ABSTRACT
Expanding the cultural participation of socially marginalised groups is a major concern of cultural policies around the world; yet, older adults are rarely seen as a target group of these efforts. In times of drastic demographic change across Europe, however, several major points can be made as to why older adults should be more carefully considered a target group for cultural policy – and therefore apply a concept of mainstreaming ageing, as outlined in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Strategy on Ageing in cultural policy. Based on data from a research project, we outline several characteristics of older audiences, and present data from an explorative survey concerning older audiences in cultural policy. Findings highlight that targeting older audiences is barely on the agenda of cultural policy authorities or many cultural organisations. Erroneously, older audiences are often seen as passive consumers, instead of active and potentially creative participants in cultural education, which highlights the sometimes-negative images of ageing that were prevalent among the cultural institutions that took part in our study. Based on these findings, we outline several points of action that should be taken by cultural policy to engage more effectively with older audiences.
