Crossover between attenders and participators

Crossover between attenders and participators

Catherine MacNeil, 8 September 2012

The question being “How can we get Audiences and participants to swap or share roles” we focused mainly on the participants who don't become audience and why? I was particularly interested in students of dance and drama or youth theatre participants who don't go to see dance or theatre.

We discussed what some of the barriers were: the obvious cost, time, location or at least the perception of those barriers. The risk factor was an obvious one in the way that young people aren't taking risks with cinema due to trailers etc, whereas dance and new, experimental theatre forms are unknown.

We talked a fair amount about about initiatives such as buy one get one free, free or reduced ticketing schemes, season schemes etc but the discussions that interested me the most were about the opportunity for dissemination of work (or lack of).
Insight events, q & a's without the art makers were discussed. Finding ways to get the student to see that viewing work can have a practical impact on their own work and training, how it can elevate their own practice.

Any suggestions for ways to encourage this.

Tags:

elevation of practice, dissemination, initiatives