I recently had the incredible opportunity to attend the 2023 AMA Conference in Leeds, UK. Industry professionals from around the UK gathered for a two-day melting pot of ideas and teabags, delving into this year’s theme: audiences at the heart.  

Today I’m sharing just a few of the insights from the jam-packed programme that struck me. As an Aussie in a sea of British accents, I’m grateful for the friendly faces and inspiring speakers I encountered who are paving the way for arts marketers, researchers and comms professionals in all stages of their career. 

Scroll on for my highlights from four sessions. 

Catching feelings 

In “Exploring Emotion and Audience Behaviour”, cultural researcher Dr Ron Evans uncovered the integral role of emotion in the audience experience. 

Audiences attend performances with the expectation of having an emotional experience – but only 43% report that they achieved that goal, raising a crucial question for organisations: Are your audiences finding the emotional experiences they seek? 

We might get this information from a post-show survey, but this only captures part of it. Over the length of a performance there might be a range of things experienced. So, do you measure the most recent emotion? The strongest? 

Dr Evans presented new research in measuring audience emotion during live performance. Participants wore a wristband that collected physiological data over the course of the show, including heart rate, skin conductivity and skin temperature, and at the end they were interviewed about their emotional experience at various points in the performance. 

The experiment revealed that there was an increase in physiological reaction during the climax of the performance, most people predominately felt surprise and sadness – and there was crying. Moreover, the tools revealed some valuable insights for arts organisations: 

  • Triggering content has the potential to captivate audiences and spark discussions and reflections about their own life experiences – and we cannot always predict what topics will be sensitive for individuals 

  • Encouraging post-show discussions and feedback through digital or face to face talkbacks can be an effective audience engagement tactic 

  • Organisations can experiment with innovative tools like live word clouds, asking “What do you think the main character was feeling at the end of the first act?”  

  • Monitoring the return of audiences, such as those with access needs, can help organisations tailor their content and offerings. 

The future of audiences

The Audience Agency presented the latest findings from the Cultural Participation Monitor (CPM) on what audiences are saying about how they engage with arts and culture. Similarly to our Audience Outlook Monitor, the CPM started out tracking audience sentiment throughout the pandemic and has since evolved to capture further insights around programming preferences, cost-of-living concerns and more. 

The recent wave of research shed light on some of the generational differences in audience segments and opportunities look out for when engaging future audiences, as well as insights around the rise of participatory experience and digital/hybrid formats. 

The session presented new patterns in values, taste and experiences, underscoring the prevalence of generational and life-stage factors. As the Audience Agency says, “Our future audiences are already here, they’re just younger.” 

Here’s what they found about values, tastes and experiences: 

  • Young audiences care about issues like climate change and social justice in a way that people always have – but they’re going to care whether or not the organisations they engage with care about those things (almost double that of older groups - see the British Social Attitudes survey)  

  • Arts organisations should think about how they can transition to being a community resource and a part of the conversations that are already happening 

  • The next generation are shifting from hierarchical traditional artforms to having a more eclectic and unpredictable taste and this is heightened with algorithm-driven content 

  • The experience is going to become more important as we continue to be engulfed in content. Audiences will be more discerning about the ‘how’ than the ‘what’, and there will be emphasis on things worth getting out for. 

  • The post-pandemic era means having a mix of FOMO (fear of missing out) and FOGO (fear of going out). If people are going out it needs to be something different - liveness, presence in a place, intensity: “It’s just a bit harder to get around to doing things. In the past if it was 6.5/10 it would be worth going to – and now it needs to be an 8/10, it has to really grab you”.

What it means for arts organisations: 

  • Don’t shy away from prototyping, testing and experimenting with different audience experience formats, alongside your new content ideas. As the experience takes centre-stage, it’s worthwhile to trial what works for different audience segments.  

  • Become a place of conversation and engage in dialogue with your audiences. Asking “Do you enjoy things that feel and look like this?” instead of “do you like opera?” could reveal more about your audiences habits, desires and interests. 

  • Keep being curious, creative and courageous! 

