Performing arts organizations are struggling to get their audiences back to pre-pandemic levels. But the challenge of declining audiences predates Covid. A study conducted before, during, and after the pandemic finds that, while there are no magic bullets, there are some strategies that can work to engage new audiences. There are also some to avoid if an organization’s goals are connected primarily to the bottom line.
Above all, the study finds that if arts organizations want to change their audiences, then they themselves—the arts organizations—may need to change as well. These changes can be subtle shifts that emerge naturally through careful listening to the communities that organizations seek to more deeply engage.
But change can also be bumpy.
Francie Ostrower, Ph.D., from the University of Texas at Austin, who led the study of 24 performing arts organizations participating in Wallace’s 2014-2019 Building Audiences for Sustainability (BAS) initiative, spoke with me earlier this summer about her work. The text has been edited for length and clarity.
Bronwyn Bevan: Researchers working in the arts space are few and far between. How did you become a researcher in the arts?
Francie Ostrower: I've always had a personal interest in the arts and arts institutions. But my research focus in nonprofits and the arts emerged when I was doing my doctoral work at Yale with Paul DiMaggio, who is a pioneering sociologist in the field of arts and nonprofits. And there was a program there at the time, PONPO, dedicated to the study of nonprofit organizations that really solidified my interests. And I’ve stayed interested ever since!
The arts organizations used the risk capital to try new things, and almost all of them were successful in attracting new audiences.
BB: Wallace’s Building Audiences for Sustainability (BAS) initiative provided performing arts organizations with risk capital to try to engage new audiences, without losing their current ones. Can you share some of the key takeaways?
FO: The arts organizations used the risk capital to try new things, and almost all of them were successful in attracting new audiences. But there are a couple of caveats. First, new audiences didn’t always generate new revenue—it sometimes cost more to attract them than tickets sold returned to the bottom line. Second, most organizations found that they had to make changes in themselves to speak to and be heard by new audiences. And that can be difficult, because organizations are attached to doing things the way they've been doing them; and it also involves a certain level of risk and time, which even under the best of times is hard to find.
BB: Right, and they might have board members and other stakeholders, and staff, who don't want the organizations to change. They want the audiences to change!
FO: Risk is something that's difficult sometimes for boards. Moreover, different kinds of new programming probably isn’t what attracted the board member to the organization in the first place. But it's not just boards. There are often concerns within the organization, among people attached to particular kinds of programming. We found in interviews that some audience-building activities didn’t fit within the traditional hierarchies in the organization, where you have the main stage audience and the core programming prioritized and valorized. And then you have community engagement activities that are designed to do other things. But sometimes, building audiences really means changing your idea of who the audience is, where the audience is, and what kind of activities are primary activities for the organization. So staff can be skeptical or even just ruffled.
BB: Can you give an example?
FO: Sure. Leadership at one of the orchestras in the study was interested in having a program where the professional musicians would play with amateurs from the community. Some of the professional musicians were concerned it would compromise the artistic level of the work. But the artistic leadership encouraged them to think about this as a different type of endeavor—one that was about relationships. Reportedly, once musicians started doing it, they became very friendly with the people from the community who had huge respect for them and what they were doing. But it was a process, and it wasn’t a smooth one at first. It involved musicians, supported by leadership, thinking differently about their work and the purpose of an orchestra.
DiMaggio’s work also illuminates that forms and norms do change. For instance, the hierarchical model of culture associated with early “high-culture” arts institutions has been eroding.
BB: So it’s not just new ways of doing things, it may be rethinking what an organization is doing. You referenced Paul DiMaggio earlier, and it made me think of his paper The Iron Cage Revisited. He argued that once an organizational type, like a nonprofit performing arts organization, is created it begins to replicate and all of the new performing arts organizations are structured in the same way, which forms a “field.” The implication is that the way a given type of organization does its work is baked into its DNA, and hard to shake. He called this “institutional isomorphism.” Do you think there is a limit to how much organizations can change?
FO: It’s true that one of the implications of isomorphism is that institutional forms and norms may endure even when they may not be most efficient or effective. But DiMaggio’s work also illuminates that forms and norms do change. For instance, the hierarchical model of culture associated with early “high-culture” arts institutions has been eroding.
BB: What do you think this means for business models for the arts?
FO: Of course, there are plenty of examples of private-public partnerships, but on the whole nonprofit performing arts organizations in this country have been heavily supported through private philanthropic dollars. There’s therefore a built-in structure to the way that these organizations have supported themselves and their relationship to donors and boards. Donors and boards are a major structural audience for arts organizations. This creates certain kinds of opportunities, you know, but also constraints.
