Who are our audiences?
saul
Thanks to all of you for subscribing to this group!
Since there are now 20 people on the group, it seemed like a good time
to get discussions kicked off.
On http://tpse.org I have posted a summary of ideas and questions from
the most popular debate that was had on the 18th May - towards
creating a 'one stop shop' for visual arts in the South East and
beyond.
I think Julianne asked the most pressing question that I would want
answered if I were going to try to actually make something: who are
our audiences?
Everyone was a bit coy about this on the day, and when pressed said
vague things like 'everyone!'
That's a very admirable ambition, but it would be great if we could be
a bit more specific.
People over 50? Out of work youngsters? Graduates? Arts professionals?
International audiences? The military? Who do you - as an arts
provider in the South East - think are your core audience? Who do you
think TPSE should target first, second, third....?
Looking forward to finding out from some of you!
Cheers,
Saul.
PS: If you want to tackle another of the issues from the 18th - either
from the blog post or something I missed, please feel free to start a
new discussion by sending an email (with a nice, clearly explanatory
subject line) to tp...@googlegroups.com
saul
On May 29, 8:04 am, saul <saul.alb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think Julianne asked the most pressing question that I would want
> answered if I were going to try to actually make something: who are
> our audiences?
there, and I hear many people are in Venice this week.
Nevertheless, is there something else people want to get started with?
I tried to make a good summary with lots of discussion points here:
http://tpse.org/2009/05/29/a-one-stop-shop-for-visual-arts/
So far my expert opinion on how the online discussion system should
look will be:
"We shouldn't bother building one, just have more offline meeings"
Because while the discussions on the day were great, not a sausage so
far online. Perhaps people don't actually have time to contribute to
online discussions. Shall we have an online discussion about that :) ?
But seriously, is the silence indicative of people's general overwhelm
with information? Is email not a good way to do this (I understood
from the day that it was the technological common demoninator). I
will interpret silence as a silent "YES" to all the above.
Cheers,
Saul.
James Gough
met me. I am the Director of Audiences South the audience development
agency in the South East. We have worked with galleries for some years
now, we were a partner in Gallery Go back in 1999 and have since
worked with many of the galleries in the south east region
individually, and are currently co-ordinating the South East Visual
Arts Network (SEVAN) group which is exploring how to capture data to
better understand audiences.
Which leads neatly to "who are our audiences?" Currently this is
difficult question to answer for many galleries. Capturing data is
difficult and heavy on resources, meaning that the data that is
captured, is often only a short snapshot as opposed to long term data
capture strategy. So that makes it difficult to answer "who are our
CURRENT audiences?". Some of this may be addressed by the training to
be provided by the Arts Marketing Association, supported by the
audience development agencies and part of the national Turning Point
strategy. BUT this training is mainly around what to do with data when
you have it, so although valuable will not answer the key problem of
galleries not having data.
More info on training at http://www.a-m-a.org.uk/news_detail.asp?id=96
"Who COULD our audiences be?" is question that we should also be
addressing as this will inform any further generic/shared promotion of
the CVA network of galleries in the South East. But again this
question would be easier to answer if we already knew the answer to
the first question.
SEVAN have developed a number of methods to capture data that they and
we want to pilot. Who else would interested in getting to know their
current audiences better?
If we can start this process maybe then we can answer the question
"who are our audiences?"
James (not in Venice!)
amand...@modernartoxford.org.uk
Very good to hear from you and have your contribution to the
discussion, I hope it will be the first of many. Obviously audiences -
current and potential - have featured large in our TPSE conversations
to date and that's reflected in our programme aims, particularly when
we say we want to raise the profile of the region and increase and
deepen audience engagement. We're looking at the current initiatives
around data capture and training with interest and we're also involved
in other approaches to the issue of 'who are our audiences" -
especially those that will focus on audiences for non gallery based
work and hard to reach groups (the work that Fabrica is doing, with
some help from Project Art Works, as part of their 'Rendezvous"
project is a case in point).
