Audience Development & Cultural Democracy

Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly talk with Steven Hadley about his latest book, called Audience Development and Cultural Policy, published by Palgrave MacMillan.

They discuss the ways in which audience development grew out of arts marketing, and the contexts within which they both operated. They discuss the model that features in the book of two parallel traditions: the Arts Lovers and those wanting Social Justice. They look at how this fits into the 2020 policy paper from the Arts Council of England Let’s Create which, on the face of it, switches from promising to democratise the existing high culture to a position in which no art form counts as better than any other.