I'm really lucky that I ply my arts marketing trade in a mono-demographic environment like Canberra. Lucky in that I can justify market research showing the dominance of Type A/B demographic people making up the market space. Of course our theatre appeals primarily to A/B rich edu-macated folks, that's ALL the type of folks we got in Canberra!
BUT I dare say we aren't alone amongst Government funded arts organisations, most arts institutions would have a dominance of upper income, higher educated types making up their database, for one the arts can be expensive, you need spare time to savour it and probably some degree of quality education to help understand much of it. This is our reality and well run institutions have childrens' and education programs, populist programs (IE; MSO+Dr Who), audience development initiatives and social inclusion programs all aimed in part as broadening the audience and increasing social inclusion.
Where I get a little disheartened however is when I see Arts organisations with little interest in reaching beyond their tidy subsidised little niche. I've seen this recently with some symphony orchestra programming and it used to be the case with some opera companies and it definitely is still very much in vogue with certain theatre companies.
Without naming names a few years ago someone plying one of the above genres outlined their show show programming rationale to a small group of marketers, it went something like Blockbuster/Old-favourite-for-hard-core-fans/Obscure-stretch-program-probably-for-the-AD/Conductor's-benefit. So really in a three show season 66% percent of the programming was designed to really only appeal to hard core genre lovers. Now I know you have little flexibility in a three show season but this seemed to me to have a slightly skewed balance.
The problem I'm outlining is a particular one for those that ply what I define as heritage art forms (Boy am I gunna get in trouble for this!), but that means opera, ballet, Shakespearean and classical music, art forms where the biggest markets are for works that are very old and very well known "...and don't you dare to anything 'funny' with it". Quite simply because the repertoire is limited and the desire for the new amongst the core patrons is not just low but in some cases assertively negative.
So I've established that a lot of performing arts appeals to wealthy, educated white folk. OK no rocket science going on here then. Now, couple that with the adherence to the subscription season pricing model that ensures that the wealthiest patrons also are the ones that pay the lowest price for their ticket. I'm sorry what? Our wealthiest, most passionate patrons are paying the least? I thought us artsy types were into social justice?
Ahh so now the heading starts to make sense. To me the aligning of conservative programming, lack of audience development effort, subs season pricing and government support all lead to one summation - cultural welfare for the rich. Pure and simple. And it's not just wrong, its offensive.
And what's more telling is that decision makers are waking up to this; participation, social inclusiveness, diversity, these are all the current buzzwords in arts policy, but we need to take it further, it is now not enough for these to be satellite programs done to tick boxes, these have to move to being the main game. Otherwise what are we here for? How do we justify the public money?
The best thing I've read this year is this, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/why-opera-australia-needs-to-change/story-fn9n9z9n-1226183568035, Lyndon Terracini's 2011 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address, in it he says it is not acceptable for a company taking $20 million in public money to continue to play to a small elitist club, and talks about the efforts of Opera Australia through it's touring arm Oz Opera (not specifically named) to reach as many people as possible up to 500,000.
So there you have it Opera perhaps the most conservative of all art forms is embracing change and recognising that they no longer have a God given right to take government money to appeal to a tiny elitist clique. It's time the rest of us moved to before someone moves for us.
