Last night I was invited to speak to a group of students at IUPUI about young audience development. The main focus of my presentation was the Arts Council of Indianapolis’ 2006 report on “Developing Next Generation Arts Audiences.” As I prepared for the class yesterday, I realized just how far the Indianapolis arts community has come in such a short time.
Above: “20 -40 Somethings” play X-Box at an IMA opening.
In a nutshell the “Next Generation” report was a study of the “20-40 something” arts participation in Indianapolis. With the help of Next Generation Consulting, the Arts Council prepared a report on how young audiences find out about arts events and their motivations for attending arts events. This study was done in order to build a more robust participation in the arts among young professionals in order to build (and in some cases, replace) the current aging audience.
