… heck, I am an older person! Go figure! Who’da thunk I would get old, eh?
At virtually every discussion I have with board members of arts organizations (and many discussions with other arts managers as well), the desire to attract younger audience members is a primary topic. The issue is typically introduced by someone commenting negatively on the age of most current audience members: “Our audience is too old. Everyone has gray hair. Our audience members are likely to die away. We need a younger audience. How do we get young people to come to our performances?”
While I appreciate the spirit of this question, I don’t really agree with the mindset of the speakers who speak as if the missions of our organizations are not aimed at servicing senior citizens. And the fear that the older audience members will die out is not exactly justified. Many people, as they reach middle age, increase their arts participation as their discretionary time and money increase; these people replace those senior audience members who do pass away.
I agree wholeheartedly that we must build the next generation of audience members, donors and trustees. We want younger people to enjoy our performances. Culture is for everyone, not just senior citizens. But there is an implicit bias in the way the topic is raised. Somehow, younger audience members are deemed to be more highly-valued than their parents or grandparents.
Thank you, Mr. Kaiser! RTWT.
I must concur. However, the sheer fact that a fifteen year old is commenting on this gives you hopes for the future. 🙂
Indeed it does, Jordan! And thanks for commenting!
The symphony audience has always been “gray”. Discretionary time and money are definite factors. Managements and boards have been wringing their hands about this for generations, but the fact is (and always has been) that as the eldest members of the audience… erm… move on to the great concert hall in the sky, others are getting older and coming in to take their places.
But maybe we should be taking a leaf from the book of that conductor you blogged about some weeks ago– the one who wanted to turn out all the old musicians in favor of recent graduates? Maybe the elderly audience can be farmed out to an orchestra made up of all the washed-up players, and the youngsters can come listen to the youngsters… and never the twain shall meet…
patti with an i: What you write is what I’ve always said. Unfortunately some disagree with us quite strongly. (Do you ever read Sandow’s blog?) But yeah, I just don’t fret over this one a whole heck of a lot. I’ve always liked “my kind of music” of course, but only recently did I have the time and income to manage to purchase tickets to anything, and only recently have we started donating money to the arts. It just works that way for a lot of us.