The crisis has provided an opportunity to reflect not just on what has changed but also what it reveals more generally about public engagement with culture. Whilst some parts of the sector have stopped completely, some have adapted and a few have prospered. It has raised new questions and demanded old ones be re-addressed.
This is at the heart of the ‘Change Within Change’ Adeste + conference series, which takes place in August and September 2020. Originally planned for Rijeka in Croatia, an early decision was taken to move the series online allowing for a very exciting series of talks and discussions which are free for all to attend.
Adeste+ is a large scale Creative Europe project, of which The Audience Agency is a partner, investigating and testing innovative approaches to audience development. This means moving beyond the ‘initiative’ to look at more fundamental approaches, considering how the ‘whole’ organisation needs to change to engage with an audience.
The events take place every Monday from 31st August (1400 – 1700 CEST / 1300 – 1600 BST) with the first star–studded line up discussing ‘Culture’s Place In Our Lives’ with Anne Torreggiani, Nicolas Barbieri, Mafalda Damaso, Alessandra Gariboldi, Valentina Montalto, Jordi Pascual and Lane Struck-Madsen.
The subsequent episodes are:
- ‘A new vision for culture? Integrity, direction and relevance.’ – Monday 7th September
- ‘The cultural institution – what needs to change?’ – Monday 14th September
- ‘Rethinking participation strategically’ – Monday 21st September
There was also an initial prequel episode in June in which some of the topics were debated by Eleonora Belfiore, Giuliana Ciancio, Niels Righolt and Pierluigi Sacco. You can find out what was said in the first half (opening 90 minutes) and get a taste of the debate to come here:
The conferences are free to attend but you'll need to pre-register
The accompanying Summer School is also taking place online, based on the Adeste+ ‘Blueprint’, a workshop based process based on ‘design-thinking’ that helps an organisation to become more oriented to user need. Applications for this are now closed but there will be a another Summer School in Turin in 2021. There will also be further capacity-building workshops based on the Adeste+ blueprint next year which will be announced in International Agent.
If you have any questions about the conferences, please get in touch with jonathan.goodacre@theaudienceagency.org.