It will be even more important to start talking about the "who' re:
audiences when we formulate our marketing strategies - the joint
marketing we undertook for the three SE projects showcasing at the
current Venice Biennale was clearly talking to a particular audience
and definitely raised the International profile of the region. We hope
to use the lessons we learnt from this piece of joint marketing and
develop a coherent approach to how we promote all the fantastic Visual
Arts work happening in the SE.
Views on how the on line TPSE facility could help to further work and
discussions across the region regarding both audience development and
marketing would be useful to hear. If you think that these things are
best developed through face to face meetings (but bearing in mind
people's limited capacity) then that would be useful to know too...
Amanda
On Jun 4, 7:31 pm, James Gough <james.go...@hants.gov.uk> wrote:
> To start with, a quick introduction for those of you who may not have
> met me. I am the Director of Audiences South the audience development
> agency in the South East. We have worked with galleries for some years
> now, we were a partner in Gallery Go back in 1999 and have since
> worked with many of the galleries in the south east region
> individually, and are currently co-ordinating the South East Visual
> Arts Network (SEVAN) group which is exploring how to capture data to
> better understand audiences.
>
> Which leads neatly to "who are our audiences?" Currently this is
> difficult question to answer for many galleries. Capturing data is
> difficult and heavy on resources, meaning that the data that is
> captured, is often only a short snapshot as opposed to long term data
> capture strategy. So that makes it difficult to answer "who are our
> CURRENT audiences?". Some of this may be addressed by the training to
> be provided by the Arts Marketing Association, supported by the
> audience development agencies and part of the national Turning Point
> strategy. BUT this training is mainly around what to do with data when
> you have it, so although valuable will not answer the key problem of
> galleries not having data.
>
Saul Albert
James, you wrote:
On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 11:31:10AM -0700, James Gough wrote:
> SEVAN have developed a number of methods to capture data that they and
> we want to pilot. Who else would interested in getting to know their
> current audiences better?
I for one would be really interested to hear what these methods are. It
strikes me that 'data capture', which I assume means gathering people's
responses to visual art, has so far taken place with surveys, comments
boxes and sometimes commissioned focus groups.
I have also seen some experiments with consoles - computers on plinths
that invite people to do multiple-choice surveys. I have to say, I have
never found those to be impressive or compelling in the least. They
seem primarily focused on making it easier for the gallery to collate
the responses, rather than making it more inviting for people to
get involved. But that's me...
The ZKM in Karlsruhe has an interesting method for qualitative
feedback. They have an interviewer who tours the gallery once per week
gathering audience responses. I have no idea what happens to the
archive, but I bet it's an interesting historical record, if not a
statistically useful one.
On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 12:51:28PM -0700, amand...@modernartoxford.org.uk wrote:
> Views on how the on line TPSE facility could help to further work and
> discussions across the region regarding both audience development and
> marketing would be useful to hear.
Well, a suggestion from the 18th might be a useful example:
- Having an e-newsletter allows us to find out:
- who is subscribed, from which geographical regions.
- you can monitor for surges of subscription in response to specific
events or recruitment drives, festivals etc.
- with a bit of help, you can even see who reads, who follows links
in the newsletter to which stories etc.
So it might be possible to apply the methods of web-statistics
gathering to the audiences that sign up for the tpse-flux (or whatever
it's called), and maybe prompt them to give feedback online to fill out
profiles of who they are, what they're interested in, how they heard
about it etc.
Would that kind of information be useful? It's certainly easily
achievable to implement that kind of thing with existing tools and
services.
Cheers,
Saul.
--
The People Speak | 17-25 Cremer St. London E2 8HD | http://theps.net
studio +44 (0)20 71007915 | saul: +44 (0)7941 255210 | m...@theps.net
Simon.Z...@artscouncil.org.uk
Hi again all,
I met, yesterday, with the Robert Powell of Beam, who is leading on the development of Turning Point Yorkshire & Humber.
They have been working on a communications plan, and I've lifted their list of audiences in case it's helpful to add to the discussion:
Client (ACE Yorkshire)
Phase 1 Consultants (those driving the set-up)
Coordinators / Managers (Other Regions)
Interim Steering Group
Observers (ACE Yorkshire team)
Interim Steering Group Advisors
Visual Arts Sector
Other Arts Sector
Non-Arts Sector
Press / Media
When questioned Robert placed audiences in the Non-arts Sectors. My instinct tells me that as they move along they will find they need specific messages for some Non-Arts Partners, and different ones for others, like Audiences.
