Developing Gaelic Arts

Improving Awareness and Raising the Profile

The Gaelic Arts Agency has been tasked with the lead role in Audience Development by the GASD Forum. This key area is one in which Gaelic Arts Agency has a wealth of experience building on its core expertise in this crucial and challenging arena.

If arts are to inform, enrich and improve the quality of life for all, they have to reach their audience. Effort and resources put into productions that play to empty halls or publications that are seldom read may support a level of artistic development but do little in terms of community development, language sustainability or wider economic benefits. The greater the market, the more economic benefits accrue to the artists and organisations and the more the cultural benefits grow for the wider population. Audience development underpins sustainable development of quality Gaelic arts that will exist for and influence the future. It is considered to have the highest strategic importance in making Gaelic arts more inclusive and encouraging more people to engage with the language.

Aims of Audience Development strand of the GASD Programme are:

• To increase attendance and participation through research and projects
• improve awareness and accessibility of Gaelic arts
• build on the linkages between Gaelic arts and use of the language
• enhance the marketing skills of those developing, promoting and delivering Gaelic arts activities.