Full Description
Drawing on unique multi-arts, multi-city scholarly research, Understanding Audiences for the Contemporary Arts makes a timely and urgent contribution to debates about the place of arts and culture in contemporary society.
The authors critically interrogate the challenges of access, diversity, privilege and responsibility in contemporary art. Asking who benefits from, pays for and consumes the arts, the book highlights fresh, forward-thinking audience and organisational attitudes that show the potential of live arts engagement to contribute to engaged citizenship. Complemented by comparative global analysis, the cutting-edge insights in this book are relevant for interdisciplinary researchers across audience studies and beyond.
Enhanced by a new framework for the understanding audience engagement, the book is relevant to scholars, policymakers and reflective practitioners across the spectrum of arts and cultural industries management.
Chapter 7 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license here.
Contents
1. Introduction: Who Goes to the Contemporary Arts? 2. Understanding Audiences: Research Methods and Approaches 3. "But is it Art?": Defining the Contemporary Arts 4. Cities for the Arts: The Importance of Place in Arts Engagement 5. Art forms, Venues and Audience Decision-Making: Navigating the Cultural Ecology 6. Routes to Engagement in Contemporary Arts 7. "It's Okay Not to Like it": The Appeal and Frustrations of the Contemporary Arts 8. Making Sense of the Contemporary Arts: Programme Notes, Gallery Panels and Arts Talk 9. Uncomfortable Questions in Contemporary Arts Practice and Research: The Formaldehyde Shark in the Room 10. Audience Development and the Future of the Contemporary Arts: Learning from Audiences
