Audience Assesement
During my Graduate studies, I worked with the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.The Contemporary Art Center was formed in 1976 by a group of visual artists who wanted to create a community driven space for artists. The current structure was donated to the CAC in 1999, and currently holds 2 floors of exhibition space, and two floors of cohabitational workspaces for artists. With an impressive 40 years under their belt, they've hardly strayed from their mission to build community engagement within New Orleans. During COVID, they requested an Audience Assessment to assist in their marketing endeavors.
Marketing Research - Data Analytics - Communication - Needs Assessment - Survey Creation - Marketing Strategy
The Process
Although the CAC offers programming feasible for people from all walks of life to engage and actively participate in community-centered issues, it is oftentimes unclear who its target demographic truly is. We decided to delve deeper into the infrastructure of the Contemporary Art Center in an attempt to answer that question.
I spoke with Laura Tennyson, the CAC’s previous Communications Director, about the current patrons and their hopes for future attendees. She shared that communicating and attracting audiences to experience challenging societal concepts expressed by contemporary artists is the most difficult aspect of the CAC audience retention.
While other museums have permanent collections, the CAC rotates new artistic practices throughout a season.
Analysis
I conducted the assessment by combining previous demographic studies, research on organizational development, and public opinion. I also created a current demographic survey to create a more accurate vision of who the CAC is currently programming for.
Through my findings, I discovered that though they have loyal patrons that make up a core part of their audience (White, ages 18-24), the participation has been known to be sporadic. Even though they provide a majority of funding to the organization.
It is worth mentioning of course, that the CAC’s audience also doesn’t reflect of the New Orleans population. With Black residents making up 60% of the city’s population, the low 11% attendance rating was a staggering discrepancy.
The Result
First, I created a survey to better understand the CAC audience and collect more up-to-date data that could be of benefit to the organization. Currently, the CAC’s audience is only 11% black or African American, but 76% white (CAC Marketing Data). Although this disparity is not uncommon for museums, in a city with more than half of its population being Black, we want our audience to better reflect the City as a whole (Census). As a museum in New Orleans, we should be trying to grow this audience.
The CAC has done so much work with the Black community and has garnered man relationships with Black artists throughout New Orleans. We should expand upon the organization’s current relationship with these artists through art fairs and outdoor festivals. The festivals would increase community engagement and allow artists to bring in revenue for their work.