. Many other scholars have highlighted the dangers of conflating cultural and market values, a phenomenon of course which Adorno (1991) blamed for cultural commodification and marketing’s deliberate attempt to cynically manipulate the masses. Unlike commodities, the performing arts are holistic and often unknown before they are performed in front of a live audience, dealing in novelty and symbolic value (O’Connor 2008, p. 65). This symbolic value is one of the core distinguishing features of the performing arts and it places them well beyond the neo-liberal realm of market values, which are driven by mass consumption. The underlying rationale for the assignment of symbolic value to the performing arts is their provenance in primal and tribal behaviour. Walter Benjamin (1970), for example, reminds us that artistic objects find their origins in rites, rituals, and cults, and he laments the lack of “aura” that they are granted in contemporary society—not least, perhaps, as a direct result of marketing, which conspires to reduce them to the level of any other sellable product. In tracing the “homology” between ritual and performance, Victor Turner (1982) also makes an implicit case for the exceptionalism of the performing arts, characterising the phenomenon of what he designates “dramatic time” as aroused, heightened, emotional, playful and liminal. From Benjamin and Turner’s perspective, the performing arts are therefore deeply sociological; they exist as manifestations of human expression and understanding, rather than as marketable products. Similarly nostalgic for the era of social ritual, Barbara Ehrenreich (2007) laments how in much of the Western world human beings have forgotten how to perform and listen together and instead chosen to wall themselves up in “a fortress of ego and rationality” (p. 9). In her extended call for collective artistic expression, Ehrenreich illustrates the supreme ability of the arts to generate “the ritually induced passion or ecstasy that cements social bonds” (pp. 2–3) and urges humankind to renew the bonds that hold its communities together (p. 10) and relocate its “ecstatic possibility” (p. 258). These calls to re-acknowledge and reassert that symbolic and ritual value of the arts reflect the Situationist tenet that art should reposition itself away

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from representation and “having” and instead move back towards “being” through dialogue and community relations (Debord 1992). Considering the reinvigorated calls in cultural policy circles for more diversity and participation in the arts alongside a more everyday approach to creative practice, this Situationism seems to mark the general direction of travel. In this section alone, we have seen how artistic events have been characterised over recent years by theorists as symbolic, intangible, meritorious, prestigious, experiential, aesthetic, autotelic, multisensory, hedonic, abstract, subjective, non-utilitarian, unknown, unique, holistic, emotional, playful, liminal, ritualistic, dialogic, and communitarian. Bearing this complex range of epithets in mind, it seems fitting to adopt a more sociological approach to arts marketing by rejecting the reification of the arts altogether and reconceiving artistic events as extraordinary sociological experiences (Carù and Cova 2003) rather than reducible products. This rejection of product-based marketing implies a significant reconceptualisation of the entire marketing mix—an implication which is being championed in the course of this chapter. The performing arts have been an itinerant art form ever since the days of the troubadours. Whilst touring has always been a mainstay of the performing arts, in recent years there has been a migration away from traditional performance spaces; and the rising trend of site-specific and site-responsive performance has seen performances emerge in a vast array of weird and wonderful spaces, from hotel rooms and tower blocks to swimming pools and ferries. In the UK, this trend has even led to new business models such as the national touring company model adopted by National Theatre of Scotland and National Theatre Wales and the commercial, site-responsive model adopted by Punchdrunk. This development has gradually refocused the attention of theatre-makers from places to spaces, which again challenges the relevance and suitability of the marketing mix in the context of the performing arts.

From Marketing to Engagement Very few scholars have ever assessed the state of arts marketing itself (Fillis 2011, p. 11). However, back in 1969 Levy and Kotler “took stock” of their field and pondered what might lie beyond marketing, which itself, they claimed, had supplanted sales and bartering (see Fig. 6.1). They suggested that “furthering” might be a more acceptable term for the marketing activities of non-profit organisations. Since then, we have of course

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Fig. 6.1 Beyond marketing (Adapted from Levy and Kotler [1969, p. 68])

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?????

MARKETING Using varies means to effect economic transactions

SELLING Face-to-face exchange of goods and money (intentions)

BARTERING Face-to-face exchange of goods

witnessed the so-called “participatory turn” (Ito 2007), which suggests, if not demands, a more collective and collaborative approach to “furthering” from inside and outside of a given organisation. In the context of the performing arts, the past few decades have also witnessed a strong focus on audience development, partly driven by the new public sector management demand for quantifiable evidence of social impact (O’Brien 2010). So there are significant sociological and political drivers that have encouraged (some might say forced) arts organisations to connect more closely and instrumentally with their audiences. But there are also strong artistic and technological drivers, such as co-creation (see Chapter 7) and digital marketing (Chapter 8), which have enabled the performing arts sector to engage on a creative level with audiences, both individually and collectively and both within and beyond the confines of a core artistic programme and venue. Given the semantic and philosophical shift evident both in theory and in practice away from the language of product consumption towards a more relational engagement with an artistic experience, I would like to propose in this chapter that the concept of “marketing” is no longer the overarching activity that connects audiences to performing artists and their respective organisations. This thesis is based not only on the theories and insights explored thus far in the chapter; it is grounded in a comprehensive content analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles over the decade from 2007–2016, which revealed that over this ten-year period 3689 articles were published which contained the words “arts” and “engagement” in their abstracts,

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compared with only 1287 containing both “arts” and “marketing” (Walmsley 2019). This suggests that almost three times as many articles over this era focussed on notions of arts engagement as opposed to arts marketing. This finding appears even more significant when compared with the analysis of the two previous decades: whereas in the era 1987–1996 (which roughly covers Rentschler’s Professionalization Period) there were significantly more articles dedicated to arts marketing than to arts engagement, by the following decade this situation had been reversed, with almost 200 more articles mentioning “engagement” in their abstracts than “marketing” (see Table 6.1). The exponential growth in articles on “audience engagement” between 1997 and 2016 is also striking in the analysis, as is the sharp (if nascent) spike in articles published post-2006 mentioning “audience enrichment” in their abstracts. The overall growth in publications in the field is also worthy of note. This does not mean, of course, that marketing activities no longer play a vital role in performing arts organisations: just as arts marketing should inform and support sales activity, engagement must support and complement marketing activity. But what I’m arguing here is that the ultimate strategic and artistic goal should be engagement rather than marketing. Indeed this content analysis appears to confirm Rentschler’s hypothesis that towards the end of the last century we were on the cusp of a new era which “rediscovered” arts marketing as relational and collaborative. This “Rediscovery Period” (Rentschler 1998) witnessed a significant tipping point in arts management scholarship, as scholars for the first time gave priority to questions of engagement over notions of marketing. Figure 6.2 visually illustrates this tipping point and again highlights the growing dominance of the semantics of engagement over marketing. Although the marketing literature has demonstrably witnessed an exponential rise in the deployment of the term “engagement” since 2006, as we saw in Chapter 1, very few authors have ever attempted to define or nuance Table 6.1 Decade 1987–1996 1997–2006 2007–2016

Key abstract terms (1987–2016) Arts + marketing 193 595 1287

Arts + engagement 111 790 3689

Arts + audience engagement

Arts + audience enrichment

9 38 309

1 1 7

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Fig. 6.2 Development of key abstract terms from 1987–2016 (Walmsley 2019)

the concept. Unlike marketing, then, the concept remains problematically under-theorised and under-developed. As noted in Chapter 1, Brodie et al. (2011) trace the theoretical development of engagement back to relationship marketing’s focus on interactive experience and value co-creation in contrast to the more transactional relationships fostered by traditional marketing encounters. This supports Rentschler’s thesis that in the TwentyFirst Century, marketing has been “rediscovered” as more relational, as well as Radbourne’s (2013) call for a more “converged” marketing paradigm. It also echoes the definitional discussion of engagement at the start of the book, where we saw how theoretical definitions cohere around perceptions

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Fig. 6.3 The Consumer Exchange Model

of engagement as a psychological process that pursues intimate, meaningful and enduring relationships. In the performing arts, this is often achieved by involving audiences in interactive and co-creative experiences. So, to complete Levy and Kotler’s conceptual model, the development of consumer exchange might look something like this (Fig. 6.3). This shift perhaps mirrors the development of the wider economy from the services economy of the late Twentieth Century to the experience economy of the new millennium (Pine and Gilmore 1999). Since the turn of the millennium, scholars such as Bill Sharpe (2010) have started to argue that experiences per se are no longer sufficient for the post-postmodern consumer who is actually seeking a particular kind of experience (or engagement)—namely one which is shared, meaningful, valuable and lasting. In the context of the arts, Sharpe’s thesis is essentially that art acts as the currency in this new economy of meaning, “the currency of experience, putting our unique individual experiences into motion amongst us as shared meaning” (p. 2). Table 6.2 illustrates the implications of an economy of meaning for traditional modes of production and consumption. Table 6.2

Economic distinctions

Economy

Agrarian

Economic offering Economic function Nature of offering Key attribute Seller Buyer Factors of demand

Industrial

Service

Experience

Meaning

Commodities Goods

Services

Experiences

Extract

Make

Deliver

Stage

Engagement opportunities (Co-)produce

Fungible

Tangible

Intangible

Memorable

Meaningful

Natural

Standardised

Customised

Personal

Interpersonal

Stager Guest Sensations

(Co-)creator Co-creator Value

Trader Manufacturer Provider Market User Client Characteristics Features Benefits

Adapted from Pine and Gilmore (1999, p. 6)

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The terms that populate this table illustrate the different expectations demanded of organisations by consumers in the experience economy. Notable developments from services to experiences include a focus on the personal, an expansion of distribution from short-term to long-term and a shift in demand from benefits to sensations. The implications of this semantic shift are far-reaching, and they highlight the need for today’s organisations to create long-term, personal relationships with their “guests” by appealing to their senses and creating a sense of occasion. In turn, the shift from an experience economy to an economy of meaning implies an organisational responsibility to engage audiences on an interpersonal level to produce, or sometimes co-produce, memorable, meaningful, and “extraordinary” experiences (Carù and Cova 2003) and to co-create value from these experiences (see Chapter 7). This interpretation of the relational responsibilities and capabilities of arts organisations chimes closely with Dave Hesmondhalgh’s definition of the wider cultural industries as those which “are most directly involved in the production of meaning” (2013, p. 16). This definition is based on Raymond Williams’s (1981) understanding of culture as “a signifying system through which […] a social order is communicated, reproduced, experienced and explored” (p. 13). So we can appreciate here that the notion of arts and cultural organisations as meaning-makers and producers of experience is actually nothing particularly new. Pine and Gilmore highlight the need to enrich the consumer experience, evoking the concept of what they label the “sweet spot” to denote the holy grail of the experiential product, the “distinctive place” where the realms of aesthetics, escapism, education and entertainment overlap (1999, p. 43). In this ideal experience, the consumer is fully immersed and becomes an active participant. Significantly for this book, Pine and Gilmore use theatre as an exemplar for the staged experiences demanded by consumers (and therefore required of businesses) in the new economy. It follows, then, that the performing arts are ideally placed to excel in the experience economy. According to some commentators, this is essentially because the industry has always functioned in a constant state of creative flux: “Having thrived as a permanent ‘industry’ with inherently temporary arrangements, in a dynamic, multicultural and project-oriented environment, the arts context is the epitome of organisation for the ‘new economy’” (Butler 2000, p. 343). The performing arts have always been in the business of producing

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experiences. The challenge for the sector now is to flourish in the economy of meaning, and it can only achieve this by developing meaningful modes of engagement with its audiences which in turn will engender intimate, enduring relationships of mutual value. Such is the ultimate goal of engagement. Towards the beginning of the chapter, we saw how arts marketing has traditionally been conceptualised around a profit-centred marketing mix focussing on elements of product, price, place, and promotion. In the course of the chapter, we have seen how scholarship has shifted, in line with artistic practice and consumer demand, away from a transactional approach towards a relational philosophy, influenced by services marketing and then relationship marketing. The extent of this shift, evidenced in theory and in professional practice, and demonstrated empirically through the content analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles, constitutes nothing short of a paradigm shift in arts marketing, and arguably in marketing more generally. If we agree that it is more appropriate to refer to the performing arts as an “experience” rather than a “product”; that “environment” is a more appropriate term than “place” to describe the aesthetic, physical, and ethical context of this experience; that “exchange” conveys the intimate, collaborative, and mutually valuable relationships inherent to the performing arts more effectively than “price”; and that “engagement” captures the more holistic and relational approach to relationship building more accurately than the reductive and transactional notion of “promotion”, then we must accept the need to fundamentally reconfigure and reconceptualise the marketing mix. So I’d like to argue here that a reconceptualised marketing mix fit for the mid Twenty-First century would instead be based around 4E’s: experience, exchange, environment, and engagement.

A Paradigm Shift from Consumption to Enrichment Kuhn defines a paradigm as a fundamental set of assumptions shared by members of a scientific community (1970, cited in Lovelock and Gummesson 2004, p. 21). As Lovelock and Gummerson remind us, paradigms exist merely as “temporary postulates” whose conceptual validity “must always be open to challenge” (ibid.). This chapter has challenged the conceptual validity of the marketing paradigm. It has traced the development of production and consumption from goods and services through to experiences

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and engagement opportunities. In order to justify my claim that the underlying assumptions of arts marketing are no longer conceptually valid, I now want to go one step further and attempt to outline a fundamental set of assumptions surrounding audience enrichment, around which I hope the arts marketing community will cohere. As discussed earlier in the chapter, the impact of macro factors such as increasing social participation and the development of interactive digital communications technologies has been so significant over the past few decades that the set of assumptions that led to the advent of arts marketing now lies in tatters. Younger generations are increasingly alienated by traditional approaches to marketing and twenty-first-century arts audiences are yearning for more meaningful modes of engagement; and we have seen already in this chapter that the service economy and even the experience economy have now had their day in the limelight. The new economy of meaning is characterised by participatory modes of engagement, both within the arts and beyond them. And the ultimate goal of this engagement is enrichment. Enrichment is a complex concept, but it implies some kind of personal transformation, some aspiration to become a better person. In the context of the arts, this might imply some kind of creative or aesthetic development. If we recall the existing audience research into motivations for attending the performing arts (e.g. Bergadaà and Nyeck 1995; Walmsley 2011), it might equally imply an emotional, interpersonal, social or even spiritual development. And if we believe in a mission-based approach to strategic management, then the fact that many arts organisations claim to transform their audiences’ lives suggests that their ultimate goal too should be one of enrichment. The concept of “audience enrichment” is now prevalent in American arts organisations, where it is not uncommon to see “audience enrichment programs”. We saw earlier in the chapter how the concept is rapidly gaining traction in the academic literature too (see Table 6.1). I would infer from this that we are going to witness a cross-pollination of enrichment into the vocabulary and everyday practice of arts engagement across the Western world, just as we have seen the exponential rise of engagement itself. Enrichment is then perhaps the next destination of arts marketing. According to Lynne Conner (2004, n.p.), audience enrichment suggests a shift in power dynamics from the traditional producers of art to audiences.

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A viable philosophy and practice of audience enrichment is centered on the assumption that what an audience really wants is the opportunity to co-author the arts experience. They don’t want to be told what the art means. They want the opportunity to participate — in an intelligent and responsible way — in telling its meaning. They want to have a real forum (or several forums) for the interplay of ideas, experience, data, and feeling that makes up the arts experience.

As Conner points out, the underlying power struggle here is about ownership of the meaning of the arts. This is interesting in light of my earlier contestation that services offer no transfer of ownership whatsoever. So enrichment involves empowerment and co-ownership. It gives audiences a voice, a say in what happens and a voice in the decoding process. In recent decades, much of the marketing focus in the performing arts has fallen on audience development and on maximising ticket sales. There are of course sound ethical, policy and business reasons to support this focus, despite the uncomfortable reality that audiences have remained stubbornly un-diverse. But it makes little strategic sense not to invest in the experiences of core audiences, because this is ultimately the key to long-term organisational sustainability.

Conclusion The performing arts raise many challenges for arts professionals and scholars working in and around the field of arts marketing. I have argued in this chapter that the performing arts are so exceptional, so fundamentally different from the tangible products and ephemeral services of profit-based industries, that ultimately they challenge the very concept of marketing itself. This demands a reconceptualisation of the field and there is increasing evidence that arts organisations and scholars are responding to the new audience context and abandoning marketing in favour of engagement. This constitutes nothing less than a paradigm shift. I have suggested here that a “4E” model might provide a more fitting conceptualization for this new paradigm, because it encapsulates the co-constructed, experiential, intimate value-based relationships that arts organisations are increasingly developing with their audiences. An engagement-based concept responds to this paradigm much more accurately and appropriately than the traditional marketing approach. We have seen in the course of this chapter that the ultimate goal of this engagement-based

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strategy in this new economy of meaning is enrichment. In the following chapter, we will see how the rising phenomenon of co-creation is enriching all parties in the triadic relationship that exists in the performing arts between artists, organisations, and audiences.

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O’Sullivan, T. 2013. Arts marketing and ethics: What you can and Kant do. In: O’Reilly, D., Rentschler, R. and Kirchner, T. A. (eds.) The Routledge companion to arts marketing. Abingdon, Routledge, pp. 29–47. Pine, B. J. and Gilmore, J. H. 1999. The experience economy: Work is theatre and every business a stage. Boston, Harvard Business School. Radbourne, J. 2013. Converging with audiences. In: Radbourne, J., Glow, H. and Johanson, K. (eds.) The audience experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts. Bristol, Intellect, pp. 143–158. Rentschler, R. 1998. Museum and performing arts marketing: A climate of change. Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 28(1), pp. 83–96. Shapiro, B. P. 1973. Marketing for nonprofit organizations. Harvard Business Review, 51(5), pp. 123–132. Sharpe, B. 2010. Economies of life: Patterns of health and wealth. Axminster, Triarchy Press. Turner, V. 1982. From ritual to theatre: The human seriousness of play. New York, PAJ. Walmsley, B. 2011. Why people go to the theatre: A qualitative study of audience motivation. Journal of Customer Behaviour, 10(4), pp. 335–351. Walmsley, B. 2019. The death of arts marketing: A paradigm shift from consumption to enrichment. Arts and the Market, 9(1), pp. 32–49. Williams, R. 1958. Culture and society. London, Chatto and Windus.

CHAPTER 7

Co-creating Art, Meaning, and Value

Introduction In the previous chapter, we saw how arts professionals and scholars are turning away from traditional, transactional approaches to arts marketing and instead striving to understand how audiences can be engaged on a more relational level in their artistic encounters. Co-creative activities have now become an integral part of artistic experiences, as audiences engage and are engaged in cognitive, emotional, and imaginal practices to appropriate and make sense of cultural products and experiences (Caldwell 2001). Indeed marketing scholars have credited the co-creation of value between companies and consumers as the key process in what some of them refer to as “the new marketing logic”—a phenomenon they associate with “collaborative marketing” and “creative consumption” (Cova and Cova 2009, p. 88; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004b). However, as I argued in the last chapter, this new marketing logic is so profoundly different from the underlying paradigm of marketing that it is no longer really recognisable as marketing at all. The new paradigm governing the multidirectional relationships between art, artists, producers, arts organisations and audiences is based on a 4E model, which reflects the complementary aspects of enrichment: experience, exchange, environment, and engagement. The aim of this chapter is to investigate why and how audiences’ expectations and behaviours are changing and explore emerging theories, concepts and practices of co-creation, including active spectatorship, co-production, © The Author(s) 2019 B. Walmsley, Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts, New Directions in Cultural Policy Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26653-0_7

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participation, play, interpretation and facilitation. The chapter will begin with a critical overview of co-creation and account for its definitional ambiguity. I will then review the drivers behind the emerging concepts of cocreation, situating them within wider sociological and technological contexts. Following a discussion of the political and related policy concerns that are shaping these phenomena, I will deconstruct the different components of co-creation and go on to argue that artists and arts organisations have a strategic, artistic and social responsibility to develop their audiences’ co-creative skills, providing illustrations of how this can be achieved and discussing the potential impact. Finally, I will investigate how co-creation can be deployed to generate and extract meaning in a collaborative way, and how this, in turn, can effect a positive impact on audience engagement, providing a lifetime of value to audiences, artists and arts organisations, and establishing relationships and communities of interest based on a shared culture of artistic exchange.

