Funders share guide to audience development strategies for arts organisations
Howard Lake | 15 September 2015 | News
Two grantmakers, one from the UK and one from the USA, have together published a book to help local arts organisations build and develop their audiences.
“Imagining Arts Organizations for New Audiences” has been written by evaluation consultant Annabel Jackson, who was commissioned by the London-based Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Ohio-based Cleveland Foundation. In it she shares the lessons learned and successful approaches supported by the two funders.
It features 14 case studies of “innovative audience development approaches” by local arts organisations that the foundations have funded.
Cleveland Foundation
The Cleveland Foundation, established 101 years ago, is the world’s first community foundation. It dedicates about 10% of its annual grantmaking of $95 million to arts and culture support. Recently, its Engaging the Future initiative ran from July 2011 through September 2014 and was specifically designed to empower local arts organisations to test approaches to reach younger and more diverse audiences.
In the book it shares the experiences of The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Public Theatre, DANCECleveland, GroundWorks, Great Lakes Theater and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Cleveland.
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
The Paul Hamlyn Foundation was established in 1987 and is one of the largest independent grantmaking organisations in the United Kingdom. It focuses on helping people realise their potential and improve quality of life through the arts, education and social projects. A substantial part of the £20 million in makes in grants each year supports projects that allow communities to access, enjoy and benefit from the arts.
It has contributed lessons learned from working with BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, the National Theatre, Opera North, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Royal Shakespeare Company, Sadler’s Wells and Tate in the UK.
Kathleen Cerveny, Program Director for Institutional Learning and Arts Initiatives at the Cleveland Foundation, explained how the book came about:
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“The Cleveland Foundation has been so impressed by the innovative work undertaken by the arts organisations in our Engaging the Future initiative and we are proud to showcase their accomplishments alongside those of similarly important British cultural institutions.
“Annabel Jackson has conceived a view of audience development for the arts from within and throughout the structure of these organisations that often requires doing business very differently, even to the point of changing the organisation’s internal culture. We hope that these case studies, while unique to each organisation’s goals and situation, will offer a fresh perspective for others seeking to engage new audiences in their creative offerings.”
Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Director, Grants & Programmes, Régis Cochefert, added:
“As part of the new strategy that we launched in June 2015, arts evidence and the understanding of impact are amongst our main themes – together with access & participation in the arts. This close look at particular case studies – and the opportunity to compare and contrast US and UK approaches within a broader framework on thoughts and reflections – felt like an opportunity too good to resist and we are delighted to have played our part in contributing to a lively debate through this book.
“Audience development, retention of audiences and working with hard-to-reach communities, groups and individual are as important as ever – if not more – in a context of reduced public subsidies in the UK. It is something we care passionately about and is very much in the DNA of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. We very much hope that Annabel’s book will become a springboard for action in the arts and culture ecosystems across the United Kingdom.”
Author Annabel Jackson, who specialises in evaluating arts and culture, and working with – and building capacity in – arts organisations, explains her aims in the foreword to the book:
“This book is not intended to be prescriptive. It is a source of ideas and practical principles, not of rules. I see new audience development as urgent, as others have described it, but also as fundamentally positive and full of choices…New audience development is not a threat to organisational integrity, but rather a process of reimagining the organisation’s work while being rooted in its essence.”
You can download the 100-page Imagining Arts Organizations for New Audiences in PDF at no charge.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.