What started out as a daunting undertaking turned into a fulfilling endeavor and oft-requested end product. After staring at the stack of audience development research on my desk, I finally decided to turn it into something useful: an Annotated Bibliography of Audience Development Resources. 

So I pose this question to all arts marketers: What is your relationship with the growing pile of research and resources on your desk?  Do you feel…

Guilt with a dash of anxiety—What am I missing?
Anger—Why do they publish all of this?
Denial—This information can’t really be relevant to my work?
Joy—Wow, this is fascinating, and I am finding innovative approaches.

You are not alone – many of us can relate to ambitious reading lists and limited time. And once we do carve out time for reading, where to start?

Like many arts marketers and leaders, as Director of Marketing and Communications at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, I had the best of intentions to read all of the books and articles that might apply to my work. I longed for more hours in the day.
 
So I am glad to share this annotated bibliography as the outcome of my immersion into all manner of recent publications in audience development. Happily, I found a number of outstanding resources that have proven quite useful. A few highlights—including three from outside of the United States—include:

• Beyond Their Walls: Ten major London arts and cultural organizations share experience of working in the public realm
  In anticipation of the 2012 Olympics in London, Arts Council England launched an initiative for high-quality outdoor cultural programming. This publication profiles 10 London projects—including several taking place within parks and some that are multi-organization collaborations—and examines the benefits, opportunities, and challenges of such work. This quick read presents an overwhelmingly positive view of the possibilities for audience development through outdoor/public space cultural programming, while honestly presenting some of the challenges.
   
• Adjust Your View: Developing Multicultural Audiences for the Arts—A Toolkit
  This toolkit outlines clear steps and potential strategies for developing a multicultural marketing strategy. Case studies are included to illustrate specific examples and cite key challenges and lessons learned.
   
• Cultural Organizations and Changing Leisure Trends: A National Convening, Online Discussion, and White Paper
  This 13-page report from a convening of 34 thought leaders by the Getty Leadership Institute and National Arts Strategies does an excellent job of summarizing and considering leisure trends affecting cultural organizations in a concise format. The participants identified three key clusters of opportunity for cultural organizations: culture as respite, culture as connector, and culture as continuum. The white paper adds value and opportunity for deeper understanding and exploration of ideas through specific scenario exercises, and the resulting ideas represent some truly fresh thinking about ways that these organizations might serve and build audiences.
   
• Family Friendly Toolkit
  This practical resource was developed based on extensive research and interviews. The robust toolkit provides guiding principles an and audit to help organizations determine how family friendly they are in access and facilities, programming, marketing and communications, and customer care, and to identify opportunities for positive change.
   
• Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life
  This seminal book examines trends and patterns in cultural participation and engagement in the United States and analyzes how participation is changing, with particularly interesting observations on amateur art making and the Pro-Am revolution. Engaging Art calls for a focus on supporting people’s creative and expressive potential—perhaps one of the most sustainable platforms for audience development. Contributors discuss expanding and facilitating choice and nurturing and enabling critique, connoisseurship, and connection.

  Tip: Skip reading the entire book, which at times can be dense and perhaps less relevant to non-policymakers, and opt instead for the book’s solid 24-page conclusion.

Find similar summaries and highlights for over 25 publications in the complete bibliography.

My hope is that the annotations from my reading will help you identify which resources might indeed be useful or interesting. Your time is golden.