The connected audience
Cultural attendance does not depend on communication but on the bond woven between people and cultural offerings. This prior relationship determines the meaning that each person finds in participating.
Beyond the Logic of Supply: Connection as Foundation
In cultural action, whether subsidized or private, the objective most often remains to reach an audience, meaning that people feel the desire to participate. I am convinced that every cultural offering, in its singularity, has somewhere its natural audience. When attendance is low, the cause does not lie in the inadequacy of the proposed work, but in the absence of a bond woven between this offering and the people it could reach. The challenge therefore consists in establishing this relationship, in building this bridge between the work and those it concerns.
The approach I advocate here goes beyond simple matching between supply and demand. As Antoine Hennion emphasizes in La Passion musicale (1993), cultural mediation is not limited to the transmission of content but involves the construction of attachments. It is about working from the outset on the nature of the bond, because cultural participation is above all an identity question: do I have within me a deep connection that makes me recognize this cultural activity as essential to my journey?
Let’s take an example: I have adored since my adolescence this music group that I listen to regularly. It symbolizes for me something very important, if not essential, in the construction of my identity. When I learn that this group is performing in a large venue, I rush to buy tickets. In a few minutes, thousands of seats can sell out. A superficial analysis might conclude that it was good communication that generated this turnout. In reality, it is precisely the opposite: communication was only the spark. The true reason for this mobilization lies in the prior importance of this music group for these people. Rare will be those in the audience who are discovering the artist. The neophytes present will have been convinced by close friends themselves deeply attached to this group, eager to share a common experience.
The Illusion of Communication and the Reality of Pre-existing Connection
We dream that the same process could apply to emerging artists. There must be room for everyone, and renewal nourishes cultural diversity, essential to our creative and human ecosystem. As UNESCO affirms in its Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005), this diversity constitutes “a common heritage of humanity” that “should be celebrated and preserved for the benefit of all”.
The usual reasoning would have it that a lesser-known artist requires more communication to create opportunities for encounter. This logic is also false. Why? Because the bond having not been previously woven, even the most sophisticated, best-targeted communication will run up against this absence of pre-existing connection. This bond must therefore be cultivated by other means.
Professionals know certain proven techniques. An emerging, little-known industrial metal group will be programmed by relying on belonging to the musical genre to reach fans of this aesthetic. This is the principle of opening acts: established artists host emerging talents from the same musical universe. This practice, which has become almost a dogma in contemporary music programming, does indeed allow bonds to be gradually woven. Spectators, who came for the main artist, discover despite themselves new horizons that can, over time, become significant for them.
Cultural Experience as Identity Transformation
The bond is not built solely in the aesthetic continuity of offerings. We must understand all the motivations that lead people to participate in a cultural offering. Going to a show, visiting a museum or monument is above all a social and identity experience. Why rush to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in a crowded room, when exceptionally high-quality digital reproductions are accessible in two clicks on our high-definition screens?
We don’t go to the Louvre to contemplate the Mona Lisa, the imposed distance and limited time in front of the work hardly allow it. We go there to live the experience, personal and collective, of having approached the most famous painting in the world. This truth applies to all cultural offerings. I do not deny the possibility of an authentic discovery or aesthetic emotion in a museum. But what gives meaning to our visit is the symbolic importance of this visit and the identity transformation it operates within us.
“I went to the Louvre” does not construct the same identity as a person as “I have never been to the Louvre”. We become different through this practice. And “I went to the Louvre Abu Dhabi” constructs yet another identity facet. I am not speaking here of social benefits or cultural capital in Bourdieu’s sense (La Distinction, 1979), but of our own identity transformed by a cultural practice. Some people, nevertheless, find no resonance in the Louvre and would see no identity transformation there, even by visiting it, for lack of prior connection with their personal construction. Everyone possesses different identity criteria, which can be enriched, transformed, proposed, and cultivated.
Netflix or the Strategy of Algorithmic Connection
Let’s observe how certain contemporary platforms work on this question of connection. Netflix represents much more than a simple distribution channel. The platform constitutes an identified label: one finds there content less conventional than on traditional television, but remarkably scripted and produced. Netflix cultivates the bond constantly through extremely fine analysis of its audiences.
