Audience Engagement and Cultural Diversity

Audience Engagement is a challenging concept. There is no one shared definition and can be an ambivalent term especially when put in relation to the aim of ‘diversifying’ audiences. The article aims to contribute to the understanding of how Audience Engagement can be both framed and implemented as a process which is able to foster and give value to cultural diversity. To this end, we firstly provide a framework of culture and arts as a space of citizenship while discussing key issues that set the stage for an understanding of Audience Engagement as a process of cultural participation and promotion of cultural diversity. In the second part of the article we present an ongoing action-research, implemented in the project “Performing Gender- Dancing in Your Shoes-DIYS” (Creative Europe 2020-2023). The initial insights presented in this essay enrich the understanding of Audience Engagement, by shedding light on the role of co-creation and of cultural operators (organizations and artists) in the mediation of a “constitution of a cosmopolitan imaginary”.