Be SpectACTive!

Priorities

- Transnational mobility

- Audience development

- Capacity building: Digital shift

Project description

Be SpectACTive! is a European project based on audience development, involving some of the most innovative European organizations working on active spectatorship in contemporary performing arts. Its members are European festivals, theatres, universities and a research center.

The key word is active spectatorship. It refers to each mechanism through which audiences, namely spectators or citizens, take on the role of decision makers with regard to the many aspects needed to carry out a theatre or dance festival. The project aims to give the audience a decision-making role, providing spectators with individual responsibilities in a common space of creation.

Project objective

In an age of personalization and ubiquitous interactive platforms – where audiences increasingly demand active participation in culture rather than passive consumption – BeSpectACTive! will enable European arts organizations to explore new models and concepts of participation, accessibility, interaction and social cohesion. It focuses on the interaction between cultural activities and new concepts of citizenship and legitimacy, including the most advanced theories of participatory governance.

Gained experience

Be SpectACTive! aims to strengthen audience engagement with artistic creation and with cultural organizations. Its main means of action will be 21 new theatre and dance shows, 54 creative residencies, 30 workshops (with 1.000 local spectators who will choose and programme 108 shows), 4 international conferences and a constant online interaction between artists and web-users. But Be SpectACTive! is also a research project: it will accompany all the previous areas of action in order to evaluate their impact and effectiveness.

Project Be SpectACTive! focuses on long-lasting progressive processes of redirecting different localities, co-organizers, performers and audiences. All activities are the result of the exchange of ideas and practices with the aim of building European transcobal audience in performing arts. Workshops with audience members in the theater or other spaces of the partners in the project, result in creating new opportunities for the audience who chooses performances that can then be incorporated into the theater or festival art program. Such an approach triggers a process of raising awareness of performing arts.