There’s a brilliant podcast that I listen to called Outrage and Optimism, all about the climate emergency that we find ourselves in and what we can do about it. They recently did a mini-series on humans’ relationship to nature, the first episode of which focused on how we evolved to consider ourselves as separate to our environment, rather than part of it. One of their guests is the journalist and author Krista Tippett, and in the episode she speaks about her Christian upbringing and how, in the language of Genesis, God sends humans forth to dominate and subdue nature - and, whether that’s what’s meant to be taken from that Bible story or not, we have internalised that language and behaved accordingly. She sums this up with the following phrase: “words shape worlds”.
I love this idea. The language we hear around us defines our identity, our outlook, our thoughts, which in turn influences how we speak, behave and interact. Words make you feel things about yourself - who you are and who you aren’t - which is why they are so powerful and should be used thoughtfully and deliberately.
One of the unique things about many organisations within the arts sectors is that we are both charities and businesses. There are some organisations that are definitively one or the other, but the vast majority straddle these two categories - raising money from various different sources in order to subsidise the work that we’re making, which, in turn, allows us to set our price point for audiences at a lower point than we’d otherwise be able to. It also means that, sometimes, we find ourselves with two different languages in play: we have audiences, art and artists, or we have customers, products and headcount.
It’s easy to feel a natural antipathy towards the language of the marketplace - most of us that work in the arts sector are doing it because we love the arts, not because we want to sell products. But whether we like it or not, if we sell things, then we’re a business, and I think it’s our job, as leaders, to acknowledge this, keep the language of the marketplace that feels useful, and ditch whatever’s not.
One of the words I feel particularly allergic to is the word growth - or perhaps not the word itself, but the way that it’s used. I have often been asked, in various different organisations, if we are ‘aiming for growth’ and, when applying for funding, a request for more money usually needs to be justified by some kind of growth or expansion in numerical terms (rather than doing more detailed, deeper work with the same number of people, for example). On a macro level, our obsession with growth has led us into the aforementioned climate emergency - we have wanted more and more and more from the planet not realising that what we have is a precious and finite resource. If we use the phrase ‘aiming for growth’ then it feels like what we’re concerned with are the number of staff we list on our websites and the size of the numbers that are present in our annual accounts. Saying that we want to reach more audience members, or that we want to double the number of participants that we work with, makes it clear that any goal of expansion is there to serve a purpose, rather than be an end in itself.
As I’ve referenced in a previous blog, we sometimes blanche at the idea of considering the arts sector as a workplace - but, in reality, this is what it is. It can be a workplace that we’re passionate about - but, if we’re getting paid by someone else to do something, it’s a workplace. It’s so important for us as leaders to remember this, so we don’t fall into the trap of neglecting to build a positive working environment and culture, and, consequently, I tend to embrace the language of the workplace - appraisal, professional development, annual leave, line manager, direct report - because it reminds us that, in many ways, we are no different to other companies and we cannot simply rest on our laurels and expect people’s passion for the artform to do all the work. But one word I think should be banned from everyone’s lexicon is headcount. It brings to my mind the image of a line of identical anonymous people, standing there to be counted, later to be analysed as just one more resource and shrunk or grown depending on what’s needed. Yes, you need to know how many people you employ, but when someone uses a phrase like ‘shrink the headcount’, I think they’re trying to distance themselves from the reality of what those words mean - which is, that some of your team members are going to lose their jobs. If that’s the situation you find yourself in, I think it serves you best, uncomfortable as it is, to look it squarely in the face, to confront the fact that these people’s worlds are about to be turned upside down, to give you the necessary compassion and thoughtfulness to deal with one of the worst parts of a leader’s job in the best way that you can.
