AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL INCLUSION IN BRITAIN

Abstract

This paper attempts to distinguish the different meanings of “audience development” and “social inclusion” – two areas receiving increasing attention in British cultural policy – by discussing their overlap and close relation to “access”. These policy areas are fraught with inherent contradictions when examined in the light of sociological theories on culture. Consumption skills, the level of which is determined socio‐economically, and the function of culture for distinction suggest problems and paradoxes for audience development and social inclusion. Discussion on representation in culture, which can work to institutionalise inequality, also leads to a call for a “target‐driven” approach to these areas. This would be fundamentally different from the dominant “product‐led” approach that tries to leave the core product intact whilst making changes in presentation. To become truly inclusive is a most formidable challenge for cultural organisations as it inevitably brings them into a wholesale review of their core products.

KEYWORDS:

• museums
• social inclusion
• audience development
• British cultural policy
• access

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper draws on my previous work on audience development in the arts (Kawashima 2000), expanded by a study into museums run by local authorities in England and Scotland. The research into museums was undertaken in 2004 while I was a Visiting Scholar at the London School of Economics and at the University of Warwick. I thank museum directors who gave me their time in talking about their experiences and thoughts with me. Earlier versions of this paper received helpful comments from Richard Sandell and two anonymous referees. Thanks are also due to Hye‐Kyung Lee and Miranda Boorsma for sharing their papers then forthcoming in this journal.

Notes

1. The government has defined social exclusion as “a shorthand term for what can happen when people or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, unfair discrimination, poor housing, high crime, bad health and family breakdown” (Policy Action Team 10 1999, p. 4).

2. The name has been changed for the purpose of avoiding confusion with the complex concepts of social inclusion.

3. On a more popular front, the way in which women, ethnic groups and other minorities are depicted in soap operas and other entertainment shows on television has had a profound impact on the perception of the general public towards these groups. See Geraghty and Lusted (1998), particularly essays in Section II, for reviews of this strand of research.