I knew I would get myself into trouble by reading a You’ve Cott Mail email before breakfast.  I opened:  What some of the best younger minds in the arts have to say about broken models, Barry’s Blog, 9/14/14.

I read the entries.  All of these entries are pointing to the same concepts, but none of them are hitting the nail on the head.  All of these entries are along the lines of connection, collaboration, community and care – getting the audience more involved, becoming part of the community solution, building a business infrastructure that is more inclusive instead of hierarchical in nature, etc., etc.   Hello!  and a big Hello! at that – this is audience development!

If we can finally come to terms on the term, you will see that all my entries are pointing to this moment.  If we can finally rally around the center-point, audience development, this can lead us into the new land of becoming more stable arts businesses.

I could go on and on, but I already have.  I am waiting for the moment that people will finally realize that the solution has been here all along.  I use audience development to create successful events – yes, we can create successful events and be the masters of our destiny (instead of the wishers of a better outcome).  The continuous use of audience development will create successful arts business.  I have seen this happen with my own two eyes and brain.

Let’s stop defining what is wrong, or we can create a website that will have the re-iterated challenges to refer back to, instead of recreating the problem over and over again.  Let’s instead talk about the solution, audience development!

I am very close to finishing my second book, a compilation of blog posts from 2009-2013.  There are around 300 entries to get us to wrap our minds around audience development.  Until then, please poke around this blog to get yourself more familiar with the nuts and bolts and the philosophy of audience development.  I think you will be refreshingly surprised to find out, yes, we have had the solution with us all along.

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,

Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder