Review of Spotlight On Broadening Your Audience
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The first Spotlight On of 2009 was held at PANDA’s partner venue Contact on Tuesday 31st March 2009.
Spotlight On Broadening Your Audience gave PANDA members the opportunity to consider how to engage with, and attract a diverse audience for their work. The attendees gained ‘golden nuggets’ of personal experience from a selection of leading figures in the UK’s cultural sector.
The panel was chaired by former audience development consultant at Arts About Manchester and now director of creative research and North West consultancy agency Culture Probe, Nadine Andrews.
Also adding to the abundance of cultural knowledge was Artistic Director of Full Circle Arts, Chris Hammond, a key player in the development of thinking and practice around arts, disability and inclusive practice. Chris give insight into how to be inclusive rather exclusive through creating dialogues and partnerships to enrich your artistic practice.
BSL interpreter Siobhán Rocks, is currently a PhD research student developing a multimedia annotation tool for the analysis of British Sign Language interpreted theatre. Siobhán spoke about how to treat BSL interpreters with artistic rigour and integrate them into performance process.
Also speaking on the panel were Claire Will, Head of Marketing and Communications at Contact and Sazzadur Rahman, former Company Director of Peshkar Productions, a leading North-West British South Asian theatre and production company. Claire and Sazzadur both advised attendees to offer opportunities to performers, participants and venues. Develop relationships and make sure you have a long-term vision.
It was a highly informative and well received evening. Many of the attendees mentioned how effective and useful the balanced viewpoints and personal insights were. The evening offered an interesting insight into some topical issues. The panel discussion affirmed the importance of honesty, openness and the ability to include in terms of diversifying your audience. Such open discussion is not only relevant to the performing arts sector but across all practice and business. Spotlight On Broadening Your Audience offered people something to think about and more importantly act upon.
Coming up...
The next PANDA Spotlight On event will take place at Contact on Tuesday 30th June 2009. Look out for further details over the coming weeks...