European inventory of
societal values of culture

Bollo et al. - Study on Audience Development

Bollo, A., Da Milano, C., Gariboldi, A., Torch, C., Carnelli, L., Karlsson, G. L., Schiavone, C. and Georgadze, N. (2017) Study on Audience Development - How to place audiences at the centre of cultural organisations. European Comission.

The aim of the study is to provide successful approaches and methods in the area of Audience Development to the European Commission as well as to equip cultural leaders inside an organization with the means to make a transition towards a more audience-centric organization on both the internal and external levels. The study was articulated in three tasks. The consortium firstly explored the issue through a systematisation of existing knowledge and literature. AD is indeed a multifaced issue that has to do with different knowledge fields as democratisation, access, participation, co-creation, organisational innovation, leadership, policies. As a second step, both to make sense of such complexity and to provide an operational framework to the following research, the consortium set up a conceptual framework for AD. Finally, the extended research group selected, interviewed and analysed 30 small and medium cultural organisations from 17 countries, in order to explore and detect innovative practices leading to effective results in terms of people participation. The learning from the research has been extensively shared and discussed through several seminars and meetings with the wider cultural professionals' community, leading to the interpretation of findings. Lastly, the consortium drew a set of recommendations for both cultural organisations and policy makers, encouraging them to tackle the challenge at all levels. Audience Development is a collective challenge that can only become systemic if all players are committed to make it happen: creating frameworks and conditions on the policy side, and tackling and managing change on the cultural professionals' side.

The study, carefully framed by the European Commission, can help guide in policy development, to create conditions for true AD. It aims at:

·       providing innovative approaches and methods in the area of AD to the European Commission;

·       providing a basis for selection criteria in future calls for proposals framed by the Creative Europe Programme;

·       equipping cultural leaders with developed means for making a convincing case, within an organisation, for a transition to an audience-centric approach;

·       investigating common elements across the diverse European landscape, clear differences and potential peer-learning opportunities.