Anyway, there you go!
Simon Zimmerman
National Coordinator, Turning Point
Arts Council England
Email: simon.z...@artscouncil.org.uk
Direct Line: +44(0)207 9793 6885
Mobile: +44(0)7834 070 040
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Matt Adams
I'd thought I'd chip with a few thoughts about audiences.
In Blast Theory we have always been extremely concerned with who are
audiences are, how they find the work and how they respond to it.
Because so much of our work is a conversation with our audience (or
even, as in Rider Spoke, between audience members) they are very
visible to us. When we toured Desert Rain (1999-2004) we had about
2000 30 minute presentations for up to 6 people in each and we were
actively interacting with every one of them. So we have a very
privileged view of our audience in one sense.
However we have also used questionnaires to get statistical snap shots
of our audience and have found these easy to do, quick and cheap. The
key question is what you then do with that information. Knowing that a
certain percentage of our audience is in a particular age group or
reads a particular newspaper turned out not to be of limited use when
we had so little budget and/or control of the marketing around our
work.
We now use analysis of our web site and web based works to tell us
where people are coming from and we can sometimes make useful
inferences from this information. For example, an upswing in US
visitors to Can You See Me Now? projects seemed to be related to our
increased presence on games blogs. This alerted us to a new
constituency who we now try to reach.
I think it's also important to acknowledge that in the gallery sector
the visitors come in a steady manageable stream, are highly visible,
often leave comments etc. In Venice recently it was striking how many
artists were waiting nervously in or near their spaces for several
days to see who came. It may not be scientific but it does mean there
is a greater connection with audiences than is sometimes suggested.
Obviously there's a gap between VIP guests and the general public but
the two do overlap. I remember chatting to the team at the Museum of
Installation after we had a show there and they had a fantastic grasp
of which *kinds* of audience had come: local vs London-wide vs
national vs international, visual art vs digital art and so on.
Finally, a point about who we might be aiming for. As our practise
became international it was harder and harder to maintain a
relationship with a distinct 'audience'. It now shifts dramatically
from work to work and venue to venue. But we have a good sense of
which audience is important to us and who we are aiming at. It remains
crucial to us that any curious 15 year old could stumble onto our work
and be engaged by it. This then affects the imagery we use, the
language we use, where we try to show our work, how it is priced and
so on. For us, we want to reach those who are economically
disadvantaged first as we believe this to be the most meaningful gauge
for those who are currently marginalised from art. So, although our
knowledge of who constitutes our audience is patchy, our knowledge of
who we want to reach is focused.
Perhaps that provides a starting point for the TPSE web presence. Who
do we want to catch who we can't/don't currently reach?
Best wishes
Matt
(And thanks to you, Saul, for so diligently keeping this conversation
moving forward)
saul
On Jun 23, 5:18 pm, Matt Adams <m...@blasttheory.co.uk> wrote:
> Perhaps that provides a starting point for the TPSE web presence. Who
> do we want to catch who we can't/don't currently reach?
this is a great question to end on.
Even if it can be difficult for TPSE network members to answer who
their audience are, having a hit-list of 'would like to meet'
audiences would be a great starting point because it will enable us to
target, and then measure the success of the online tool in a clear and
transparent way.
If everyone contributes to an audience development hit-list, it will
make a huge difference to how we approach the first public version of
the online tool. For example, to reach Blast Theory's two WLTM
audiences (curious 15 year olds and economically disadvantaged
people), I'd think about ways to use simple mobile phone systems
(probably SMS rather than anything very fancy) rather than web-based
systems because in my experience, those are communications devices
that those two audiences are most likely to have access to. Then there
are outreach programmes and partnerships between arts organisations,
schools, social services, shelters etc. which might benefit from being
highlighted and networked, and their communications processes opened
up to a wider regional participation.
Many of the methods of engaging specific audiences won't be technology-
led as such, but it will be possible to use technology to help
establish and facilitate that engagement in a way that is measurable
and scalable.
Cheers,
Saul.