Arts companies ask, how do we bring in Millennials?

The New York-based Wallace Foundation last year offered dance, music, and theater institutions grants under a six-year, $52 million audience-expanding initiative. Many projects that were funded focused entirely or in part on young adults. Here are the results so far.

|
Murad Sezer/AP/File
Dancers with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform during a dress rehearsal in 2008.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater listened, and it heard young adults’ concerns that an evening with the renowned company meant missing out on socializing, or wouldn’t be relevant or affordable.

“We also found out they really don’t like to be called Millennials,” Ailey executive director Bennett Rink said, adding he could understand individuals resisting being lumped under a label. 

Whatever they’re called, arts organizations are intent on engaging them. The New York-based Wallace Foundation last year offered dance, music, and theater institutions grants under a six-year, $52 million audience-expanding initiative. Many projects that were funded focused entirely or in part on young adults. The Pew Research Center noted this year that Americans who were between the ages of 18 and 34 in 2015 had edged out baby boomers as the biggest generation.

Cultural workers from institutions around Denver gathered recently to hear how the city’s main theater was trying to lower its average audience age, which is currently 52. A presentation detailed results of surveys that a Wallace grant allowed the Denver Center for the Performing Arts to commission. Data on Millennials’ entertainment habits informed marketing and staging this year of the DCPA immersive show “Sweet & Lucky.”   

Ailey also used Wallace money for surveys. The results prompted the company to offer “young New Yorkers” – no mention of “Millennials” in promotional material – discounted season tickets, after-show parties, even an exercise class led by Ailey instructors. Such efforts were funded by the Wallace grant.

Having found that young New Yorkers are interested in social issues, Ailey is also drawing attention to pieces in its repertoire such as MacArthur-winning choreographer Kyle Abraham’s exploration of racial injustice, “Untitled America.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Arts companies ask, how do we bring in Millennials?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2016/1108/Arts-companies-ask-how-do-we-bring-in-Millennials
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe