Understanding audiences for the contemporary arts

当代艺术——在本项目开始时临时定义为那些新创造的、在某种程度上具有创新性或挑战性的艺术活动和实践——吸引了有趣的相反的观众反应：在极端情况下，狂热者将他们的艺术参与主要集中在寻找“当代”（Gross & Pitts 2015），而“主流”或传统艺术的既定观众将不信任新作品的编程，充其量只能容忍它们，否则就会远离（Pitts 2005）。对于各类艺术机构来说，这是一项营销和沟通挑战；对于那些对艺术在人们生活中所扮演的角色感兴趣的学者来说，对当代艺术的态度提供了关于文化价值和艺术体验中创造力、挑战和舒适的有趣见解。我们对这两种极端的观众反应的调查——那些参与当代艺术的和那些选择不参与的——是由伯明翰当代音乐集团（BCMG）推动的，我们在这个项目中的主要合作伙伴，我们与他们一起进行了一项试点研究，为这个雄心勃勃的、全国性的、跨艺术形式的调查奠定了基础。BCMG对不同艺术形式之间的“跨界”范围很感兴趣：当代美术馆的常客是否也会成为BCMG音乐会的潜在观众，或者是实验剧院的潜在观众，或者是废弃仓库里的弹出式画廊的潜在观众，以及这些不同群体的从业者和观众对彼此作品的了解程度。这些以实践为中心的最初问题导致了伯明翰当代艺术网络的形成（在我们的研究项目一年后仍在开会），与来自五个主要组织的56名观众进行了实质性的定性调查，并进行了一系列的“观众交流”访问，让观众体验到他们通常出席的活动模式之外的活动。这些方法产生了围绕“当代”的本质、艺术在日常生活中的地位、它们对个人和公民身份的贡献，以及“文化公民”的概念的深入研究，这抓住了我们伯明翰参与者的公民参与感（Gross & Pitts 2015; 2016）。在为期30个月的全国项目中，我们将通过在另外三个城市（布里斯托尔、利物浦和伦敦）建立当代艺术网络来扩展我们的调查，这些城市因其独特的地理、人口和当代艺术场景而被选中。我们将与国际公认的主要合作伙伴合作，他们的实践涵盖了多种艺术形式，并建立从业者和观众交流网络，以促进实证调查和跨艺术比较，这在观众研究中是前所未有的。纵向行动研究的一个阶段，首先在伯明翰，然后在我们的三个新的合作城市，将利用我们的发现来产生和测试受众发展和体验的新方法，从而确保研究产生直接和持久的影响。除此之外，对谢菲尔德“主流”艺术观众的调查将探讨对当代艺术的抵制，从而为辩论提供更批判性的视角。该项目产生的大量经验知识将为21世纪艺术参与的跨学科批评提供新的视角（Heim 2016; Freshwater 2009），并建立在目前极少数提供当代艺术观众体验的研究基础上（Sifakakis 2007; Van Dyke 2010; Hanquinet 2013）。我们的目标是深入了解“当代艺术的受众”，与艺术社会学和心理学、文化研究和特定艺术学科的学者以及所有相关领域的从业者和政策制定者交谈。

Contemporary arts - provisionally defined at the outset of this project as those arts events and practices that are newly created and in some way innovative or challenging - attract interestingly opposing audience responses: at the extremes, enthusiasts will focus their arts engagement primarily on seeking out 'the contemporary' (Gross & Pitts 2015), while established audiences for 'mainstream' or traditional arts will distrust the programming of new works, tolerating them at best or otherwise staying away (Pitts 2005). For arts organisations of all varieties this is a marketing and communication challenge; and for academics interested in the role of arts engagement in people's lives, attitudes towards contemporary arts offer interesting insight on cultural value and the place of creativity, challenge and comfort in experiences of the arts.Our investigation of these two extremes of audience response - those who engage with the contemporary arts and those who choose not to - was prompted by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG), our lead partner in this project, with whom we have carried out a pilot study to lay the groundwork for this deliberately ambitious, national, cross-art form investigation. BCMG were interested in the scope for 'crossover' between art forms: whether regular attenders at a contemporary art gallery would also be potential audience members for a BCMG concert, or for experimental theatre, or a pop up gallery in a disused warehouse, and the extent to which those different groups of practitioners and audience members were aware of each other's work. These practically-focused initial questions led to the formation of a Birmingham Contemporary Arts Network (still meeting a year after our research project), generating a substantial qualitative investigation with 56 audience members from five key organisations, and a series of 'audience exchange' visits in which audience members experienced events outside their usual patterns of attendance. These methods generated a depth of research enquiry around the nature of 'the contemporary, the place of arts in everyday life, their contribution to personal and civic identity, and the notion of 'cultural citizenship', which captures the sense of civically engaged involvement that characterised our Birmingham participants (Gross & Pitts 2015; 2016). For the 30 month, national version of this project, we will extend our enquiries by establishing contemporary arts networks in three additional cities (Bristol, Liverpool and London), chosen for their distinctive geographies, demographics and contemporary arts scenes. We will work with internationally recognised lead partners whose practices encompass a diversity of art forms, and build networks of practitioner and audience exchange to facilitate empirical investigations and cross-arts comparisons on a scale not previously seen in audience research. A phase of longitudinal action research, first in Birmingham, and then in our three new partner cities, will use our findings to generate and test new approaches to audience development and experience, so ensuring immediate and lasting impact from the research. Alongside this, enquiries with 'mainstream' arts audiences in Sheffield will explore resistance to the contemporary arts, so providing a more critical perspective on the debate. The substantial empirical knowledge resulting from the project will shed new light on interdisciplinary critiques of arts engagement in the 21st century (Heim 2016; Freshwater 2009), and build on the very small number of studies currently providing insight on audience experience in the contemporary arts (Sifakakis 2007; Van Dyke 2010; Hanquinet 2013). We aim to understand 'audiences for the contemporary arts' with a depth that speaks to academics across sociology and psychology of arts, cultural studies and specific arts disciplines, as well as practitioners and policy makers in all related fields.