I’ve been toying with the idea of exploring the phenomena of rural residents who attend arts events, and other activities in their town, not because they think they will enjoy it, but out of a sense of obligation that if they don’t go, their town will miss out next time.
Sounds like a great idea for a paper, but I’ve been having trouble trying to get some references together – maybe there just isn’t any out there? Please someone, prove me wrong!
I’ve had an audience survey go out over the past year with performing arts shows that have been touring regional Western Australia. The statistics on their own haven’t told me anything too profound as yet. It was mostly to get some numbers on who was going and what else they got up to, because so few statistics specifically on regional arts attendance exists. The most fascinating part of the survey was the comments at the end.
My impressions so far are that some of the respondents of my survey will support touring shows because they want to support their local community, they want to show their support to the organisers (who are invariably local), and out of a sense of obligation to show their support to the performers who made the effort to visit in the first place.
Comments such as the following really bring this point home:
“Though we originally intended with the viewpoint of making up the numbers, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!”
On a similar vein, many respondents implied that their attendance at the current event ensured that future events would also tour to their town:
“To ensure good attendance, so that future events are held here”
“Because it was available locally and it’s important to support so as we get more”
So are regional audiences more committed arts attendees than metropolitan audiences? From the responses I received, it would appear so. This was suggested by a few respondents who commented that they “would attend good quality performances locally, exceptional in Perth”. It was also suggested that because there are fewer channels of communication in small towns, local residents were more likely to know what was going on and therefore they would attend:
“If this was in Perth it would be harder to get to and most likely (I) wouldn’t hear about it.”
Fascinating stuff.
I’m distributing a household survey to the focus region for my research within the next few months or so, so it will be interesting to see how the responses compare to the audience survey.
Only 18 months on the PhD to go!
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