The Innovator

a journey into audience participation
INNOVATOR

As innovator, your key challenge is to change the contemporary symphony orchestra in meaningful ways while also conserving the symphonic canon. Your work could be at the department of marketing or education, or you cooperate as a musician with other colleagues in an innovation working group. Rethinking audience participation can function as a propeller for innovation. Your task as an innovator in the orchestra may be to develop ideas, programs, or concert formats aimed at reaching new and different audiences.

Observing how the audience is always present in the daily practice of your orchestra, in a real or imagined form, can be a starting point. It reveals the expectations, norms and ideals that structure the work of both musicians and staff. Finding ways to reflect on and learn from existing imaginings of the audiences paves the way for designing experimental or participatory concerts. In this process of learning, there are different roles you can take as innovator.

Choose a theme to continue your journey!

Choose a particular theme to continue your journey:

The Innovator as Observer and Experimenter

Innovation is closely linked to learning. But how to learn in the daily practice of the orchestra? And what to learn? Rethinking audience participation starts with becoming aware of how audiences are already present in regular symphonic practices. By becoming an observer of your own orchestra, you are able to make implicit expectations, norms and ideals about audiences visible – and changeable. As experimenter, you design experimental or participatory concerts with the aim of learning from them.

Choice of theme 1

Cultivating Reflexivity within the Orchestra

Artistically meaningful innovation requires reflexive learning over time. Reflexive learning is the capability of musicians and staff to anticipate uncertain musical situations and unexpected changes to their routines. How to stimulate and embed this reflexive learning in the everyday practices of both musicians and staff of the orchestra? What does it take to reflexively learn over time?

Choice of theme 2

Explore a different character

What does audience participation mean from another perspective? Select a character to continue your journey into audience participation!