What Is Co-creation? It would be an understatement to contend that definitions of co-creation are divergent, ambiguous, shifting and contested. We have seen over the past few chapters of this book that many concepts pertaining to audience engagement lack any definitional coherence, and it has been acknowledged that the terminology surrounding arts participation in particular is in a problematic state of flux (Brown et al. 2011, p. 4). Thus far, scholars and practitioners have failed to cohere around a standard definition of what cocreation actually means or entails. Considering the rising popularity of cocreative practice, the lack of research into why audiences choose to engage with the arts in a more participatory way, and the value that they and others obtain from it, is both striking and inhibiting. However, it is perhaps of some comfort to learn that this lack of insight is not limited to the arts and culture: relatively little is known about how customers contribute to the co-creation of value in general (Payne et al. 2008). So one aim of this chapter is to close this epistemological gap through an extensive critical analysis of the various processes that comprise co-creation. Grönroos (2011) forges a clear distinction between co-creation and coproduction, arguing that the latter implies consumers participating in the production phases of the creative process whereas co-creation is linked to the creation of consumer value. There is some consensus about this demarcation in the literature, and personally, I find the separation between active

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involvement in the creative process and decoding or meaning-making activities a useful one: these are clearly two different modes of audience engagement that are likely to appeal to different kinds of participant at different phases of the production cycle. However, most scholars take a broader view of co-creation, perhaps because “co-production” has connotations of professional (B2B) collaborations, especially in the performing arts. For example, based on research with over 100 organisations actively engaged in participatory arts, Brown et al. (2011) define co-creation as an activity where audience members “contribute something to an artistic experience curated by a professional artist” (p. 15). This definition echoes Govier’s description of co-creation as a “collaborative journey” that producers embark on with audiences in an attempt to create something new together (2009, p. 3). Govier’s focus on novelty is replicated by Ind et al. (2012), for whom co-creation “suggests the interaction of individuals within a framework to evolve, re-define or invent something that is new” (p. 7). So for many scholars, co-creation implies a form of pro-am (B2C) collaboration deployed for the purpose of creative innovation. However, it is important to acknowledge that co-creation does not always culminate in something new, and Charles Leadbeater’s more generic depiction of co-creation as “the art of with” (2009, p. 5) provides a welcome alternative to what we might disparagingly refer to as the “novelty fetishism” prioritised in many accounts of co-creation and in the creative process (or even the creative industries) more broadly (Tanggaard 2014). Leadbeater goes on to elaborate his vision of this culture of with, highlighting the surprising irony evident in the lack of genuine engagement opportunities on offer even in a sector that has traditionally resisted the neo-liberal politics of consumption and commodification. The arts, and the modern avant garde in particular, has stood in opposition to this commodified, regimented world of to and for. The arts offer a space for contemplation and reflection, challenge and controversy, higher meanings and deeper purpose. Yet in its way the modern art world and modern arts institutions embody the principles of to and for just as powerfully as the modern factory or school. (Leadbeater 2009, p. 3)

Leadbeater’s charge reflects the transactional and product-led approach to marketing the arts that I critiqued in the previous chapter, and it again highlights the urgent need to delineate new, more authentic modes of audience engagement. This broader, more democratic and open conception is also

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espoused by Hannah Rudman, who champions co-creation as “a new form of ‘organizational porosity’ – a mindset that allows for a free exchange of creative energy between an arts organization and its public” (as cited in Brown et al. 2011, p. 18). Rudman’s definition is significant here, as it emphasises the need for a holistic organisational approach to co-creation; this is not a discreet area of activity that can happen “under the radar” or be “siloed off” into the bell jar of a particular department or project. It is often assumed within both the academy and the professional arts sector that co-creation is a relatively new trend, but Claire Bishop reminds us that there is nothing fundamentally novel about it. Indeed Bishop argues that the arts enjoy a long tradition of participation and what she refers to as “activated spectatorship” (2004, p. 78). Citing the participatory qualities of 1920s German theatre, social sculpture, and performance art, Bishop rightly notes that a relational approach to art requires above all a critical assessment of its democratic or emancipatory outcomes. The tasks facing us today are to analyze how contemporary art addresses the viewer and to assess the quality of the audience relations it produces: the subject position that any work presupposes and the democratic notions it upholds, and how these are manifested in our experience of the work. (ibid., p. 78, original italics)

In other words, the true value of art resides in the responses that it triggers; and what matters, therefore, is the quality rather than the facticity of audience engagement. This focus on the quality of audience engagement is particularly important in light of John Knell’s charge that “issues such as the quality of public engagement in cultural activities, and how innovation might recast public engagement, have been left unexamined” (2004, p. 4, original italics). These are important considerations that address the sociocultural functions of art explored in Chapter 4. Another notable trend in the literature on co-creation is the argument that markets in general are shifting away from a company-centric model to a “forum-based” dynamic, where value is co-created “at multiple points of interaction” as consumers subject processes of value creation to scrutiny, analysis, and evaluation (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004a, pp. 6, 13). The metaphor of the market as a forum is an apt and productive one in the context of the performing arts, as it echoes Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre where as many “spect-actors” as possible were encouraged to “intervene

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directly on stage as part of the investigation of an oppressive social situation” (Dwyer 2004, p. 199). Like Bishop, Bourriaud, Debord and Leadbeater, Boal was interested in the political and emancipatory potential of collective artistic endeavour, in his case by producing theatre with audiences to liberate them from oppression. The very fact that we are striving here to consider the performing arts as a forum highlights how far we have travelled away from the social rituals of Ancient Greece, and even Shakespeare’s Globe, where the performing arts really did function as a social forum, towards the consumption-based business of today’s competitive leisure and entertainment markets. Seemingly influenced by this consumption-based approach, Miranda Boorsma offers a fundamentally different perspective on co-creation, arguing that co-creation should be limited to the consumption phase of the artistic experience, where audiences strive to make sense of a work of art. A certain level of artistic freedom on the part of the artist is a necessary condition. The art consumer should not be actively involved before the artistic idea has developed its form. After that, however, the art consumer’s role becomes crucial. Arts consumers play a central role as co-producers in the final stage of the art process by giving meaning to the artefact by means of their imaginative powers. (Boorsma 2006, p. 85)

This is a controversial standpoint, which presupposes the existence of an artistic elite that is uniquely capable of producing artistic works of original value. Boorsma justifies her rejection of co-production (to deploy Grönroos’s binary distinction) by claiming that including audiences in product design and development will not only compromise artistic freedom but “lead to the production of safe, consumer-oriented arts products which, in the end, may not be what the audience either wants or needs” (Caust 2003, p. 58, cited in Boorsma 2006, p. 74). Boorsma warns that this “businesslike approach” constitutes the “arts marketing pitfall” (ibid.)—in other words, that when the traditional product-led approach to arts marketing is abandoned, artistic freedom, quality, and value is compromised. This represents an interestingly conservative view for a scholar who generally champions a relational perspective of art, and it is reminiscent of Andrew Keen’s (2008) fulmination against the so-called “cult of the amateur”, which, he argues, is blurring the distinction between trained experts and uninformed amateurs to the detriment of quality and truth.

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These elitist arguments are challenged by many cultural producers, policymakers and scholars, who either question the objectivity of artistic quality or define it in much broader terms. A good example of the latter camp is Brian McMaster, the former Director of the Edinburgh International Festival, who contends that “excellence in culture occurs when an experience affects and changes an individual” (2008, p. 9). Another important challenge to Caust, Boorsma and Keen’s position is provided by Leila Jancovich (2017), whose empirical study of audience participation contests the assumption that non-professional participants make safe, poor quality work. So let’s proceed here on the basis that artistic quality and “excellence” are subjective, contested and experiential; art is not based (and therefore should not be judged) on technical merit alone but also on its transformational impact; and this impact can occur in myriad ways, modes and forms that are not always product- or producer-led. Ultimately, we must accept that co-creation is likely to remain an ambiguous umbrella term for any number of participatory processes and practices that open up any part of the creative process to audiences and the wider public. The main problem with this is that the discussion and planning of co-creative practice tends to be dominated by attempts to engage audiences in the production phases of a project (despite Boorsma’s appeal) at the expense of the decoding phases, where meaning is elaborated collectively. Co-creation is therefore adopted or rejected as a concept by many scholars and practitioners on narrow, partial or unclear terms. However, despite the ambiguities and tensions in the academic literature, the sparse definitions provided by scholars working in this small field do coalesce around a number of key ideas: collaboration, interaction, participation, invention, value, meaning, and exchange. These notions will be explored further in the following sections of the chapter, once we have explored their provenance.

Drivers of Co-creation As discussed in the previous chapter and earlier in this chapter, the performing arts have traditionally functioned on a product-led model (Colbert 2007) designed to promote productions to predisposed audiences in order to entertain, challenge and/or educate them. However, we have also seen how audiences are starting to take back control and find or forge their way into artistic processes, particularly thanks to processes of

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co-creation. There are a number of factors and traditions that have driven this quiet revolution. The renaissance of community and amateur arts is certainly one factor that is starting to impinge on the professional performing arts sector. In many Western countries, including the UK, the USA, and the Netherlands, this growth was spurred not only by the community arts movement of the 1970s and 1980s but also by the proliferation of outreach and education activity spearheaded by pioneering arts and cultural organisations and supported by sporadic policy initiatives. A prime example of this is Arts Council England’s recent Creative People and Places programme. It could justifiably be argued that these movements and initiatives find their origins in cultural democracy—a tradition which encompasses three interrelated ideas: 1. Many cultural traditions co-exist in society and none of them should be allowed to dominate and become an ‘official culture’; 2. Everyone should be free to participate in cultural life; 3. Cultural life should be subject to democratic decision-making and control. (Goldbard and Adams 1990) As well as influencing arts education and participation, cultural democracy has also influenced theories of creativity and cultural production. In essence, there has been a growing consensus that creativity is now a collective phenomenon rather than a special gift embodied in lone artists. As Csikszentmihalyi articulates it: “What we call creativity is a phenomenon that is constructed through an interaction between producers and audiences. Creativity is not the product of single individuals, but of social systems” (Csikszentmihalyi, cited in Pope 2005, p. 67). This collective perception of creativity has been embraced by a growing number of marketing scholars, including Terry O’Sullivan (2009), who describes audiences as “communities of consumption” or “consumities”, and Chris Bilton, who notes that “cultural products are increasingly ‘social’ products, whose meaning and value is rewritten by audiences” (2017, p. 15). Whilst we might challenge the neo-liberal reduction of audiency to the “consumption” of a “product” in these two citations, this relational perspective implies that art, which is perhaps the quintessential “cultural product”, has no meaning in and of itself; it only derives meaning when it is experienced by an audience. This explains why Rancière (2011) is right to argue that audiences must be

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emancipated and that spectatorship can function as an aesthetic and political act. As we saw in Chapter 3, engaged audience members are active agents in an embodied, enactive and multisensory experience, and collectively, this act of audiency culminates in a powerful social phenomenon. This focus on the active and collective experience of audiences is also a key characteristic of relational aesthetics. In his formative work in this emerging field Nicolas Bourriaud (2002) proposed that artistic practice and criticism should shift its focus away from the primacy of the artistic artefact or performance and embrace instead the discursive characteristics that engagement with art can produce. Influenced by Guy Debord (1992), who perceived the primary role of art as to stimulate dialogue and develop community relations, Bourriaud is interested in how art can transform the aesthetic project from an object into an encounter and, in so doing, unite artists and audiences in a common aesthetic endeavour. Relational art, he maintains, offers “spaces where we can elaborate alternative forms of sociability, critical models and moments of constructed conviviality” (Bourriaud 2006, p. 166). Bourriaud’s ideas on relational art are regularly echoed in audience members’ accounts of their performing arts experiences, as typified by one of Caroline Heim’s (2016) participants who maintained: “You use the play as another avenue of communication”. Grant Kester (2005) also notes the shift in contemporary art towards a more dialogical and socially engaged approach. As we saw in the previous chapter, the insights offered by relational aesthetics are significant in that they attempt to move beyond the artistic product and beyond the traditional producer–consumer divide: they reflect the concerns of audience engagement and help to circumnavigate the passive and transactional relationships with audiences that are usually generated by marketing. Accordingly, Boorsma and Chiaravalotti (2010) maintain that arts marketing has evolved away from a functional approach towards a more relational view, which recognises artistic consumption as experiential. This, they contend, is serving to highlight the role of audiences in the creation and reception of art. Perhaps in response to these and other calls for emancipation, over the past few decades artists and producers have gradually begun to open up their creative processes. This evolution has been fuelled by changing audience behaviours and expectations and by the dialogic opportunities offered by Web 2.0, social media and digital communications technologies (see Chapter 8). Arvidsson (2008) goes so far as to claim that the progressive inclusion of consumers in the creation of value represents one of the

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most significant trends in contemporary society. This kind of assessment of active consumer engagement has now become a trope, if not indeed a truism, which acknowledges the defining features of a postmodern audience that engages in “active and expressive ways” to form a culture of “making-and-doing” (Brown et al. 2011, p. 4). Arvidsson links this trend with an oversupply of knowledge workers who have learnt to seek out self-expression and self-realisation through social production, whilst Payne et al. (2008) identify three concrete factors behind this shift: technological breakthroughs; changes in industry logics; and changes in customer preferences and lifestyles. In the performing arts, these factors are manifest in developments like live streaming or simulcasting, which has spurred initiatives such as NT Live and National Theatre of Scotland’s 5-Minute Theatre (see Chapter 8). Despite these sociological drivers of change, involving audiences in creative processes remains a highly controversial proposition. Many artists, writers, composers, directors, choreographers, and producers still fervently believe in the product-led model (albeit tacitly) and actively protect the freedom and independence of the artist. However, an increasing number of arts professionals advocate an “audience-focussed” approach, which appears to represent a hybrid model between the product-led and audience-led models. An audience-focussed approach to artistic development might involve marketing, engagement and education/outreach staff being involved in programming discussions and decisions, so that artistic decision-making contains an inherent audience focus. In other words, in an audience-focussed model, art is commissioned, produced, curated, presented and marketed with audiences very much in mind, albeit as passive stakeholder in the process. In an “audience-led” approach, audiences would have an active role in artistic decision-making and indeed in the strategic development of the organisation. Audiences might be represented on the board of directors and even have a say in the appraisal and recruitment of the leadership team. This book advocates for an “audience-centred” approach, wherein audiences are the primary stakeholders of the organisation, constituting its core focus and representing its very raison d’être. Audience-centred organisations are artistically led but empower audiences with a genuine artistic and strategic voice. Such organisations actively seek out opportunities for authentic co-creation but they retain the ultimate artistic vision and decision-making capabilities; they know when to stop engaging and act.

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Another core driver of co-creation, particularly in the UK, the USA, Canada, and Australia, has been the concept of audience development. Audience development is yet another ambiguous and contested term, which was heavily influenced amongst cultural policymakers by notions of cultural democracy and which now covers a multitude of strategic activities ranging from audience recruitment and diversification to audience engagement and enrichment. The term has been helpfully and broadly defined as an ethos that “places the audience at the heart of everything the organisation does” (Arts Council England 2010). This aspirational definition reflects the audience-centred approach discussed earlier, and it is therefore the definition that reflects most closely the aims of audience engagement and thus the underlying philosophy of this book. A fuller definition of audience development, which highlights aspects of engagement and education, is offered by the international cultural strategy and research agency, Morris Hargreaves McIntyre: Audience development is a continual, actively managed process in which an organisation encourages each attender and potential attender to develop confidence, knowledge, experience and engagement across the full breadth of the art form to meet his or her full potential, whilst meeting the organisation’s own artistic, social and financial objectives. (cited in European Commission 2015)

This is the quintessential depiction of the audience-centred organisation. We can see from this analysis that co-creation is the product of a number of interrelated concepts, movements, and developments from both within the arts and cultural sector and from society at large. These include the community arts movement, cultural democracy, collective consumption, the emancipation of audiences, relational aesthetics, the rapid evolution of digital communications technologies, and audience development. In essence, co-creation represents a broadening perspective of creative production from the individual to the collective and a socially led reconceptualisation of creative consumption, alongside a democratisation of the ownership of their related processes. Co-creation remains contested and controversial and it is still in a state of flux and evolution, both within the academy and within the arts and cultural sector itself.

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Who Is Co-creation for? Remarkably little research has been conducted into the marketing of cocreation or co-created work, so there remains a significant gap in knowledge regarding the potential target markets for and beneficiaries of this kind of activity. However, there is evidence that audience members with a professional or academic background in a given art form are not just more likely to attend artistic performances, but also to prepare in advance and report higher levels of anticipation and ultimate impact (Brown et al. 2011). There is also emerging evidence that although new audiences are potentially the biggest beneficiaries of co-creation, benefitting from the contextual insights and empathy with artists that co-creative activity can confer (Walmsley 2016), these participants can often feel anxious, insecure, alienated, conspicuous, incongruent or out of place (Walmsley 2013). Indeed my previous empirical research into co-creation revealed a tendency from some artists and producers to design co-creative activity specifically for highly engaged audience members, in effect “handpicking” participants for essentially “private” events (ibid., p. 113). This trend of course risks developing a solipsistic culture of “inter-legitimation” (Bourdieu 1984), which could merely alienate new audience members and reinforce existing perceptions of elitism. The issue of the openness of co-creative activity has significant repercussions on both policy and practice, because “finding better ways to engage with the public is necessary, not only to increase the legitimacy of decision-making but also to ensure that artistic practice is less self-referential” (Jancovich 2011, p. 279). Questions of openness and empowerment are central to co-creative practice. As Whaley and Miller note, “the move to position audiences as partners seems to be informed by the anxiety around arts organisations losing cultural relevance. Implicit within this is the sense that it is within the gift of arts organisations to invite the audience in. It presupposes a them/us binary in which the power is held on one side” (Whalley and Miller 2017, p. 26). Decisions to co-create can, therefore, be cynical and self-interested, which can make them feel both tokenistic and inauthentic. Co-creation tends to be conceived by artists and producers and is often therefore framed by them to meet their own needs: Interactivity and immersion allow for more active involvement, leading to the language of co-creation, but always within a predetermined set of appropriate responses. In all these instances, and more besides, we seem to be surfacing

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the recognition that to be an audience continues to be a political act, one freighted with significant social and ideological implications. (Whalley and Miller 2017, p. 33)

So there is a live and urgent question about the extent to which co-creation can offer opportunities for audience empowerment, autonomy and diversification. An obvious response to this question is that the potential impact of a co-creative activity depends on its artistic intention and on the intended beneficiary. This may sound obvious, but many (if not most) co-creative projects are curated by professional artists and designed to enhance the process or end product itself rather than offer a transformative audience experience. If artists want to receive “expert” feedback, they may well prefer to open up their creative process exclusively to peer artists and other “desirable” customer groups (Payne and Frow 2005). Even if the process is opened up, this is often to the artist’s or producer’s benefit, with audiences essentially crowdsourcing, imagineering or trialling artistic research and development. A good example of this is The Royal Shakespeare Company’s “R&D work in progress sharings”, where audiences are invited into The Other Place, the company’s “creative engine room”, to provide feedback on early iterations of productions such as Matilda (Royal Shakespeare Company 2017). As an audience researcher, I have observed and been actively involved in a number of co-creative projects that have been designed by and for artists. Whilst I am not arguing here that there is anything wrong with this per se, there is a certain irony about a co-creative activity being designed primarily with the artist in mind: as the RSC tacitly acknowledge, this approach is more akin to traditional R&D. What I would argue is that the dominant power dynamic noted by Whalley and Miller is indicative of and provides further evidence for the underlying fear, suspicion, derision, and subjugation of audiences that was elaborated in Chapter 1. It is readily apparent that artists and producers often underestimate the value and insight that audiences can bring to both artistic development and sense-making. As we have seen, it could and has been argued that a work of art has no significance until an audience has enshrined it in meaning; and in the performing arts, there is of course no performance at all without an audience (Freshwater 2009). A telling example of a co-created activity geared exclusively towards artists is the American choreographer Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process (CRP). CRP is a widely recognised and globally applied method that

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nurtures the development of artistic works-in-progress through a fourstep, facilitated dialogue between artists, peers, and audiences. CRP essentially helps artists to make the kind of work they want to make (Walmsley 2016). The role of the audience is to support the artist’s creative process and artistic development by providing permission-based and highly structured constructive feedback. Again, and as with the RSC example above, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this as a philosophy and creative approach; but CRP is limited in its audience appeal and engagement precisely because it is artist-led and artist-focussed. What is interesting is when the process is reconfigured into an audience-focussed process, designed to open up and contextualise artistic practices and develop empathy between audiences and artists. In the case study outlined in Chapter 8 (Respond), the positive impact of this shift in focus on non-attenders of a particularly alienating art form is profound. The simple lesson here is that genuine cocreation must be designed for both artists and audiences. Processes and activities that are both artist-led and artist-focussed are likely to alienate and intimidate all but a tiny minority of niche and culturally empowered audiences. Brown and Ratzkin isolate six typologies of artistic engagement, the smallest and most deeply engaged of which, “active learners”, are said to seek out “making and doing engagement opportunities that offer a way into the art” (2011, p. 24). Figure 7.1 displays Brown and Ratzkin’s typologies according to participants’ preferred style and mode of engagement. The framework provides a useful and workable psychographic segmentation model, and it highlights some of the most common forms and processes of co-creation, including critical review, talking, digital engagement and insight seeking. Brown and Ratzkin rank these typologies on an engagement spectrum ranging from low appetite (= 1) to high appetite (= 6), as follows: 1. Readers 2. Critical reviewers 3. Casual talkers 4. Technology-based processors 5. Insights seekers 6. Active learners

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Fig. 7.1 Audience typologies with respect to engagement styles (Source Brown and Ratzkin [2011, p. 23])

A typology approach is helpful in informing discussions about co-creation, because the qualities, outcomes and potential beneficiaries of co-creation are always contingent on the underlying philosophy and rationale. However, I would contest the assumption that readers and critical reviewers all share a low appetite for arts engagement. All of these typologies are potential candidates for co-creation because they share a desire for active engagement with art. The problem, perhaps, is that artists, producers, and marketers are currently failing to engage typologies other than the active learner. This is very probably because the emphasis in co-creation is almost always on co-production rather than co-interpretation, which might appeal more to the more individual and reflective typologies outlined here. So the problem and area for development is perhaps not so much the audience but rather artists and arts organisations, who generally fail to provide a range of appealing opportunities for co-creation.

