Strategies for and experiences of audience development

Audience development has increasingly become a staple term in both cultural policy and cultural management discourses. This chapter attempts to clarify this term for teachers and students alike, and to demonstrate how audience development is, and can be, practised primarily within the subsidized arts sector. The chapter starts by locating audience development in both a cultural policy and arts practice context, highlighting how such practices diverge from arts marketing and how it makes use of audience segmentation. The chapter then moves on to suggest that audience development is a complex term that can refer to a range of different cultural practices, all of which attempt to reach out to new and, often, more diverse audiences. The chapter concludes with some examples of practices and gives advice about how the topic can be taught, tested and evaluated. It also includes a short list of reading suggestions.