An impact and capacity building study of audience development within contemporary arts in Scotland.

Creative Scotland as the national development agency for the arts, and the primary investor in the subsidized arts sector needs to understand as precisely as possible the value of the art forms that it funds. Creative Scotland funds one hundred arts organisations within Scotland. This funding does not allow for research, in relation to measuring and evaluating the impact of this funding in relation to the profile of audiences, the perception of audiences and the attraction of new audiences to the funded artistic performances. This impact study seeks to fill the need for this research, with the aim of assessing the impact of contemporary arts in Scotland. This study will take Red Note contemporary classical music ensemble, as a case study, as an archetypal Creative Scotland fundee. Such a case study will provide invaluable learning and knowledge for Creative Scotland policy making and the broader contemporary arts community in Scotland and beyond. In addition the knowledge exchange would provide practitioner learnings and insights in particular for students in my new Creativity: theory and practice course at the University of Edinburgh, in addition to academic and practitioner orientated national workshops and 3 and 4 star journal outputs.



• To impact on the understanding of contemporary arts audiences and the effectiveness of arts funding in Scotland which may influence funding of the arts within the UK and beyond.

• To develop insights from the selected setting to measure the effectiveness, impact and capacity building of audiences funded by Creative Scotland

• To activate learnings from the research methods in terms of skills and capacity building for Creative Scotland, practitioner and academic communities to inform future policy and research decisions

• To explore attitudes towards new / contemporary music, identifying both shared and differentiating issues to build on the extant research on Cultural Value (AHRC: AH/L006278/1) to inform knowledge exchange activities with academics, students and other contemporary arts organisations within the UK and beyond

• To identify the future areas of audience development, and the impact in relation to funding within the arts informing Creative Scotland future funding decisions, informed by the research, workshops with contemporary arts communities and policy makers and a final report