The Idea of Audience

What sort of relationship do artists want with their audience? What kind of role do they imagine for the performing arts in their community?

Under the “creative industries”, the audience relationship has been increasingly defined and shaped by marketing and/or institutional interests. Wedged between the competing needs of the market, and their belief in the power of art to positively impact their communities, many artists and arts workers are caught in what Julian Meyrick describes as a “confused intellectual terrain”. While much audience scholarship has focused on understanding the motivations of audience members engaging with the arts, there has been considerably less research into the motivations of arts professionals with respect to their relationship with the audience. The Idea of Audience is a critical examination of the current fields of audience development and arts marketing, and explores the relationship between artists and audiences from the perspective of the artists themselves.

The book will be of most interest to students and academics of audience development/arts marketing, theatre/performance, and audience studies. It is hoped that the reader will gain greater insight into what artists actually mean when they talk about their audience.