On the flip side, there are some words from the world of the marketplace that I think serve us well - in particular, the words ‘customer’ and ‘sell’. In the arts we’re sometimes prone to the ‘if we build it they shall come’ way of thinking, when the reality is much more gnarly than that, particularly after the pandemic when audience numbers are still bouncing back. People have a smorgasbord of options to choose from when they’re considering what to do with their evening - including staying in and watching TV - so we’re in competition not only with other arts venues and the rest of the night time economy, but with incredibly bingeable content on Netflix. This is why marketing departments exist - to sell the brilliant thing that a team of artists have made to people that might not know about it but would probably love it. Great marketing teams are motivated by sales - they want to know how many tickets have sold each day, they want to track campaigns, they work really hard to encapsulate the essence of the work with an image or a tagline or in a small number of words. Marketing departments can often be the unsung heroes of arts organisations - if something sells well, it’s assumed that people are coming because it’s good and they get little credit - if something doesn’t sell, they usually take the blame. But like it or not, whatever art we make exists in a marketplace, and marketing teams are a key part of bringing what’s been made into the public consciousness.
I had a number of sales jobs when I was growing up, my first one was at Next during the Christmas sale (terrifying), another was at a local jewellers and my first ever theatre job was as a Marketing & Sales assistant for an outdoor theatre company, which involved manning the box office during performances. We use the word audiences but I think the word ‘customer’ is useful because it broadens the context in which they encounter our organisation. An audience exists in relation to a piece of art. A customer’s experience begins when they encounter your website, book a ticket online, try and find your venue, walk into it, buy a drink from the bar, speak to someone to find their seat. The art we make doesn’t exist in a vacuum - and someone who has struggled to find a venue, been spoken to rudely by a staff member and thinks the drinks are too expensive is in a very different state of mind when they step into an exhibition or a play than the person who’s been welcomed by the front of house team, shown to their seat and is now ready and receptive and excited to experience what’s coming. The word customer reminds us that every single part of this journey is important and contributes to their overall impressions and experience of the work.
My favourite word that I probably overuse is one that comes neither from the world of art nor the world of the marketplace, but the world of nature: ecology. I love the phrase ‘arts ecology’ - I think it perfectly captures the living, growing, knotted, pulsating world that our sector is. And critically, it reflects the interdependence of all the different parts to one another. This feels particularly important at the moment when, as the economy struggles, we are having to justify our value to people who might like the income that the West End or the gaming sector generates, but don’t see why they should pump in state funds into other organisations that don’t turn a profit. Ecology gets to the heart of this matter: you can’t let one bit die and expect the rest to carry on as normal. You don’t get the big global smash hits without the small company dedicated to bringing a theatre programme to schools with little arts provision; the British director that goes on to take Hollywood by storm might have taken part in a subsidised talent development scheme that got them onto the first rung of the ladder. As always, nature has the answer - everything (customers, artists, marketplaces, staff) is interconnected.
Love this Rach! I wonder whether you have both customers & audiences…in media & TV we use both.
Customer typically being the person who buys the ticket so it therefore captures how they feel about the entire experience as you say (including whether they attended or gifted a ticket). They are the person you initially have a relationship with that you then have details for to email etc., that you’d look to be a repeat customer. You have a responsibility to this person over & above a good performance as you need to safeguard personal information & use this information responsibly. You may also have a need to help build a stronger sense of “value” for ticket prices.
Audience would refer to anyone who interacts with the content you put on - that could be a person who walks past your marketing or a person who watches alongside someone who pays (they may not have anything to do with payment). Your responsibility here is focussed on integrity of expectations for what they see/watch and their experience of viewing.
This may be overkill for the arts as someone could be both, but I’ve previously found it helpful as you could have 1 customer but 30 audience members (who could, and you want to, eventually become customers). A customer can also be an audience member but it allows you to focus on different sides of experience and hopefully value both. I saw a play recently that dealt with exceptionally violent content - as I did not purchase the ticket I was not privy to the trigger warnings on the sales pages. The theatre did not have an appropriate trigger warning before the show (probably because it was a book adaptation and they assumed people knew the content…I did not). I spent the whole play in a state of stupor trying to manage my mental state. Had they acknowledged audience could be different to customer maybe there would have been an appropriate trigger warning for me. Then again…my friend could have said!
Maybe the question is how many people buy tickets for themselves vs. How many people attend who did not purchase tickets? How is their experience different?