Community Outreach: Listening Outside Our Silos

From the study: Taking Another Listen

Here’s an impressive study that may offer useful insights to your cultural organization’s community-outreach efforts: a national cohort of classical-music radio stations has worked with audience-research firm Slover Linett to ask non-listeners (especially younger and non-White listeners) what might encourage them to tune-in. I was particularly touched by the study’s foundational questions (page 16 of the PowerPoint) and their “we’re here to listen – REALLY” attitude. The findings offer fascinating insights and thoughtful action items. The biggest takeaway for me, if we have the courage to step outside our silos: Folks are ready to listen, if we go where they are – physically, musically, culturally.

From the study’s closing:

“We need to respect people’s own operative definitions of classical music and meet them on their own cultural terms. We need to trust that, for many people of all races and ethnicities, the music itself is relevant and pleasurable, at least for certain purposes or moods — but that the ways we’ve been framing, delivering, defining, and disconnecting it from other forms of music and culture must change if we truly want to become more welcoming and equitable.”

If your organization needs to understand who’s NOT tuning-in to your work - and why - let’s talk about that.