The platform does not follow a simple logic of supply but a strategy of deep connection, intrinsic to its very design. After acquiring the rights to quality series, Netflix analyzed viewing behaviors with surgical precision. Artificial intelligence then guided the production of their first original series, House of Cards (2013), whose narrative framework responded precisely to identified expectations. This series, of undeniable quality, was literally designed to create a connection with what already mattered to many viewers.
This approach (called “data-driven”), although commercially effective, raises questions about cultural standardization and artistic risk-taking. Nevertheless, it demonstrates the importance of knowing those to whom one is addressing oneself, not to flatter them, but to establish an authentic connection.
Encounter as Method: Toward Embodied Knowledge of Territory
For cultural venues anchored in territories, the work consists simply, though this simplicity is very demanding, in going to meet the inhabitants, to know them and recognize them. This is in no way demagoguery but knowledge of the other. Let us honestly ask ourselves: what portion of our professional time do we devote to formal encounters with our audiences? We easily legitimize time spent prospecting at the Avignon Festival or the Cannes Festival to spot new creations. But do we deploy as much effort to meet those to whom we address ourselves?
Without this knowledge, how can we propose works that resonate with what matters to them, that give them a profound reason to travel? It is quite simply impossible. This requirement, for it is one, is neither demagoguery nor the desire to please. It is about knowing those to whom one is addressing oneself. Knowing the other is being connected with them. From this relationship can be born mutual enrichment, surprises, fruitful disagreements, constructive disputes.
Authentic connection allows for risk-taking: “I trust you, I come to see everything you propose, even what might displease me. It interests me anyway.” That is the true connection. This connection must be built, activated, cultivated. This responsibility falls to us. We cannot ask people to do this work in our place based on a few posters, however aesthetic they may be, or publications on social networks, however numerous they may be.
Cultivating the Relationship: A Living and Continuous Process
My proposal is simple in its statement and demanding in its implementation: organize in our schedule formalized moments dedicated to encounters with the people to whom we address ourselves. From this regular practice, we will establish deep connections, we will truly know them.
Caution, this knowledge is never definitively acquired. Communities evolve, expectations transform, identities recompose themselves. It is not about commissioning an audience study from an external firm to know once and for all “the audience’s expectations.” I am speaking of exactly the opposite: it is not about knowing the tastes or expectations of an abstract audience, but about connecting with concrete people.
This connection passes between human beings. It is not an online questionnaire to fill out, it is a living relationship. And digital tools and databases must also accompany us. In a cultural venue, the work is collective, staff changes, we must preserve the memory of relationships woven. We cannot afford to lose the connection. Because if we lose it, we will lose much more: we will lose our place itself. Without connections, no places. The formula may seem terse, but it summarizes the fundamental challenge of our cultural action.
As Walter Benjamin already wrote in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), the authentic cultural experience concerns the aura, that “singular weave of space and time” that connects us to the work (with many nuances, which I have documented in the article The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Mediation. Today, this aura no longer resides only in the uniqueness of the work, but in the quality of the connection woven between people and cultural offerings. It is this connection that we must cultivate, patiently, humbly, but with determination.
(Collage created by young people from the PJJ as part of a workshop led by Benoît Labourdette - 2025)
My multidisciplinary practices—spanning creation, cultural action, training, and support in a wide range of cultural, social, and educational contexts across France—provide me with a privileged, subjective, and in-depth observatory of the cultural sector in France.
This sector is weakened by its position, often deemed “non-essential” by many political leaders, by the competition from digital platforms in cultural practices, as well as by challenges and obstacles related to the difficulty of establishing interdisciplinary collaborations and the scarcity of evaluations, which are often poorly conducted and instrumentalized.
My observatory allows me to identify dynamics that work, as well as difficulties I observe. Here, I propose to share my analyses, methods, and suggestions, hoping they may prove useful. My goal is to contribute to a stronger cultural sector in the future, as I believe that defending a cultural sector funded by taxpayers’ money holds the potential for emancipation, the development of freedoms, democracy, and the capacity to act—in a way that is fundamentally different from what private actors produce.
