Articoli taggati con ‘audience’
Users or Audience?
It’s sure. No doubt about it: this is the user’s era. This is what we daily learn when we try to understand how We’re trying to build our future. This is true when we talk about soft-industries, such as software industry or audiovisual industries (just think at the House of Cards’ case history), but it’s also true when we look at object-centered industries. This number of Tafter Journal presents two specific declination of the complex relationship between user and provider in two different sectors. On one side this number presents the research proposed by Sağlar, Garip & Garip that shows the results of a wider research project about Flexible User Centered Design Model for Social Housing Units, illustrating the development methodology through which the interior design could create customized housing units. This model could represent a valid solution to a wide social need, inasmuch, as affirmed by authors, “although there is a great variety in social pattern in big cities […] the response of architecture is extremely standard”. On the other side the article written by Gobbi and D’Ambrosi analyzes the Web communication strategies used by corporate museums, proposing a 5-scale evaluation for seven of the most important design corporate museums in Italy, such as Alessi, Bitossi, Kartell, Molteni, Mumac (Cimbali), Poltrona Frau and Rancilio. The results of the analysis are not so positive: authors show how design corporate museums are not as active as they should be, or at least, as active as we should expect they are. Going beyond the single researches, the proposed results underline an important issue for Cultural and Creative Industries: in fact, this two articles allow us to glimpse the differences in the value chains when the beneficiary of the production process is represented by a user or, on the contrary, is represented by the so-called “audience”. Even though the two articles analyze the same manufacturing sector (interior design), in one case we have users of the objects that this sector produces, while in the other we have an audience that experience a cultural product.
Museums and Storytelling: From the last trends to the future
In 2010, Kelly found that museums’ adult visitors were deeply aware of their learning preferences and that they wanted experiences both educational and entertaining. On a more general scale, LaPlaca Cohen “Culture Track Report 2014” reveals how the meaning itself of what a cultural experience is like, expanded to activities more related to nature and entertainment. According to this report, audience values a TED talk or a visit to a Botanic Garden just as culturally engaging as going to the museum or attending a theater performance. The public is more demanding and wants to satisfy more than one need at the same time, pursuing activities that are educational, entertaining, interactive and customizable. This expanded notion of culture is on top of the priorities of professionals, as it challenges them to find continuously newer and more unique attractions, able to deal with a much wider range of competitors to the public attention. In order to address the increased uncertainty, museums reshaped their programs to include more and more extra-ordinary events, such as family days, curators’ talks, nocturnal exhibitions, and so on. On the one hand, special events are successfully flourishing and tend to be more participated, to have a wider impact on social media and to be more easily sponsored than ordinary programs. On the other hand, it seems that museums would be struggling at actually improving the ordinary visitors’ experience, which is a much more radical transformation affecting deeply each department, from the Curatorial to the Visitors’ Services and it is often extremely costly. In this gap among special programming and ordinary visit, the organization Museum Hack has found a fertile environment for its growth.
Does Culture Need New Audiences? Absolutely Yes!
In a time of austerity, audience development represents a fundamental aspect which should be taken into account. In the traditional business sectors, the demand side has always played a key role in order to predict and satisfy a huge range of needs – sometimes real, but more often market-oriented. On the contrary, in the Italian cultural realm we are witnessing a growing gap between the supply of products and services and the demand side. An excessive self-referential cultural system, together with a low attention to cultural audience’s requests and desirers, are at the same time cause and effect of a static perception of cultural phenomena. As Lyn Gardner noted in a recent Guardian blog, cultural organisations are afraid of asking people what they really want, transforming the relationship with the audience into a boring marriage of convenience. In this respect, if cultural institutions will continue perceiving themselves as locked places specifically dedicated to the upper classes of society, they will be doomed to forget their primary functions such as education and research.
Call For Papers on “Festivals: audience, funding and sustainability”. Deadline extended to 31 March 2014
Tafter Journal and LOOP Studies/University of Barcelona invite paper submissions which offer new and challenging research on trends within the management of cultural festivals. Get Involved! We welcome participants willing to share their research and experiences!
