Image: Craig Kirkwood via Flickr
Going to a concert is not the same as passively watching television. John Tusa describes it as “closer to an intellectual gymnasium, where minds are fed, intellects stretched and emotions challenged.” The artistic experience is not the only benefit that the audience member receives. At the same time they also receive recreational, social and learning experiences. As an audience member said:
“It all depends on your rituals…You are there to see a show…you see it and you leave. On the other hand…if you are the “true consumer”, you will want the dinner, the drinks, the shows, the coffee, the cake and so on.”As well as the regular quantitative and qualitative surveys and focus groups done at MTC, sometimes an interested researcher would come our way and provide insights into our audiences. Ben Walmsley, an English academic, was one such person. He did deep interviews with some our audience members and along with comments from audiences at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, wrote a fascinating paper called “A big part of my life”: A qualitative study of the impact of theatre. He concluded that “theatre-going is a complex pursuit that transcends the blurred boundaries of arts, entertainment and leisure” and I suspect, for the all the attempts to divide art into high and popular boxes, that this is true of many cultural experiences.
The reasons his (my) audience gave as to why they went to the theatre included escapism and immersion, distraction and emotional release, feeding the imagination, relationship building, personal insight and having one’s belief systems challenged. When asked what their life would be like without theatre responses varied “ from a casual shrug to a devasted tear”.
MTC was doing its biennial audience research around the same time as Walmsely’s interviews and the theatre experience was summed up the research company as offering a unique emotional and (often) intellectual experience which they refined to the idea that going to the theatre was to ‘exercise my emotions’. And that, the researchers concluded , was why people kept coming back for more.
Phrases MTC audience members used about why they came to the theatre included:
- Immerse myself
- The surprise element
- Real and relevant issues – not superficial
- Passionate
- Expose my mind to different ideas
- Give myself over to storytelling
- As real as it gets
- Entertainment
- Watching the creative process
- Dramatic
- Intimate, moving
- Escapism
- Being taken on a journey
- Challenge myself
- Confronting, thought provoking.
Each arts organisation should have its own understanding about why people turn into their audience members. Lisa Baxter makes some really good points about audience research. Her starting point is that in order to develop and grow audiences, we need to know and empathize with them. And this means not just finding out what they think about us but to concentrate on finding out what they think about art and culture. Baxter argues the case (and I agree with her) about the importance of qualitative research which helps us understand how our company is perceived, the motivational triggers that lead to participation and the degree to which various marketing and brand strategies appeal .
MTC had a good history of audience research but hadn’t done much in the early 90s because of financial pressures. Our initial venture back into this important area was in the form of focus groups. One of the questions we used to try and determine how our brand was perceived was to ask what sort of animal the company was. To my absolute horror, the overwhelming answer was a wombat. For those who don’t know this unique Australian animal, it could best be described as iconic but also fat, brown, boring, slow (with occasional 90 second bursts of unexpected speed) burrowers. Not exactly how we viewed ourselves. A couple of years later, with some changes in programming, marketing and public relations, we asked the same question again and we had become labradors. Not the most glamorous of dogs but with a reputation for being friendly and hardworking and at least no long a boring brown. Needless to say, there were other animals in the mix but the result of asking the question was a fascinating conversion that unpacked a lot of unstated assumptions about the company. I have no idea where I picked up this idea of asking how the company was personified (or rather animalified) but fifteen years later Baxter was advising this sort of technique to help uncover unconscious insight from one’s audience.
This article is an excerpt from The A to Z of Arts Management by Ann Tonks published by Tilde, Melbourne
REFERENCES
Baxter, L 2010 ‘From luxury to necessity: The changing role of qualitative research in the arts’ in O’Reilly, D & Kerrigan, F (eds) 2010, Marketing the Arts: a fresh approach, Routledge, London, 121-140
Tusa, J, 2007 Engaged with the Arts, London: I.B. Tauris & Co.
Walmsley, B 2011 ‘A big part of my life”: A qualitative study of the impact of theatre’ AIMAC 11th International Conference, Antwerp, Belgium
