The book covers other more complex distinctions of a qualitative nature that take into account barriers to participation, as well as motivations and cognitive competencies and experience. For example, one of the authors, Pierre-Michel Menger, in an analysis of contemporary music audiences within the context of the historical transformation of spaces or possibilities of choice, distinguishes three types of audience depending on their experience: newcomers, occasional and committed. And Víctor Fernandez-Blanco et al. identify 12 types of music consumers, using classical music consumption as a guiding criterion and taking into account diverse sociodemographic variables. Of these 12 types, four are considered “omnivorous”, while the rest are characterised by a low level of classical music consumption and, in certain cases, by a lack of interest in any type of music.
Other articles direct attention to the changes that are proposed from the perspective of the supply in order to attract certain audiences, those from the communication and digital societies, who have more complex expectations than audiences in previous eras. In participation outside the home, audiences are no longer happy to settle for attendance at specific functions or events, but need involvement in meaningful experiences. For this reason, those in charge of programming have to adopt multiproduct strategies (diverse goods and services are offered) or multifunction strategies (urban regeneration, promotion of creativity, education, social inclusion). These aspects are dealt with in the articles by Tiziana Cuccia et al., by Michel Hambersin and by Roberto Cellini et al.
The same occurs with cultural tourism, as the committed consumer will not settle for a visit to heritage sites, but requires the integration of the different components of the heritage-territory, environment, material culture, etc. For example, Calogero Guccio et al. describe and analyse the supply in the Orta lake, Italy. Imma Fondevila studies the transformations in Spanish museums, that not only pursue an increase in audiences in absolute number terms, but also aim to open them up to the variety of types of visitors, reflect on the function that public facilities must perform and achieve a qualitative change in visitor involvement through guided tours, education proposals, mediation and interpretation as well as the creation of experiences with the use of new technologies, among others.
One of the transformations being played out with new audiences is the combination of the classical aim of personal development or self-realisation with the growing need for entertainment or distraction. Francesco Mannino and Anna Mignosa introduce the hybrid concept of edutainment to approach this problem. And Michel Hambersin also points out the need to pay attention to the expectations of new audiences in his article on classical music.
The political objective of relating participation with social inclusion and, therefore, reaching new audiences, especially vulnerable social groups (excluded minorities, immigrant population), is made patent in two of the chapters: one by Mannino and Mignosa on the Benedictine Monastery of Catania and one by Marco Ferdinando Martorana et al. on participation in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. These sustain that the arts and culture contribute to the accumulation of social capital, reduce exclusion and, therefore, improve the development of depressed urban environments, but prolonged public action is required for them to be successful.
In the introductory chapter great attention is paid to this dimension of politics and cultural participation. The discussion makes mention of both the individual benefits (differentiating between child and adult population) and social and public benefits. Undoubtedly artistic participation generates new forms of learning and new languages for interpreting the world that are key in the education process, but it also enables the generation of a sense of community and identity, promoting integration and social cohesion thanks to its symbolic efficiency. This is a question that, in the future, must not only be proclaimed but also researched with breadth and empirical rigour, without avoiding the conflicts and tensions that symbolic forms generate in constitutively plural societies.
In the part that deals with the impact of new technologies, Hasan Bakhshi defends the need to fund innovation in the cultural field, while simultaneously showing how audiences can be expanded using different applications and techniques. In this regard, he recounts the experience of the National Theatre in London with the play Phèdre, which was screened at digital cinemas, reaching both a broad and a new audience. Noam Shoval and Bob McKercher show the efficiency of digital trackers for finding out not only the patterns followed by tourists at heritage spaces but also across the whole of the city of Hong Kong. Christian Handke et al. analyse the impact of digitalisations. In all these cases, there is much talk of information and communication technologies, but the fact is overlooked that they are also technologies of organisation and, therefore, of new forms of participation. Not only do they “alter” previous ways of consuming or expand access (such as the Gutemberg and Europeana projects), they also generate new practices and this is their most relevant dimension.