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Now that we have considered the underlying theories and more common applications of co-creation, let’s move on to explore some of its underlying processes in more depth.

Processes of Co-creation Although co-creation might sometimes appear to be a relatively new concept in the performing arts, the participatory processes and practices that inform and inspire it are arguably as old as the arts themselves. Indeed Boorsma (2006) contends that the notion of art as autonomous only appeared with the modernists and claims that postmodernism has regenerated a vision of the arts as “a product of social interaction” (p. 75). This relational view of art, she argues, accepts the evolution of arts consumers from passive recipients into active participants. At the start of Chapter 3, I acknowledged the necessity to consider, critique and deconstruct terms that are deployed to describe and qualify the complex processes and relationships that connect audiences to performance. So I will now hone in on some of the most significant concepts that underpin this umbrella term of co-creation. The aim here is not to produce a detailed theoretical elaboration of all of these concepts (which lies well beyond the scope of this chapter) but rather to summarise the key ideas, aspects, and processes that mark them out as distinct and, in so doing, to highlight their potential complementarity in shaping co-creative practice.

Participation As noted earlier, the terminology surrounding arts participation is in a state of flux (Brown et al. 2011, p. 4). “Participation” itself is a particularly woolly term and to complicate matters, it is often used interchangeably with “audience development” and “co-creation”. Like its sister terms, it is deployed and appropriated to cover a multitude of heterogeneous activities ranging from applause to blogging to community engagement. It is perhaps more useful, therefore, to talk about “participatory practice” rather than “participation” per se, because the former term implies an established philosophical approach to audience engagement that is distinct from audience development and narrower than co-creation. Jenkins and Bertozzi provide a useful description of what participatory practice might lead to and highlight its civic roots:

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A participatory culture might be defined as one where there are relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, where there is strong support for creating and sharing what one creates with others, and where there is some kind of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. It is also a culture where members feel that their contributions matter and where they feel some degree of social connection with each other at least to the degree to which they care what other people think about what they have created. (Jenkins and Bertozzi 2008, p. 174)

I argued earlier that co-creation tends to be hierarchical and framed by the needs and interests of artists and producers. Participatory practice and culture, on the other hand, has its roots in the community arts movement. It is therefore, at least in theory, an audience-centred activity; more than that, it is often audience-led (representing what Brown et al. [2011] refer to as “audience-as-artist”) and can even manifest as public engagement. So to return to Whalley and Miller’s argument about empowerment, it is not about “letting the audience in” but more about co-designing, co-curating, co-programming, and co-performing. Participatory practice is finally starting to take hold in mainstream arts organisations and venues, and the academic literature on participation is starting to burgeon, especially within cultural policy studies. Although there are different factions and tensions within the scholarly community of participatory arts, there is some consensus that participatory approaches can democratise the arts and culminate in the kind of “forum culture” referred to earlier in the chapter: By placing the users of art and culture and their different personal tastes and preferences in the center of cultural policy, arts advocacy and audience development consequently means that the classic cultural arenas – theatres, concert halls, cinemas, museums, and libraries – are regarded as democratic participatory platforms for exchanging and negotiating meanings and values. (Juncker and Balling 2016, p. 233)

Arts and cultural participation sits somewhere between the competing traditions of cultural democracy and the democratisation of culture. The challenge for scholars is essentially where to locate this kind of practice within the parameters of these two traditions, on a spectrum from participatory budgeting and decision-making at the cultural democracy end of the spectrum to the promotion of professional activity at the democratisation of

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culture end. So participation comes in many guises and is often philosophically and politically driven. Since this book is primarily focussing on the engagement of core or existing audiences, we will concentrate on how participatory practice impacts on this particular cohort, rather than communities or the general public more broadly. In other words, we will explore how participatory practice impacts on the democratisation of culture. The American museum director Nina Simon has produced a significant body of work which explores how cultural institutions can use participatory techniques not simply to give visitors and audiences a genuine voice, but to develop experiences that are more valuable and compelling for everyone. Simon (2010) argues that participation is “a question of design and not just one of intention or desire”. This is a useful (and indeed radical) proposition, because it again shifts the focus from whether arts and cultural organisations are engaging audiences through participatory practice to how well they are doing it. Simon highlights the importance of “scaffolding” participatory activities, demonstrating how participants “thrive on constraints, not openended opportunities for self-expression”. She maintains that participatory organisations support “multidirectional content experiences”. Participatory projects make relationships among staff members, visitors, community participants, and stakeholders more fluid and equitable. They open up new ways for diverse people to express themselves and engage with institutional practice. (Simon 2010)

As Matthew Reason might articulate it, they facilitate “intersubjective doing” (2010, p. 19). So we can see how participatory practice lies at the core of successful co-creation. It provides a guiding philosophy for engagement strategies and is starting to offer tried-and-tested techniques for deeper, richer engagement that can open up and democratise arts and cultural institutions.

Play In my own empirical study of co-creation, one of the theatre directors involved said that he wanted his participants to “play wholeheartedly” and “come along for the ride” (Walmsley 2013, p. 114). This comment encouraged me to reflect on the role of play within the broader context of cocreation and led me to investigate some of its seminal theories. Play is

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generally understood by performance scholars as both positive and productive. Based on evidence from cognitive science, Bruce McConachie, for example, claims that “play has a positive impact on our wellbeing and on our homeostasis” (2008, p. 106). A perfect example of this is provided by Josephine Machon, who illustrates the interrelationship between play and interpretation: When an audience is encouraged to experience the layers of ‘meaning’ in the work by becoming part of the ludic play at the heart of the form itself, a dynamic curiosity is ignited; a curiosity that may seek to unearth narratives, themes or to just be within the work. (Machon 2013, p. 105)

Contrary to this unstructured ontological vision of play, other performance-based theories of play characterise it as a carefully managed process, a “framed activity where the frame both defines a space of freedom and provides a productive constraint” (Bayliss et al. 2009, p. 9). It is worth noting the focus on “constraints” here, which echoes the theories on participation detailed above. This suggests that playful co-creation incorporates constructive limitations which (perhaps counter-intuitively) facilitate participants’ creativity. Play is a process often deployed in rehearsals, of course, and particularly in devised or improvised work, where it enables directors and performers to experiment and innovate, to try out fresh ideas within a safe environment and within a given artistic vision or style. However, like co-creation, play is “risk-laden”: for example, Bayliss et al.’s action research on play revealed that it can “unsettle, disturb and pressurise” participants (2009, p. 10). Play theorists present a paradoxical conceptualisation of play as both free and constrained, as creative and destructive, personal and collective, political and nihilistic: Play is a dance between creation and destruction, between creativity and nihilism. Playing is a fragile, tense activity, prone to breakdowns. Individual play is a challenge to oneself, to keep on playing. Collective play is a balancing act of egos and interests, of purposes and intentions. Play is always on the verge of destruction, of itself and of its players, and that is precisely why it matters. Play is a movement between order and chaos. (Sicart 2014, p. 3)

Sicart dedicates an entire book to exploring notions and processes of play. As revealed in the quotation above, he accepts the oxymorons inherent to play and seems to perceive it as profoundly entrepreneurial, at least if

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we accept Schumpeter’s (1942) definition of economic innovation as “creative destruction”. This is a productive connection, because in the context of co-creation, processes of play are often invoked to shape and develop something new, something risky, something that might push and challenge all sorts of artistic and organisational boundaries. Sicart acknowledges this implicitly in his reference to egos, interests, purposes, and intentions: play, like co-creation, is power-based and political in the sense that someone needs to frame and demarcate its boundaries and determine its ultimate purpose. Play, then, can be experienced as both pleasurable and painful, and its impact can be both positive and negative. It is noteworthy here that Sicart characterises play as an almost liminal space that exists somewhere between order and chaos. Chaos theory informs us that behavioural patterns that might appear to be random can actually be integral to the effective development of natural ecosystems. Various scholars (e.g. Bilton 2007; Grobman 2005) have applied chaos theory to the context of arts management, particularly to illuminate the process of change management. For example, Grobman argues that organisational change should culminate in the adoption of “a quasi-equilibrium state, just short of the point where a system would collapse into chaos, at which the system maximizes its complexity and adaptability” (2005, p. 370). For Grobman, this entails a willingness by leaders to seek out contradictory attributes, engender a healthy level of anxiety and actually bring organisations to the “edge of chaos” (p. 351). The associations with play theory are self-evident here: like chaos, play is natural and creative; it fosters innovation and agility, and flourishes within the tension of a predetermined framework or equilibrium. As Sicart goes on to argue, the nature of this equilibrium is always contingent and open to negotiation. Play is autotelic – an activity with its own goals and purposes, with its own marked duration and spaces and its own conditions for ending. […] Play is autotelic in its context, but it is also negotiated. Its autotelic nature is always being discussed and negotiated. We play by negotiating the purposes of play, how far we want to extend the influences of the play activity, and how much we play for the purpose of playing or for the purpose of personal expression. (Sicart 2014, p. 16)

The questions inherent to this theorisation of play shed fresh light on the purposes and impact of co-creation and provide a useful typological framework for it. For example, we might now ask of a co-creative activity whether

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its value is intrinsic or instrumental. What are its intended outcomes and who decides? Who are likely to be the main beneficiaries and why? Is a co-creative project valuable in and of itself or does it need to serve a higher (artistic) purpose? Play and co-creation are thus indelibly linked: play theory can help us to explicate co-creation and processes of play are integral to co-creation because they provide a context for collective creativity. By incorporating aspects of experimentation, innovation and chaos, play can establish a safe space and a negotiable framework for productive and enjoyable co-creation. But as ever, the extent to which this potential is realised is dependent on the power dynamics (quite literally) at play.

Interpretation Many of the definitions of co-creation explored towards the beginning of this chapter coalesced around the notion of the collective elaboration of value, which is variously referred to in the literature as co-creating value, or collective meaning-making or sense-making. This suggests that artists and arts organisations should invest time in meaning-making activities in order to maximise their audiences’ perceptions of the value of their artistic experiences. It also suggests that artists, producers, marketers and audiences need to possess (and ideally continuously develop) strong decoding and interpretive skills in order to derive as much value or meaning as possible. This is because in their “consumption” of art, audiences “integrate the resources offered by companies and combine them with their own resources to co-create and co-extract value from a consumption experience” (Cova and Cova 2009, p. 89). So in order to close the circle, or complete the artistic cycle, those who produce and “market” artistic experiences should also be in the business of building the requisite resources to decode and interpret them. Like Miranda Boorsma, Chris Bilton (2017) is of the view that audiences should take an active role in the meaning-making process. This is essentially because audiences are inherently part of a triadic relationship with artists and fellow audience members: […] the consumer is actively involved in creating meaning and value by associating the product with their own experiences, with the artist and with each other. Such extended meanings and interpretations can go well beyond

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the producer’s intentions, drawing on the collective imaginations and actions of audiences – but they remain umbilically connected to the product. (p. 82)

So there is a strong artistic case to be made for involving audiences actively in meaning-making processes, because this can uncover previously hidden meanings and interpretations and enhance the original value of a production or performance. Bilton argues persuasively that consumers of “cultural products” retain the right to reimagine them and add meanings of their own to them: “unlike other forms of product cultural products are not ‘used up’ by consumption, rather the uses of consumption change the product’s meaning, making it more valuable not less” (pp. 99–100). In this sense, Bilton maintains, cultural products become paratexts which can be reimagined by successive audiences. Referring back to the previous chapter, we might add that this is essentially because in the performing arts, cultural products take the form of collective experiences, whose meaning can only ever be fully elaborated in a collaborative way. The primary role of the audience in the meaning-making endeavour might at face value appear to be incontrovertible; but following the influence of Foucault and Derrida, some scholars insist on perceiving interpretation as illusory. Citing Artaud and Brecht as inspirations, Blau, for example, claims that theatre audiences are “beguiled into thinking” that plays are performed for them and “that by some consensus of perception they determine what the play means” (1990, p. 49). This suggests that plays have some kind of objective (or, as Derrida would say, “originary”) meaning, the articulation of which lies beyond the capacity of mere audiences. Blau’s studied disdain for audiences is revealed in his derisory slur that they “mostly miss the point” (p. 126). In our post-structuralist world, there are certainly divergent opinions about who owns the meaning-making process and who is empowered to (co-)create the meaning of artistic experiences. Blau quite rightly notes that meaning-making is “disarticulated” through “dominant and oppressive systems of meaning” (ibid., p. 8). The examples he provides here are the media and the self-referential theatre machine itself. The underlying philosophical question is the extent to which meaning-making is ever free and unfettered, and Blau reminds us of Heidegger’s notion of “Vorhabe”: “the forestructure of understanding in which interpretation is grounded” (p. 41). By this, Blau means that interpretation is partially preordained in that it is restricted by pre-existing linguistic

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and semiotic parameters, by social systems, by the “hermeneutic circle” (Gadamer 1989).1 In light of the rise of social media and the rise of immersive and cocreated art, it is interesting to reflect on the extent to which audiences might have freed themselves from this dominance and oppression since the publication of Blau’s monograph in 1990: although meaning-making is still very rarely facilitated by the professional arts sector, it is assuredly harder to contain and control. So although, as a core element of co-creation, meaning-making remains protected, prejudicial and political, in the past few decades it has certainly become more subjective and democratic. It was perhaps with this development in mind that Boorsma counselled arts organisations to actively develop their audiences’ co-creative skills: If arts organizations want to survive in the competitive global world of tourism and leisure, they will have to develop their audiences’ capacity to co-create and deepen their engagement through increasingly ‘entire’ experiences including recreational, social and learning experiences. (p. 77)

It is significant that Boorsma connects the co-creation of meaning with deep engagement here, and she is right to advocate for arts organisations performing a broader role that merely producing and/or presenting artistic content. As Hodgson (2002) reflects, in order to become “creative consumers”, individuals need to be “shaped, guided and moulded” (p. 326). Interpretative skills are not innate and as the primary receivers of artistic work, audiences benefit from social and educational experiences that develop their capacity to sense-make. When audiences engage with a performance, they may or not decode or derive meaning from it depending on how they deploy their interpretative faculties: In a gaze we have at our disposal a natural instrument analogous to the blind man’s stick. The gaze gets more or less from things according to the way in which it questions them, ranges over them or dwells on them. (Blau 1990, p. 377)

1 Gadamer’s interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of the hermeneutic circle is that all interpretation is inherently prejudicial in the sense that it is always based on people’s existing knowledge, concerns and interests (Malpas 2016).

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In this sense, then, audience development, or education, is key, and it is fitting, therefore, that certain scholars insist on the need to develop audiences’ critical response faculties. A natural context for this is of course within the school classroom, and O’Toole et al.’s (2014) study provides a revealing analysis of the potentially positive impact of developing younger audiences’ capacities for meaning-making. For instance, there is consensus amongst almost all of the teachers and creative artists interviewed in the book that what the authors refer to as “theatre literacy” enabled young people to “master a complex theatre discourse that allowed them to describe, analyse and understand the experience of theatre” (p. 147). The authors go on to illustrate how providing young people with the appropriate critical tools to deconstruct a piece of theatre can develop their decoding and analytical skills. Theatre literate young people demonstrate the use of technical and metalanguage, and the language of experience and pleasure. They are able to respond critically to a play, deconstructing both the text and the performance in depth, using learned conceptual frameworks. (p. 155)

However, some participants felt that their formal learning at school had encouraged them to be too analytical and critical in their responses, which “distanced” them from a live performance “because they were busy evaluating and deconstructing it” (p. 149). It is worth noting therefore that overanalysis can sometimes hamper engagement. Developing audiences’ interpretative skills is clearly a strategic goal that can bear rich dividends in the collective endeavour to elaborate the meaning(s) embedded in the performing arts. There is also evidence that it provides audiences with “eudaimonic pleasure”—the “deeply enjoyable critical attitude” extolled by Brecht (Heim 2016, p. 98). Despite these clear benefits, interpretation remains under-deployed, perhaps because of the entrenched habits and power structures delineated above. Some artists aren’t interested in the meanings that audiences ascribe to their work; some producers never strive to listen to audiences’ interpretations; and some scholars don’t credit audiences with the ability (either cognitive or ontological) to interpret a work of art. This particular aspect of co-creation is therefore fraught with structural challenges ranging from apathy to disdain, which means that it is woefully neglected as a core component of the audience experience and an essential part of audience engagement.

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An audience member’s pleasure is deeply tied with the opportunity to interpret the meaning and value of an arts event. […] Without public opportunities to articulate our individual decoding processes, the pleasure of the interpretive function is cut short and thus engagement is limited. (Conner 2004, pp. 1, 4)

As opportunities for collective meaning-making continue to be missed, more and more audience members leave performances unsatiated and more and more productions remain poorly explicated and under-critiqued.

Facilitation A potential remedy to this deficiency is provided by Lynne Conner (2013) and her concept of “arts talk”. Conner describes her concept as “a metaphor, an ethos and […] a call to arms” (p. 137) and she outlines its underlying rationale as follows: Our goal should be to empower audiences to engage in constructive and pleasurable dialogue about the arts and to celebrate those audiences who, by virtue of their vital and engaged presence, can turn any arts space into a site of public assembly ripe for intellectual and emotional connection. (2013, p. 13)

Conner reminds us of Gadamer’s contention that “meaningful conversation” can offer a resolution to the hermeneutic circle (ibid., p. 18). In other words, bringing audiences into a structured dialogue can help to generate fresh interpretations and produce original meaning that circumnavigates many of the linguistic and semiotic constraints inherent to individual decoding. Citing Stanley Fish, Bennett rightly contends that “texts are accorded value not by any intrinsic properties but by interpretive communities” who develop strategies to provide opposing, and sometimes even resistant, positions (1997, pp. 40–41; p. 56). This latter observation is particularly evident in the interpretive approaches advocated by queer and feminist theorists, for example, which further underline the Barthesian resistance to the primary role of the author. However, generating meaningful conversation requires excellent facilitation skills, and these are often sadly lacking in our arts and cultural institutions, which tend, perhaps as a result of this skills gap, to present “talkbacks” or post-show Q&As which persist in their goal of casting audience members as attentive listeners and which thus reduce, rather than facilitate,

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opportunities for democratic dialogue and exchange. As Caroline Heim asserts: Most Western theatre companies that hold post-performance discussions follow either a question-and-answer or expert-driven model, both of which perpetuate an ‘expert agenda’ that can be seen as didactic and to devalue any audience contributions. […] The expert-driven model fosters an intellectual environment in which audience contributions, if encouraged at all, are expected to conform to the cerebral thoughts of the expert in both expression and content. A large percentage of the audience, daunted and intimidated by the expert environment, are hesitant to contribute to the discussion or even ask questions. […] Post-performance discussions have been relegated to educational or entertaining events that perpetuate a hegemonic hierarchy. (2012, pp. 189–190)

Heim’s action research project on two theatre productions in Queensland, Australia culminated in the realisation that a carefully facilitated, nondirective and unstructured approach to post-show discussions helped to give audiences “a voice of authority” and generated “opinionated, expressive, articulate, and discerning” feedback that was “evaluative and interpretative, as well as fault-finding” (ibid., p. 194). It is important to note here the method’s ability to unearth negative responses from the audience, as positive bias has been acknowledged as a particularly pernicious limitation of much audience research (Johanson and Glow 2015). Another significant finding of Heim’s research was that a more empowering approach to post-show discussion served to maximise opportunities for audiences to co-create meaning and develop a community of interpretation: The audience critics were preoccupied with making meaning, negotiating meaning, and contributing meaning in an attempt to broaden and enrich their experience of the theatrical event. The audience regained their status as an interpretative community of critical contributors. (ibid., pp. 194–195)

The impact of this ad hoc community was palpable, as it apparently influenced the director’s interpretation of one of the characters and led to subsequent changes in the way the actor portrayed the character. This provides a wonderful example of how engaging and emancipating audiences in a meaningful way after performances can develop a culture of co-creation in all senses of the term.

