Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Ben Walmsley

   Pages 1-23

3. Understanding Audiences: A Critical Review of Audience Research

   • Ben Walmsley

   Pages 25-62

4. Deconstructing Audiences’ Experiences

   • Ben Walmsley

   Pages 63-90

5. Capturing, Interpreting, and Evaluating Cultural Value

   • Ben Walmsley

   Pages 91-110

6. Researching (with) Audiences

   • Ben Walmsley

   Pages 111-139

7. From Consumption to Enrichment: The Long Slow Death of Arts Marketing

   • Ben Walmsley

   Pages 141-163

8. Co-creating Art, Meaning, and Value

   • Ben Walmsley

   Pages 165-198

9. Engaging Audiences Through Digital Technologies

   • Ben Walmsley

   Pages 199-224

10. Conclusions and Implications

    • Ben Walmsley

    Pages 225-241

11. Back Matter

    Pages 243-248

    PDF

This book explores the concept of audience engagement from a number of complementary perspectives, including cultural value, arts marketing, co-creation and digital engagement. It offers a critical review of the existing literature on audience research and engagement, and provides an overview of established and emerging methodologies deployed to undertake research with audiences. The book focusses on the performing arts, but draws from a rich diversity of academic fields to make the case for a radically interdisciplinary approach to audience research.

The book’s underlying thesis is that at the heart of audience research there is a mutual exchange of value wherein audiences ideally play the role of strategic partners in the mission fulfilment of arts organisations. Illustrating how audiences have traditionally been side-lined, homogenised and vilified, it contends that the future paradigm of audience studies should be based on an engagement model, wherein audiences take their rightful place as subjects rather than objects of empirical research.

• Jean-Paul Sartre
• arts audiences
• audience research
• quixotic thinking
• death of the audience
• prosumers
• arts funding
• Kickstarter

“Ben Walmsley's book draws together and reviews a considerable body of existing scholarship and does a vital job in identifying and drawing out key and emergent themes. In doing so it marks a moment in the maturation of the field. It has a particular and persuasive focus on the trajectory from arts marketing to audience engagement, which it argues with commitment and impressive scholarship.” (Matthew Reason, Professor of Theatre and Performance, York St John University, UK)

“This book offers a fluid, engaging and philosophical approach to the topic of audience engagement that will make its mark on the creative industries.” (Ruth Rentschler OAM, Professor of Arts & Cultural Leadership, University of South Australia, and Author of Arts Governance: People, Passion, Performance)

• School Performance Cultural Industries, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

  Ben Walmsley

Ben Walmsley is Associate Professor in Audience Engagement in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds, UK and Director of the Centre for Cultural Value. Previously, Ben was Producer at the National Theatre of Scotland and an Assessor for Drama for Arts Council England. Since 2014 he has been the Academic Director of the Arts Fundraising and Philanthropy Programme, now one of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations. He is also Co-Editor of Arts and the Market.

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