In 1978, John Lane called his book about arts centres, Every Town Should Have One. He argued that for a town to be fully complete, it needed a place where the arts and the community could come together in creative adventure each feeding and inspiring the other. The arts centre movement he wrote about implied a democracy of culture where high art could co-exist with other kinds of art in an atmosphere of mutual respect. It suggested that audiences needed to be able to respond to art in an atmosphere of choice rather than having artistic styles and values imposed on them.

Southbank Centre is the ultimate British arts centre. It has grown both conceptually and physically from the spirit of the Festival of Britain in 1951: 21 acres of land by the river dedicated to the human imagination in the immediate aftermath of the second world war. It is a place where the highest of high art co-exists with new work by school-children, where an orchestra of professional musicians are on the same bill as a group of young and emerging musicians where everything is artistically real and where audiences are beginning to risk moving from experience to experience.

Southbank Centre works to bring audiences on journeys of the imagination which may inspire them and may change their lives. We base our audience development strategy on these ideals. My contribution to the Symposium will focus on the practical steps we take to make these ideals a reality.

Related links:
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/learning-participation

Shân Maclennan
Creative Director, Learning and Participation, Southbank Centre

Image © Morley von Sternberg

Shân is currently the Creative Director of Learning and Participation at the Southbank Centre, where she leads a multidisciplinary team and is responsible for free programming, archives and collections as well as education and participatory work.

During the major refurbishment of the Royal Festival Hall in 2007, Shân had particular responsibility for the creation of new learning spaces, and together with the artistic team created the Overture opening weekend, which brought 250,000 people to the site, 18,000 of them as performers and participants.

Shân holds degrees from the universities of Bristol and Edinburgh. She has worked in arts centres across the UK. She was chair of the education committee of the Southbank Centre and Bankside Cultural Quarter, which unites 20 not-for-profit arts organisations along the south bank of the River Thames.

In 1999, the V&A faced something of a crisis in audience numbers. Total visits to the South Kensington site each year had fallen to below 1 million – the lowest of any of the UK’s major national museums. Not only were overall numbers low, but the profile of visitors was very heavily weighted to white, affluent and well-educated visitors. Ministers and senior civil servants expressed their concern at their meetings with the Museum’s senior staff.

Today, the V&A has nearly 2.5 million visitors per annum, and the ethnic profile is almost identical to that of the UK as a whole. However, the poorer sector of society is still significantly under-represented. Like many other cultural institutions, in a country in which social and economic divisions are growing ever wider, the V&A has a lot of work to do to address social exclusion.

Visitor research on audiences and evaluation of services has been a key part of the V&A’s strategy for change. We now conduct audience research as an integral part of the development of every new gallery, and our visitor data is much more accurate and complete than it was a decade ago. We have invested strongly in new galleries, exhibitions and service.

There is extensive evidence that the way we design galleries, and the kinds of education programmes we offer, can significantly change the profile of our audiences. Research has also shown us that improvements to the public space around the Museum, and collaboration with other educational and cultural institutions in the Exhibition Road Cultural Quarter, are transforming the profile of visitors to our institutions. We have learnt much from best practices in Europe, Asia and other parts of the world.

In what we seek to achieve in reaching new audiences, we must remember that our deepest aim is to improve the quality of people’s lives, and not simply to increase numbers. This, too, will be one of our challenges over the next decade.

Related links:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/

David Anderson
Director of Learning and Interpretation, Victoria and Albert Museum

David joined the Victoria and Albert Museum as Head of Education in 1990. As Director of Learning and Interpretation at the V&A, he is now manager of the V&A’s learning services, community programmes, audience research and gallery interpretation; he also has responsibility for cultural policy, diversity and external partnerships.

David studied at The University of Edinburgh, and then worked as a history teacher and in the education departments at the Royal Pavilion Art Gallery and Museum in Brighton and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. His many publications include a government report on the development of museums and learning in the UK (A Common Wealth, 1997).

As co-Chair of the Exhibition Road Cultural Group, David shaped the development of a new organisation dedicated to development of cultural and educational programmes through partnership between 15 major institutions in South Kensington.

Andrew will share the results of a major UK research programme that maps out why people attend and why they don't attend. This insight has led to a number of highly successful programmes that have attracted new audiences and deepened the engagement of existing audiences. He will share examples from an orchestra in New Zealand, an opera house in Sweden and a museum in the UK.

Related links:www.lateralthinkers.com/

Andrew McIntyre
Director, Morris Hargreaves McIntyre

This presentation will look at how the Royal Albert Hall has developed its learning and participation work in order to meet its founding charter principles of ‘promoting the arts and science’.

The presentation will cover the general guiding principles that we use to help us create and deliver an innovative, unique and diverse programme of activities. It will also provide some case studies to demonstrate how we put these principles into practice. The case studies will feature both music and science/arts projects and show the different approaches taken depending on the participants that we are working with. The presentation will also cover the key points that were raised in the evaluation of the projects. It will also cover working with a wide range of partners and participants from diverse age groups and backgrounds, and show they relate back to the hall’s overall purpose.

Related links:
http://www.royalalberthall.com/explore/projects/

Alastair Tallon
Head of Learning and Participation, Royal Albert Hall

Image © Sheila Burnett

Alastair joined the Royal Albert Hall as Education Manager in 2006, becoming Head of the Learning and Participation Department in 2008. He has been responsible for the creation and delivery of a wide range of educational activity and a series of projects that reach out to the socially excluded and hard to reach groups, including working with young ex-offenders and travellers.

Previously, Alastair was a freelance consultant helping create community involvement and learning projects for clients including The National Archives, Historic Royal Palaces and Southwark Council.

Alastair studied Education and Medieval History at Roehampton Institute. He started his career in 1991 by establishing the Community Affairs Department within the then new Shakespeare’s Globe. He remained there for ten years and was responsible for a whole programme of events and activities that linked the local people and schools of Southwark to the theatre.

When London won the right to host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games it promised a 'Games for Everyone' in the UK. The promise was that London would stage a Games that 'inspired the youth of the world'.

Three years out from the opening ceremony, whilst the construction of the main sporting venues in the Olympic park in East London continues apace, the opportunities for the public to experience 'London 2012' are limited.

The London 2012 Cultural Programme is a key way to reach audiences not just in London but around the rest of the country. Young people around the world are into music, fashion, sport and each other. The ability to be able to capture those universal interests whilst catering for a sophisticated London audience, working with established cultural organisations and pleasing international visitors is our challenge.

The talk will detail how the programme was designed to meet this challenge in the lead up to the Games whilst ensuring that during the summer of 2012, the Olympic Park and the streets of London are brought to life not just through sport but through contemporary culture, heritage and celebration events. It will explore the balance between 'high culture' and popular culture, London and the UK and also share some of the emerging results about who is really engaging with London 2012.

Related links:
http://www.london2012.com/get-involved/cultural-olympiad/culture-projects

Francesca Hegyi
Senior Cultural Adviser, London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games

Francesca has been the Senior Cultural Adviser for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games since 2005. She is responsible for ensuring the delivery of the cultural programme accompanying the London 2012 Games, working alongside major cultural institutions, regional arts and cultural bodies and community organisations in London and around the UK.

Originally trained as a physicist, Fran went on to study adult education, which led her to teach mathematics and numeracy. She undertook research at the Science Museum in London into adult learning through museums and subsequently worked on museums policy in Scotland. As Head of Regions and International at the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, she worked to develop a network of regional agencies across England and an international programme for the sector.