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Heim’s reflections on the benefits of adopting a more democratic model of audience feedback are shared by Lynne Conner, who equally advocates for independent facilitation. As Conner argues, when “invited properly, audiences will push beyond the discomfort of ‘thinking’ to get to the interpretive sphere” (2013, p. 109). Conner therefore advocates building what she calls “audience learning communities” (p. 101ff.) based on what she perceives to be the “fundamentals of productive talk” (p. 117ff.). Facilitation is the method she invokes to achieve these goals because she argues that “the best audience-centred interpretive experiences are rooted in good facilitation” (p. 117). Conner deconstructs productive talk into three operations: open talk, powerful questioning, and effective listening (p. 120). So these, she maintains, are the objectives of effective facilitators, who should “listen for meaning rather than for validation” (p. 164). There is surely an implicit criticism here of the solipsism and self-congratulation that characterise many post-performance events. Although there is no scope here for a more thorough exploration of facilitation, it is worth noting that it is a process that is highlighted by other studies and scholars and one which has been demonstrated to deepen and broaden engagement. The richness of this [the theatre-going] experience, and therefore its potential to influence future theatre-going behaviours, can be enhanced and supported by well-crafted post-show discussions wherein meaning-making is scaffolded by thoughtful and strategic inputs from creative and educational facilitators […] and by opportunities for open-ended discourse with friends, peers and mentors. Our research suggests that these opportunities for discussion and meaning-making beyond the time spent in the auditorium are critical. (O’Toole et al. 2014, p. 196)

We can appreciate here the repeated call for the “scaffolding” of co-creative interventions and also the significant potential of effective facilitation to perform the primary function of relational art in bringing people together to forge deeper social links, occasionally referred to as “enhanced socialization” (Nicholson and Pearce 2001, p. 460).

Impact We have seen how co-creation is informed by theories related to collaboration, interaction, participation, invention, value, meaning and exchange,

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and also how it is underpinned by a number of underlying activities, including participation, play, interpretation and facilitation. In this final section of the chapter, we are going to reflect on the impact that co-creation can have on audiences, artists, arts organisations, and on the wider arts and cultural sector. I have discussed several examples of how effective co-creation can deepen and broaden audiences’ engagement and develop social communities of interpretation which can co-generate value and derive original meaning, providing a resolution to the hermeneutic circle. From a marketing perspective, co-creation has also been credited with providing “experiential interactions and encounters which customers perceive as helping them utilize their resources” (Payne et al. 2008, p. 87). In the context of the arts, this might imply aesthetic development (e.g. developing audiences’ creative practice) or cognitive growth (e.g. developing school children’s appreciation and knowledge of Shakespeare). This kind of intrinsic and instrumental impact can generate strategic opportunities for creating value, as long as producers align their creative processes with their audiences’ interests and needs. So from a strategic marketing perspective, “planning for co-creation is outside-in as it starts from an understanding of the customer’s valuecreating processes, and aims at providing support for better co-creation of value” (Payne et al. 2008, p. 89). This suggests that co-creation should be embedded into the vision and strategic management of arts organisations in order to maximise mutual value. However, this understanding of audiences’ value-creating processes is essentially what is missing from both the research and practice of cocreation in the arts. As Brown et al. put it, whilst “an international debate rages about the value of the arts […] missing in this debate is a dispassionate, critical assessment of the relative benefits and value of participatory arts practice versus receptive participation” (2011, p. 10). Whilst there is no space here for a thorough investigation of cultural value and impact (see Chapter 4), some of the key benefits of co-creation have been presented in the literature. From the audience perspective, such benefits have been described in terms of self-expression, self-realisation, aesthetic insight, as well as building confidence, creative thinking, communication and problem-solving skills (Arvidsson 2008; Brown et al. 2011). From the perspective of artists, producers, and organisations, co-creation has been credited with maximising the lifetime value of desirable customer groups (Payne and Frow 2005); fulfilling the artistic mission (Boorsma 2006); and developing “artistic exchange relationships” (ibid., p. 77).

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Indeed it has even been argued that value is compromised without some element of co-creation: The assumption that artistic value can be realized autonomously, independently of the patronage of arts consumers, is no longer valid. Artistic value goes beyond the product in terms of its form [and] emerges in the confrontation with an audience. (Boorsma 2006, pp. 75–76)

So again we can appreciate both the business and artistic case for investing in co-creation. But there is a wider impact at stake here, which takes us into the realm of audience development and education. Audience research has demonstrated how developing the interpretive skills of young people can empower them to generate their own meaning from the performing arts and encourage them to engage with a more diverse body of work. Once equipped with a conscious awareness of the skills and entitlement to construct their own meanings from their theatre experience, many young theatre-goers we interviewed articulated a desire to see work which challenged conventions (and therefore audience expectations) rather than affirmed them. They had transcended the fear of ‘not liking’ or ‘not understanding’ a theatre event, and embraced, equally, the prospect of being provoked and educated, or entertained. (O’Toole et al. 2014, p. 135)

Developing audiences’ co-creative skills, then, can not only broaden their aesthetic tastes but also shift their perceptions of an art form and increase their likelihood to engage with it. This is particularly the case when cocreation occurs within a social or community setting: For most participants in customer co-production, similarly to other forms of social production, motivation is directly related to the pleasures that can be derived from community participation and contribution. (Arvidsson 2008, p. 335)

As Conner maintains, we desperately need a renaissance of “social interpretation” in the arts, and we can only achieve this by developing an “authorised audience” (2013, p. 40). Despite the overwhelming evidence of the potentially positive impacts of co-creative activities, the overriding challenge in understanding and articulating the value of co-creation remains the lack of meaningful evaluation.

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This is a problem that plagues many sectors and it often stems from reductive applications of marketing: “Improved ways of measuring the delivery of customer value are required. Marketing metrics and measures should meaningfully assess the value co-creation potential of customer relationships” (Payne et al. 2008, p. 89). In other words, if evaluators don’t ask the right questions, they won’t obtain meaningful answers. This again highlights the need for organisations to deploy the nuanced and tailored audience research methods explored in Chapter 5 and to adopt an engagement-based approach to developing relationships with audiences (strategies which are clearly interconnected).

Conclusion Co-creation is an umbrella term which encompasses aspects of collaboration, interaction, invention, value, meaning, and exchange. In the course of this chapter, I have demonstrated that it is a slippery and ambiguous concept that resists a simple definition, and which, therefore, is both open to interpretation and vulnerable to misinterpretation and misappropriation. I have argued that co-creation might fruitfully be understood as a generic term, which has evolved theoretically via studies of processes of participation, play, interpretation, and facilitation. We have seen in the course of this chapter how co-creation thrives on constraints, on skilful facilitation, and on careful planning, scaffolding, and evaluation. We have also seen that arts organisations would be wrong to believe that all audience members possess “the competencies enabling them to dialogue, play a particular role and integrate the products or services” that they offer (Cova and Cova 2009, p. 94). So it is beholden on arts organisations to develop the co-creative skills of their audiences: to enable them to participate; to encourage them to play; to educate and empower them to interpret; and to facilitate the full impact of arts engagement. This, in turn, can break down often pernicious barriers to engagement and develop audience members’ aesthetic taste and their propensity for artistic risk. Co-creation is undoubtedly in vogue, and this trend has been attributed to enduring communitarian values, which have engendered a more social approach to production and consumption (Arvidsson 2008). Co-creation is a natural heir of cultural democracy, although it is often deployed as an attempt (cynical or genuine) to democratise existing culture. It is also part of a wider “participatory turn” in society (Crawford et al. 2014), a

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phenomenon which we will explore more fully in the following chapter. Like questions of cultural value, practices and processes of co-creation are always political, because they are dependent on preordained power dynamics, and the power generally resides in the hands of artists and producers. I have therefore advocated here for an audience-centred approach to arts management and cultural policy, wherein audiences become the primary focus and raison d’être of artistically led organisations. Audience-centred organisations actively seek out opportunities to cocreate, and we have seen in the course of this chapter that co-creation can genuinely engage and empower audiences and culminate in democratic exchanges that can decode complex artistic messages and translate them into shared (albeit contested) meanings and values. So although there is undoubtedly a strong business case to be made for co-creation, perhaps the ultimate goals and benefits of co-creation are social and artistic: to derive collective meaning; to bring artists, producers and audiences together to co-create mutual long-term value by developing an interpretive community of artistic practice and exchange. Following Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004a) and Boal, we might well conceive of this community as a forum; and if Csikszentmihalyi is correct in his assertion that creativity is the product of social systems, then arts and cultural organisations are uniquely placed to facilitate and even shape and lead these social forums. If consumers in general are increasingly seeking experiences rather than products or services (Pine and Gilmore 1999), then arts audiences are hungry for meaningful aesthetic experiences. As Charles Leadbeater (2009) notes, the arts provide a space for higher meanings and deeper purpose; and as Lynne Conner argues, “deep pleasure resides in those opportunities to prepare, process, and analyse in order to be ready to interpret in a social setting” (2013, p. 67). To exclude audiences from active involvement in the creation or interpretation of a work of art is therefore to deny them the opportunity to find the deepest sense of purpose and pleasure, and to derive optimal meaning from their artistic engagement. When expressed in these stark terms, it is difficult to comprehend that this is what the majority of arts and cultural organisations continue to do, for this failure ultimately undermines most of their social and artistic missions. Co-creation is on the rise, and as attention turns to high quality engagement opportunities, arts organisations have been cautioned that if they wish to survive in the increasingly competitive global world of tourism and leisure, they will have to develop their audiences’ capacity to co-create and deepen their engagement (Boorsma 2006, p. 77). One proven way to

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achieve this is via digital communications technologies, and in the following chapter, I will explore how existing and emerging technologies can be harnessed to open up opportunities for co-creation and to elongate and ultimately enrich the audience experience.

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Jancovich, L. 2017. The participation myth. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 23(1), pp. 107–121. Jenkins, H. and Bertozzi, V. 2008. Artistic expression in the age of participatory culture. In: Tepper, S. J. and Ivey, B. (eds.) Engaging art: The next great transformation of American cultural life. New York, Routledge, pp. 171–195. Johanson, K. and Glow, H. 2015. A virtuous circle: The positive evaluation phenomenon in arts audience research. Participations, 12(1), pp. 254–270. Juncker, B. and Balling, G. 2016. The value of art and culture in everyday life: Towards an expressive cultural democracy. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 46(5), pp. 231–242. Keen, A. 2008. The cult of the amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today’s user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values. New York, Doubleday. Kester, G. 2005. Conversation pieces: The role of dialogue in socially engaged art. In: Kocur, Z. and Leung, S. (eds.) Theory in contemporary art since 1985. Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 76–100. Knell, J. 2004. Whose art is it anyway? London, The Intelligence Agency. Leadbeater, C. 2009. The art of with. Manchester, Cornerhouse. Machon, J. 2013. Immersive theatres: Intimacy and immediacy in contemporary performance. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Malpas, J. 2016. Hans-Georg Gadamer. In: Zalta, E. N. (ed.) The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy [Online]. Available from: https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2016/entries/gadamer [Accessed 19 April]. McConachie, B. 2008. Engaging audiences: A cognitive approach to spectating in the theatre. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. McMaster, B. 2008. Supporting excellence in the arts: From measurement to judgement. London, Department for Culture Media and Sport. Nicholson, R. E. and Pearce, D. G. 2001. Why do people attend events? A comparative analysis of visitor motivations at four south island events. Journal of Travel Research, 39(4), pp. 449–460. O’Sullivan, T. 2009. All together now: A symphony orchestra audience as a consuming community. Consumption, Markets and Culture, 12(3), pp. 209–223. O’Toole, J., Adams, R.-J., Anderson, M., Burton, B. and Ewing, R. (eds.). 2014. Young audiences, theatre and the cultural conversation. Dordrecht, Springer. Payne, A. F. and Frow, P. 2005. A strategic framework for customer relationship management. Journal of Marketing, 69, pp. 167–176. Payne, A. F., Storbacka, K. and Frow, P. 2008. Managing the co-creation of value. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36, pp. 83–96. Pine, B. J. and Gilmore, J. H. 1999. The experience economy: Work is theatre and every business a stage. Boston, Harvard Business School. Pope, R. 2005. Creativity: Theory, history, practice. London and New York, Routledge.

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Prahalad, C. K. and Ramaswamy, V. 2004a. Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 18(3), pp. 5–14. Prahalad, C. K. and Ramaswamy, V. 2004b. The future of competition: Co-creating unique value with customers. Harvard, HBS Press. Rancière, J. 2011. The emancipated spectator. London, Verso. Reason, M. 2010. Asking the audience: Audience research and the experience of theatre. About Performance 10, pp. 15–34. Royal Shakespeare Company. 2017. Press release [Internet]. Stratford-on-Avon, Royal Shakespeare Company. Available from: https://www.rsc.org.uk/press/ releases/spring-mischief-festival-the-other-place-stratford-upon-avon-24-may17-june [Accessed 10 November]. Schumpeter, J. 1942. Capitalism, socialism and democracy. New York, Harper. Sicart, M. 2014. Play matters. Boston, MA, MIT Press. Simon, N. 2010. The participatory museum. Santa Cruz, Museum 2.0. Tanggaard, L. (ed.). 2014. Fooling around: Creative learning pathways. Charlotte, NC, Information Age Publishing. Walmsley, B. 2013. Co-creating theatre: Authentic engagement or interlegitimation? Cultural Trends, 22(2), pp. 108–118. Walmsley, B. 2016. From arts marketing to audience enrichment: How digital engagement can deepen and democratize artistic exchange with audiences. Poetics, 58, pp. 66–78. Whalley, J. and Miller, L. 2017. Between us: Audiences, affect and the in-between. London, Palgrave.

CHAPTER 8

Engaging Audiences Through Digital Technologies

Introduction The previous chapter traced the rise of co-creative approaches to audience engagement and reviewed how these initiatives have the potential to enhance value and create artistic exchange relationships between audiences, artists and arts organisations. This chapter will move on to investigate how digital communications technologies are starting to transform philosophies and processes of audience engagement, occasionally by facilitating and enhancing co-creative projects themselves. The chapter will situate practices of digital engagement within the wider phenomena of participatory culture and social production, and acknowledge the implications of mass online migration for artists, producers, arts marketers and policymakers. This will entail a critical discussion of the relative utility of digital platforms in: supporting audience development initiatives; elongating the audience experience; and realising the core marketing objective of fostering two-way communication with audiences. The literature on digital engagement in the arts is sparse, and although the arts sector has witnessed a sharp global rise in digital projects, not least through the proliferation of live streaming, surprisingly little empirical work has been undertaken to document or evaluate the impact of this trend. However, there are a small number of scholarly studies into digital engagement and these will be reviewed in the course of this chapter alongside Nesta’s studies of NT Live—the Royal National Theatre’s international programme of live streaming productions into cinemas. © The Author(s) 2019 B. Walmsley, Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts, New Directions in Cultural Policy Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26653-0_8

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One aim of this chapter is to review the aims, objectives and outcomes of digital arts engagement projects; what won’t be reviewed here are digital arts projects per se, as what we are focussed on in terms of engagement is essentially how digital communications technologies are impacting on the traditional marketing mix explored in Chapter 6: namely, artistic products and experiences; sales and distribution; pricing strategies; and promotional activity. In order to illustrate how theories pertaining to digital engagement play out in practice, and to compensate in some way for the lack of academic literature on digital engagement in the arts, the chapter will conclude with four case studies. The first three case studies will present and review the activities of arts organisations that are acknowledged globally to be leading the way in the digital engagement of audiences: National Theatre of Scotland, Bristol’s Watershed and New York’s Brooklyn Museum. The final, extended, case study will provide a critical evaluation of a project funded by Nesta’s Digital R&D Fund: Yorkshire Dance’s Respond. The aim of this final case study is to illustrate and evidence the potential of digital communications technologies to create responsive, reflective and artistled but audience-centred platforms, whilst critically reviewing the inherent challenges in maintaining active audience engagement remotely over a sustained period of time.

The Rise of Digital Engagement As noted over a decade ago by Hannah Rudman (2006), interactive online communication is becoming an increasingly common feature of cultural consumption. The use of digital technology to engage audiences is a tangible manifestation of the wider cultural economy, which is characterised in part by a growing culture of participation. Crawford et al. (2014) characterise this “participatory turn” as a culture where everyday users engage more actively with online technologies than through the standard “read mode” (p. 1073). However, they also point out that the transformative potential of online engagement stems back several decades, citing Rheingold’s (1993) argument regarding “the potential of the Internet to revitalize the public sphere and construct new forms of community, even before the advent of Web 2.0” (p. 1072). So it is important to avoid falling into the common trap of assuming that participation is something new: indeed as we

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saw in the previous chapter, the arts have enjoyed a long and proud tradition of “viewer participation” and “activated spectatorship” (Bishop, 2006, p. 78). Ito (2007) relates this participatory turn to his concept of “networked publics”, which he invokes to explain how online audiences engage actively with media to the point where they co-create or even reinvent it. This focus on collective participation provides an excellent example of what Cova (1999) calls “the linking value of consumption”; and a primary aim of this chapter is to explore how artists and arts organisations can harness digital technologies to engage their audiences collectively—or, in other words, to use the performing arts as a vehicle to create social bonds between them. Another practical example of this “linking value” is provided by Terry O’Sullivan’s (2010) study of online engagement by a UK symphony orchestra, which found that respondents’ motivations for participating in web forums included socially enhancing their cultural experiences and “obtaining privileged information” (p. 666). This reinforces Kozinets’ (1999) argument that “information needs” drive people online; and it provides further evidence of audiences’ desire to connect with other audience members, in this case through digital technology. This finding links back to the discussions of cultural value in Chapter 4, which highlighted the potential of the arts to facilitate social cohesion and strengthen human relationships. O’Sullivan’s study also highlights the importance of creating “a clear context for activity” in order to “manage relevant dialogue” through a “substantial online presence” (2010, p. 667). This indicates the need for digital engagement activities to be well designed, managed and resourced, just like any other type of co-creative activity. O’Sullivan concludes that “hosted online interactivity provides a distinctive opportunity for arts organisations to position themselves as an essential resource for […] sustaining and enhancing arts experience” (p. 668). This is perhaps because, as Crawford et al. (2014) point out, online marketing enables “bidirectional communication”; and the “dynamic process of online attention” can lead to a form of “networked engagement – a necessary corollary to having a ‘voice’” (p. 1081). These studies suggest that the participatory turn has created a new generation of vocal, networked, and empowered audiences. However, there are some important caveats here that need to be acknowledged. The first caveat regards the “social risk” that audiences sometimes attach to participation and the “uncertainty” they attribute to their online identity (O’Sullivan 2010, p. 665). O’Sullivan notes that this insecurity can lead

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online audiences to feel alienated, which in turn can translate into a shyness or reluctance to post online for fear of appearing less complex or expert than their peers. Another caveat is that this new generation of empowered audience members is not always easy to reach and maintain. Sita Popat’s (2006) work with online dance communities underscored the challenges of maintaining sustained digital engagement with a transient audience community. But in her discussion of the artist/participant relationship, Popat notes that interactive digital situations allow participants to “understand in detail how the artwork is created” (p. 33). Popat stresses the importance of participatory artists developing social interaction and hosting skills, and drawing on techniques of asynchronous communication in order to develop an effective partnership with audiences. This asynchronous interaction, she argues, “can support play, reflection and development in a journey through the creative cycle” (p. 35). So it seems that there are clear and tangible benefits to be reaped from persevering in coaxing unfamiliar participants and in drawing out their online identities. In her powerful exhortation of taking a social learning and digital approach to audience engagement, Lynne Conner (2013) argues that a pleasurable audience experience is deeply connected to the hermeneutic opportunity to discuss and interpret meaning. Echoing Boorsma’s theory on co-creation, Conner maintains that effective audience engagement is about process rather than outcome. Conner illustrates and elaborates the many benefits of digital engagement, including its ability to empower and embolden users by safeguarding their anonymity. Conner also stresses the importance of “honouring silence” in effective listening and notes that this is far easier online than face-to-face because of the different social mores attached to these different modes of dialogue. She adds that “periods of silence slow the pace and allow for a redistribution of power among the speakers”. Conner demonstrates how effective online engagement can democratise discussion and increase audiences’ access to paratextual insights, thus profoundly enhancing the “meaning-making operation” (p. 79). On the other hand, she acknowledges Keen’s (2007) disdain for the rising cult of the amateur with a withering attack on the facile nature of the Facebook “Like”, which she derides as “a gesture that eschews substantive feedback for quick, almost guerrilla-style intervention” (p. 89). Thus whilst effective digital engagement has been repeatedly demonstrated to facilitate creative dialogue, and therefore support the co-creation of meaning and value, it has also been revealed as a potential cause of facile reductionism, of what Daniel Kahneman (2011) might call “fast thinking”.

