Ben Walmsley

“A big part of my life”: a qualitative study of the impact of theatre

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that theatre can have on its audiences, both immediately and over time.Design/methodology/approach – The article evaluates the existing literature on impact and critically reviews a number of benefits models. Through a textual analysis of 42 semi‐structured depth interviews, the paper deconstructs the concept of impact and rearticulates it in audiences’ terms.Findings – Impact emerges as a personal construct articulated by audiences in terms of emotion, captivation, engagement, enrichment, escapism, wellbeing, world view and addiction. Impact is ultimately described as a relative concept, dependent on audience typology and perceived by audiences in holistic terms, incorporating both intrinsic value and instrumental benefits. While catharsis is confirmed as a key enabler of impact, flow emerges as both an enabler and a benefit in itself.Research limitations/implications – As this is a qualitative study with a sample of 42, the results are not rep...

Co-creating theatre: authentic engagement or inter-legitimation?

This article investigates the development, purpose and value of co-creation in theatre. Through a qualitative analysis of a festival of new work at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, it explores the levers and barriers to participatory engagement and evaluates the phenomenon of co-creation from the comparative perspective of theatre producers and audiences. The rising trend of co-creation reflects the evolving role of the audience in the creative process. Co-creation is one of the most intensive ways audiences can engage with the arts, and this study questions to what extent it can be regarded as an authentic democratization of the creative process. The study takes a qualitative approach, based on participant observation and 12 in-depth interviews with a sample drawn from theatre-makers, managers, marketers and audiences. Its key findings are that co-creation attracts a highly niche audience of “theatre people” who are active learners and risk takers and that while an all-encompassing definition of co-creation remains elusive, the activity is here to stay. Co-creation is ultimately messy, raw, incomplete, contingent and context-dependent. Successful co-creation involves trust, respect, collaboration, playfulness and exchange; it takes participants on an adventurous journey and deepens their engagement with theatre. The implications of this study are as follows: producers and artists should engage authentically with participants and explore ways to develop their co-creative skills; marketers should utilize experiential marketing techniques to emphasize the different, fun, risky and edgy aspects of co-creation; and policymakers should not rely on co-creation to widen participation and democratize the arts, but accept that it can deepen engagement for a select few.

Deep hanging out in the arts: an anthropological approach to capturing cultural value

This article presents the findings of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project carried out from September 2013 to March 2014 by five researchers at the University of Leeds (UK), who paired off with five audience-participants and engaged in a process of ‘deep hanging out’ at events curated as part of Leeds’ annual LoveArts festival. As part of AHRC’s Cultural Value project, the overarching aim of the research was to produce a rich, polyvocal, evocative and complex account of cultural value by co-investigating arts engagement with audience–participants. Findings suggested that both the methods and purpose of knowing about cultural value impact significantly on any exploration of cultural experience. Fieldwork culminated in the apparent paradox that we know, and yet still don’t seem to know, the value and impact of the arts. Protracted discussions with the participants suggested that this paradox stemmed from a misplaced focus on knowledge; that instead of striving to understand and rationalize the value of the arts, we should instead aim to feel and experience it. During a process of deep hanging out, our participants revealed the limitations of language in capturing the value of the arts, yet confirmed perceptions of the arts as a vehicle for developing self-identity and -expression and for living a better life. These findings suggest that the Cultural Value debate needs to be reframed from what is currently an interminable epistemological obsession (that seeks to prove and evidence the value of culture) into a more complex phenomenological question, which asks how people experience the arts and culture and why people want to understand its value. This in turn implies a re-conceptualization of the relationships between artists or arts organisations and their publics, based on a more relational form of engagement and on a more anthropological approach to capturing and co-creating cultural value.

Redefining Rural Marketing: Insights from Touring Theatre

There remains little academic consensus on a definition of rural marketing, and as a concept, rural marketing has therefore struggled to establish its own vocabulary and ideas. Modi (2009) argues that rural marketing should be defined in terms of the impact it has on the developmental of rural people. This article builds on this developmental concept of rural marketing by exploring the touring theatre sector and illustrating how theatre spaces and audiences differ fundamentally in urban and rural communities. The article reviews the literature on rural touring theatre and applies it to rural marketing. It also analyses the results of audience questionnaires and a series of audience interviews carried out with rural theatre-goers in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. The article illustrates how the definition of rural marketing can be further developed by analysing audience reactions to rural theatre and reviewing case studies of best practice for marketing touring theatre productions. This primary and secondary research reveals the tangible benefits of authentic rural marketing and confirms Modi’s (2009) contention that successful rural marketing should have a positive impact on rural people. The article concludes that touring arts organizations and rural marketers working in other sectors should adjust their marketing strategies and activities to communicate more authentically and effectively with rural audiences. Finally, it uses the insights gained from touring theatre to propose a new definition of rural marketing.

A reflective perspective on the challenges facing research-led teaching in the performing and creative arts

This article provides a reflective perspective on the role that research-led teaching plays in the development of future arts workers in higher education. It explores the challenges faced by lecturers developing curricula in the performing and creative arts and argues that the increasing focus on employability can conflict with universities’ traditional aim of developing conceptual and critical thinkers. The article charges that the UK’s higher education sector is rapidly transforming itself into a two-tier system, which is serving to dichotomize vocational and academic learning even further. It concludes with a call for universities, students and employers to reject the false dichotomy between vocational and academic learning and perceive education in a more holistic, longitudinal sense, which might in turn develop more balanced graduates who excel in networked knowledge, conceptual and theoretical imagination and critical, lateral thinking.

