Beyond Mobilizing Audiences: Building Democratic Narratives

Cultural structures struggle to mobilize audiences. Rather than perfecting communication strategies, I explore here a different path: that of democratic narrative as a tool for legitimizing and transforming the cultural sector.

The diagnosis of a mobilization crisis

Performing arts professionals share the observation that cultural venues, particularly in suburban areas, are experiencing a gradual erosion of attendance during regular seasons, while major events like festivals continue to attract significant audiences. This seems to reveal a transformation in cultural practices: an isolated performance is no longer sufficient to justify the trip; citizens now seek a comprehensive “experience,” a social moment as much as an artistic one.

The reasons for this are multiple, including competition from streaming platforms (which offer immediate convenience for receiving cultural content), the multiplication of proposals accessible with a click, economic caution that favors “safe bets” validated by social networks, etc. As Yves Citton analyzes in Pour une écologie de l’attention (2014), we evolve in an attention economy where the relevance of content depends as much on its quality as on its capacity to fit into contemporary information flows. Cultural institutions find themselves competing not only with each other, but with the entire media and digital ecosystem.

Most often, faced with this, “solutions” primarily focus on optimization: adapting schedules, improving visual communication, offering packages, multiplying distribution channels, etc. These tactical adjustments, although useful, remain in my view insufficient because they do not question the very nature of the link between cultural institutions and citizens. They perpetuate a logic where culture remains “proposed” to audiences that must be “mobilized,” without questioning the deep reasons for this growing distance.

The democratic fragility of the cultural sector

In my view, we question too little about a matter of great importance: why do citizens so easily accept reductions in cultural budgets? Why is there no massive mobilization to defend threatened cultural venues? This brings to mind what Antonio Gramsci wrote in his Prison Notebooks (1951) that « the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum we observe the most varied morbid phenomena. » It is clear that the model of cultural democratization is exhausting itself. But what is the new paradigm?

I believe that if the link between subsidized cultural institutions and citizens were truly strong, funding cuts would be experienced as an unbearable amputation. Their resigned acceptance signals something deeper than a simple “attendance crisis”: it reveals a democratic fragility. Institutional culture is no longer perceived as an essential common good, but as one sector among others, or even as a class privilege. Pierre Bourdieu anticipated this as early as 1979 in La Distinction: legitimate cultural practices reproduce patterns of symbolic domination that exclude as much as they include.

Rather than seeking scapegoats (elected officials, social networks, remote work, etc.), I propose adopting a sociological posture that questions our own responsibility: how have we, cultural professionals, contributed to widening this gap? Have we sufficiently worked to account for the democratic meaning of our actions? Have we built narratives that allow citizens to appropriate culture as a common good of which they are co-authors?

Democratic narrative as a tool for transformation

My proposal on the subject of mobilization differs quite fundamentally from the usual way of seeing things. Instead of seeking to “communicate better” about artistic proposals, I suggest developing a systematic practice of democratic narrative. This is not institutional communication, but a territorial narrative ecology where each actor—professional, volunteer, spectator—contributes to weaving the narrative of the cultural territory. As Édouard Glissant writes in Poétique de la Relation (1990): « Act in your place, think with the world. »

Concretely, this means documenting not so much the performances themselves as the lived experiences, the encounters that are created, the personal transformations that occur. When a spectator recounts how a performance allowed her to address a difficult conversation with her teenage daughter, when a volunteer testifies to the friendship born during a set construction, when a resident shares how the neighborhood theater workshop changed his relationship with French, these are the narratives that create connection. These testimonies, shared by the actors themselves on social networks, in private clouds, in newsletters, during meetings, with family, build a horizontal, peer-to-peer legitimacy infinitely more powerful than any press release.

Patrick Germain-Thomas notes in the article La démocratisation culturelle, illusion ou utopie en devenir ? (Quaderni, 2020) that digital mediations promise greater inclusion by supporting horizontal circulation of narratives. But this promise is only realized if we agree to let go of control over the narration. We must encourage each person—territorial agent, artist, spectator—to write, to testify, to share their cultural experience, even and especially if it seems “banal” or “insignificant.” It is precisely this “banality” that creates identification and thus democratic legitimacy. Within municipalities, for example, it is extremely rare, due to hierarchical organization, for people to speak nominally. I encourage them to do so and it’s difficult, because it’s an entire culture, rooted in the history of French administration, that needs to be transformed. It’s about respecting cultural rights, that is, the dignity of everyone, including civil servant employees.