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Although it is important to remain critical of poorly planned and designed online projects, examples of effective digital engagement are now manifold. In the UK, high profile national digital initiatives such as The Space are transforming the way in which audiences engage with the performing arts and thus once again challenging the very premise of the marketing mix. The Space (www.thespace.org) is a relatively new digital collaboration between Arts Council England and the BBC. It describes itself as “a commissioner of art that employs technology to push the boundaries of creative expression” (The Space 2015). The Space provides an online platform to showcase artists who “nurture and develop projects on the cutting edge of the digital arts”. It aims to “develop new models of participation that allow everybody to contribute”. The past few years have witnessed a significant increase in digital audience engagement tools, not least in the form of apps. Artory (www.artory. co.uk) is a digital engagement app that was launched as a pilot in 2015 to offer a “what’s on” service for culture. The app gathered audience feedback and facilitated the collective promotion of arts and cultural events. In exchange for providing feedback and engaging in promotional activity, users earned so-called Art Miles, which they could redeem to receive exclusive offers at arts and cultural venues across Plymouth (UK). Ultimately, Artory aimed to measure the quality of cultural experiences and thus help organisations to better understand their audiences (Artory 2015). Along similar lines, Culture Counts (http://culturecounts.cc) is a new intrinsic measurement platform that captures artist, peer, and public feedback on the quality and reach of arts and cultural events (Culture Counts 2015). The aim of Culture Counts is essentially to enable cultural organisations to co-produce value metrics with their audiences and other key stakeholders on their terms. The platform combines survey insights with box office data and Google analytics to produce reports in real time, so that organisations can access feedback as it is produced; compare their feedback over time and against benchmark organisations; and quickly export it into graphs to send to their funders. Reliant on effective digital engagement of audiences and other key stakeholders, Culture Counts now forms a formal part of the artistic assessment process in Western Australia and has recently been introduced, to significant controversy (as we saw in Chapter 4), in England.

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Social Production In the twenty-first-century networked culture of participation, the interrelationship between digital engagement and co-production is one of increasing significance. In Chapter 6, I discussed Debord’s (1992) claim that art needs to reposition itself from its traditional mode of representation towards one of dialogue and community, and the academic studies of digital audience engagement reviewed above exemplify how some arts organisations are starting to embrace the digital to develop communities of artistic exchange based around a more relational and aesthetic approach to marketing. This shift in approach reflects not just the participatory turn explored earlier in the chapter but also the move towards what Benkler (2006) refers to as “social production”. Adam Arvidsson (2008) credits the digitally networked environment with establishing the framework for this social production and with related phenomena such as fan culture. This framework, he argues, is built on the diffusion of networked information and communications technologies, “which have both lowered the price of access to the means of cultural and informational production and radically facilitated the autonomous organization of productive processes” (p. 328). Arvidsson claims that this social mode of production heralds “an ethical economy where value is related to social impact” (2008, p. 326). Arvidsson’s focus on the ethical nature of social production complements Bill Sharpe’s (2010) broader argument that human society comprises multiple “economies of life” that should function in a complex equilibrium to establish a balanced and effective ecosystem. Sharp, however, focusses more explicitly on artistic production, claiming that art is “the currency of the economy of experience” (p. 32).

Empathy A possible justification behind Sharpe’s claim lies in the role that art can play in facilitating empathy between one human being and another. This point marks a development of the argument proposed in Chapter 4 that the arts can function as an effective vehicle for relationship building and socialisation. Based as they are on live interactions between audiences and performers, the performing arts have been shown to be particularly powerful facilitators of human empathy, as discussed earlier in this book. What is relevant in the context of digital engagement is the role that technology can play in enhancing this core extrinsic benefit.

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Clay Shirky (2009) claims that “technological changes and the rise of social networking mean that the age-old problem of synchronizing the performer and audience in space and time now has new solutions that no longer depend on traditional presenting organisations, venues, programming or marketing”. This is an important argument, which highlights the potential of communications technologies to elongate the performer–audience relationship and transpose it offline and away from the constraints of synchronicity. This notion underlines Popat’s earlier point about the benefits of asynchronous communication. A related benefit of the online interaction between performers and audiences is the disintermediation that it implies: audiences are increasingly engaging directly with performing artists online without needing to pass through organisational channels and mediation.

Live Streaming The rising trend of live streaming or “simulcasting” stems back to New York’s Metropolitan Opera’s live streaming of a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute on December 30, 2006. The international success of the Met’s venture soon inspired others to follow suit, and an increasing number of large-scale arts organisations in the USA and Europe are now simulcasting their live productions, making live streaming the sector’s fastest growing technology development (Nesta 2013; Towse 2013). Despite the ongoing, and sometimes heated, debate about whether live streaming is cannibalising live audiences (the Met claims that it is, whilst Nesta’s latest research finds that it isn’t), what is clear is that the phenomenon is impacting significantly both on the marketing mix and on the global arts ecology. This impact is manifesting itself in a number of ways. There is emerging evidence that live streaming is starting to hamper cultural production, as venue producers and programmers increasingly offer valuable weekend slots to safe, live-streamed productions by global mega-brands like NT Live. This is likely to have a particularly negative impact on small regional producing organisations, which find themselves increasingly relegated to the more challenging mid-week slots. Another impact is on audience behaviour: whilst one study of London opera audiences seemed to indicate that attending a live broadcast increased audiences’ motivation to see future simulcasts but not to see more live performance (Wise 2014), a recent study conducted for Nesta by Bakhshi and Whitby (2014), based on a big data set of 54 performing arts venues across England broadcasting the National Theatre’s NT Live productions between 2009 and

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2013, concluded that live streaming can actually boost live attendance in neighbourhoods where simulcasts are easily accessible. However, there is an important caveat to this study in that it was based on a meta-analysis of post-code based ticket transactions (rather than individual audience members) and failed to incorporate any qualitative audience research to explore possible explanations for this apparent behavioural shift. Finally, simulcasting is almost irrevocably altering the audience experience of the performing arts. Exploratory research by Nesta (2010) on the 2009 NT Live season confirmed the significance of the live element of performance even for remote audiences, and concluded that live streaming can succeed in attracting new audiences into theatres. More surprisingly, it also indicated that remote audiences can actually enjoy a more emotionally engaging experience and are more likely to achieve a flow experience and feel “transported to another world” than if they watched the same performance live. Possible explanations for these findings proposed by survey participants included the ability to see actors “up close” and from a spacious, comfy seat. This supports White and Hede’s (2008) thesis about the importance of enablers of artistic impact. Nesta’s study concluded that whilst digital innovation can represent “a source of new and valuable theatrical experiences […] better knowledge about what works with audiences, and what does not, in digital innovation is crucial for the competitive success of the UK’s creative industries” (2010, p. 7). Such is the purpose of the following case study analysis.

Case Studies Case Study 1: National Theatre of Scotland’s Five Minute Theatre On Monday 23rd June 2014, working in collaboration with The Space, National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) presented The Great Yes, No, Don’t Know, Five Minute Theatre Show. The show comprised 24 hours of live theatre from Scotland and beyond on the topical theme of independence. This theatrical event was the latest edition of the company’s much celebrated Five-Minute Theatre project, whose strapline reads: “created by anyone for an audience of everyone” (see Fig. 8.1). To take part in Five Minute Theatre, successful applicants must create a five-minute-long piece of theatre, which must be performed in front of a live audience. It can be pre-recorded and sent to NTS; filmed live by one

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Fig. 8.1 Five Minute Theatre 2012 (Image courtesy of National Theatre of Scotland)

of NTS’s roving crews; or filmed live at one of the company’s performance hubs. There are very few restrictions on how participants can interpret “theatre” and anyone and everyone is actively encouraged to take part. The event’s Producer, Marianne Maxwell, explained the rationale behind the project as follows: In our five year history, everything had changed, both in the potential ways we could communicate with audiences, artists and participants, but more importantly how they could communicate with us. We wanted to unite both these moments in time and the idea to open our doors and let whoever wanted to create theatre with us emerged. (Maxwell 2013)

Around 1000 people from all over the world participated in the first edition of Five Minute Theatre in 2011. The event gathered 6,300 unique viewers from 51 countries who visited the site 22,000 times. Since June 2011, the 207 individual shows, all performed in front of their own live audience, have been watched a further 28,000 times, creating a total Five Minute Theatre virtual audience of 50,000. However, in July 2012, the online audience for Five Minute Theatre was low compared with previous editions, rarely rising above 60. This led The Scotsman’s Theatre Critic, Joyce McMillan (2012) to comment that “NTS, having established this ground-breaking format, now needs to think hard about how to increase its impact and reach”. This temporary setback once again highlighted the challenges of maintaining online engagement with audiences over a sustained period of time and the disappointing figures led NTS to rethink its relationship with its audiences. Maxwell (2013) described the vital role that social media played in this process of re-engagement as follows:

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Social media has been crucial in allowing us to talk about the audience and their connection with our work as anything other than passive. By embracing the power of our audiences’ voices we have begun to refine the definition of audience members. This has led to hugely creative outcomes. […] We are a theatre without walls … Five Minute Theatre and the other audience engagement activity we plan absolutely reflect our core values. We are playful and provocative and we want to share that with as many people across the world as we can, building meaningful relationships in ways that suit our audience, in whatever way they choose to connect with us – physically or virtually.

Maxwell highlights here how successful digital engagement can help an arts organisation fulfil its mission and strategic objectives and develop more participatory and democratic relationships with its audiences on a global scale. This case study example provides a useful vindication of Lynne Conner’s (2013) call for programming that “begins and ends with the audience’s interests” (p. 99) and of her contention that when audiences are granted the authority to make meaning and feel that they are listened to, the potential to strengthen “a national dialogue around the arts” is significant. As Maxwell (2013) argues, the impact of this digital empowerment can be nothing short of game-changing. As an idea it caught the imagination and was embraced. Technically we broke new ground and audience numbers and viewing figures were very high. However the most astonishing impact is how exciting it is to blur the lines between artists, audiences and participants, completely challenging what that means to a theatre company. The global impact of that seems to hold limitless potential: a connection with the National Theatre of Scotland is not restricted to a physical experience; now you can create, produce, watch, comment and chat with us no matter where you live. When you really think about that, it’s revolutionary.

Case Study 2: Watershed (Bristol, UK) In 1998, Watershed was a traditional arts centre in the south-west of England comprising two cinema screens, a photography gallery, an education department, and a café/bar. In 1999, Watershed entered into a collaborative agreement with the University of Bristol and invested heavily in high speed broadband. This strategic decision pushed the venue into spaces it wouldn’t normally have entered and encouraged it to constantly innovate.

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By getting rid of its old gallery content and co-producing new content with its audiences, Watershed realised that it was continually establishing new relationships and its staff became aware that they had to invest in these new relationships and get to know the people behind them. These developments quickly forced the management team to rethink radically what the venue now stood for and what art might mean for its new audiences, which in turn led to a wholesale rebrand that repositioned the venue as a co-creative space and recast its staff as cultural facilitators. As Managing Director Dick Penny puts it: “We understood that we were not just making and selling products, but offering an experience. As part of the capital project the public space in the building was flooded with free wireless, which transformed the spaces. Suddenly the social space became an active space where people did business, where people were not consuming, but getting active” (Penny 2009, p. 51). Through a creative use of technology, Watershed has handed over ownership of its building (at least physically and symbolically) to its audiences in what represents a genuine manifestation of social production (see Fig. 8.2). This shift in production culture exemplifies the “bidirectional communication” and “networked engagement” promulgated by Crawford et al. as a precondition for audiences having a “voice” (p. 1081). Indeed, as Bill Sharpe notes, Watershed has become “a space that people and organisations naturally gravitate towards to stimulate creativity and to ‘make something happen’”. He goes on to claim that “Watershed operates in the economy of exchange” (Sharpe 2010, pp. 4–5). Sharpe’s language is significant here, and it highlights the role that technology can play in opening up both arts spaces and their business models, and facilitating mutual exchange relationships between artists, producers, and audiences. Indeed the case of Watershed (like that of NTS) demonstrates how these traditionally separate functions are starting to blur and merge as digital communication technologies continue to break down traditional barriers to production, creation and engagement. As Sharpe puts it, Watershed has become a “perfect breeding ground” for producers; an “effective producer of producers” (pp. 79–80). What started out as a simple experiment to see what would happen if an arts centre flooded its spaces with high speed broadband has now become a sine qua non: Watershed’s innovative use of technology has led it on a journey that has radically reshaped its mission and core purpose and enabled it to become one of the best networked arts venues in the UK, a champion of social engagement and production. However, as with NTS, the physical and rhetorical transference of ownership to audiences has not yet radically

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Fig. 8.2 Social production at Bristol’s Watershed in 2010 (Image by Toby Farrow, courtesy of Watershed)

transformed the venue’s business model into one where audiences could be fully described as partners. Case Study 3: New York’s Brooklyn Museum Brooklyn Museum is one of the oldest and largest cultural organisations in the United States. Located in the New York borough of Brooklyn, its mission is “to act as a bridge between the rich artistic heritage of world cultures, as embodied in its collections and the unique experience of each visitor”. The museum describes itself as “dedicated to the primacy of the visitor experience” and it draws on “both new and traditional tools of communication, interpretation, and presentation […] to serve its diverse public as a dynamic, innovative, and welcoming center for learning through the visual arts” (Brooklyn Museum 2015).

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From 1999 to 2016, the digital engagement strategy at Brooklyn Museum was overseen by its Vice Director of Digital Engagement and Technology, Shelley Bernstein. Shelley’s role was to enhance the museum’s visitor experience and community engagement through the innovative use of technology. This activity culminated in a series of digital initiatives including free public wifi, video competitions, user-generated content, projects designed specifically for mobile devices, and digitising the museum’s vast collection of artwork. According to Bernstein (2013), one of the museum’s most successful technology projects was its “comment kiosk”. These iPad-based kiosks now sit in every exhibition (see Fig. 8.3), where they gather visitors’ comments and email them automatically to the museum’s curatorial and visitor services staff. Visitors’ comments are moderated, but a selection (containing both positive and negative feedback) are posted on the kiosks in the gallery, on the website, and on the exhibition pages for other visitors to respond to. Bernstein argues that the kiosks offer the

Fig. 8.3 An interactive comment kiosk at Brooklyn Museum (© 2004–2019 the Brooklyn Museum. Image courtesy of Brooklyn Museum, under Creative Commons License 3.0)

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museum a novel way to learn from its visitors, as well as facilitating visitor to visitor communication. Over time, the kiosks have become more interactive and the technology has enabled artists, curators, conservers, and educators to both pose and answer questions, which are then threaded into themes, ranked by popularity and posted on exhibition websites. This has facilitated a deeper, two-way engagement between visitors and the museum staff, and effected what staff estimate as a 40% rise in inspiring and insightful comments. These three case studies illustrate how arts and cultural organisations are starting to harness digital technology to realise the fundamental goal of arts marketing: to develop and manage mutually satisfying value-based relationships with audiences. Through the innovative and appropriate use of digital communications technologies, National Theatre of Scotland, Watershed and Brooklyn Museum are engaging in open, creative dialogues with their audiences, which are enhancing the value of their audiences’ cultural experiences and helping them to extract social and aesthetic meaning from them. Most performing arts organisations are still behind the technology curve; but these illustrative examples indicate how they in turn might draw on technology to maximise their cultural offering. Case Study 4: Yorkshire Dance’s Respond Project1 Introduction The final case study of this chapter constitutes a critical evaluation of Respond (www.respondto.org)—a project funded by Nesta, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Arts Council England through the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts. The core aim of this fund was to support ideas that use digital technology to develop new business models and enhance audience reach. The aim of Respond was to design and develop a digital adaptation of Liz Lerman’s renowned Critical Response Process (CRP) that would enable participants to interact directly with artists and share their interpretations of artistic ideas and works-in-progress. In March 2014 two dance artists, Hagit Yakira and Robbie Synge, were selected through a public vote to each create a new piece of dance. Between September and November 2014, the artists developed their respective 1 I have published a full account of this project in Poetics. Please see Walmsley, B. 2016. From arts marketing to audience enrichment: How digital engagement can deepen and democratise artistic exchange with audiences. Poetics, 58, pp. 66–78.

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pieces using the new Respond platform (see Fig. 8.4) to engage in a creative and extended dialogue with audiences, following the established four steps of Lerman’s CRP: statements of meaning; artist’s questions; neutral questions; and sharing opinions. The core research purpose of the project was to investigate whether a new responsive online platform could successfully deepen and broaden audiences’ engagement with contemporary dance and foster a culture of constructive critical enquiry between arts organisations, artists, and audiences. A related aim was to explore whether the platform could expand the audience reach of new dance works and benefit the creation and development process of new works of art. Particular research objectives included investigating whether the platform could enhance and demystify the creative process of contemporary dance and facilitate audiences’ decoding processes, and evaluating to what extent it might increase empathy between

Fig. 8.4 A screen-grab of the Respond platform (Image courtesy of Breakfast Creatives)

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artists and audiences. The project ultimately aspired to provide new insights into the benefits of artists engaging with a range of audiences via digital communications technologies throughout the creative process. The research design followed a mixed-methods approach based on a combination of audience and participant surveys, discussion groups, depth interviews, content analysis of online discussion, and netnography. Primary research was undertaken with 32 participants sampled behaviourally across three distinct populations: I. Artists, producers, and frequent dance attenders; II. Infrequent dance attenders; III. Non-attenders (sampled from a range of ages, professions, and social groups). Findings The primary research produced a number of insightful findings that have significant implications for practices and processes of audience development and engagement. The research team observed that a high number of participants using the Respond platform during the first live week of the Critical Response Process (CRP1) were completing the four-step process in one sitting, as opposed to waiting for the artist’s response and interacting with other participants. This was significant because the initial aim of the site was to foster a communal and interactive experience. The team thus became aware that participants were experiencing the platform independently and were sometimes acting in isolation, which made it question whether the online format and the language it was using on the platform were conducive to a communal online experience. The sense of an online community and the ability to view the experience of others seemed to be lacking from the site and so the experience was not reflective of how CRP usually functions amongst a group in dialogue, together in a physical space. Conversely, there was clear evidence that users were engaging deeply, emotively and reflexively with the dance clips and with the questions posed by the artists. Content analysis of online interactions also revealed that frequent attenders were focussing more on process, whereas infrequent and non-attenders appeared to be more focussed on emotions. Both artists reported after CRP1 that they were impressed at the level and depth of user engagement. Compared with live CRP, Robbie Synge found the online process to be “more reflective, more expansive, a different

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mode of expression […] the act of doing it is more generative”. Robbie appreciated the fact that the platform gave him the opportunity to “reread and reflect back on” his and other people’s comments, but felt that it was missing what he called a “moment of dialogue”. This point was reinforced by several survey participants, who called for “more interaction with others” and greater “collaboration and feedback”. This finding led the project team to alter the functionality, look and feel of the platform before the next phase of the project (CRP2), in order to allow users to take part in live web chats and respond via subject threads to each other’s online comments. Despite the inevitable technical hitches at the start of the project, initial feedback from participants was predominantly positive, with 62% of respondents to the post-CRP1 survey reporting a positive experience of using this type of platform and 67% stating that they managed to convey their thoughts successfully. One of the infrequent attenders in the closed group fed back on her experience as follows: I had always loved dance but felt a lot of it was inaccessible to me because I didn’t have ‘the knowledge’ and vocabulary to appreciate it fully. […] Having not heard of Liz Lerman’s work previously, I realized that it was possible to engage in dialogue with an artist/artistic work without opinionated, and often received, judgment playing a huge part in the process. […] Creating, especially initial creation, is scary and I, therefore, also felt great respect and admiration for [the artists] – that they were actually prepared to offer up their creative works in progress and share/question that work in a dialogue with us.

