Visitors are now recognized to have a key role within cultural projects in museums and the cultural heritage. One sees the strong implementation of audience and public development policies; cultural institutions are enhancing their training and social roles, paying extra attention to their local audience and surroundings. A renewed economic and social context is redefining local and global audience policies. At the same time, cultural organizations experiment new management’s models and their ambition is to carry new responsibilities in order to earmark their visitors policies.

The professional and academic stakeholders need to enhance theoretical and practical approaches and new skills to accompany the European museums and heritage development. The question of audience policies’ evaluation underlies the thoughts as a growing problematic.

Audiences’ policies cover a wide range of academic matters (art, sociology, economics, marketing, psychology, museum studies…), and a wide range of services and job opportunities (audiences marketing, mediation, and studies).

Relations between cultural institutions and audiences are moreover to be constantly enhanced, unique in time, space and context. Therefore, professionals specialised in audiences policies finally need to develop technical, intellectual and above all personal skills. Educational programs dealing with audiences’ policies and mediation are to be permanently updated. A balance must be found between theoretical and practical approaches.

Challenges:

  • To contribute to the development of collaborations between universities, experts and practitioners from the museums, the cultural heritage and local communities.
  • To exchange information, academic and working knowledge, to study relevant European examples and theoretical approaches on the subject.
  • To develop a network of Regional and European partners within the Louvre-Lens project.
  • To introduce thoughts on a European program focusing on mediation training, management and audience policies in museums 
  • To contribute to the global evaluation of European cultural audience policies