The Arts Council of England developed a definition that attempts to embrace this broad term:
“The term Audience Development describes activity which is undertaken specifically to meet the needs of existing and potential audiences and to help arts organisations to develop on-going relationships with audiences. It can include aspects of marketing, commissioning, programming, education, customer care and distribution.”
Emphasis is also placed on the strong relationship audience development has with marketing, as audience development is also involved with building market share. It also focuses on finding audiences outside the mainstream –i.e. “new audiences” or “audiences from socially excluded groups”. Audience development also reflects the relationship with audiences that develops over time with a focus on the long term.
Different types of Audience Development activity are suitable for different types of organisations, from the large scale concert hall to the small scale arts centre.
As a process, audience development employs a range of marketing tools such as research, publicity, communication and customer relationship management. As an ethos, audience development places the audience at the heart of everything the organisation does.
Famous quotes containing the words audience and/or development:
“Bottom. What is Pyramus? A lover or a tyrant?
Quince. A lover that kills himself, most gallant, for love.
Bottom. That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)