There was consensus from the artists and participants that the platform encouraged a more “considered”, “deep”, “honest”, “structured”, “succinct”, and “mindful” approach to critical response than a verbal, face-toface exchange. Participants also fed back that the platform helped them to develop a “close relationship” with the artists and fellow participants, and to express their thoughts expansively and “in different ways”. One infrequent attender confided that it made him feel “like an insider”. However, a minority of participants missed the “layers of dialogue” that can emanate from a live discussion and felt that the physical absence of artists prevented non-verbal empathy and made the process feel a little “cold” and “impersonal”. Others noted the inherent tension between the “snappy and superficial” habits encouraged by digital communications and the “thoughtful and analytical” process encouraged by CRP.

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When asked if the process had affected their feelings about seeing the final performance, 86% of participants replied that it had had a positive impact. Positive responses here included participants feeling “intrigued”, “involved”, “important”, “connected”, and enjoying “a sense of ownership”. This suggested that the platform had succeeded in generating a positive sense of anticipation, reminiscent of Brown and Novak’s (2007) concept of “readiness-to-receive”, which the study found to be a key predictor of captivation and ultimately of positive impact. Providing further insights into the role and power of anticipation, one non-attender responded as follows: I feel as if I’m now attached to the work and that I’m a part of the development, even if it’s just as a viewer. I am looking forward to the performance more because I will be able to understand it in its entirety and read it with prior knowledge instead of just reading a quick blurb in a programme and attending like any other audience member. I feel somewhat privileged! It’s quite lovely.

Another non-attender experienced an even greater transformation, communicating that the process had actually changed her outlook on contemporary dance: “I am looking forward to it more as my initial preconceptions of contemporary dance as an esoteric art form have been (mostly) dispelled”. This evidence of the potential of the platform to serve as an effective audience development tool was also communicated by an infrequent attender, who fed back: “I feel more ‘open’ to dance now and more stimulated to read more about dance and […] go and see more dance”. These findings confirmed the conclusions of earlier studies regarding the particular needs and concerns of new audiences, as well as the positive role that context and paratextual insights can play in enhancing audience experience. On the other hand, two participants (one non-attender, one infrequent attender) reported feeling “confused” following CRP1, and one frequent attender felt that the process had actually jeopardised his potential enjoyment of the ensuing performance: “I am looking forward to seeing the work; however I feel that I won’t be able to enjoy it as much as I will be looking at it with informed analytical eyes”. When asked whether the process had affected their ability to provide constructive feedback and whether it might encourage them to attend dance more frequently, almost all of the participants (89%) affirmed that the platform had challenged them to be

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more open, empathetic, questioning, and confident in providing feedback, in many different contexts. This again confirmed the findings of previous studies into the impact of effective digital engagement. But participants’ predictions of the process’s potential impact on their attendance patterns were mixed, with 55% reporting that it was unlikely to encourage them to attend dance performances more frequently. However, this figure was skewed negatively by the frequent attenders, with 62% of the infrequent non-attenders stating that it might indeed make them attend more often, offering yet further indication of the platform’s potential capabilities to develop new audiences. Three findings were particularly striking. Firstly, the contention from two of the participants that the digital engagement process had helped them to “do the hard work” before seeing the final performance indicates the ability of digital engagement during the creative process to remove a common barrier to artistic impact and enjoyment. One infrequent attender reported feeling that she had “done a lot of the thinking” during the two CRP weeks, so she imagined that seeing the performance would give her “a really rich experience” as opposed to “seeing it cold”. She felt she would enjoy a “more embodied experience” and that it would be “less hard work”. This confirmed Lynne Conner’s argument that context can make cultural interpretation “cognitively easier” and enable deeper interpretations (2013, p. 113). It also reflected Matthew Reason’s (2010) assertion that audiency is an embodied kinaesthetic experience, and provided tangible evidence of John Dewey’s “rhythm of surrender and reflection” theory, which holds that reflection cannot occur during an absorbing experience (2005, p. 144). As Kahneman (2011) might put it, the platform facilitated the separation, whilst encouraging the complementarity, of two distinct modes of thinking: System 1 (fast, emotional and instinctive); and System 2 (slow, logical and deliberate). Secondly, one participant commented that the experience had been transformative on a personal level. When asked how the process might affect the way she gave feedback in future, this participant replied: It’s almost like a rebirth … it has been incredibly profound […]. I actually felt, during the process, what I had to say was taken seriously and perhaps valued and whatever thoughts I had were actually being recorded. And so, in a way, it forced me to think more about what I did think. But I think the whole CRP thing does that anyway; […] you’ve got this kneejerk reaction,

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which we all have nowadays. It makes you stand back and […] think, be mindful about your first reactions.

This infrequent attender valued the “analytical and reflective” nature of Respond and perceived it as an antidote to what she labelled “pundit culture”. She felt that CRP’s rejection of the “fix-it” (attempts to provide any quick artistic “solutions”) helped to avoid this trend towards punditry by encouraging a more mindful, democratic and constructive approach to delivering a critical response.2 As such, this participant’s views entwined with the renowned film critic Mark Kermode (2013), who makes a strong case for “slow reviewing”. They were also akin to both Andrew Keen and Lynne Conner’s respective attacks on the rising cult of the amateur and guerrilla-style online engagement. Finally, the research findings indicated that digital platforms of this nature might work more effectively with non- and infrequent attenders as opposed to frequent attenders. This challenges the findings of some existing studies into co-creation (e.g. Walmsley 2013) that co-creative projects generally attract a niche, highly engaged audience segment. It seems that the key difference here is technology: non- and infrequent attenders communicated that they felt less intimidated to engage online, where they could reflect in peace and enjoy some degree of anonymity. This supports existing research findings regarding the benefits of digital anonymity, e.g. Conner’s assertion that the “face-to-facelessness” of digital platforms can generate “a new kind of liquid courage when it comes to stating an opinion” (2013, p. 80). Frequent attenders, on the other hand, felt that they learnt less and found the film clips a little reductive. When asked what changes participants would make to the platform, the most common call was for more interaction with other participants. Respondents also called for greater clarity and simplicity and for automated email reminders, both to prompt them to engage with the platform more frequently and to notify them when the artist had responded to their comments. Underlining the insights regarding empathy, it transpired to be very important to almost all of the participants that artists did engage with their responses. Mobile compatibility was another common request for future versions of the platform. An interesting dilemma for the development team emerged as several participants requested a mechanism that would allow 2 On the online platform, participants received an automatic pop-up warning if the start of their sentence seemed to be leading to a potential “fix-it”.

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them to revisit and amend their feedback. The danger here is that this might encourage groupthink and inhibit more immediate, spontaneous, original and visceral commentary. But participants seemed to want to be more in control of their online presence and be able to change and develop their comments as their views and ideas progressed along the process. They particularly praised the online journal for enabling them to do this in private. Implications and Conclusions The findings of this project have potentially significant implications for audiences, artists, arts organisations and policymakers. Respond has generated fresh insights into the benefits of sustained digital engagement between artists and audiences, including: encouraging greater reflexivity; encouraging a more generative creative process; empowering less frequent attenders to engage in artistic dialogue; facilitating a more kinaesthetic and absorbing engagement with live performance; and changing non-attenders’ perceptions of unfamiliar artforms. The platform has therefore demonstrated its potential to serve as an effective audience development tool (for both new and existing audiences) and move audience relations well beyond the standard transactional processes into a more artistic and relational realm much more in tune with twenty-first-century marketing. This is precisely the kind of engagement that exemplifies Miranda Boorsma’s (2006) conception of co-creation, whereby audiences give “meaning to the artefact by means of their imaginative powers” (p. 85). It also reflects the Situationist tenet that “art must move away from representation towards community and dialogue” (Debord 1992; Overend 2010, p. 2) and Bourriaud’s definition of “relational art” as “intersubjective encounters […] in which meaning is elaborated collectively” (cited in Bishop 2004, p. 54, original italics). Furthermore, this kind of two-way interaction is indicative of an effective Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) model, whereby “senders” and “receivers” are connected via a communications feedback loop which can facilitate the decoding process and increase customer loyalty and brand equity (Pickton and Broderick 2005). This research thus has profound implications for arts marketers and managers and has the potential to revolutionise the way in which arts organisations engage with their artists and audiences, bringing a whole new meaning and possible approach to Customer Relationship Management. The biggest challenge during the lifecycle of the project was maintaining momentum amongst participants, especially amongst new audiences. The

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findings suggested that any future development of any such tool would need to focus on making the platform as sticky and interactive as possible: online users are accustomed to what one participant termed “a dopamine hit”, and the platform could address this by providing automatic notifications when an artist or fellow participant has read and/or responded to a post. Another challenge is to maximise participants’ dwell time on the platform and to encourage them to engage with the platform more reflectively. Challenges for organisations include the apparent need to provide professional development for artists to enhance their digital presence; to record their creative development in an interesting and high quality way; and to pose enticing and productive questions. Another obvious organisational challenge is the need to resource the facilitation of the online process during periods of intensive engagement. This confirms the findings of O’Sullivan’s (2010) study discussed at the beginning of the chapter. Ultimately, this type of digital engagement platform could provide the performing arts sector with a highly structured, tried-and-tested model for maximising audience development and engagement via digital communications technologies, which could potentially revolutionise arts organisations’ digital engagement strategies and speed up the adoption of the more open, porous, dialogic, informally networked and digitised business models advocated by recent research in the arts (e.g. Bolton et al. 2011; Hewison and Holden 2011; Knell 2007). This kind of tool can demonstrably facilitate Steven Tepper’s (2008) concept of engagement, whereby audiences actively connect to art; discover new meanings; and offer their own critique. It seems to encourage slow, structured critique and encourages participants to separate Kahneman’s two distinct systems of thinking. There are therefore indications that it could even herald a new age of digital engagement that might provide an antidote to the punditry and kneejerk ephemerality that many popular social media platforms feed on by encouraging both artists and audiences to review artistic work more deliberately and dwell together more often online.

Conclusion This chapter has investigated recent theories and practices of digital audience engagement and placed them within the wider context of an emerging culture of participation and within a wider ecology of an economy of experience and meaning. Digital platforms are undeniably changing the ways

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in which artists and arts organisations engage with their audiences. But as ever, whilst the early adopters are capitalising on the benefits of digital engagement, there is a long tail of laggards and luddites who are steadily falling behind the curve and not responding to the modern needs of their audiences. A good example of this is the Edinburgh Festivals, which were warned recently that unless they became leaders in the digital sphere and embraced the potential for digital platforms to improve social engagement and access, they risked being overtaken by their peers (BOP Consulting and Festivals and Events International 2015). The case studies outlined in this chapter have illustrated and evidenced the potential of digital communications technologies to create responsive, reflective and artist-led but audience-centred platforms. Moreover, they have validated Rheingold’s prediction back in 1993 that the Internet had the potential to “revitalize the public sphere and construct new forms of community”. For whether digital platforms are facilitating cultural coproduction at NTS; developing cultural networks at Watershed; adding meaning to audiences’ visits to Brooklyn Museum; or encouraging slow reflexivity at Yorkshire Dance, what is clear is that they are empowering audiences all over the world and giving them an artistic voice. At the same time, the case studies have highlighted the inherent challenges involved in maintaining digital audience engagement over a sustained period of time, confirming the findings of existing studies. There is a consensus in the academic literature that aspects of social risk and online insecurity can cause audiences to feel inferior and alienated, but also that effective design, social interaction and hosting skills can help to overcome these barriers to engagement. There is clearly a long way to go before the performing arts can claim to be delighting their audiences digitally or even responding to their basic online needs. But there is movement in the right direction, and a small number of trailblazers, some of whom have been showcased in this chapter, are starting to revolutionise their engagement with their audiences through the digital and reap rich dividends from these new value-based exchange relationships. It is to be hoped that the long tail will quickly follow suit so that a critical mass of audiences will soon have access to the kind of meaningful, reflexive digital engagement that the performing arts can assuredly excel at.

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References Artory. 2015. Artory [Internet]. Artory. Available from: http://www.artory.co.uk [Accessed 18 May]. Arvidsson, A. 2008. The ethical economy of customer coproduction. Journal of Macromarketing, 28(4), pp. 326–338. Bakhshi, H. and Whitby, A. 2014. Estimating the impact of live simulcast on theatre attendance: An application to London’s National Theatre. London, Nesta. Benkler, Y. 2006. The wealth of networks. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Bernstein, S. 2013. Moving toward a conversation. Available from: http://www. brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/2013/06/11/movingtoward-a-conversation [Accessed 5 August]. Bishop, C. 2004. Antagonism and relational aesthetics. October, 110, pp. 51–79. Bishop, C. 2006. Participation. London, Whitechapel. Bolton, M., Cooper, C., Antrobus, C., Ludlow, J. and Tebbutt, H. 2011. Capital matters: How to build financial resilience in the UK’s arts and cultural sector. London, Mission Models Money. Boorsma, M. 2006. A strategic logic for arts marketing: Integrating customer value and artistic objectives. The International Journal of Cultural Policy, 12(1), pp. 73–92. BOP Consulting and Festivals and Events International. 2015. Edinburgh Festivals: Thundering Hooves 2.0. A ten year strategy to sustain the success of Edinburgh’s festivals. Brooklyn Museum. 2015. About: Mission statement [Internet]. New York, Brooklyn Museum. Available from: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/about/mission. php [Accessed 18 May]. Brown, A. S. and Novak, J. L. 2007. Assessing the intrinsic impacts of a live performance. San Francisco, WolfBrown. Conner, L. 2013. Audience engagement and the role of arts talk in the digital era. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Cova, B. 1999. From marketing to societing: When the link is more important than the thing. In: Brownlie, D., Saren, M., Wensley, R. and Whittington, R. (eds.) Rethinking marketing: Towards critical marketing accountings. London, Sage, pp. 64–83. Crawford, G., Gosling, V., Bagnall, G. and Light, B. 2014. Is there an app for that? A case study of the potentials and limitations of the participatory turn and networked publics for classical music audience engagement. Information, Communication & Society, 17(9), pp. 1072–1085. Culture Counts. 2015. About [Internet]. Available from: http://culturecounts. cc/about [Accessed 19 May]. Debord, G. 1992. Society of the spectacle. London, Rebel Press. Dewey, J. 2005. Art as experience. New York, Perigee Books.

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Hewison, R. and Holden, J. 2011. The cultural leadership handbook: How to run a creative organization. Farnham, Gower. Ito, M. 2007. Introduction. In: Varnelis, K. (ed.) Networked publics. London, MIT Press, pp. 1–14. Kahneman, D. 2011. Thinking, fast and slow. London; New York, Penguin. Keen, A. 2007. The cult of the amateur: How today’s internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy. London, Nicholas Brealey. Kermode, M. 2013. Hatchet job: Love movies, hate critics. London, Picador. Knell, J. 2007. The art of living: A provocation paper. London, Mission Models Money. Kozinets, R. 1999. E-tribalized marketing? The strategic implications of virtual communities of consumption. European Management Journal, 17(3), pp. 252–264. Maxwell, M. 2013. Five-Minute Theatre. E-mail interview with Ben Walmsley. 25 March, Glasgow. McMillan, J. 2012. Theatre reviews. The Herald, 19 July [Accessed 19 July]. Nesta. 2010. Beyond live: Digital innovation in the performing arts. London, Nesta. Nesta. 2013. Digital culture: How arts and cultural organisations in England use technology. London, Nesta. O’Sullivan, T. 2010. Dangling conversations: Web-forum use by a symphony orchestra’s audience members. Journal of Marketing Management, 26(7–8), pp. 656–670. Overend, D. 2010. Underneath The Arches: Developing a relational theatre practice in response to a specific cultural site. PhD, University of Glasgow. Penny, D. 2009. Imagine an arts sector which works collaboratively to deliver excellence and engage the public. In: Proceedings of the Arts Marketing Association Conference 21–23 July. London, Arts Marketing Association, pp. 48–53. Pickton, D. and Broderick, A. 2005. Integrated marketing communications. 2nd ed. Harlow, Pearson. Popat, S. 2006. Invisible connections: Dance, choreography and internet communities. Oxon, Routledge. Reason, M. 2010. Asking the audience: Audience research and the experience of theatre. About Performance, 10, pp. 15–34. Rheingold, H. 1993. The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier. Reading, MA, Addison Wesley. Rudman, H. 2006. New horizons. Arts Professional, 11 September, p. 20. Sharpe, B. 2010. Economies of life: Patterns of health and wealth. Axminster, Triarchy Press. Shirkey, C. 2009. Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. London; New York, Penguin.

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CHAPTER 9

Conclusions and Implications

Introduction This book began with a plea for audiences—a plea to leave behind the fear, ridicule, homogenisation, vilification and victimisation which have traditionally characterised society’s relationship with audiences, and to engage them as valid and informed subjects of their own research, as co-researchers, even. The book embarked from the thesis that at the heart of audience research lies a mutual exchange of value, wherein audiences can and should become strategic partners in the mission fulfilment of performing arts organisations—that is to say, in their own internal processes of enrichment and transformation. In the preceding chapters, we have seen how and why audiences are more than capable of playing this role. We have seen that they are increasingly demanding to play this role. But we have also seen that for many audiences, the doors to engagement and enrichment remain closed. The past decade has witnessed a flurry of audience research, most of which appears to confirm the often hailed shift towards empiricism. By engaging directly and deeply with audiences, this shift is finally offering audiences a genuine voice in telling their own stories. As I stated at the beginning of the book, questions of audience engagement pose a number of fundamental questions regarding what an audience actually is and does. In advocating for an interdisciplinary approach to audience research that places questions of engagement at its heart, this book has responded to © The Author(s) 2019 B. Walmsley, Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts, New Directions in Cultural Policy Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26653-0_9

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Willmar Sauter’s (2000) call at the turn of the millennium to develop radically different research strategies. This is the only way to get beneath the surface of the audience project, to de-marginalise audiences and capture the rich complexity of their experiences of the performing arts. This concluding chapter is structured into four sections. The first section draws out the key findings and conclusions from the preceding chapters and explores their implications for the evolving field of audience studies, and, most significantly, for the future of audience research in the performing arts. The second section hones in on the phenomenon of engagement and outlines how this core concept might be fruitfully reconceptualised to move the field and the performing arts sector forwards. Section three takes a more macro view and considers the implications of the findings for external stakeholders, including arts and cultural organisations, artists and arts professionals, and policymakers. It makes the case for audiencecentric organisations fuelled by mutually beneficial relationships of artistic exchange. The final section draws out some overall conclusions and speculates about the likely direction of future research in the field.

