'Rethinking the missionary position' - the quest for sustainable audience development strategies

Abstract

Audience development is an emerging priority for many arts organizations. This paper explores the nature and purpose of audience development and considers the role of arts organizations in nuturing both new and existing audiences. Two styles of audience development are described, 'mainstream' focusing on existing arts attenders and 'missionary' focusing on traditional nonattenders. The authors have drawn on literature from relevant areas as a springboard for their ideas, given the lack of theory and empirical data in this discipline. 'Missionary' audience development projects appear to dominate in terms of resources and priorities. Whilst the focus on these audience constituencies is of value these groups are notoriously difficult and expensive to attract. This paper proposes that development initiatives should also focus on strengthening the franchise with existing arts audiences who may deliver higher levels of loyalty and have the dual benefits of being lower risk and less resource intensive. A map of audience typologies described by other academics is presented based on behavioural and attitudinal loyalty together with a map of audience development potential that identifies additional sub-groups. Using Rogers' integrated approach to audience development, functional and strategic responses for each group are then proposed. This discussion focuses on the arts, but is equally applicable to other areas of cultural tourism and leisure.