Barcelona Metropolis

The crisis of cultural audiences has made audiences a highly prized asset. Managers are striving to win them over, and some audiences are even calling for their role to be broadened. In the jargon of cultural management, there has been a shift from politics of access – so that people can go to the theatre – to access to the means of production – so that they can do things on stage. Perhaps the solution is for the audience to go from playing a passive role to being an active author of their own story.

We have been talking about cultural audiences for years. In this article, and owing to professional deformation, reference will mainly be made to theatre audiences, but it is an issue that affects other artistic disciplines (film, music, the visual arts, etc.). And I say problematic because it has often been regarded as “the audience problem”, as if the audience had a problem that did not affect the other agents in the cultural ecosystem, such as artists or managers. Jordi Oliveras, cultural activist and head of the Indigestió project, summed it up as follows in a discussion in 2015: “The idea that audiences need to be educated for culture is repeated in different spheres. This opinion is voiced among the world of cultural entrepreneurs and also among some creative circles, claiming that people need to be taught the basics to be able to relate to cultural production. It is often said that there is a lot of production and quality, but that the problem is the audience.”

For years, this subject has thus been the focus of numerous professional conferences, debates, public policies, European programmes, and articles and commentaries in specialised and mainstream publications. This year will mark the tenth anniversary of the creation, on the part of the Catalan Institute of Cultural Enterprises, of the Audiences Division, which devises and develops strategies for the promotion of cultural audiences (also known as “audience creation”). This division fosters subsidies for professional activities, the aim of which is precisely to increase the loyalty and the number of cultural audiences in Catalonia.

It seems, then, that if it occupies so much space and so many people and so many organisations work on it, that the problem is a major one. And according to the findings of studies, it is a widespread issue (at least across Europe, not only here) and it is not so much about economic hurdles (I don’t go to the theatre because I can’t afford to), as it is about interest (I don’t go to the theatre because I have no interest or because I don’t have time to go, which is the same thing, because the people who say this are never short of things to do).

In parallel to this movement of cultural promotion on the part of politicians and agents in the sector, the last decade has seen a second movement calling for audience participation. Roberto Fratini, professor at the Institut del Teatre, playwright and art theorist, wonders what this wave, which is widely accepted and shared in society, is all about: “Participation has become synonymous with interactivity, with the capacity to come together, to foster a certain kind of togetherness, closeness or proximity; because participation is synonymous with socialisation, the arena for a fruitful exchange of experiences, opinions and feelings; because ‘participation’ is even a festive phenomenon”. This participatory movement has taken shape in a multitude of formats and proposals ranging, to cite a few examples, from audience-artist gatherings to audience involvement in theatre programming, the creation of spectators’ associations, the presence of non-professionals on stage or community creation shows, such as the La gata perduda community opera initiative promoted by the Liceu, which was seen last autumn with the participation of more than 350 residents in the Raval neighbourhood.

In short, in this “era of participation” in which we are immersed, audiences (or non-audiences) have become users. Or in the jargon of cultural management, there has been a shift from politics of access (so that people can go to the theatre) to access to the means of production (so that people can do things on stage). But is all this real, is it a real commitment to audiences?

1^st Congress of Theatre Spectators

Last autumn, two international events of a certain scale and originality were held in Barcelona that placed the spectator and the citizen at the heart of the debate. On the one hand, a congress of theatre spectators, the aim of which was to collect the concerns, challenges and aspirations of theatre audiences. In other words, a forum on audiences, but letting them speak, without philosophers, educators, cultural managers or artists monopolising the debate. On the other hand, the second major event was Culturopolis, an international conference organised by Barcelona City Council for reflecting on and discussing cultural rights. Both events shared the same political agenda, which once again included citizens’ cultural participation, the recognition of diversity, creativity, access to cultural practices… But let’s take a closer look at this unique congress on theatre audiences.

The 1^st Congress of Theatre Spectators, organised by Àfora-Focus and held at the Romea Theatre from 24 to 26 October 2022, brought together some fifty people from all over the world with the aim of rekindling collective energy in the wake of the pandemic. The curator of the congress, Pepe Zapata, began by saying that audiences are still the great unknown and a mystery that everyone wants to unravel. Apart from the conferences and workshops by performing arts experts and professionals – Zavel Castro, Roger Bernat, Antonella Broglia, Toni Jodar, Katya Johanson and Antonio Monegal – that acted as a conceptual framework, the highlight were the interventions of the audience and congress participants, organised into five debate tables, and the reading of the theatre spectators’ Barcelona Manifesto, which they drew up during the online work sessions prior to their arrival in Barcelona. All the materials are available on the Congress website.