With audience profiles still stubbornly white, middle-class and middle-aged, most of Australia’s arts and cultural organisations have done little to broaden and diversify their audience base in recent years, a study has found.
And the recovery from Covid-19 may have narrowed the demographic even further, according to the joint study led by Deakin University.
Of the 184 Australian cultural organisations surveyed, and 1,011 individual responses from those working within arts organisations, more than half the respondents conceded they had made little or no changes to their programming or outreach programs to attract audiences from different cultures, age groups, geographic locations and gender identities.
In general, arts festivals, museums and galleries, opera companies and orchestras appeared the most resistant to identifying new target audiences and adjusting programming to attract them. The study did not identify which specific organisations.
The Sydney Opera House, Australia’s flagship state theatre and dance companies, arts festivals and a range of state and national museums and galleries, along with many smaller regional organisations, were captured in the research.
Led by the Deakin University professor of arts and cultural management, Hilary Glow, the research concluded that when it came to programming performances and exhibitions with the potential to capture new audiences, 55% of organisations fell into the “avoider” category – that is, ignoring or resisting change and prioritising their existing audiences to the exclusion of other potential audiences.
Glow said while most organisations recognised the need to broaden their audience base to capture more diverse populations, for many it was a case of “talking the talk but not walking the walk”.
“They are internally focused conversations,” Glow said. “If an organisation is really going to take audience diversity seriously, they’re going to have to stop having fascinating conversations in their boardrooms and start bringing an external focus into the organisation.”
A recent trawl of major arts organisation boards conducted by the Guardian found that although gender parity was evident across most, the more traditional art forms such as opera and orchestras still had boards made up overwhelmingly of white men.
A number of flagship organisations have, however, set up First Nations advisory boards, including the National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Earlier this year the Melbourne Theatre Company became the first major performing arts organisation to form a dedicated a group of artists diverse in culture and age to act as an advisory council to those making the programming decisions.
“One of the tasks that organisations absolutely have to commit to, if they’re going to diversify their audiences, is to diversify their workforce,” Glowsaid.
“Positions across an arts organisation need to be diverse themselves. But that is not the only thing that needs to happen. There’s no evidence to suggest that by simply putting someone from a minority or diverse background in any kind of leadership position it’s instantly going to lead to new audiences.”
Glow said there was evidence that “avoider” behaviour towards diversifying audiences was more noticeable in organisations dependent on a loyal subscriber base, bases that were severely eroded with the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
“What happens is that an organisation ends up knowing an awful lot about the demographics of the people who buy their subscription passes. They have a high level of knowledge about their existing audiences but this doesn’t help them understand who isn’t there.
“I think many organisations have set themselves up to nurture their existing audiences, possibly at the expense of thinking about investing in the pursuit of new audiences, new knowledge, new ideas and new programming.”
Glow said it was hard to ignore the role Covid has played in entrenched patterns of behaviour and risk-averse programming.
“Post-Covid, many organisations treated that as an opportunity to further build and strengthen their relationships with their current audiences,” she said.
Academics from Edith Cowan University and the UK’s University of Sheffield, and the Australia Council Board member and theatre and festival director Wesley Enoch, also contributed to the research.
The second phase of the project will see 11 selected organisations, including the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne’s Rising festival and the Adelaide Festival Centre, work with a panel of change experts to develop a range of resources to attract new audiences.
