Where is the audience

Sam Freeman, 2 October 2012

Present: Amber, Angie, Sam, Gordon, Jill, Jill, Rob & Rachel.

Summary:

- How do we develop audiences?

There is an expectation of audience of the audience who might go there. Not for the likes of me.

- Do we exclude older audiences?

Sometimes feels that theatres exclude older audiences from studio work, through marketing. However there are limitations to the budget available to market the shows and venues have to follow the financial target and match them with the audience most likely to aid this. Small-scale theatre tends to be emerging theatre which is why audiences can be younger. Theatre responds to the funding situation which is why we tend to chase young audience rather than older.

- How do we use online channels?

No longer excludes older audiences - increasingly they take advantage of video / reviews / content to make judgements of shows.

- There are problems with venues and touring companies sharing data?

Questions asked about what touring companies would use the data for that venues shouldn't be doing. The data is perhaps a safety net to protect people from slightly bad venues who ain't that great at marketing. There are data protection issues about sharing data. But there should be a responsibility to cross pollinate audiences. Actually venues should know audiences better than companies, also the relevance of a companies name and the sell-ability of that name can be overstated by touring companies. Image and defining the experience is far more important for atttracting a broader audience. Emerging companies should look at venues that programme similar work as they'll have developed audiences for such work.

- Hard to reach audiences?

Really difficult to create, it can take 10 years to build a following.

Tags:

Audience development, emerging artists, audience development, Audience Development, Emerging Artists