6.3. Adjust the offer to the needs of the audience (from a supply-driven to a demand-driven method of working) Education is the classic tool to build a demand, the idea behind most educational programmes mainly being to create a ‘taste’ for the existing cultural offer. This often implies an image of society in which there is ‘culture’ encapsulated in particular institutions and somewhere else there are people trying (or not trying) to get access to this kind of ‘culture’. A more radical approach to audience development involves, however, questioning the relevance of the offer to the envisaged public, taking into account its needs and interests. User surveys analysing the audiences of cultural institutions show that socio-economic disadvantage is not always the main reason for not visiting. In particular, young people, almost regardless of social background, seem to show disaffection not for culture, but for the institutional places where culture is celebrated and conserved. Increasingly, people consume culture in other places and in other forms. This should lead institutions and funding authorities to a deep reflection on their relevance and on strategies to maintain relevance in the future. Thus, the condition to drive interest and engagement might be to ensure the relevance (to individuals and the community) of cultural products. This might involve re-interpreting or re-positioning cultural services, chainging programming and the context (e.g. location, taking culture out of its traditional setting or bringing social activities into the cultural space) of the offering. Doing this means revising the overall approach and mandate of the institutions, also questioning and revising decision-making processes and modalities. It may be argued that such a process might lead to a whole revision of what ‘culture’ is – shifting from the provision of appropriate programmes of professional cultural institutions to ‘enabling people to articulate and to express different cultures in different environments’. While this approach is the deepest and most promising in terms of impact, it may also be the most challenging and complex in terms of definition and implementation. The main questions are how to define relevance, who decides what is relevant to whom, and how to identify what is really relevant. The process of determining such relevance may be demanding in terms of resources. Also, the process of involving the audience in the programming may be perceived as threatening by some cultural institutions. The fear is that asking the audience may lead to being obliged to compromise on quality, opening to amateur or popular taste, etc. It should be clear, however, that a participatory approach that asks users about their preferences has the main purpose of identifying and better understanding their needs; it does not need to involve delegating artistic authorship. Retaining the ultimate responsibility for artistic choice also ensures that the institution may keep the balance between suiting the interests of new audiences and maintaining traditional, core audiences.
Open method of coordination (OMC) Working group of EU Member States’ experts on better access to and wider participation in culture
OMC
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