Connected Audience Conference 2025: Culture & Young People

The Connected Audience Conference is held every two years bringing together cultural professionals, researchers, and policymakers to actively participate in discussions about how to build and engage audiences in cultural organizations (museums, theatres, symphonies, etc.).

 

The conference 2025 will address the importance of active engagement with cultural activities, artistic and creative content for healthy adolescent development, supporting young people’s personalities and opportunities for a self-determined lifestyle. At the same time including young people offers the organizations new opportunities in shaping innovative program and education formats as well as and new forms of co-creation, participation and inclusion. What do we know about how young people value these encounters and how to facilitate them well? What are the challenges and opportunities of working for and with young people? Answers to these questions require an understanding of young people’s cultural experiences, values and preferences to build on these insights and shape meaningful experiences and mutual learning opportunities together.

 

To explore these challenges the Institute für Kulturelle Teilhabeforschung (Institute for Research on Cultural Participation | IKTf Berlin) in collaboration with the Institute for Learning Innovation (USA) will bring together experts, researchers, and practitioners from the global cultural sector for discussion and exchange.

 

 

Previous years’ participants have described the conference as fun AND informative, and helpful to make important new connections in their field. This international, biennial conference will be highly interactive and participatory. Wanting to create more of a workshop feeling: There will be more discussion than presentation, and you will learn from both experts and colleagues.

 

The main goal of the conference is to examine how audience research and evaluation can support cultural institutions in gaining a greater understanding of their audiences. This includes how research is both performed and applied. By using these tools, institutions and practitioners will be able to increase participation and better inform their strategic development and overall cultural practice for youth, thus building their future (audiences).

 

The conference organisers are inviting proposals for hands-on workshops, individual and panel presentations or whatever creative format idea you might have that present research findings or other direct evidence that informs effective policy and practice or that creates deep discussions among conference participants. Sample topics and questions include (but are not limited to):

 

These questions, and others are fundamental to the sustainable future of cultural institutions and practitioners. Join us as we seek to understand and build the kind of relationships with young people that the cultural institutions’ missions promise and that sustainable futures demand.

 

 

Please submit an individual presentation, a workshop or choose to organize a panel of 3 speakers or other creative format ideas.

 

To be considered for inclusion in the conference, individuals, groups or panels should submit an abstract in English of no more than 250 words (per individual presenter) and include a short biography and your contact details.

 

The conference organizers will select interesting and innovative proposals, possibly bringing related topics together for a panel discussion. Successful candidates must be committed to attending the whole conference. Each session will be scheduled for approximately an hour with presentations limited to 10 minutes or less to allow significant time for audience participation and discussion. 

 

Any contributors to the conference will be able to attend the conference for free, but will have to bear to pay for their own travel, food and accommodation costs. Travel support may be provided in exceptional cases. Please check first whether other funding sources are available to you (e. g. universities travel allowances or DAAD). Please contact the organisers for more information.

 

DGS interpreting is guaranteed if required. The project team will be happy to answer any questions you may have about accessibility at the event. You may also have the option to leave a corresponding note when registering. 

 

By contributing to the conference, you agree to the processing (collection, storage and publication) of your photo and /or film material (personal data in the form of image data).

 

 

 

Prof. Dr. Vera Allmanritter, Director IKTf

 

Hülya Özsari-Wöffler, Event Management IKTf