Understanding audiences for the contemporary arts

Contemporary arts - provisionally defined at the outset of this project as those arts events and practices that are newly created and in some way innovative or challenging - attract interestingly opposing audience responses: at the extremes, enthusiasts will focus their arts engagement primarily on seeking out 'the contemporary' (Gross & Pitts 2015), while established audiences for 'mainstream' or traditional arts will distrust the programming of new works, tolerating them at best or otherwise staying away (Pitts 2005). For arts organisations of all varieties this is a marketing and communication challenge; and for academics interested in the role of arts engagement in people's lives, attitudes towards contemporary arts offer interesting insight on cultural value and the place of creativity, challenge and comfort in experiences of the arts.

Our investigation of these two extremes of audience response - those who engage with the contemporary arts and those who choose not to - was prompted by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG), our lead partner in this project, with whom we have carried out a pilot study to lay the groundwork for this deliberately ambitious, national, cross-art form investigation. BCMG were interested in the scope for 'crossover' between art forms: whether regular attenders at a contemporary art gallery would also be potential audience members for a BCMG concert, or for experimental theatre, or a pop up gallery in a disused warehouse, and the extent to which those different groups of practitioners and audience members were aware of each other's work. These practically-focused initial questions led to the formation of a Birmingham Contemporary Arts Network (still meeting a year after our research project), generating a substantial qualitative investigation with 56 audience members from five key organisations, and a series of 'audience exchange' visits in which audience members experienced events outside their usual patterns of attendance. These methods generated a depth of research enquiry around the nature of 'the contemporary, the place of arts in everyday life, their contribution to personal and civic identity, and the notion of 'cultural citizenship', which captures the sense of civically engaged involvement that characterised our Birmingham participants (Gross & Pitts 2015; 2016).

For the 30 month, national version of this project, we will extend our enquiries by establishing contemporary arts networks in three additional cities (Bristol, Liverpool and London), chosen for their distinctive geographies, demographics and contemporary arts scenes. We will work with internationally recognised lead partners whose practices encompass a diversity of art forms, and build networks of practitioner and audience exchange to facilitate empirical investigations and cross-arts comparisons on a scale not previously seen in audience research. A phase of longitudinal action research, first in Birmingham, and then in our three new partner cities, will use our findings to generate and test new approaches to audience development and experience, so ensuring immediate and lasting impact from the research. Alongside this, enquiries with 'mainstream' arts audiences in Sheffield will explore resistance to the contemporary arts, so providing a more critical perspective on the debate. The substantial empirical knowledge resulting from the project will shed new light on interdisciplinary critiques of arts engagement in the 21st century (Heim 2016; Freshwater 2009), and build on the very small number of studies currently providing insight on audience experience in the contemporary arts (Sifakakis 2007; Van Dyke 2010; Hanquinet 2013). We aim to understand 'audiences for the contemporary arts' with a depth that speaks to academics across sociology and psychology of arts, cultural studies and specific arts disciplines, as well as practitioners and policy makers in all related fields.

This research has impact at its heart from the outset: its data collection is embedded in the networks of practitioners and their audiences who are central to the project, and consultation with those groups will occur through network meetings, workshops and conferences. The longitudinal, action research phase will identify those findings that have the greatest potential to change and develop the experiences of arts organisations and their audiences, and the documentation of the impact of these forms part of the research itself.

Our project is ambitious in its aims to increase understanding of audience experiences, motivations and values in relation to the contemporary arts: our pilot phase in Birmingham has demonstrated a strong appetite for this knowledge amongst practitioners - indeed, the project was initiated by such a request from Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (so in itself demonstrating the relevance of the PI's previous research with live music audiences to the current concerns and practice of our partner organisations). The scope of the project, across five cities (including Sheffield) and multiple art forms, is intended to facilitate the greatest potential impact by offering opportunities for exchange of ideas and practices across regions and art forms, in ways that are often otherwise limited by organisational habit and resources. Audiences themselves will benefit from our work also: past studies involving 'audience exchanges' have been reported as enriching the arts experience for those involved, by providing opportunities for facilitated reflection, as well as drawing new audience members into unfamiliar experiences.

There is potential for this research to impact upon the organisations and their audiences in a number of ways:
- Culturally: through increasing the understanding of audience experiences and perspectives, and so articulating more clearly the value of the contemporary arts in ways that speak to new and existing audiences.
- Financially: through using this stronger articulation of value to persuade funding bodies and policy makers of the imperative to fund contemporary arts practices; and through the potential increase in audience numbers and revenue achieved by more effective marketing built on this understanding.
- Politically: through increasing awareness of the contribution made by the contemporary arts to creating a society in which citizens are culturally and civically engaged.
- Developmentally: through the involvement of staff, practitioners and audience members in posing questions, interpreting and applying findings, and coming to a deeper understanding of their own practices and their impact.

To fully achieve this impact, the project will report frequently through the practitioner network meetings, the national conference (Year 1) and international conference (Year 2), and the research centre website (www.sparc.dept.shef.ac.uk), which from an early stage will provide research materials and accessible summaries of findings for use by wider networks of contemporary arts organisations. The online publication of interim findings and research tools will support practitioners in carrying out similar work and in learning from our experiences and findings, so extending an invitation to join our research activities and spread their impact. In addition to academic reporting of the work through journal articles and a co-authored book, the project will lead to a handbook for contemporary arts practitioners, freely available through download from the website, and distributed in printed form at our own conferences and those of the Arts Marketing Association and Arts Council England. Collaborations with those organisations and other relevant bodies (e.g. Sound and Music) will also be sought to ensure that the findings of the project, and the measurement of its impact, achieve the greatest possible reach.