AI: friend, not foe? 

AI is demanding our attention, whether we love it or loathe it. Marketing consultant Jo Burnham described how we’re currently in a golden moment to acquaint ourselves with the nuances of AI - even if it's just a few minutes of trialling and testing here and there. Burnham’s session delved into the pragmatic uses of different AI tools to empower arts marketing professionals, along with delving into the crucial aspects of its ethics and challenges. 

Burnham asserted that arts marketers hold a distinctive advantage to embolden how we communicate with our audiences in new and captivating ways – and encouraged them to: 

  • Be curious: Most AI tools are free to use – don’t let yourself be sold. A key platform Burnham shared is www.futuretools.io, which collects all the emerging AI software in a user-friendly interface, equipped with categories and audience up-votes. Don’t get deterred by the ‘taboo’ – experiment to build up your own knowledge and even explore how using multiple tools together could empower your work. 

  • Be creative: GPT4, Ask Your PDF, Bing Chat, MidJourney and DALL-E2 are just a few examples of tools that Burnham says arts marketers should be aware of. In terms of what they’re good for, getting a handle on prompt engineering for GPT4, for instance, can assist you with creating social media posts to signpost longform content, critiquing your own copywriting, reducing copy length, directing your own learning and helping you plan marketing outputs. 

  • Be critical: As with any new way of working, it’s important to continually interrogate AI and weigh up its costs and benefits. When traversing this unfamiliar path, some aspects and questions Burnham invited us to start think about include: Is this tool actually producing good content? What’s real and what’s hype? What am I being sold? Data security (when in doubt – don’t!) and systemic bias. 

Here are a few reflections from arts marketers shared via Burnham’s presentation: 

“These tools are useful for getting keyword and hashtags without paying for an expensive service. It often comes out with answers that are far too verbose. You must be specific.” – Anna Whelan, Head of Marketing and Communications at Tara Theatre 

“AI speeds up writing and it sounds more engaging than what I write, but you have to be careful with the accuracy of info and plagiarism.” – Marketing and Communications Manager at a theatre in Wales. 

“There is potential that in 10 years’ time, people will look back on his moment and see AI as a transformative event in culture. It feels like there are huge developments happening at phenomenal speed. It feels like a refocusing or a re-framing taking place.” – Steven Franklin, Social Media Manager at the National Archives. 

Be Bold; Be Brave 

The Conference keynote by Leeds5 – a group of female black and brown cultural leaders – underscored the importance of getting to know your audience before inviting them to buy your tickets. 

An analogy by Keranjeet Kaur Virdee, from South Asian Arts and one-fifth of Leeds5, summed it up perfectly: Would you accept an invitation to a wedding if you didn’t know the bride and groom? (Short answer: no.) 

It takes time, effort and energy to develop relationships with diverse communities that you want to reach, ensuring you’re conscious of cultural sensitivities requires an on-stage and off-stage approach. Here are some things to consider: 

  • Ditch the familiar: Cultural exchange thrives when we step outside of our comfort zones and reach beyond our safe space. Complacency keeps us tethered to what we know – and hampers our ability to understand the unique needs and perspectives of diverse audiences. 

  • Unlock new perspectives: Kully Thiari of Leeds5 said ‘We know audiences are at the heart, but we continue to make assumptions about them.’ Listening and understanding the community you want to engage with is more than ticking a box – it’s an invitation to take part in real dialogue, absorb diverse experiences and foster meaningful connections. 

  • Solutions over symbols: Leeds5 used the example of Blackout Tuesday to remind us of the importance of moving beyond grand gestures towards concrete actions – and be proactive to foster positive change in our accessibility, inclusivity and sustainability goals. 

Despite the challenges of post-pandemic rebuilding and cost-of-living pressures, I left the AMA conference feeling affirmed that the future is as promising as it is dynamic. Armed with inspiration from our colleagues across the pond, I’m excited about how Patternmakers can help shift and shape the landscape of audience research as we look to the next chapter. 

About the Author

Bianca Mulet
Senior Research Analyst

 
 

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