I write a weekly column for the website AudienceOutlookMonitor.com which collects audience surveys taken by arts groups from around the world and analyzes the results and tracks the data over time since this spring. Here are some columns over the last few months.

Aug. 21, 2020

Good day,

These recent weeks it seems whenever I come across a story that brings a bit of hope, it’s followed by a barrage of reports offering bleak forecasts.

The news that Russia’s Mariinsky Ballet was returning to the stage with carefully crafted distancing, for example, was at first uplifting — until it was not.

It also was a warning that premature returning to the indoor stage cannot only have problems when such shows are cancelled but can create a climate where audiences may not want to return again, even when the situation is considerably safer.

So as we head to summer’s end and approach what would be for many the start of the 2020-’21 season, there’s a feeling of confusion, if not, at times, despair, to the point that one could simply be stuck in suspended motion.

But if this period can’t be used for programming and planning an immediate return to normal, it can still be used productively, for consideration, for thoughtfulness, for communication, for re-imaging. What so many busy arts institutions so rarely have is now right in front of them: time.

A blog by a U.K. arts curator reflects this period of uncertainty.

“The prospect of being stuck in a constant toing and froing between limited-capacity opening and complete closure, will no doubt shatter confidence at a time when organisations will be making decisions about the direction for the coming months that will shape the future of the arts…Will hibernation or adaptation be the best long-term survival strategy?”

There are no easy answers here, no right way to proceed in this limbo time. But even as some organizations take the approach not to program or create — at least for the remainder of the summer, and perhaps beyond — other important work can still be accomplished.

One of the things it can do is make an even deeper connections with their communities, taking a tip from the farm-to-table movement in the restaurant industry: “Go local.”…

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