Audience Engagement Forum and Workshops

The Audience Engagement Forum, Workshops, and Webinar were presented by the Washington State Arts Commission and The Wallace Foundation. This timely discussion of emerging practices in Audience Engagement featured nationally recognized researcher and consultant Alan Brown of WolfBrown.

 

During the forum and workshops, Alan and participants delved into the questions of how audiences like to engage with different art forms, and how arts organizations can respond to the changing expectations and demands of audiences.

 

The forum was introduced by Daniel Windham of The Wallace Foundation with a discussion led by Sandra Jackson-Dumont of the Seattle Art Museum. The forum and workshops were held in the McCaw Hall on the Seattle Center campus, and were free to the public.

 

Watch the Video

Watch an online video of the audience engagement forum provided by the Seattle Channel.

 

Follow-up Material

Comments from forum and workshop participants (PDF)

 

A complete copy of Alan Brown's forum presentation with added notes - Audience Engagement Forum Presentation (PDF).

 

Audience Engagement Workshops Summary (PDF) was prepared by Alan following the workshops and includes ideas and topics generated by participants of both workshops.

 

We're also providing the complete PowerPoint presentation from the Audience Engagement Forum (PPT) - this is a large file (8 MB) and may take awhile to download.

 

Both the complete presentation and the workshop summary include notes taken with ideas from audience members on their techniques for engaging audiences and other input from participants.

 

Five Ideas for Arts Organizations

Alan has also gleaned from the workshop discussions the following five ideas that are do-able research and development projects that arts organizations can try right now, in order to better engage audiences:

 

1. Explore community/collaborative solutions to memory elicitation (e.g., online scrapbooks where people accumulate memories of their arts experiences).
2. Explore how to generate additional revenues by up-selling educational enhancements at the point of sale.
3. Develop methods of capturing questions from audience members as they leave programs (i.e., what questions would you like to ask the artist, director, curator, composer, choreographer, etc.), and how to feedback those questions to audience members to stimulate critical reflection in various formats.
4. Determine how can individual arts groups, or consortia, use mobile apps most effectively to engage audiences.
5. Explore strategies for allowing audiences and visitors to take photographs and video at/during arts programs, and how to leverage the resulting user-generated content.

 

Related Readings

Here are some links to articles, provided by our speaker Alan Brown.

 

• Mission Unaccomplished (PDF) – an excellent essay on the place of learning in performing arts organizations, a provocation paper by Sara Robinson and Teo Greenstreet, 2006.
• Hannah Rudman on “Organizational Porosity” and user-generated content (video message to project audience, 2009).
• How not to handle a critic, So much drama! - an article in the Globe and Mail by J. Kelly Nestruck on what happens when you try to muzzle audience feedback.
• Dancers Adopt a City and Vice Versa - an article in the New York Times by Claudia La Rocco on the Trey McIntyre Project a dance company defined around engagement.
• Pacific Symphony to tweet during live concert - another orchestra dabbles in tweets as explored in this Orange County Register article by Timothy Mangan.
• Getting in on the Act- Understanding participatory arts practices by The James Irvine Foundation

 

 

Webinar

WSAC hosted a webinar (phone and web conference) with speaker Alan Brown and facilitator Jerry Yoshitomi on September 23 as a follow-up to the successful forum and workshops.

 

The webinar covered the same material as the forum while providing an opportunity for greater participation from around the state.

 

Webinar Documents

Presentation - Audience Engagement Webinar (PDF)

Voice Recording - Audience Engagement Webinar (MP3) - this is a large file approximately 5 MB.

 

Free document readers and download instructions are available.