Artistic Vibrancy, Design and

Audience Development

@_lisabaxter

What do the words‘artistic vibrancy’ mean to you?

•Audience numbers

•Ticket sales

•Ticket income

•% first time attenders

•Socio-demographics

•Market penetration

1. What did the Artistic Director intend from the audience perspective?

Artistic

Intention

1. What did the Artistic Director intend from the audience perspective?

2. To what degree was this experienced and valued by the audience?

Audience

Experience

Artistic

Intention

1. What did the Artistic Director intend from the audience perspective?

2. To what degree was this experienced and valued by the audience?

3. What does this reveal about the artistic vibrancy of the production?

Artistic

Intention

Artistic VibrancyThe degree to which artistic intention

and audience experience align

Audience

Experience

Artistic intentionality

• Intention 1

Programme choice and impact on audience motivation

• Intention 2

Programme choice and impact on audience expectations

• Intention 3

Artistic choices and impact on audience experience

• Intention 4

Artistic choices and impact on subsequent value placement

Artistic

Intention

The Mist in the Mirror

What we learnt …Audience Motivation

• The degree to which the programme proposition impacted on motivation to book from within a population of low arts engagement.

Audience Expectation

• The precise dimensions of audience expectations based on genre and title.

Audience Experience

• In-depth understanding of the intrinsic audience experience of the production

Value Attribution

• The degree to which those experiences impacted on over-all value attribution and propensity to re-engage.

Artistic Vibrancy

• The degree of alignment between the artistic intentions and actual audience experience.

Audience

Experience

Value of this Approach

• Encourage Artistic Reflection

• Develop Audience Sensibility

• Inform Artistic Risk

• Explore Dimensions of Artistic Vibrancy

• Fuel long-term Audience Development

Artistic

Vibrancy

Courthouse Gallery

Repelled

Pain

Body

Banal

Small

Now

Seduced

Beauty

Heart and Soul

Precious

Vast

Timeless

Designing for Experience

Develop

personas

Develop

personas

Empathy

“Creativity is putting your

imagination to work, and it's

produced the most extraordinary

results in human culture.”Ken Robinson

Develop

personas

Empathy

Ideate

• Serious play with purpose

• A creative tool for developing new ideas

• Gives you permission to take risks

• Makes abstract concepts tangible

• An opportunity to fail well and cheaply

Develop

personas

Empathy

Ideate

Prototype

Develop

personas

Empathy

Ideate

Prototype

Test

1. Curatorial intention from an artistic perspective

Curatorial

Authority

1. Curatorial intention from an artistic perspective

2. Design pathways to connect, engage and hold meaning for specific audiences.

Audience

Sensibility

Curatorial

Authority

1. Curatorial intention from an artistic perspective

2. Design pathways to connect, engage and hold meaning for specific audiences.

Curatorial

Authority

Artistic VibrancyThe degree to which curatorial authority

and audience sensibility align

Audience

Sensibility

Designing embodied experiences• Create a ‘de-compression’ area to quieten inner noise and alert the senses

• Choreograph a physical and sensory journey through the exhibition

• Through the design of different atmospheric environments

• Using light, sound, colour, digital projection and tactile elements

Designing beyond the gaze• Offer structured and unstructured opportunities to become makers

• Create space for reflection and quietness

• Provide opportunities to physically experience the work in a focussed way

• Allow people to ‘scavenge’ and find objects as the artists did and see their beauty

• Programme artist and audience sharing events

“Our biggest learning was that as arts programmers

and curators we have an obligation to our audiences

as well as our artists, and that our role is in facilitating

innovation, collaboration, and audience empowerment

over and above disseminating expert knowledge.”

Mollie, the curator

Oldham Coliseum

• Theatre

• Evaluative

• Research based

• Artistic Intention

• Audience Experience

Courthouse Gallery

• Visual Arts

• Formative

• Design led

• Curatorial Authority

• Audience Sensibility

The insightful pursuit of artistic vibrancy is

essential in building enduring audience

relationships.

Over to you …