The Evolution of Audience Studies: Towards a New Paradigm One of the most ambitious aims of this book was to reconfigure the paradigm of audience studies in the context of the performing arts. The core rationale for this was that audiences have traditionally been overly absent from audience research and treated with an odd admixture of disdain and paternalism, which of course represents a significant methodological and epistemological failure on behalf of the field. Through an extended critical exploration of different aspects of audience engagement, covering the audience experience, cultural value, research methods and methodologies, arts marketing, co-creation, and digital engagement, I have built the argument that audience studies should adopt an engagementbased paradigm. Engagement has been placed centre stage in my analysis of audience research because it encapsulates the embodied, relational and hermeneutic aspects of audiency required of twenty-first-century art. Researching audiences, audiencing, and audiency without a deep understanding of how audiences engage and are engaged with the performing arts will always be somewhat vacuous. However, the comprehensive review of existing audience research presented in Chapter 2 highlighted the welcome fact that audience scholars have now moved beyond the hypothetical

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“model” spectator towards a rich, multimodal exploration of the total audience experience. The assumptions that have been made for centuries about the “ideal” and homogenised audience have been supplanted by revelations about real audience members who deploy highly individualised and deeply personal strategies to engage with their chosen art forms. I argued in Chapter 2 that audience studies is predominantly interested in the how and why of engagement and that it should leave questions of who and who not to sociology and cultural policy studies. In the course of the literature review which comprised that chapter I outlined an emerging taxonomy of extant audience research, which I deconstructed into the following core themes: the pacification of audiences; power, elitism and class; cultural policy, participation and co-creation; immersive performance; performance venues, spaces and places; performance as ritual; reception theory and semiotics; research methodologies; the audience experience; value and impact research; young audiences; arts marketing and management; and audience engagement and enrichment. The aim of this classification was not to reduce or restrict what is thankfully now a burgeoning field, but rather to anchor it, in another attempt to shore up its evolving paradigm. My proposed taxonomy can only be subjective, indicative and emergent; but it represents a critical summary of the core themes and traditions of research into performing arts audiences over the preceding decades and hopefully establishes a solid platform for future research in the field. Audience studies ostensibly has much to learn from phenomenology, psychology, aesthetics, and anthropology, where mature theorisation on questions of distance, flow, arousal, empathy, and catharsis indicates that audiences’ emotions are ultimately what transform ordinary everyday experiences into extraordinary aesthetic experiences. This suggests that audience scholars should follow Paul Silvia’s (2005) advice and apply appraisal theories on emotional engagement, which would offer the field new ideas and research directions. They should also heed Miranda Boorsma’s (2006) call to follow up insights from philosophical aesthetics, which perceive the arts as culturally and socially embedded. As the field of audience studies continues to evolve, supported by the serendipitous rise of interdisciplinary research, we are likely to see further convergence between scholars from traditionally disparate fields. Considering the complex social and managerial structures that contextualise the performing arts and the multifarious impacts that they have on individuals and communities, this can only be a positive development for audience research. But interdisciplinarity requires its own structures to support it, and so it is incumbent on audience scholars,

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and on their institutions and funders, to break free from twentieth-century silos and invest time and money in collaborative research; and if academic research is to impact on performing arts organisations and audiences, then the arts and higher education sectors will need to develop more embedded long-term collaborations that reflect the research requirements of both parties. As we saw in Chapter 3, organic performance takes place within an aesthetic, symbolic and live context. Empirical research has revealed that this context can engender experiences for audiences that can be characterised as framed, intense, hedonic, autotelic, stylised, and playful. Audiences’ experiences are complex and multisensory and they can therefore often appear noumenal and ineffable, but it is possible and indeed insightful to deconstruct audiences’ experiences into their constituent parts in order to understand them more deeply without demystifying them completely. Audiences’ experiences of the performing arts combine cognitive, sensual, aesthetic, kinaesthetic, emotional, social, intellectual, imaginative, enactive and spiritual responses to performance. Most researchers concur that many of these response modes are contingent on a live, relational experience of the performing arts, which offers intimate proximity to artists and privileged access to stagecraft. These are thus the inherent and differentiating qualities that demarcate the performing arts and make them so appealing to audiences. In order to facilitate an engagement-based culture, they are qualities that should therefore be borne in mind by artists, producers, and marketers when creating, programming, and promoting performances. Questions of cultural value are never very far away from discussions about the impact of the arts on audiences; so these questions must also be imperative for audience studies. Scholars of cultural value and of audiences share a desire to capture the impact of the arts and culture, and both communities are continually exercised by seemingly intractable questions of methodology. The discussion in Chapter 4 revealed that investigations into cultural value and audience engagement also share a political element, because both fields are characterised by the vested interests of gatekeepers. As Whalley and Miller note, “to be an audience continues to be a political act, one freighted with significant social and ideological implications” (2017, p. 33). So there are many synergies between these two small loci of research, not least their combined impact on cultural policy and on society more broadly. What is needed, therefore, is a more coordinated research approach that might enable more rapid mechanisms for knowledge exchange, particularly in the area of evaluation methodologies,

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where both fields are separately advocating for nuanced, longitudinal, multidimensional and reflexive approaches to impact assessment that combine complementary methods in a tailored and systematic way. The conclusions offered in Chapter 4 suggest that a fruitful way forwards might be to focus on how the value and impact of the arts might be reliably expressed by audiences, rather than to engage in the more abstract debate about what this value actually is. This conclusion again supports the contention that empirical audience research offers a valuable impact in and of itself rather than a means to a constantly elusive end. In Chapter 5, I explored the range of methods that are deployed by researchers to explicate audiences’ engagement with the performing arts. This highlighted the issue that, like cultural value scholars, audience researchers often struggle to find a third way between the particular and the universal. This apparent tension between individual versus collective experience and impact is omnipresent in audience studies, and it still appears to compromise a good number of studies that choose not to take a mixedmethods approach. An ongoing challenge for the discipline is therefore to continue to develop a paradigm that captures the personal and the microscopic, whilst retaining the “generous” and critical eye necessary to interpret these personal findings in a comparative and transferrable way. A more scientific approach to narration and storytelling might support this endeavour and enable researchers to achieve the dual policy objective of communicating immeasurable value whilst demonstrating measurable impact. In this first section of the concluding chapter we are principally concerned with the evolving paradigm of audience studies, and in Chapter 6, I called for a reconceptualisation of the tired old arts marketing paradigm towards an engagement-based model that would reflect the co-constructed, experiential and intimate value-based relationships that arts organisations are increasingly developing with their audiences. The performing arts offer audiences exceptional and extraordinary experiences that distance the sector from the product-centred paradigm offered by marketing, and there is increasing evidence that arts organisations and scholars are responding to the new audience context and prioritising engagement over marketing (Walmsley 2019). This conceptual shift has significant implications for audience studies as it strives to evolve as a field that is both interdisciplinary and audience-centred. Rather than engagement supplementing marketing, I have argued that marketing needs to augment engagement.

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Engagement cannot be an afterthought; it must be embedded in professional arts practice and therefore embedded in the underlying paradigm of audience research and audience studies. One particular aspect of audience engagement that is rapidly becoming a major sociocultural force is co-creation. In Chapter 7, we saw how cocreation functions as an ambiguous umbrella term that encompasses aspects of collaboration, interaction, invention, value, meaning, and exchange. In order to maximise the potential benefits of co-creation, we have seen how arts organisations need to develop the participatory skills of their audiences by encouraging them to play and empowering them to make meaning. Theories and practices of co-creation thus support the engagement model because they share a common focus on relational aesthetic experiences and intersubjective encounters. Like co-creation, effective engagement can develop audience members’ aesthetic tastes and interpretive skills, and enhance their propensity for artistic risk. If we heed the advice of Caroline Heim (2016) and Josephine Machon (2013) and consider audience members as co-conspirators or creative comrades, then audience studies has much to learn from co-creation, which at its most effective acts as a powerful democratic force in arts and cultural organisations. In Chapter 8 we saw how digital communications technologies can also act as a democratising force, whilst simultaneously elongating and deepening audience engagement. Digital engagement can also enhance impact by providing a pre-performance context and offering diverse opportunities for post-performance sharing and interpretation, which in turn can generate a genuine culture of learning. At the start of the book I cited Martin Barker’s call for audience studies to develop an elaborate research paradigm that would combine a theoretical framework, working concepts, methods of enquiry, and paradigmatic studies (2006, p. 129). At this final stage of writing, it is now time to reflect on the extent to which this book has responded to this call. As I clarified in the introduction, it was never going to be feasible, nor indeed desirable, to develop one theoretical framework, nor even one, one-size-fitsall model of engagement. What has become clear is that audience studies is far too broad, even in the context of the performing arts, to ever be encapsulated within any one framework, and nor should any profoundly interdisciplinary field. However, as the core process of audiency, which itself subsumes other subsidiary processes, engagement does offer a plural and open framework that might inform a more suitable and sustainable paradigm for the field. This book does, therefore, represent a paradigmatic

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study of audience research. It also offers a critical exploration of working concepts and research methods that will hopefully inform the future development of the field and influence future research.

Reconceptualising Engagement As we saw in Chapter 1, audiences’ attention is a dwindling resource and this makes the need for effective engagement all the more urgent. In the course of the opening chapter, I offered a summary overview of existing definitions of engagement, which I synthesised to conclude that engagement is essentially a psychological process which aims to develop intimate, meaningful, converged, and enduring relationships with audiences by involving them in interactive, immersive and hermeneutic experiences. Chapters 2 and 3 highlighted also the embodied and enactive aspects of engagement, so we should now modify our initial definition to qualify engagement also as a series of psychological and psychobiological processes that emancipate and empower audiences and generate deep connections by enabling audiences to become an invaluable part of the art-making process. So the ultimate goal of an engagement-based strategy in our new economy of meaning emerges as a form of enrichment; and based on the theorisation of engagement, captivation, immersion, and value undertaken in the previous chapters, we can discern a relatively simple model of enrichment as depicted in Fig. 9.1. As illustrated in The Audience Enrichment Model, enrichment is dependent on the effective engagement of audiences and on their ensuing flow and immersion in art and artistic processes, including meaning-making processes, which generate growth and ultimately co-create personal, interpersonal and community-level value and impact. This is essentially why engagement is so significant. Engagement, flow/immersion, and learning/development are co-dependent processes which exist in a symbiotic relationship because effective engagement captivates and immerses audiences in art, which in turn facilitates aesthetic growth and personal development, which fuels future engagement. Stephen Bitgood’s (2010) research with museum audiences helpfully deconstructed engagement into a number of intellectual, perceptual, and affective processes, including learning, inquiry, flow, and immersion. These processes are all reflected in the model but presented in a more circular way that frames engagement as a process to enrichment rather than an end goal in itself. Aesthetic growth and personal development are key aspects of engagement and various scholars have

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Fig. 9.1 The Audience Enrichment Model

highlighted the need for the sector to invest in the education and aesthetic growth of its audiences to help audiences “acclimatise” to artistic work (Machon 2013, p. 84). As we saw in Chapter 6, audiences are increasingly seeking out more relational ways to engage with artists, and performing arts organisations are starting to offer innovative ways to facilitate this. The live element of the performing arts offers exceptional opportunities for audience engagement because, pace Philip Auslander, live performance does possess its own ontological integrity. As Auslander himself acknowledges, the ontology of live performance is based on the temporal and physical co-presence of performers and audience members (2008, p. 60). Auslander is partly right to assert that this co-presence rarely translates into a tangible benefit to audience members (because they are physically too far away from the performers, for example); but what he fails to acknowledge is that the ontology of live performance is based on the real and potential engagement of audiences and performers, as well as on the engagement of audiences with other audience members and, of course, with art itself. This triadic potential for engagement is another quality that demarcates live performance and sets it apart from mediated and mediatised arts and entertainment. The problem, as I have highlighted throughout this book, is that opportunities for

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audiences to engage with performers, each other, and art are almost always curtailed or completely missed. The implications of this for producers, performing arts organisations, funders and policymakers are clear: more time and money must be spent on conceiving, developing and delivering engagement opportunities; and alongside artistic quality, funding decisions should be dependent on the range and quality of engagement activities offered to audiences. Otherwise, Auslander will be proven right and live performance will continue to lose sway over easier and more accessible forms of leisure and entertainment. This book has revealed how and why audiences should be treated as the active agents of their own aesthetic enrichment and highlighted how audiences’ performance encounters are messy and individualised. There can never be, therefore, a one-size-fits-all approach to audience engagement. Engagement strategies and philosophies must embrace the diversity of audiences’ unique experiences and therefore offer different touchpoints for engagement. I hope I have developed a convincing argument over the course of this book that engagement is above all a philosophy and a culture—one that must be underpinned by an audience-centric ethos which recognises audiences as equal partners in processes of artistic exchange.

A Plea for Audience-Centric Organisations The systematic disempowerment of audiences over the past two centuries is a familiar trope in audience research, and the cynical dislocation of audiencing and interpretation represents a political and aesthetic problem that has partly fuelled the rise of scholarship into co-creation, audience engagement and enrichment. In the course of this book, I have advocated the acceptance and adoption of an audience-centred model for the performing arts. By this I mean that audiences must finally be acknowledged, by both scholars and practitioners, as the primary stakeholders of performing arts organisations and placed at the heart of everything these organisations do. This is (sadly) a radical thesis, which rejects the traditional product(and power-)led model that produced and still governs the field of arts marketing. However, it offers a compromise by moving beyond the fudge of an audience-focussed model whilst stopping short of the audience-led approach favoured by iconoclasts and by certain elements of the participatory arts sector. The reason for this audience-centric position is certainly not to stick to the middle ground, but rather to acknowledge that whilst audiences need to continue to be empowered and emancipated, they also

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need and desire to be challenged and delighted by artists and art, and from my own perspectives as an audience member, theatre producer and audience researcher, this can best be achieved via a vision that is artistically led. Audience-centricity, then, implies placing audiences at the heart of artistically led and artistically vibrant organisations, and engaging them actively in all aspects of organisational activity. In other words, artists and arts organisations need to build and foster an open culture of engagement by developing “artistic exchange relationships” with audiences and treating them as creative partners. They need to consider their organisations, and their artistic spaces in particular, as social forums where audiences can interpret collectively, and collaboratively generate intrinsic cultural value. They need to facilitate these processes of meaning-making by developing their audiences’ interpretive and imaginative powers (Boorsma 2006) and their ability to co-create both artistic experiences and value. Only then will audiences ever have the opportunity and requisite empowerment to become the “creative comrades” imagined by Machon (2013, p. 73). Caroline Heim’s case study of Chicago’s Steppenwolf theatre depicts what this creative comradeship might look like in practice and illustrates how audience-centric organisations can reinvent traditionally closed artistic spaces as open civic spaces: Audience research indicated that Steppenwolf’s audiences were predominantly lifelong learners who wanted plays ‘to stimulate both introspection and debate’. The theatre now programmes post-show discussions for every performance they stage, inviting audiences to join them in a ‘public square’, which Artistic Director Martha Lavey describes as ‘a civic cultural space activated by the work on stage where we can negotiate meaning in an interpretive community’. (Heim 2016, p. 104)

This example highlights the core functions that learning and engagement can play in developing communities of practice amongst audience groups and indicates how artists and performing arts organisations can themselves benefit by engaging their core audiences collectively to develop them as an artistic congregation. It thus supports the findings of Chapter 2, where we saw how the desirable goal of communitas , a shared liminal state which delivers communal experience and meaning, is facilitated when audiences share a common goal and attend performances with a shared vocabulary and history.

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Regardless of the strong theoretical and philosophical case for an audience-centric model, there is also a strong business or strategic case to be made for embracing audiences as partners, not least that it can maximise their “lifetime value” (Payne and Frow 2005) and significantly increase organisations’ earned income (Simon 2010). There is a moral and policy case to be made in that audiences invest and are invested in the arts and arts organisations, and so they have an inherent stake in and ownership of them. There is a social and economic case to be made for audience-centricity in that countless studies across the globe have now demonstrated the potentially positive impact that the arts can have on audiences’ health and general wellbeing. There is an educational and sociological case to be made because the arts facilitate cognitive growth and fulfil the mimetic role of holding up a critical mirror to society. And, perhaps most importantly, there is a strong artistic case to be made for audience-centricity: many commentators agree that relinquishing control of a cultural project to participants can actually increase its relevance and impact (e.g. Arvidsson 2008; Department for Culture Media and Sport 2007). This so-called “participation agenda” is of course opposed by detractors such as Brian McMaster (2008), who contend that a political focus on instrumental benefits can erode artistic excellence, and by others, such as Miranda Boorsma (2006), who claim that it endangers creative risktaking and compromises artistic freedom. However, this protracted debate, which is at the heart of many of the policy tensions within national funding agencies, is far from Manichaean, as activities such as co-creation continue to blur and challenge the very terms of reference: “As artists collaborate, sample, remix and repurpose, they obscure the line between creator and observer and toy with fundamental presumptions of originality and authenticity that traditionally define artistic excellence” (Brown et al. 2011, p. 7). The focus on quality in this debate remains contested and is demonstrably beyond resolution. It might therefore make sense to alter the terms of the debate and shift the focus from the quality of the art to the quality of audience engagement. This is of course the underlying premise of relational aesthetics, and there are growing signs that the need to prioritise the quality of audience engagement might actually represent the next frontier. Practitioners like Nina Simon are trailblazing this approach and advocating for a reinvigorated focus on how engagement activities are actually designed, rather than whether they take place at all. So concepts and skills such as design thinking, facilitation, mediation and scaffolding are going to be of

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increasing importance to the sector, and they will need to be nurtured by arts leaders and policymakers alike. The reason why these skills need to be prioritised is essentially that they facilitate meaning-making and confer value onto art and artistic experiences. To return to Stanely Fish’s key term, they help to establish and solidify interpretive communities, these elusive forums where value is cocreated by audiences who subject art to scrutiny, analysis and evaluation (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). As a champion of audience enrichment, Lynne Conner (2013) is another strong advocate for facilitation and mediation skills; she urges arts workers to develop these skills in order to support the much needed renaissance of “social interpretation” in the arts, which, she maintains, can only be achieved by developing an “authorised audience” and by re-enfranchising “audience sovereignty” (p. 40). The endeavour to develop an authorised audience implies a strong element of education, and another recurrent theme in this book has been the need for arts workers to promote arts education and guide their audiences so that they understand the “rules” of performance (Burland and Pitts 2012) and develop the appropriate skills to decode, interpret, deconstruct and make meaning of it (O’Toole et al. 2014). There is abundant evidence from extant empirical studies of performing arts audiences that the more au fait audiences become with the modes and codes of performance, the more critical they become and the more they start to feel part of a connected community of interest. This is all part and parcel of good hosting: designing engagement activities that will help audiences to feel included and at home. It is not education in a patronising, didactic or normative sense; it is about developing and enabling, about opening up possibilities for multiple and divergent interpretations rather than leading audiences to any predetermined decoding of intended meaning.

Final Conclusions To describe the concept of “the audience” as a “vexed term” (Machon 2013, p. 98) is clearly an understatement. As a term, we have seen that “audience” is deceptive, reductive, elusive, problematic, and indicative of the cynical disempowerment and objectification of audiences that has been sustained for centuries. However, it seems that the battle to place audiences at the heart of research into their own experiences of the performing arts has almost been won. Nevertheless, audience research remains difficult. It is compromised by myriad methodological challenges and undermined by

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rapidly evolving and often disingenuous policy and management imperatives that rarely value its legitimacy or integrity. I have argued in this book that audience studies can only ever thrive as a field in its own right if it moves beyond its disparate cross-disciplinarity to become fiercely interdisciplinary. Fortunately, the rise of a culture of interdisciplinarity within the academy is gradually encouraging audience scholars to collaborate in ever more creative and innovative ways and to learn how to compromise and even triangulate their respective positions, traditions and methods. This interdisciplinarity is already leading to some pioneering research—particularly, as we have seen, in the areas of neuroscience and psychobiology, which are starting to offer fresh insights (and, dare I say, proof ) into how audiences engage with the performing arts and the impacts that these art forms have on them. This evidence of impact is vital from both a management and a policy perspective, and it is, of course, of growing relevance to academics too. However, despite these advances, we urgently need more interdisciplinary research into audiences and into different types of audience. If the ultimate goal of engagement is to enrich the lives of audiences and, in so doing, enrich the work of artists and arts organisations, then we need an even deeper understanding of how the various processes of engagement co-function and of which amongst them might be the strongest predictor variables of impact. If we are to shift our focus from assessing the quality of artistic products to evaluating the quality of audiences’ experiences and engagement—which would tangentially offer artists and policymakers a possible solution to the quality assessment of community and participatory work—then we need to fund research into refined evaluation frameworks. As the rhetoric of cultural policy continues to shift towards questions of cultural democracy and relevance, audience engagement offers a fresh paradigm for audience studies that positions it ideally to exert a positive influence in the policy and management sphere. From a policy perspective, the impacts of engagement and co-creation need to be properly evaluated in order to better understand the impact that they have on audiences, on artists and organisations, on the wider sector, and on society at large. This is one of the challenges inherent to the Cultural Value debate and any positive resolution to this challenge is likely to depend on finding and applying appropriate anthropological methods. We need to move on methodologically from “casual stories” to meaningful, potent, and universal stories that will gain more traction than the contested and meaningless econometric data that they will supplant. We need to evidence more rigorously

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our repeated claims that the performing arts, audiencing, and audience engagement are transformative. There remains much work to do. Audience engagement still has a lot to learn from aesthetics, both in its theoretical underpinnings and in its empirical endeavours. We have seen in this book how insights from biometric analysis, for example, are changing the way we understand audiences’ intersubjective experiences and creating an evidence bank of the sociological benefits of artistic engagement. If artistic experiences can increase audiences’ empathy and sync their brain waves and heart beats with fellow audience members, then the arts could find a renewed role in applied contexts of conflict resolution. Empathy has emerged in this book as a prerequisite condition of audiencing, essentially because it develops interpersonal engagement and supports emotional contagion, which in turn can restore collective energy and help to develop a sense of community amongst a regular audience. This is no small thing in light of the global rise in populism. In our postmodern world, people have relatively few opportunities to physically engage with one other and feel part of a community, and arts venues clearly have the potential, and some would argue the responsibility, to act as community spaces that bring diverse groups together in acts of enhanced socialisation (Heim 2016). With the demise of the community arts and arts centre movements, many arts venues have lost sight of this social aspect of their missions and sold their souls to the devil of marketing. Whilst marketing undoubtedly still has a vital role to play in supporting financial resilience, it is fundamentally different from engagement, and often continues to squeeze engagement out of the picture altogether. This constitutes an artistic, social and strategic error, because the misconstrued shift towards a culture of artistic consumption has undermined loyalty and artistic exchange, and wilfully ignored perhaps the ultimate virtue of aesthetic engagement—namely that it “implies no desire to possess or use the object” (Lord Shaftesbury cited in Ben Chaim 1984, p. 1). We have lost sight of the profound ability of the arts to offer an antidote to consumerism and materialism and to the wider neoliberal agenda. We have therefore neglected the inherently political role of the audience and of audience studies. Machon argues that immersive artworks can function as “interstices” and “otherworldly-worlds” (2013, pp. 122 and 153). I would argue that all art has a public responsibility to offer an interstice, a small opening or aperture that can offer audiences a chink of light into an artist’s practice or worldview. In reflecting on the term “interstice” I am reminded of the burgeoning literature on third and liminal spaces—in-between or “found” spaces that

