This is the fifth article in a series about why the strategies that used to work don’t work the same way anymore—and what that means for every decision you’re making right now. If you missed the previous articles about the impossible equations leaders face, the effort that isn’t translating to results, the gap between what we send and what people receive, and the questions your audience is actually asking, you can find them here.
“Why aren’t more people buying tickets?”
A ballet executive said this to me recently, genuinely puzzled. Their mixed rep program featured a work they’d never performed, a new setting on the company, and a beloved Balanchine classic.
“This should be selling better,” they insisted.
I asked why.
“Because it’s Balanchine! Because our company performing this piece is an artistic achievement!”
And there it was. Not a marketing problem. Not a pricing problem. Not a channel problem. Something more fundamental.
Everything they said was about the art. Nothing was about the audience.
Or rather—everything was about an audience that already understands why Balanchine matters, already cares about “never-performed-before,” already speaks the language of mixed rep programs and new settings on the company.
That audience exists. They’re called subscribers. And they’re already coming.
While yes, the executive was lamenting poor sales, they were actually mourning that more people weren’t interested. But they couldn’t see the gap between the audience in their head—the one who shares their passion, their knowledge, their frame of reference—and the actual people they needed to reach.
The Audience You’ve Been Imagining
Every arts organization carries an imagined audience. This audience is remarkably consistent from organization to organization, even though nobody ever writes it down or names it explicitly.
The imagined audience is educated—not just generally, but specifically in your art form. They understand the conventions. They know the references. They can appreciate the nuances that distinguish good work from great work, the way your artists and your staff can.
The imagined audience is eager. They’re actively looking for cultural experiences. They read reviews. They follow arts coverage. They don’t need to be convinced that your art form matters—they already believe it.
The imagined audience is available. They have the schedule flexibility to attend performances on your timeline, the transportation to get to your venue easily, the childcare or the freedom from childcare that lets them spend an evening out without significant logistical negotiation.
The imagined audience is affluent. Not necessarily wealthy, but comfortable enough that ticket prices represent a discretionary choice rather than a meaningful sacrifice.
This imagined audience shapes everything. It shapes how you write your program notes—assuming familiarity with the art form’s history and vocabulary. It shapes how you design your lobby experience—assuming people know where to go and how to behave. It shapes how you market—assuming people are already interested and just need the details.
And it shapes the question you keep asking: How do we find more people like this?
The People Who Actually Show Up
Now think about who’s really in your seats.
They’re smart. Many of them are well-educated—in law, nursing, engineering, business, education. They bring sharp minds and genuine curiosity to everything they do. But their education isn’t in your art form. They don’t bring the insider knowledge your programming and marketing assumes they have.
They’re interested—but tentatively. They didn’t wake up this morning thinking about your organization. They came because a friend invited them, or they received a gift certificate, or they saw something that caught their attention for reasons that might have nothing to do with artistic merit. Their interest is real but fragile. It needs to be met and nurtured, not assumed.
They’re navigating uncertainty. They’re not sure what to wear. They’re not sure when to clap. They’re not sure whether they’ll understand what’s happening or whether everyone around them will seem to know things they don’t.
They have money—some of them, quite a lot of it. But they also have Netflix and travel plans and restaurant reservations and gym memberships and a dozen other ways to spend a free evening. You’re not competing against other arts organizations for their discretionary time. You’re competing against everything.
These people have every capacity for deep engagement with your work. They can be moved, transformed, inspired. They can become passionate advocates and generous supporters. But not if your first move is to treat them as a disappointing substitute for the audience you wished had shown up.
These people have every capacity for deep engagement with your work. They can be moved, transformed, inspired. They can become passionate advocates and generous supporters.
The Cost of Looking for Someone Who Isn’t There
When you’re oriented toward an imagined audience, you make decisions that systematically alienate the real one.
I experienced this recently at a symphony concert. I’m a longtime classical music fan—I brought my own context, my own passion, my own reasons for attending. But I watched the experience with fresh eyes, and what I saw was an organization talking to its imagined audience at every turn.
The program notes were written for musicologists. Three paragraphs about harmonic structures and contrapuntal variations. Two paragraphs about the composer’s relationship with other composers and critical reception in his time. The notes mentioned that Brahms struggled with impostor syndrome, that this work came from feeling “less than”—but they didn’t name that universal human experience. They didn’t say: We all feel this. We all wonder if we’re enough. Tonight, you get to experience what Brahms created from that pain.
That connection was right there, waiting to be made. Instead, I got: “The finale is a passacaglia with precisely 30 variations on the theme.”
Who is that sentence for? It’s for the imagined audience—the one who knows what a passacaglia is, who finds variation counts intellectually stimulating, who speaks the insider language fluently.
It’s not for the engineer sitting three seats away, attending his first concert because his daughter gave him tickets for his birthday. He has every capacity to be moved by this music. But nothing in that program helped him understand what he was about to experience or why it might matter to him.
This pattern repeats everywhere. Your season brochure describes a production as “a searing deconstruction of the American family drama” and assumes the reader knows what a deconstruction is, what constitutes the American family drama tradition, and why deconstructing it matters. Your concert begins with no explanation of what’s about to happen. Your lobby materials reference the organization’s history as though everyone already knows and cares about it.
