ABSTRACT

In the original interviews in Birmingham, we found that audience members wanted more opportunities to talk to other nonexperts about their experiences and that these informal discussions were a site of sense-making, especially in response to more puzzling artworks. This finding was complicated by the later interviews in Bristol, Liverpool and London, which showed that some participants found their experiences ruined by having to explain their reaction to friends and family. Similarly, formalised Q&As, programme notes and gallery texts, at their best, could provide participants with a way to anchor their own reaction but were often full of pseudo-academic arts language and so viewed as impenetrable and pretentious even by well-informed audience members. We look at how these barriers are also present in arts marketing and show how both new and regular audiences for the contemporary arts want to be told about the nature of the experience in ways that will entice them to attend.