copyright © 1998-2007
Durham Arts Council, Inc.
120 Morris Street
Durham, NC 27701
919.560.ARTS

TODAY'S ARTS MARKET:
THE BIG PICTURE

By Louise Stevens, ArtsMarket, Inc.

3. Frequency Decrease

Ask most people involved either in arts marketing or on the boards of arts and cultural institutions to define a "frequent attender," and they will most likely speak of subscribers, presumably to their own institution and others. Not too long ago, a normal expectation would be for truly interested arts patrons to subscribe to a couple of performing arts institutions, hold memberships at a museum or two, and be general admissions/single ticket attenders elsewhere. Frequent attenders went to the arts anywhere from once a month to once a week.

No more. Today, people who describe themselves as frequent arts attenders may attend one to three times a year! They'll go to an outdoor arts festival in the summer, a holiday performance of some sort in December, and maybe take in a play or concert sometime during the winter. Those who identify themselves as really active participants say they may go to five or six different events/cultural destinations in town during the course of a year.

Meanwhile our field is trying to sell them "mini-subscriptions" of six events. We still operate under the hierarchy of affiliation theory -- assuming people move from being rare to more frequent single ticket buyers, to subscribers or museum members, and then donors. The theory no longer rules across the market; we can no longer count on it as a behavior predictor. Of even more concern is if those who think they are frequent arts participants get the message from arts institutions -- implied or direct -- that they don't count, aren't as important or valuable to the institution as the members and subscribers, what feeling do they come away with?

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