Manchester is known worldwide as a music city, but not necessarily for its classical music provision that spans professional orchestras, traditional and non-traditional concert venues including the internationally recognised Bridgewater Hall, traditional, specialist and contemporary classical music ensembles, and wide-ranging education, learning and outreach work across Manchester and the Greater Manchester region.
Yet despite this impressive breadth and depth in classical music, the audience trend for attending live classical music concerts is not increasing.
In partnership with The Audience Agency, we were commissioned by Manchester City Council to research classical music audiences in Manchester and identify ways to grow audiences for live classical music concerts. The Audience Agency analysed audience data from the multiple partners to identify audience trends. We conducted in-depth consultations with all the partners and looked at national and international comparators.
Our detailed report with costed recommendations was completed and presented to the City Council’s Leader, Director of Culture and the Executive Member for Skills, Culture and Leisure during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Despite the project completing in the middle of a pandemic, the partners are identifying ways to work collaboratively to raise their collective profile with audiences and stakeholders.
Thorsten Mayer, Principal Resources and Programmes Officer, Culture, Manchester City Council
Many of the orchestras, classical music ensembles and concert halls in Manchester are working in partnership with BBCRadio3 to produce a week of live and recorded concerts (postponed due to Covid-19).
With live concerts cancelled during the pandemic, the orchestras and concert halls have creatively developed live classical music experiences for audiences to experience digitally.
There's nothing like a crisis to enable new collaborations and Manchester's classical music sector is part of wider discussions for collaborative joint marketing to engage audiences.
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