BB: The ongoing and perhaps increasing reliance on philanthropy as a part of a successful performing arts organization is one of the important conclusions of your BAS study. As a person who helped to run a nonprofit museum for many years, I read this as suggesting that donors need to be seen as part of the key organizational infrastructure, along with facilities, technologies, etc. It’s not a part of the organization that can be phased out but more like an HVAC system—it’s essential and sustaining.
FO: Yes, given the current framework. However, one of the things the study found was that keeping donors as part of the organizational system can involve demonstrating that organizations are attractive to younger or new audiences. One of the BAS organization leaders noted that the fact that the organization was trying to do something to attract new audiences, more diverse audiences, even if it was not a financial panacea, was important to their donors.
Of course, there are plenty of examples of private-public partnerships, but on the whole nonprofit performing arts organizations in this country have been heavily supported through private philanthropic dollars.
BB: What were the steps organizations followed to attract new audiences?
FO: We found that organizations had to start with testing their assumptions about their audiences. Because so often, when they didn’t, it turned out that they had been talking past their intended audience. An example was an assumption that new audiences would like new work—work not yet seen in the world. It turns out that deeply engaged audiences are more likely excited about new work. New audiences can often be interested in the classics. Not only is there a faulty assumption at play, but the organization is projecting its own values—prioritizing new work—in its communications to audiences.
BB: Could you say more about how values show up in communications?
FO: There was a theater that wanted to expand audiences for new work. They initially built their whole marketing strategy for this new work around the idea of a world premiere, which they thought would be attractive to new audiences. This turned out not to be the case, the audiences they were trying to reach didn't really care too much about premieres. What the audiences were looking for was information about the performance that would help them have a sense of what they could expect if they attended the play.
BB: Did they learn this lesson through lackluster attendance?
FO: External feedback is really, really helpful here. A lot of it, in this Wallace initiative, came from data. I think data can be enormously helpful in giving external feedback. But, for some organizations, having an advisory committee from the community, speaking with leaders in the community was helpful for giving ideas about what kind of information it was useful to convey.
BB: What kind of information? Like…how many intermissions will there be?
FO: This theater wound up concluding that if you went to a new restaurant, you’d Google it and get some sense of the food that would be served, the ambience. So, in the performing arts context: Are you going to laugh or are you going to cry? What type of experience can you expect? But this demand-side orientation requires organizations to change. One issue was that many artists didn’t want to reveal everything that’s going to happen. And one of the things that this theater did was get the artists involved so that they were giving people a sense of the experience, but not giving too much explicit detail that would weaken the artistic experience.
BB: Was there anything that really didn’t work at all?
FO: I would say most of the organizations in the initiative at some point tried a strategy that was, broadly speaking, a crossover strategy. By that, I mean, they did something new, or they did something different, but they did it hoping that they would attract a new audience, and then that audience would go on to their traditional programming. And those crossover goals repeatedly failed to materialize. Sometimes the new things brought new audiences in, but the crossover goal just didn't pan out.
BB: Could you provide an example?
FO: There was a symphony orchestra that launched a genre crossing series, where orchestra musicians played with indie artists. The idea was it would attract millennial audiences, who would then attend their main season performances. It did attract younger audiences. But the younger audiences didn't then opt to attend the traditional programming. What’s interesting is that the orchestra wound up keeping the new programming. They saw it as worthwhile because it brought new people in, and they felt it made the organization more relevant. But they accepted that the crossover goals weren't going to be recognized.
BB: Did anything surprise you?
FO: One thing surprising was that it turned out that quite a number of these organizations were actually seeing increases in their audience. But this was coupled with declines in how often people were attending. So, in other words, more people were attending, but they were attending less often. It was much easier for them to get people to attend than to return, at least during that season.
The implication is that arts organizations need to accept that many people do want to engage with them, but that they are going to engage as infrequent attendees.
BB: This seems to challenge the myth of “the long, slow escalator ride”: Get them in the door and their participation will steadily increase until one day maybe you are opening a new atrium with their name.
FO: The implication is that arts organizations need to accept that many people do want to engage with them, but that they are going to engage as infrequent attendees. That is going to be the form of their attendance, and so incorporate them for who they actually are. They are not going to become subscribers or even necessarily frequent attendees.
BB: Francie, it has been a pleasure to talk about your work. Thank you for the study.
FO: I hope this hasn’t been too negative. You know there's a reason the study is called In search of the magic bullet. I think we all hoped that we could find strategies that, if not a magic bullet, would consistently move the needle. But it turns out that there are trade-offs. Your great idea could be productive for reaching some goals, but it's probably going to involve a trade-off with other goals. Also, maybe it takes time. Five years did not prove enough time for these organizations to see the attendance and financial changes they had hoped for. Organizations need to be realistic about timelines.
BB: So give it time. Experiment. Listen. Check assumptions.
FO: And be willing to change it up.
