Call for Panels:  Engaging Young Audiences Research Symposium

Thursday 17th November 2011
Venue: Level 3, Patrick White Room
Australia Council for the Arts
372 Elizabeth Street‬
‪Surry Hills, Sydney NSW‬

The Australia Council is hosting a 1 day symposium, emerging from The Australian Research Council co-funded TheatreSpace research project, on engaging young audiences in the arts. The symposium aims to stimulate a research exchange and discussion around the nature of young audiences in different arts forms and their present and future needs. In addition to stimulating discussion across and between art forms the symposium will also engage with discussions around the future research and policy implications for young audiences arising from the research discussion.

The symposium will comprise several panels and will also feature an opening keynote from United Kingdom based audiences researcher Dr Matthew Reason on “International Perspectives on Young Audiences” to frame the discussions for the day.

The day is designed to share with the arts, education and research communities the outcomes of recent research that relate to young people as audiences for:
Theatre
Music
Dance
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts
Literature
Inter-Arts

Panels should address young people’s access to the cultural conversation; and might also choose to respond to any of the following:

• What attracts, engages and sustains young people as audiences?
• What effect do performance venues have on young people as audiences?
• What is the impact of a young person’s education on their audience experience?
• What are the factors influencing young people’s continued membership of audiences at performance events after schooling?
• Why do young people choose not to attend performance events, what factors might exclude them and hat would encourage them to attend?
• What effects do the venue and performance context have on attendance?       

Panel proposals should be sent to Michael Anderson (michael.anderson@sydney.edu.au 02 9351 7810)
by 21September 2011 (late proposals may be accepted) and include:

• Title
• 250-300 word abstract
• Proposed panel members (up to 5)