Operational proposals for a narrative ecology

I propose three concrete axes of action, directly applicable:

1. Create devices for collecting democratic narratives

Beyond satisfaction questionnaires, establish light protocols to collect narrative testimonies. For example: at the exit of each performance, offer a notebook where spectators can leave not a rating, but a sentence about what they’re taking with them. Create a territorial hashtag where everyone can share their “cultural moment of the week.” Dedicate a page of the website to residents’ narratives, renewed monthly. Train cultural mediators not to “explain” works but to collect and valorize spectators’ words. These devices require few resources but a radically different posture: accepting that legitimacy is built from the bottom up.

2. Transform slow periods into spaces of shared cultural practice

Rather than seeking only to fill halls for performances, open cultural venues as spaces for amateur practice. If spectators don’t come enough to performances, let’s make them actors of their own culture. Offer open writing workshops, public rehearsals, participatory residencies where residents co-construct with artists, even just by passing through. The goal is not to “replace” professionals with amateurs, but to create porosity between practice and reception that strengthens the sense of belonging. As Patrice Meyer-Bisch argues, cultural democracy « recognizes the equal dignity of cultures and the right of each person to participate in the cultural life of their choice. » These practice moments naturally generate experience narratives that circulate on participants’ social networks.

3. Institute a narrative responsibility for each professional

Make the production of democratic narratives an integral part of each cultural agent’s work. This means including in job descriptions an explicit mission of « documenting the democratic meaning of cultural actions. » Allocate work time specifically for writing, photographing, filming moments of encounter and transformation. Train teams in situated, embodied writing that tells the cultural territory without jargon or dominating posture. These narratives must be disseminated in a decentralized manner: each agent can have their own channel (personal blog, social account) to testify to their professional experience in service of the common good. This multiplication of voices creates a narrative density that reinforces the collective legitimacy of the sector. It’s very good that city mayors are active on social networks, but their agents should be no less so. Experience shows that whenever this is the case, the cultural benefits are immediately tangible. This should not be reserved for a few particularly motivated agents; it must be cultivated, transmitted, organized, and valorized.

Toward a refounding of the cultural democratic pact

These proposals may seem distant from immediate concerns of filling empty halls. They are indeed. Because I believe we are facing not simply a “mobilization crisis,” but a crisis of democratic legitimacy that requires a refounding of the pact between institutional culture and citizens. Tactical adjustments (schedules, communication, pricing) can bring marginal improvements, but they do not solve the structural problem: citizens no longer feel concerned by subsidized culture because they do not recognize themselves as actors in it.

Democratic narrative is not an additional communication tool: it’s a paradigm shift. It implies accepting that the value of our cultural actions is measured less by the number of spectators than by the quality of connections created, less by institutional recognition than by citizen appropriation. It requires having the courage to also document failures, misunderstandings, necessary adjustments, because it is precisely this vulnerability that creates trust.

When current elected officials seek to justify their cultural investments, they need these narratives to concretely demonstrate how culture serves the democratic common good. Without these testimonies, they can no longer legitimize a sector that appears disconnected from daily concerns. Narrative mobilization is therefore not just an abstract democratic exercise: it touches the very heart of the economic survival of the public cultural sector.

Start now, from our current means

The good news is that these proposals do not require additional budgets. They demand a reorientation of collective energy: less time spent designing visuals for social networks, more time collecting and sharing testimonies of lived experiences. Less effort to convince “non-audiences” to come, more attention paid to those who already come to understand and tell what happens in their encounter with art.

Each structure can begin at its own scale. Launch a testimony notebook. Create a monthly newsletter recounting a meaningful encounter. Ask each team member to write a short personal text about what touched them this month. Film three minutes of interview with a spectator after each performance. These small gestures, repeated, progressively create a narrative density that transforms the relationship to the territory.

The question is not whether we are right or wrong in our artistic programming. The question is whether we are building enough narratives that allow citizens to understand why publicly funded culture deserves to exist. Without these narratives, our future is compromised. With them, we create the conditions for a democratic refounding of the cultural sector. The urgency is therefore not so much to fill the halls as to fill the territory with narratives that give meaning to our collective presence in the cultural field.