Outdoor arts: Key to increasing audience diversity

When Arts Council England released its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Review 2018-23 last month, I was initially thrilled to see improvements in the range of grant recipients and the workforce of core funded organisations. However, the drop in audience diversity was a cause for alarm.

It reported that the percentage of audiences who identify as non-white has decreased from 16% to 10%. It also initially reported that disabled audience members dropped from 12% to 10%, but this has since been revised as an increase from 9% to 10% after a review. But this is still way below 24% – the percentage of disabled people in the national population.

The review was published a week after Culture Minister Lisa Nandy’s announcement of the Hodge review into Arts Council England to explore “ACE’s role in supporting excellence across the country, ensuring that everyone is able to participate in and consume culture and creativity, regardless of their background or where they live”.

I understand that the way arts organisations collect audience data does not give an accurate picture, but a declining – or at best stagnant – trend in audience representation is surely not a good sign. Sorting out data collection is one solution, but how can the culture sector respond to turn this tide?

Outdoor arts at the forefront of access

Outdoor arts is a gateway to diverse audiences because much of our work takes place in the heart of communities where underrepresented people feel at ease.

Before I became director of OutdoorArtsUK, I worked with Stopgap Dance Company which creates and tours indoor and outdoor work with disabled and non-disabled artists. Our audience data consistently showed that outdoor touring reached a much more diverse range of individuals than indoor touring. We regularly had in-depth conversations about audio description, touch tours, BSL interpretation and, during the height of the pandemic, how to stream live performances for those who were still shielding.

Recently, I went to After Dark Festival where I observed audiences who would identify as white were very much in the minority. The outdoor arts sector includes prominent carnival and Mela organisations – such as Nutkhut, Cohesion Plus, and East Midlands Caribbean Carnival Network – who, year on year, deliver work to diverse communities including Black and Asian audiences. And In terms of engagement with disabled audiences, Stoke-on-Trent based Appetite theatre company’s collaboration with FrontlineDance and Greenwich+Docklands International Festival showed particularly strong commitment to making festivals accessible to d/Deaf and disabled audiences.

At OutdoorArtsUK’s most recent national conference, we focused on diversity and inclusion, attracting more than 350 delegates from across the country. It showed that the sector is serious about remaining at the forefront of giving access to the arts despite all the economic challenges. It’s particularly important to be paying attention to inclusivity in the current climate because marginalised people are always the first to have services and access cut off in cost reducing measures.

Continues…

Beyond the Waves by Stopgap Dance Company’s Chris Pavia at Watts Gallery. Photo: Callum Graham Robertson

An invitation to the wider culture sector

Our sector is full of people with skills and experiences that are valuable for the wider culture sector wanting to diversify their audience. Outdoor artists put great care and consideration into work to captivate new audiences with otherwise low cultural engagement – curating festivals in places like these have taught programmers how to tune into the interests of these communities.

Everyone who receives public funding, be they libraries, museums, theatres or arts centres, is obliged to engage with the full spectrum of their local community. So come talk to us to find out how we do it.

There are good examples of festival programmers transferring skills to other culture sectors. For example, Appetite worked with New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme to run Sensasian, bringing South Asian communities across their threshold. As a Creative People and Places programme, has a community-led decision-making framework with networks within New Vic’s target audience group. They lent heavily on their outdoor arts programme to create an enticing programme offer.

OutdoorArtsUK would like to encourage more cross-sector collaboration, so that our sector’s unique strength and expertise can be shared to improve audience diversity for all.

Inclusivity makes financial sense

It also makes financial sense to do inclusivity well. Purple Pound is a disability advocacy organisation and their research shows that the spending power of disabled people amounts to £275 billion annually. They state that restaurants, pubs and clubs lose £165 million a year because of being inaccessible. And according to Black Equity, the spending power of Black, Asian and other ethnic minority groups is £300 billion.

If you want to meet our colleagues, look for your nearest outdoor festivals. OutdoorArtsUK has a listing on our website and, by signing up to our newsletter, you’ll get a monthly notice of all the events happening across the country. OutdoorArtsUK and Without Walls Consortium are also supporting Out There Arts to deliver an international outdoor arts symposium as part of their annual festival this year, so this is a great opportunity for you to come and meet colleagues from all around the world. You can register for the Fresh Street symposium here.