Audience Diversification Resources

Updated July 2024

Engaging a wide range of audiences from local communities is critical to the future relevance, artistic vibrancy, and financial sustainability of orchestras across the U.S. We hope the resources below and on the audience growth resources page will inform the work ahead.

Read First

NEW JULY 2024 Strategies: Read the League’s Catalyst Guide on Audience Diversification to explore 8 key audience diversification strategies; case studies showing 15 orchestras in action; and tactics for overcoming commonly experienced challenges. Dive deeper into this resource with its accompanying webinar and Symphony spotlight.
NEW JULY 2024 Challenges: The proportion of tickets sold to Asian, Black and Hispanic patrons grew only slightly between 2019 and 2023, according to TRG research conducted in partnership with the League. National panel research from IMPACTS Experience suggests that 14% of orchestra patrons self-identified as BIPOC in 2023, compared to 25% of live theater patrons and 43% of the U.S. population.
NEW JULY 2024 Opportunities: Many Americans who do not attend orchestra performances do say they enjoy classical music. Read the report “Taking Another Listen: Audience Research With People of Color To Help Make Classical Music Radio More Welcoming,” issued by Slover Linett in partnership with the League.
Insights: Learn how and why people of all racial and ethnic groups connect to arts, culture, and creativity, by reading studies Centering the Picture: The role of race & ethnicity in cultural engagement, and Black Perspectives on Creativity, Trust, Welcome and Wellbeing: a Qualitative Study from Slover Linett. Also, watch the League webinar Engaging the Latinx Community.

Creating a Warm Welcome

NEW JULY 2024: “It’s difficult to entice people to spend their precious time and money going to a place where they feel like they do not belong,” says Colleen Dillenschneider of IMPACTS Experience.
NEW JULY 2024: While orchestras have been making efforts to become more welcoming, they are seeing limited progress when compared to other cultural organizations.
43% of Black Americans – and 27% of the total U.S. population – see systemic racism in orchestras. For the details, watch the League’s 2022 webinar Understanding Audience Motivations in a Time of Ongoing Uncertainty with Slover Linett and LaPlaca Cohen.
Even some current audience members feel unwelcome at orchestra concerts, and those who do so are twice as likely to be BIPOC than White. The most often reported sources of discomfort are other audience members and front-of-house staff: read more in the Study of Audience Attitudes towards Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity produced by WolfBrown in partnership with the League.
NEW JULY 2024: In describing a welcoming experience at an arts and culture organization, Americans (both attendees and non-attendees) prioritize seeing “people like me” in the audience. For organizations with little current audience diversity, other factors become even more important, according to IMPACTS Experience.
Scroll down for guidance on how to create a warm welcome, and be sure to read the League’s Catalyst Guide on Audience Diversification for more.

Repertoire

NEW JULY 2024: Across the arts and culture sector as a whole, audiences value fair representation in the form of inclusive stories told by representative voices. For orchestras working on audience diversification, this means programming repertoire that is significantly meaningful to the target communities. Read about your peer orchestras’ efforts in programming music that is engaged with our times and meaningful to multiple audiences and communities, with the League’s Catalyst Guide Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Artistic Planning and watch the accompanying webinar.
NEW JULY 2024: Hear how Phil Chan of Final Bow for Yellowface updates works from the classical Western canon that contain outdated representations of non-Western cultures while maintaining the integrity of these works. Explore this topic more broadly with bassoonist and commentator Loki Karuna.
NEW JULY 2024: Explore the League’s list of repertoire diversification resources, and explore the repertoire by BIPOC, women, and transgender composers being performed by your peer orchestras in the annual Repertoire Report produced by the Institute for Composer Diversity in partnership with the League.

Programming

NEW JULY 2024: While diversity of on-stage representation is critical, alone it is not enough to sustain progress towards audience diversification. This finding of the Study of Audience Attitudes towards Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity from by WolfBrown (in partnership with the League) is mirrored across the arts and culture sector as a whole: read more from IMPACTS Research.
NEW JULY 2024: The same study shows that when programming is designed with and forBIPOC communities, audience diversity does increase. Sustaining the interest of BIPOC audiences requires ongoing listening and responsiveness to programming preferences.
Read how the Detroit Symphony adopted the kind of integrated approach to audience diversification, community engagement and programming that builds communities’ agency, in the League’s Catalyst Snapshot Pursuing EDI Through Community Engagement.
To hear about the importance to BIPOC Americans of local venues that focus on arts and culture reflective of their own cultural identities, watch the League’s 2022 webinar Understanding Audience Motivations in a Time of Ongoing Uncertainty with Slover Linett and LaPlaca Cohen.

Marketing

NEW JULY 2024: “Seeing people like me in ads / marketing materials” is the second most important factor in making Americans (non-attendees and attendees) feel welcome at an arts and culture institution, after “seeing other visitors like me.”
Which specific social media and communications tactics have orchestras found most helpful in reaching new audiences? Download the Advisory Board for the Arts’ 2022 Audience Diversification Strategies Benchmarking Report, produced in partnership with the League. And learn from the Handel and Haydn Society’s research to identify and leverage latent market potential by downloading the League’s Catalyst Snapshot Using Plans and Metrics to Advance EDI, or watching the related Conference 2022 session.
SMU DataArts also offers insights into about how specific marketing and advertising investments) can enhance audience diversification efforts.
For guidance on marketing to younger audiences, watch the League webinar Post-Pandemic Engagement: How to Reach Out to NextGen in the Digital Age with a focus on data-driven content presentation, digital communication, and online community.

Setting Your Organization Up for Success

Read the League’s report Promising Practices: Actions Orchestras Can Take Towards Equity to learn about the organizational foundations needed for any audience diversification efforts to succeed.
NEW JULY 2024: Listen to Paul R. Johnson, VP of People & Culture and Chief Diversity Officer of the Seattle Symphony, and Aaron Dworkin of Art Engines discuss how DEI can be systematically structured within orchestras to promote inclusive environments.
Read this DataArts report and listen to Capacity Interactive’s podcast for highlights on how subscription decline can be used to prompt a culture change that supports new audience diversification efforts.