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Reimagining the Wheel: The Implications of Cultural Diversity for Mainstream Theatre Programming in Australia1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2014

JOSEPHINE FLEMING ,
ROBYN EWING ,
MICHAEL ANDERSON  and
HELEN KLIEVE
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Abstract

Profound demographic shifts in Australia's population are raising fundamental questions about how we reimagine the practices of our mainstream cultural institutions. The ability and the willingness of these institutions to reconceptualize their work in ways that encompass a diversity of traditions and tastes are critical. The paper draws on Pierre Bourdieu's notions of distinctions and taste to examine the influence of cultural identification on the choices that young people make about attending live theatre. The paper includes findings from a large Australian study, TheatreSpace, which examined why young people chose to engage or not to engage with theatre. In New South Wales nearly 40 per cent of the 726 young participants spoke a language other than English at home. Most were attending with their schools, many with no history of family attendance. This paper highlights significant issues about cultural relevance, accessibility and the often unintended challenges and confrontations that theatre can present to young first-generation Australians.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 133 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2014 

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Footnotes

1

TheatreSpace was funded by the Australian Research Council. We wish to acknowledge the other chief investigators: Professor John O’Toole (lead CI), Professor Bruce Burton, Associate Professor Penny Bundy, Associate Professor Kate Donelan, Associate Professor Angela O’Brien, Dr John Hughes, Dr Christine Sinclair and Dr Madonna Stinson. We also acknowledge Partner Investigator Noel Jordan and National Research Coordinator Dr Clare Irvine.

References

NOTES

2 Interview with Anh (school student, fourteen years of age), May 2010, TheatreSpace Research project. Aliases are used for all interviewees in this article.

3 See, for example, Instinct and Reason (A), More than Bums on Seats: Australian Participation in the Arts (Sydney: Australia Council for the Arts, 2010)Google Scholar; Bunting, Catherine, Wing Chan, Tak, Goldthorpe, John, Keaney, Emily and Oskala, Annie, From Indifference to Enthusiasm: Patterns of Arts Attendance in England (London: Arts Council London, 2008)Google Scholar; Ostrower, Francie, The Diversity of Cultural Participation (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute and the Wallace Foundation, 2005)Google Scholar.

4 Jancovich, Leila, ‘Great Art for Everyone? Engagement and Participation Policy in the Arts’, Cultural Trends, 20, 3–4 (2011), pp. 271CrossRefGoogle Scholar–9, here p. 275.

5 Instinct and Reason (A), More Than Bums on Seats, focused on extending audiences rather than practice. Ethnicity was recorded and loosely addressed (p. 8); however, cultural taste was not substantively addressed in either the survey questions or the findings. Robert LaLonde, Colm O’Muircheartaigh and Julia Perkins with Grams, Diane, English, Ned and Joynes, D. Carroll, Mapping Cultural Participation in Chicago (Chicago: Cultural Policy Centre and Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago, 2006)Google Scholar, analysed around a million box-office transactions from non-profit arts organizations to establish baseline data for evaluating future initiatives. Audience development was largely addressed in terms of logistical issues such as pricing and programme delivery. See esp. p. 10.

6 Zakaras, Laura and Lowell, Julia, Cultivating Demand for the Arts: Arts Learning, Arts Engagement and State Arts Policy (Santa Monica: RAND, 2008), p. 11Google Scholar.

7 Seaman, Bruce, Attendance and Public Participation in the Performing Arts: A Review of the Empirical Literature (Georgia: George State University Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, 2005), p. 140Google Scholar.

8 McCarthy, Kevin, Books, Arthur, Lowell, Julia and Zakaras, Laura, The Performing Arts in a New Era (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001), p. 18Google Scholar.

9 Andreasen, Alan and Belk, Russell W., ‘Predictors of Attendance at the Performing Arts’, Journal of Consumer Research, 7, 2 (1980), pp. 116–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Nice, Richard (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 1.

12 McCarthy et al., The Performing Arts in a New Era, p. 22.

13 Bunting et al., Indifference to Enthusiasm, pp. 52–4.

14 DiMaggio, Paul and Ostrower, Francie, ‘Participation in the Arts by Black and White Americans’, Social Forces, 68, 3 (1990), pp. 753–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Ibid., p. 774.

16 DiMaggio, Paul and Mukhtar, Toqir, ‘Arts Participation as Cultural Capital in the United States, 1982–2002: Signs of Decline?’, Poetics, 32, 2 (2004), pp. 169CrossRefGoogle Scholar–94, here p. 179.

