Audience Engagement in the Arts: A Guide to Public Programming

Duration: Jul 08 – Aug 5, 2024
Fee: 189€
Max Seats: 32
Enroll Before: Jul 4, 2024
Live Sessions: 2 hrs/week

Public programs play a vital role in engaging art audiences – from educational and participatory activities, such as artist talks, performances, and workshops, to outreach initiatives in schools, communities, and beyond. They offer art museums and curators multidimensional ways to reach diverse audiences, facilitate community-building, and create memorable experiences.

This course gives a comprehensive guide to audience engagement and public programming in the arts by exploring their history, theory, and especially their practice. We will cover questions such as: How do we forefront the public in public programs? How to decide what form a public program should take? What are the practical hands–on aspects needed to realize a public program? Through these questions and more, participants will discover how to shape their own present and future programs.

We will focus on three key areas of public programming: interpretive programming (programs done in response to an exhibition or other prompt), independent programming (programs that are created for their own purpose), and experimental or interdisciplinary programming. Case studies–both from the instructor’s programs and from around the world–and short readings will help us as we explore these forms.

Since public programming occurs in a wide range of art organizations and independently, this course is for artists, curators, cultural workers, educators, museum and other arts nonprofit staff, academics/professors, and more. By the end of the course, participants will have a greater understanding of the many possibilities of public programming and the practical skills needed to engage art audiences in innovative and inspiring ways.

About Daniel Atkinson

Daniel Atkinson is a public programmer, curator, educator, and publisher, who currently programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Atkinson has over a decade of educational and programming experience at institutions of all sizes, including: including the Walker Art Center and Emerging Curators Institute in Minneapolis, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and at Dia:Beacon, the Museum of Modern Art, Art:21, and the Museum of the Moving Image across New York.

Atkinson is currently co-producing two books: an interview-based history of recent museum education and programming practice and an introductory reader on contemporary curatorial practice from a global perspective.