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are politically neutral and therefore offer up ideal places to play and cocreate. There is a wicked irony in the fact that just as we are really starting to appreciate the manifold creative benefits of these places and spaces, they are becoming scarcer and more remote as our cities proliferate and gentrify, pushing real estate prices up so high that artists and arts organisations are squeezed ever further outside them. There are significant implications here for policymakers, and specifically for local governments: creative spaces need to be preserved for the public and protected from the acquisitive development encouraged by the free market economy. Arts organisations, too, must look to their laurels and (co-)create neutral creative spaces where their local artists and communities can come together. As partners, their audiences can assist in this political endeavour. Performing arts audiences are brimming with untapped potential: as the very people who make performance manifest, they are the only people who can make sense of and confer meaning on art. So as well as segmenting their databases into suitable target markets, performing arts organisations should be developing interpretive communities and forums which could become their lifeblood by co-creating artistic and organisational value and meaning. They should be converging audiences with performers. As Conner argues, audience engagement is concerned with offering audiences opportunities to prepare, process, and analyse so that they can interpret art in a social setting (2013, p. 67). We have seen that this concept is neither radical nor new and yet it has not yet become mainstream practice. To exclude audiences from active involvement in the creation or interpretation of a work of art is to deny them the opportunity to derive optimal meaning from their artistic engagement. Yet many performing arts organisations continue to treat their audiences as customers in defiance of their own artistic missions. As Ruth Rentschler (2007) notes, this constitutes a significant failure of governance and leadership. Many organisations still miss simple opportunities to deepen and elongate the engagement that they currently enjoy with audiences, which has led certain commentators to the depressing conclusion that in the contemporary performance culture, audiences’ consumer power has become far more significant than their verbal power (Heim 2016, p. 130). This is strategic suicide in a sector, and indeed in a society, that is swiftly moving away from transactional modes of engagement. It represents nothing less than a significant policy, management, and artistic failure. Considering that this book has devoted so much space to emerging theories, methods and practices, it seems fitting to conclude it with a little bit

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of futuregazing. What lies in store for audience studies and research? My analysis of the latest blogs, conferences and publications in the field suggests a steady growth in creative and psychobiological research methods alongside a greater focus on arts and health/wellbeing and marginalised audience groups. As governments and funders invest heavily in technology, video gaming, and digital art, we are likely to witness an exponential rise in digital engagement and in audience enquiries related to artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality. At the same time, as the attention economy makes its mark, commercial producers and streamers of creative content such as Netflix and Amazon are starting to realise that audience research in the live performing arts can offer rich and lucrative insights into cultural production and consumption. So we will probably see some convergence across the creative industries as researchers collaborate across disciplines to explore how work lands with audiences, how different narrative arcs and production elements affect them, and how creative content impacts on them, both concurrently and over their lifetimes. Artificial intelligence will probably play an increasing role in these investigations, for example by calculating “ideal” peaks and flows of plot lines in relation to audiences’ attention spans. As policy agendas shift away from the democratisation of culture and towards cultural democracy, we will certainly see renewed focus around questions of place-making, participation, and co-creation and an according rise in methods like Social Return on Investment. As arts organisations come under increasing pressure to welcome more diverse and representative audiences, I hope that we will also see a rise in design thinking and hospitality, with organisations acknowledging the enabling role of place and space, creating discursive social spaces, and ultimately becoming better hosts. These are significant sociocultural trends, and only a radically interdisciplinary approach to audience studies, based on the relational insights offered by the engagement paradigm, will be able to respond to them effectively to secure the privileged role of the performing arts well into the latter half of the century.

References Arvidsson, A. 2008. The ethical economy of customer coproduction. Journal of Macromarketing, 28(4), pp. 326–338. Auslander, P. 2008. Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. 2nd ed. Oxon, Routledge.

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Barker, M. 2006. I have seen the future and it is not here yet …; or, on being ambitious for audience research. The Communication Review, 9(2), pp. 123–141. Ben Chaim, D. 1984. Distance in the theatre: The aesthetics of audience response. London; Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press. Bitgood, S. 2010. An attention-value model of museum visitors. Available from: https://airandspace.si.edu/rfp/exhibitions/files/j1-exhibition-guidelines/ 3/An%20Attention-Value%20Model%20of%20Museum%20Visitors.pdf [Accessed 5 April 2019]. Boorsma, M. 2006. A strategic logic for arts marketing: Integrating customer value and artistic objectives. The International Journal of Cultural Policy, 12(1), pp. 73–92. Brown, A. S., Novak-Leonard, J. L. and Gilbride, S. 2011. Getting in on the act: How arts groups are creating opportunities for active participation. San Francisco, CA, The James Irvine Foundation. Burland, K. and Pitts, S. 2012. Rules and expectations of jazz gigs. Social Semiotics, 22(5), pp. 523–543. Conner, L. 2013. Audience engagement and the role of arts talk in the digital era. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Department for Culture Media and Sport. 2007. Culture on demand: Ways to engage a broader audience. London, Department for Culture Media and Sport. Heim, C. 2016. Audience as performer: The changing role of theatre audiences in the Twenty-First Century. London and New York, Routledge. Machon, J. 2013. Immersive theatres: Intimacy and immediacy in contemporary performance. London, Palgrave Macmillan. McMaster, B. 2008. Supporting excellence in the arts: From measurement to judgement. London, Department for Culture Media and Sport. O’Toole, J., Adams, R.-J., Anderson, M., Burton, B. and Ewing, R. (eds.). 2014. Young audiences, theatre and the cultural conversation. Dordrecht, Springer. Payne, A. F. and Frow, P. 2005. A strategic framework for customer relationship management. Journal of Marketing, 69, pp. 167–176. Prahalad, C. K. and Ramaswamy, V. 2004. Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 18(3), pp. 5–14. Rentschler, R. 2007. Museum marketing: Understanding different types of audiences. In: Sandell, R. and Janes, R. R. (eds.) Museum management and marketing. London; New York, Routledge, pp. 345–365. Sauter, W. 2000. The theatrical event: Dynamics of performance and perception. Iowa city, University of Iowa Press. Silvia, P. J. 2005. Emotional responses to art: From collation and arousal to cognition and emotion. Review of General Psychology, 9(4), pp. 342–357. Simon, N. 2010. The participatory museum. Santa Cruz, Museum 2.0. Walmsley, B. 2019. The death of arts marketing: A paradigm shift from consumption to enrichment. Arts and the Market, 9(1), pp. 32–49. Whalley, J. and Miller, L. 2017. Between us: Audiences, affect and the in-between. London, Palgrave.

Index

A action research, 125–127, 182, 189 active spectatorship, 39, 165 Adorno, Theodor, 151 advocacy, 105, 120, 180 aesthetic growth, 51, 100, 231, 232 aesthetics, 31, 34, 38, 84, 93, 150, 157, 227, 238 experimental, 84 amateur arts, 169, 171, 202, 218 anonymity, 202, 218 anthropology, 112, 124, 132, 227 anticipation, 50, 51, 175, 216 applause, 17, 28, 52, 77, 121, 179 Aristotle, 96, 97, 106 arousal, 40, 48, 64, 83–85, 87, 129, 227 Artaud, Antonin, 1, 72, 79, 185 artistic exchange, 56, 166, 191, 199, 204, 212, 226, 233, 234, 238 arts and health, 57, 118, 128, 240 Arts Council England, 102, 103, 143, 171, 203, 212 arts ecology, 97, 205, 220

arts education, 10, 37, 52, 56, 157, 171, 173, 174, 186, 187, 192, 208, 228, 232, 236 arts evaluation, 15, 100, 101, 104, 105 arts marketing, 9, 12, 14, 15, 19, 20, 25, 28, 30, 33–35, 49, 53, 54, 56, 64, 65, 83, 115, 135, 141–146, 148, 150–152, 154, 158–160, 165, 169, 172, 212, 226, 227, 229, 233 definition, 143, 144, 146 arts spaces. See venues asynchronicity, 202, 205 attention economy, 13, 240 audience-centricity, 98, 146, 234, 235 audience development, 8, 9, 14, 30, 36, 51, 52, 54, 113–115, 122, 143, 147, 149, 153, 160, 174, 179, 180, 187, 192, 199, 214, 216, 219, 220 audience engagement, 3, 5, 9–14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 25, 27, 28, 30, 35, 36, 38, 46, 47, 54–56, 64, 67, 91, 99, 112, 113, 119, 122, 124,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 B. Walmsley, Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts, New Directions in Cultural Policy Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26653-0

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INDEX

127, 130, 135, 141, 142, 154, 166–168, 172, 174, 179, 187, 199, 200, 202–204, 208, 220, 221, 225–228, 230, 232, 233, 235, 237–239 audience enrichment, 8, 14, 25, 28, 36, 54, 55, 91, 135, 141, 145, 154, 159, 160, 212, 225, 227, 232, 233, 236 Audience Finder, 114, 115 audiencing, 7–9, 13, 14, 37, 39, 40, 49, 57, 63, 65, 66, 71, 72, 76, 80, 81, 87, 226, 233, 238 definition, 7 audience participation, 27, 29, 31, 106, 170 audience studies, 5, 7, 9, 14–16, 18–20, 25, 26, 30, 32, 37, 44, 45, 55–57, 72, 74, 86, 112, 132, 134, 226–230, 237, 238, 240 audience walking interviews, 68, 122 audiency definition, 11 B bad faith, 31, 43, 73, 74 Barthes, Roland, 41 Benjamin, Walter, 151 bias, 15, 36, 80, 103, 105, 120–122, 126, 130, 189 confirmation, 15, 120, 122, 126 positive, 15, 120, 121, 189 big data, 2, 112, 114, 115, 135, 205 biometric research, 77, 129, 135 Boal, Augusto, 7, 27, 168, 169, 194 Bourdieu, Pierre, 3, 28, 29, 34, 120, 175 Bourriaud, Nicolas, 41, 169, 172, 219 Brecht, Bertolt, 27, 72, 75, 85, 185, 187 Brooklyn Museum, 200, 210–212, 221 buzz, 17, 36, 50, 68, 79

C captivation, 13, 50, 78, 79, 100–102, 216, 231 casting, 29, 188 catharsis, 1, 40, 48, 64, 70, 71, 84, 85, 87, 227 clapping. See applause class, 25, 26, 28, 29, 35, 57, 120, 227 co-creation, 2, 8, 10, 11, 14, 18, 25, 28, 29–34, 100, 134, 142, 146, 153, 155, 161, 165–195, 202, 218, 219, 226, 227, 230, 233, 235, 237, 239, 240 co-research, 126, 127, 135 cognitive mapping, 112, 128, 132 cognitive science, 40, 43, 46, 66, 77, 82, 85, 182 commodification, 151, 167 communion, 49, 50, 69, 73, 77, 99 communitas, 17, 33, 39, 40, 77, 87, 234 community arts movement, 171, 174, 180 conceptual blending, 43, 65 consumer behaviour, 14, 141 contemplation, 67, 167 cost-benefit analysis, 95 creative economy, 13 creative methods, 45, 52, 66, 128 Critical Response Process (CRP), 176, 212, 214 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 78, 171, 194 cultural capital, 4, 28, 34, 120, 149 cultural deficit, 8 cultural democracy, 171, 174, 180, 193, 237, 240 cultural economy, 92, 200 cultural studies, 7, 15, 26, 43, 47, 48, 149 Cultural Value Project, 30, 94, 95, 106 Culture Counts, 102, 203

INDEX

D dance, 15, 18, 55, 67, 81, 115, 182, 202, 212–217, 221 Debord, Guy, 33, 142, 143, 151, 152, 169, 172, 204, 219 deep hanging out, 112, 125–127 democratisation of culture, the, 180, 181, 240 design thinking, 235, 240 disempowerment, 27, 28, 33, 58, 233, 236 disintermediation, 5, 205 distance, 6, 7, 37, 38, 43, 49, 50, 69, 70, 74, 84, 87, 119, 124, 227, 229 diverse audiences, 10, 12, 57, 160, 181 dramatic time, 40, 151 dramaturgy, 15, 49, 71 Durkheim, Émile, 40 dwell time, 132, 220

E economy of meaning, 12, 92, 156–159, 161, 231 ecstasy, 40, 151 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 40, 41, 84, 151 emancipation, 85–87, 172, 174, 231 embodied spectatorship, 31, 46, 48, 64, 66, 73, 76, 80–82, 102, 129, 132, 171, 172, 210, 217, 226, 231 emotion psychology, 83 emotional contagion, 77, 79, 87, 238 emotional engagement, 11, 13, 38, 71, 75, 77, 227 empathy, 13, 32, 51, 64, 66, 74–77, 79, 80, 82, 87, 175, 177, 204, 213, 215, 218, 227, 238 empowerment, 11, 33, 34, 100, 128, 160, 175, 176, 180, 194, 208, 231, 234

245

enactive spectatorship, 48, 64, 80, 82, 85, 86, 98, 107, 172, 228, 231 engagement, 2, 4–6, 8–14, 16–18, 20, 26, 28–32, 34, 37, 45, 47, 51, 54–56, 65–67, 70–72, 75–78, 80, 82, 83, 94, 95, 100, 102, 104, 106, 114, 119, 125, 131, 132, 135, 141, 146, 153–156, 158–160, 165, 167, 172–174, 177–181, 186–188, 190, 193, 194, 199–204, 207, 208, 211, 212, 214, 217–221, 225–240 networked, 201, 209 enrichment. See audience enrichment escapism, 17, 78, 99, 104, 157 ethical economy, 204 ethnography, 112, 124, 125, 132 etiquette, 27, 52, 149 excellence, 103, 104, 106, 170, 235 exchange economy, 148, 204, 209 experience economy, 12, 16, 64, 156, 157, 159 experiential marketing, 16, 17, 32, 48, 64, 78, 128, 146, 149, 150, 152, 157, 160, 170, 191, 229

F facilitation, 55, 122, 128, 166, 188, 190, 191, 193, 220, 235, 236 fandom, 37 fans, 8, 11, 121 Fish, Stanley, 39, 41, 58, 188, 236 Five Minute Theatre, 206–208 flow, 10, 13, 17, 27, 48, 50, 78, 79, 206, 227, 231, 240 group, 79, 87 focus groups, 112, 121, 122, 124, 127, 132 Frankfurt School, the, 143

246

INDEX

G gaze, 6, 31, 67, 73, 74, 116, 186 guided introspection, 121, 125 guided visualisation, 45, 112, 128, 129

H habitus, 29, 34 hedonic consumption, 64, 77, 78, 83, 86, 150, 152, 228 hermeneutics, 3, 12, 43, 44, 55, 83, 186, 188, 191, 202, 226, 231 hospitality, 148, 149, 240 hospitality economy, 149 hosting, 148, 202, 221, 236

I immersion, 10, 11, 13, 27, 48, 64, 78–80, 82, 100, 175, 231 immersive performance, 25, 31–34, 36, 38, 57, 79–82, 227, 238 impact evaluation, 49, 113, 131 income compensation, 117, 118 instrumental benefits, 49, 50, 75, 93, 94, 96, 100, 101, 235 interactive introspection, 125 International Network for Audience Research in the Performing Arts, 17, 121 interpretation, 19, 28, 31, 40–43, 45, 47, 58, 65, 71, 84, 85, 120, 122, 149, 157, 166, 182, 185–187, 189, 191–194, 210, 217, 230, 233, 234, 236, 239 interpretive communities, 39, 41, 58, 125, 188, 239 interpretivism, 46, 48, 111 intersubjectivity, 48, 64, 76, 77, 79, 80, 87, 238 interview coding, 121 intrinsic benefits, 50

J jazz, 36–38, 49, 68, 69, 76 K kinaesthetic engagement, 82 L liminality, 39, 77, 97, 151, 152, 183, 234, 238 live performance, 19, 33, 37, 42, 50, 67–71, 77, 79, 80, 86, 130, 146, 187, 205, 219, 232, 233 live streaming, 2, 68, 145, 173, 199, 205, 206 NT Live, 173, 199, 205, 206 liveness, 48, 64, 67–69, 71 M manipulation, 11, 12, 27, 38, 48, 70, 103, 150 marketing definition, 9, 10, 12, 14, 64, 99, 143, 144, 146, 155, 157, 219 marketing mix, 141, 146, 147, 149, 152, 158, 200, 203, 205 meaning-making, 7, 12, 28, 43, 72, 100, 132, 143, 167, 184–188, 190, 230, 231, 234, 236, 239 mediation, 13, 14, 68, 205, 235, 236 mimicry, 77 mixed-methods research (MMR), 44, 46, 50, 95, 106, 112, 131, 132, 214 moderation, 122 N narrative enquiry, 112, 123 National Theatre of Scotland (NTS), 145, 152, 173, 200, 206–208, 212

INDEX

neoliberalism, 34, 93, 238 netnography, 125, 214 nostalgia, 29

P pacification, 25, 26, 227 paratexts, 185, 202, 216 participant-observation, 17, 125, 132 participatory arts, 31, 167, 180, 191, 233 participatory methods, 45, 112, 127, 129 performers, 7, 19, 27, 29, 31, 37–39, 42, 49, 51, 67–69, 72, 73, 75–77, 80, 81, 87, 130, 182, 204, 205, 232, 233, 239 actors, 50, 68, 70, 99, 147 phenomenology, 30, 64, 73, 94, 227 philanthropy, 2 Plato, 1, 27 play, 3, 11, 31, 37, 48, 58, 65, 70, 84, 87, 145, 151, 154, 166, 169, 181–184, 191, 193, 202, 228, 230, 239 positivism, 46, 48, 111, 131 post-show discussions, 122, 189, 190, 234 post-structuralism, 43, 72, 185 power, 3, 6, 10, 11, 25, 27, 28, 41, 53, 56, 57, 82, 122, 127, 128, 159, 160, 175, 176, 183, 184, 187, 194, 202, 208, 216, 227, 233, 239 praxis, 93, 104, 127 pricing, 146, 147, 200 programming, 10, 29, 56, 104, 114, 173, 180, 205, 208, 228 public value, 96 Punchdrunk, 34, 70, 145, 152

247

R Rancière, Jacques, 33, 85, 171 reception theory, 15, 25, 41, 44, 72, 227 rehearsals, 182 relational aesthetics, 41, 76, 172, 174, 235 relationship marketing, 8, 10, 101, 145, 155, 158 revealed preference techniques, 112, 117 hedonic pricing, 117 rhythm, 40, 77, 217 risk, 31, 47, 67, 100, 103, 104, 193, 221, 230 ritual, 25, 39–41, 65, 77, 85, 151, 227

S Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1, 19, 38, 39, 72–75 scenography, 73, 81 Schechner, Richard, 48, 65, 97 segmentation, 9, 115, 117, 144, 177 self-actualisation, 64, 74, 87, 100 semiotics, 15, 25, 42–44, 71, 72, 141, 227 services marketing, 148, 158 Simon, Nina, 181, 235 social impact, 93, 153, 204 social media, 6, 172, 186, 207, 208, 220 social production, 173, 192, 199, 204, 209, 210 solace, 67 The Space, 203, 206 spectatorship, 6–8, 41, 46, 49, 66, 82, 172 spiritual engagement, 12, 99, 104, 145, 159, 228 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 3 stated preference techniques, 115, 116 choice modelling, 116

248

INDEX

contingent valuation, 116 Steppenwolf, 234 storytelling, 6, 229 subjective wellbeing (SWB), 93, 95, 112, 117, 118, 135 surveys, 46, 81, 112–114, 121, 124, 132, 214 suspension of disbelief, 48, 65, 66

V value creation, 14, 168 venues, 7, 25, 34–38, 51, 52, 67–69, 100, 115, 124, 146, 180, 203, 205, 209, 227, 238 viscerality, 32, 33, 69, 81, 219 visitor studies, 132 voyeurism, 6, 33, 72, 74

T taste, 29, 149, 180, 192, 193, 230 thick description, 70, 120, 121, 124 third spaces, 238 transformation, 3, 7, 11, 13, 33, 48, 84–87, 159, 216, 225 triangulation, 102, 132, 133 systematic, 133, 134 Turner, Victor, 39, 40, 97, 151

W Watershed, 200, 208, 209, 212, 221 wellbeing, 51, 78, 95, 100, 106, 117, 118, 182, 235, 240

U utilitarianism, 48, 53, 92, 93, 96, 97, 102, 106, 107, 150, 151

Y young audiences, 25, 36, 37, 51–53, 100, 227