Considering the Relationship Between Digitally Mediated Audience Engagement and the Dance-Making Process

This chapter explores the integration of audience feedback via a digitally mediated platform during the creative process of three new pieces of dance. It considers how attempts to forge empathetic relationships between artists and audiences through digitally mediated interactions intersect with the dance-making process. These themes are explored through analysis of data gathered during the development of Respond (February 2014–15), a digital adaptation of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process (2002). The Respond platform mediates interaction between audience and artist, taking them on a structured journey of critical enquiry to deepen their insights into the development of creative and artistic projects. The chapter articulates Respond’s role in innovating digitally-mediated modes of audience engagement and empathy towards the dance work, whilst also benefitting the creative process.

Book reviews editorial

The fact that two of book reviews in this section are from Palgrave Macmillan’s new book series, New directions in cultural policy research, edited by Anna Upchurch and Eleonora Belfiore, unarguably heralds an exciting new era in cultural policy scholarship. Closely reflecting the scope of Cultural Trends, this new series encourages both theoretical and empirical research, which will enrich and develop the field of Cultural Policy Studies. It is perhaps noteworthy, then, that in the review of one of the two books the tension between theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding the cultural sector is explicitly underlined. Susan Oman’s review of Making culture count: The politics of cultural measurement praises the book’s attempt to foster inter-disciplinary, practice-based approaches to capturing cultural value. Cultural policy’s failure to engage sufficiently with practice in the past is, she argues, what has held the cultural value debate back in recent years. Oman’s review highlights the detrimental impact of confusing value assertion with value measurement, which, as O’Brien and Lockley point out, has thus far hampered many well-meaning attempts to advocate for the value of the arts and culture. One of the key contributions offered by this new title to the debate seems to be its insistence that cultural value is inherently site-specific. Julie Brown’s review of The Routledge companion to the cultural industries, edited by Kate Oakley and Justin O’Connor, also focusses on value; but in this case, the spotlight is on the nature and value of the cultural industries – that is, what they constitute and why they might matter. As Brown points out, the taxonomic complexity of the rhetoric surrounding the cultural and creative industries has helped make the concept of value illusive. This new companion investigates the tense relationship between the “cultural” and the “economic” values of the cultural industries. The impact of the financial crisis, Oakley and O’Connor argue, has reduced political accounts of cultural value to the economic, while not only perpetuating, but actually augmenting, existing inequalities of funding, labour and access. Ultimately, Brown argues, this new title constitutes a powerful call to arms to focus (or perhaps re-focus) on the cultural values of the cultural industries. As such, Oakley and O’Connor appear to be aligned with long-awaited Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Cultural Value report by Geoffrey Crossick and Patrycja Kaszynska, which highlights the need to focus on the lived cultural experience of people engaging in the arts and disregards many previous attempts to quantify and reductively instrumentalise them. Ken Arnold’s review of The politics of museums by Clive Gray provides another forceful reminder of the truism that in the arts and cultural sector politics is never far away. But in his review, Arnold distinguishes between ‘large P’ Politics (top-down and policy-driven) and ‘small p’ politics, which come from the bottom up and concern themselves with the lives of real people. At the heart of Arnold’s review (and indeed Gray’s new book) is

Book review editorial

In light of the recent Government Spending Review in the UK, Ben Morgan’s reminder that the creative economy rhetoric articulates the arts and culture as a driver and engine for growth is a timely one. Morgan is also right to highlight the fact that research on the instrumental benefits of creative work for artists and creators in low-income countries remains relatively rare. De Beukelaer’s new publication aims to address this gap; but it does so by striking a welcome balance between economic benefits and socio-cultural value. As Morgan points out, this latter focus is greatly enhanced by the ethnographic methodology employed by the author. Judging from Morgan’s positive review, De Beukelaer’s research presents an alternative collaborative approach to the now hackneyed cultural industries’ obsession with so-called “policy transfer”, whereby western consultants and academics are flown out to so-called “developing” countries to roll out a cultural industries paradigm. This somewhat imperialistic approach flies in the face of the increasing momentum behind endogenous approaches to cultural policy generation; and Robert Hewson’s review of Christoph Grafe’s People’s Palaces: Architecture, Culture and Democracy in Post-war Western Europe illustrates how even the so-called “people’s palaces” of culture, such as Stockholm’s Kulturhus and London’s Royal Festival Hall, were imposed on, rather than built with, people. This ironic and disingenuous approach to cultural planning culminates, Grafe argues, in artistic palaces that are neither manageable nor fit for purpose. La plus ça change...

Entertainment management : towards best practice

1. The entertainment industry: a re-introduction 2. The entertainment environment 3. Marketing entertainment 4. Public relations 5. Media principles 6. Managing live entertainment events 7. Management in entertainment organisations 8. HR & artist management 9. Arts & cultural management 10. Responsible entertainment management 11. Enterprise, creativity & business 12. Entertainment law 13. Performance management 14. Consultancy 15. Visitor attractions management 16. The future.