None of this is malicious. It comes from genuine love for the art form. But the cumulative effect is a series of small signals, repeated over and over: We’re speaking to someone, and that someone isn’t you.
And the clapping. Think about the clapping.
I know to applaud when the concertmaster enters the stage. I know not to clap between orchestral movements. I learned these conventions years ago, so thoroughly that they feel natural now—obvious, even.
But the couple on their first visit doesn’t know any of this. And when they clap between movements—out of genuine enthusiasm, out of being moved by what they just heard—the tight smiles from the people around them teach a lesson no one intended: You don’t belong here.
Meanwhile, the people who are there—who showed up, who made the effort, who were genuinely open to being moved—slip quietly away. Not angry. Not offended. Just unaddressed. They came looking for connection, understanding, emotion, an experience that would take them somewhere they couldn’t go on their own. And instead they got a performance designed for a connoisseur they aren’t, wrapped in an experience that assumed knowledge they don’t have.
You’ve Forgotten What It’s Like to Be Outside
How did this happen? How did smart, caring, mission-driven people build organizations that inadvertently exclude the very audiences they want to serve?
Think about your own journey into arts leadership.
You probably didn’t start with a degree in arts administration and immediately step into an executive role. You learned through experience, from mentors, from insiders who were already fluent in the language and culture of your art form. You gradually absorbed not just technical skills but an entire way of seeing and valuing art.
You developed sophisticated taste. You learned to appreciate nuances that casual observers miss. You gained deep knowledge of your art form’s history, conventions, and contemporary innovations. You built relationships across the sector and learned the insider perspectives that shape how arts professionals think.
This expertise is essential to your role. It’s what makes you good at your job.
But it also created a blind spot you can’t easily see around.
You’ve forgotten what it was like not to know these things. The language that once felt foreign is now how you naturally think. The references that once confused you are now obvious. The social conventions that once made you anxious are now second nature.
You’ve been an insider for so long that you literally cannot access the memory of what it feels like to be confused, uncertain, or anxious about attending a performance for the first time.
And because you’ve forgotten, the experiences you design and the marketing you approve don’t address those anxieties. They assume a level of comfort, knowledge, and social confidence that your potential audience doesn’t have.
That ballet executive who couldn’t understand why Balanchine wasn’t selling? They weren’t being dismissive or arrogant. They genuinely couldn’t see the gap between their own deep appreciation for what makes Balanchine important and the experience of someone sitting at a kitchen table on a Tuesday night, exhausted by the week, thinking: We need to get out of this house. We need a night that’s just for us.
That’s a problem the ballet could solve—if only they could see the person asking it.
You’ve forgotten what it was like not to know these things.
What If They’re Already Here?
Here’s what I keep coming back to.
Every person who walks through your doors—regardless of their educational background, regardless of how many performances they’ve attended, regardless of whether they know the rules—has the capacity for connection. For understanding. For being moved. For having their perspective shifted. For seeing something they can’t see anywhere else.
These aren’t capacities reserved for an educated elite. They’re human capacities. Universal ones. The retired teacher on her first visit to the symphony has the same capacity for transcendence as your most seasoned subscriber. The young couple who bought tickets on a whim can be just as deeply transformed as the board member who’s attended every opening night for twenty years.
The question isn’t whether your audiences can appreciate your work.
The question is whether you’ve helped them understand what your work offers them.
That’s a different orientation than most of us are used to. Instead of starting from what we want to present and hoping the right audience finds it, it starts from where people actually are—their curiosity, their uncertainty, their openness, their very real desire to feel something meaningful—and meets them there.
I’ve started thinking of this as an audience-first lens. Not a program. Not a methodology. A lens. A way of looking at every decision—from how you write a season brochure to how you greet someone in your lobby to how you describe a production to your board—and asking: Are we starting from where our audience is? Or from where we wish they were?
The Reframe
For years, the question in arts leadership has been: How do we find more of the right people to grow our audience?
How do we find audiences who are sophisticated enough, educated enough, affluent enough, committed enough to sustain our organizations and appreciate our art?
But what if that question itself is the problem?
What if the people you need are already in your seats, walking through your doors, following you on social media, opening your emails—and you’ve been looking past them toward someone who better fits the picture in your head?
The retired engineer who attends three shows a year and has never been asked what the experience means to him. The young professional who came once, loved it, and never came back because nothing in the follow-up communication made her feel like she belonged. The family that bought tickets for a holiday performance and had a magical experience but couldn’t figure out from your website what else you offer that might be right for them.
These aren’t people you need to go find. They’ve already found you. They’ve already made the effort. They’ve already demonstrated interest.
The audience you need might already be here. You just haven’t invited them in yet.
Next in this series: We’ll look at what happens when audiences have been treated as targets for too long—and why the people you most want to reach might have already decided you’re not for them.
Seeing the people already in your seats starts with how your leadership thinks about them. The free Audience First Organizational Alignment Assessment takes about 10 minutes and looks at five dimensions, including strategic alignment and leadership buy-in. Your personalized report arrives in your inbox as soon as you finish.
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