17 Bourdieu, Distinctions, p. 230.

18 Jancovich, ‘Great Art for Everyone?’, p. 272.

19 FreshMinds, Culture on Demand: Ways to Engage a Broader Audience (London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2007), p. 60Google Scholar.

20 Charmaz, Kathy, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis (London: Sage, 2006)Google Scholar.

21 O’Toole, John, Adams, Ricci-Jane, Anderson, Michael, Burton, Bruce and Ewing, Robyn (eds.), Theatre and Young People: Accessing the Cultural Conversation (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Instinct and Reason (B), More than Bums on Seats: Australian Participation in the Arts. Technical Appendices (Sydney: Australia Council for the Arts, 2010), p. 27Google Scholar.

23 Instinct and Reason (A), More than Bums on Seats, p. 8.

24 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Attendance at Selected Cultural Venues and Events (Sydney: ABS, 2010), p. 12Google Scholar, available at www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/527DC2F6CB079837CA2577FF0011EC88/$File/41140_2009–10.pdf, accessed 2 March 2013.

25 Interview with Sonya (university student, twenty-one years of age), May 2010.

26 Interview with Sean (school student, sixteen years of age), April 2009.

27 Interview with Nina (school student, fifteen years of age), January 2010.

28 Interview with Delia (school student, fifteen years of age), December 2010.

29 Interview with Anushka (university student, twenty years of age), April 2009.

30 Interview with James (teacher), July 2010.

31 Interview with Elizabeth (teacher), September 2010.

32 Interview with Simon (school student, seventeen years of age), March 2010.

33 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 2.

34 Australian Government Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Australia's Migration Trends 2011–2012 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2013), pp. 20–34. There has been a substantial increase in Australia's immigation intake (108,072 in 2002–3 to 184,998 in 2011–12). This increase is most marked in the skilled migration scheme, where there has been a rise from 61 per cent in 2002–3 to 68 per cent in 2011–12. Research has overwhelmingly linked education levels to frequency of arts participation, albeit that much of the visible research comes from the developed world. Although greater research is required in this field it is likely that many of Australia's new migrants would have participated in the arts in their countries of origin and may want ongoing participation in their dominant cultural forms, particularly for their children. There has been some evidence of this in the success of large cultural events such as the A. R. Rahman concert that was part of the 2010 Sydney Festival and attracted over 50,000 people, mainly from the Indian community.

35 Seaman, Attendance and Public Participation in the Performing Arts.

36 Such as Orian Brook, International Comparisons of Public Engagement in Culture and Sport (London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2011), available at http://old.culture.gov.uk/images/research/Int_comparisons_public_participation_in_culture_and_sport-Aug2011.pdf, accessed 13 October 2012; Instinct and Reason (A), More than Bums on Seats.

37 FreshMinds, Culture on Demand.

38 Jancovich, ‘Great Art For Everyone?’, p. 272.

39 Profile.id (2013), ‘Community Profile: Australia – Language Spoken at Home’, http://profile.id.com.au/australia/language, accessed 3 July 2013.

40 McCarthy et al., The Performing Arts in a New Era, p. 117.

41 Reason, Matthew, ‘Young Audiences and Live Theatre, Part 2: Perceptions of Liveness in Performance’, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 26, 3 (2006), pp. 221CrossRefGoogle Scholar–41.

42 Ibid., p. 230.

43 From the Marquee Panel Address delivered by Matthew Reason for the TheatreSpace Symposium, Sydney Opera House, 2011.

44 See, for example, Hunter, Mary Ann, ‘Anxious Futures: Magpie2 and “New Generationalism” in Australian Youth-Specific Theatre’, Theatre Research International, 26, 1 (2001), pp. 71–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 See Le, Huong and Fujimoto, Yuka, A Participatory Model for Ethnic Audience Development for the Arts, in unknown (ed.), ANZAM 2011: 25th Annual Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management Conference: The Future of Work and Organisations (Wellington: ANZAM, 2011) pp. 1–15Google Scholar; Migliorino, Pino and Perspectives, Cultural, The World Is Your Audience: Case Studies in Audience Development and Cultural Diversity (Redfern: Australia Council for the Arts, 1998)Google Scholar.

46 Tompkins, Joanne, ‘“Homescapes” and Identity Reformations in Australian Multicultural Drama’, Theatre Research International, 26, 1 (2001), pp. 47–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 55.