Get more people
engaging with
your mahi
Curated information and resources from the experts to help you understand and develop your audiences.
Who are you for and why?
Audience development requires a shift from thinking of audiences as merely numbers, ‘bums on seats’, or ticket sales.
It means starting a genuine conversation with your audience, building a supportive and loyal community that grows with you.
So what does this mean?
Audience Development is about having a clear vision for who you are as an arts organisation – and everyone in your organisation champions this vision.
It’s about engaging your audience to want to be part of your community, reaching out with authenticity and a desire to create meaningful experiences, aligning them with your vision.
It’s about understanding who your current audience is, who you are excluding, who you want to reach in your potential audience and all the mahi you do to engage with these audiences.
It’s about having an authentic 2-way conversation with your audience, listening to what they want, their arts experiences, their attendance obstacles, and creating access, trust and loyalty so that they will support and grow with you.
Through your audience development mahi you will contribute to a thriving, valued and sustainable creative sector, that ultimately benefits us all. You will nurture the health and wellbeing of our communities and the individuals within them.
Here are some other definitions we really like:
“Audience development means creating a love affair between arts and audiences”
– Leader of the education department of Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
“Audience Development is the building of relationships with your existing and potential audiences…Audience development uses the 4 C’s: Community, Connections, Collaborations, and Caring”
– Shoshana Fanizza