Audience Development and Cultural Policy

Encouraging more – and different – people to attend the arts remains a vital issue for the cultural sector. The question of who consumes culture, and why, is key to our understanding of the arts. This book examines the relationship of audience development to cultural policy and offers a ground-breaking perspective on how the practice of audience development is connected to ideas of democratic access to culture. Providing a detailed overview of arts marketing, audience development and cultural democracy, the book argues that the work of audience development has been profoundly misunderstood by the field of arts management. Drawing from a rich range of interviews with key individuals in the audience development field, the book argues for a re-conceptualisation of audience development as an ideological function of cultural policy. Of importance for students, academics and researchers working in arts management and cultural policy, the book is also vital reading for anyone working in the arts, cultural and heritage sectors with an interest in understanding how our relationship with the audience has been constructed.

Steven Hadley is an academic, researcher and consultant working internationally in the cultural sector. He is currently a Research Fellow in the Moore Institute, National University of Ireland Galway, Visiting Lecturer at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Associate Consultant with The Audience Agency, and sits on the Editorial Boards of both Cultural Trends and the European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy.