In 2020, FVD Consulting participated as a panel member in the scenario development for future cultural audiences by DEN. DEN is the Knowledge Institute for Culture, Heritage & Digitisation based in The Netherlands. The purpose of the scenarios is to identify emerging opportunities and challenges in order to proactively develop perspectives for action.

Future Cultural Audiences Scenario Development

For this process, DEN identified challenges for the next five to fifteen years which are central to the future sustainability of the sector. The scenarios focus on the following key questions:

• How does the audience of the future define culture and how do they participate in culture in the medium term (five years) and the long term (15 years)?
• What is the role of the digital transformation in this respect?
• Who are the cultural audiences of the future? What do they consider culture to be?
• And how is culture actively and passively experienced in a society that is becoming increasingly digital?

The resulting scenarios should not be seen as forecasts or predictions. They are plausible stories describing directions in which cultural audiences might evolve. They can serve as the basis for a dialogue with the sector about the implications for their digital strategies.

A note about Covid-19

The scenario development took place in the summer 2020 when the impacts of the corona pandemic on the cultural sector were still very unclear. However, the conversation about the cultural audiences of the future and the impact of the digital transformation on the perception of culture is, for the most part, not related to COVID-19.