Our Network

Welcome to the new International Network for Audience Research in the Performing Arts (iNARPA). The University of Leeds in conjunction with Deakin University will be managing the network with support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

This exciting new network aims to stimulate new debate on the potential of emerging audience research methods to provide fresh insight into questions of cultural value by bringing together academics, consultants, artists, audiences and arts practitioners from a diverse range of disciplines.

In particular, the network will explore the potential of combining inter-disciplinary approaches to audience research to provide fresh insights into questions of cultural value. The network will provide a catalyst for innovative, multi-method and multi-disciplinary discussions and research projects that will in turn generate significant advances in our understanding of the audience experience and the role(s) that audiences play, not only in the arts but in society at large. The implications of this for the wider fields of Arts Marketing, Arts Management and Cultural Policy Studies are likely to be significant, in the UK, Australia and further afield.

The overriding aspiration of this network is to provide a home for audience researchers and practitioners, which will function as a crucible of thinking and re-thinking about how society understands the impact of the performing arts on audiences.

Let’s Keep the Conversation Going

As part of the network we will run four events over the next two years (please see our events page). Alongside these events we will have an interactive blog to keep the conversation going, add your thoughts, criticisms, bright ideas, breakthroughs, discussion topics and debates.

At the end…

At the end of the network we will be publishing a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal on audience research, for which we’ll invite expressions of interest and abstracts over the course of the network. We are also aiming to develop a large AHRC bid to fund an interdisciplinary research project exploring ‘ways of knowing’ the audience experience.

Get involved

To get involved in the network, RSVP to an event, join the conversation on the blog and Twitter and join us in putting audience research and engagement on the map!