But it has to work the other way as well Jake. No point in having a system that positions ‘high’ (subsidised) culture against ‘low’ (non-subsidised) culture. Those who are off to see a bit of Operatic Otello in a Digbeth warehouse next week should get free tickets to Snow White on Ice at the Alex next year.

Dave

Agreed. My examples pointed to a trading up from ‘low’ to ‘high’ brow, but I’m not sure that’s what I really intended. The main thing is to convert people who attend something once or twice a year to attending three times a year (or more). I think that pairing could be between obvious crowd-pleasers and less obvious ones though.

What gets me is that ‘going out and having a good time’ should be considered such a hard thing to sell to people.

Chris

Well, you are competing against ‘staying in and being miserable’.

I’m not going to comment on Scene Central, because it might come across as sour grapes.

I think the good folk of the Black Country would welcome some facilities rather than a campaign aimed at telling them the cultural experiences they value, that makes meaning for them are somehow second rate. I thought Postmodernism dealt with all this?

NB: NI11 = ‘The percentage of the adult population in a local area that have engaged in the arts at least three times in the past 12 months.”

What gets me is that ‘going out and having a good time’ should be considered such a hard thing to sell to people. After all, this lot – http://thefuntheory.com/ – can apparently make walking up stairs and using bins seem fun.

My idea? Package up arts experiences in threes like Collateralised Debt Obligations. If you want to see A Christmas Carol and We Will Rock You, you are forced to sit through Katya Kabanova too. Either by law [joke], or via clever pricing incentives. A website that did that might be quite interesting…