The reason way we segment out young people as highly important target group and audience in the field of contemporary visual art is their experimental nature and the fact that they are digital natives, making them prone to the innovative approaches based on new technologies and easy to reach on the global market. This was confirmed through experience on the BITE 1.0 where young people 18 to 30 years were most frequent audience on digital and in-person BITE events. Also, according to the report published by the US Trust – wealth management division of the Bank of America from 2018, “millennials are the fastest growing demographics of art collectors”, and hence the audience of contemporary visual art we need to develop in order to boost competitiveness of cultural operators in the field and ensure their sustainability on the long run. However, according to the research conducted among 400 young people from Spain, Slovenia and Serbia within the BITE 1.0 project, around 30% of them visited contemporary art programs more than twice in last 3 years and around 40% of them that visited none. These data showed us a big gap in the frequency of consuming a contemporary art among young people and weak relations between contemporary visual art and young people.
Our survey among young people shows that minor population of young people are interested in contemporary art, but also there are lot of reasons why majority of them are not interested, and it causing lack of interest in comparison to other content and opportunities. Some of the causes stood out:
- offer from the culture and art is not attractive to them;
- it is not communicating with “their language”;
- communication with them is boring, bureaucratic and held in places they do not visit;
- they often have a fear of being embarrassed because they do not understand contemporary art;
- the visit to the exhibitions itself is often not interactive enough and provides a limited range of information;
- digitalization as a way of life for young people, is very little present in galleries and exhibition spaces;
- it’s not fun, although educational can be fun at the same time, it’s a matter of approach.
Therefore, for any successful communication the results on attraction of the audience, the target audience have to be segmented and approach to each segment defined. Young audience, that is targeted by BITE concept could be segmented by age, occupation, leisure time interests, location, education, gender, etc. Each segment of this audience requires a specific approach in communicating with it, as well as a combination of target audience segments. In principle – mixing age and occupation, or crossing approaches according to other determinants of the target audience.
Practical advices and guidelines on how to know your audience, how to do the segmentation and accordingly how to develop the strategic approach, are presented in BITE Communication Strategy (ANNEX 3).