This is possible if there is no hypocrisy, and in my view, it comes at the cost of a commitment to lucidity and self-questioning, a choice to deconstruct representations, and perhaps to challenge certain privileges and systems of domination.
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The Fertile Margin
Reframe cultural and therapeutic practices within the current reality, where digital culture has become the dominant culture.
Publicly funded culture has become marginal in the face of digital practices. Rather than lamenting this, this article proposes to embrace that (…) -
Growing Up in Cultural Contempt
When the Emancipation Sector Manufactures Domination: A Sociological Analysis of an Intimate Experience
Contempt is not an accident of the cultural system; it is its fuel. What François Dubet analyzes on a societal scale, I experienced from childhood (…) -
What Artistic Discourse Reveals About Itself
A semiological analysis of a performance program text, when the talk about art speaks primarily of power.
A flyer distributed to audience members before a show may seem like nothing more than a mediation tool. Linguistic analysis reveals something (…) -
The Dramatization of Mistrust
When cultural venues stage the opposite of their own rhetoric.
An evening at the theater in a left-leaning city reveals a troubling paradox: the welcoming procedures produce exactly the opposite of the (…) -
What we avoid seeing when we defend culture
When young people are forced to go to the theater under threat of sanction, the promised emancipation can become suffered oppression.
Calls to defend funding for arts and cultural education are multiplying in the face of budget cuts. While these commitments are legitimate, they (…) -
The Representation of One’s Cultural Role
What the Association of French Mayors survey reveals about the cultural imaginary of local authorities.
What do we presuppose when we speak of “audiences distant from culture”? The AMF survey, read as an anthropological document, unveils the (…) -
For a Permanent Cultural Transformation
Moving beyond political infantilization to rebuild our institutions.
Faced with budget cuts in arts education, cultural actors appeal to those in power. This posture of supplication reveals, in my view, a dead end. (…) -
Is Culture Serving the Public?
Reflections on the dead ends of French cultural policy.
Do the 4 billion euros of the national culture budget truly serve the general interest? This question deserves to be asked pointedly, as budget (…) -
The True False Cultural Freedom
When defending creative freedom masks a corporatist conflict.
Faced with recent film deprogrammings by elected officials from various political sides, a collective statement expresses outrage at political (…) -
The Hypocrisy of Cultural Actors’ Independence
When the fear of political alternation reveals the unspoken truths of the French cultural sector.
Cultural actors have been regularly mobilizing for some time against an alleged threat to their programming and creative freedom. But does this (…) -
The False Public-Private Debate in the Cultural Sector
What is at stake in cultural policies is not the public-private opposition, but a transformation in what we expect from culture.
The rhetoric of scarcity masks deliberate political choices. Deconstructing the false public-private debate allows us to think differently about (…) -
The Free Institution
Opening spaces for creation outside the logics of cultural domination.
For thirty-five years, in response to the systems of domination that structure the cultural field, I have been proposing an alternative approach: (…) -
Why Are Cultural Actors So Fragile?
A plea for a democratic refoundation of cultural institutions in the face of political arbitrariness.
From Arcadi in Île-de-France in 2018 to the Agence culturelle Grand Est in 2025, cultural agencies are disappearing into indifference. Beyond the (…) -
Social Networks and Cultural Institutions: Breaking the Strategic Deadlock
Towards a digital policy that renounces communication in favor of citizen empowerment.
Local authorities are massively investing in their presence on social networks without questioning the relevance of this approach, and are (…) -
Beyond Mobilizing Audiences: Building Democratic Narratives
Rethinking the link between cultural institutions and citizens through collective storytelling.
Cultural structures struggle to mobilize audiences. Rather than perfecting communication strategies, I explore here a different path: that of (…) -
On the Fragility of Corporatism
When the defense of cultural privileges masquerades as freedom of expression.
The recent condemnation of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region has aroused enthusiasm among performing arts professionals. Yet, this provisional legal (…) -
The connected audience
Rethinking cultural participation through building connections.
Cultural attendance does not depend on communication but on the bond woven between people and cultural offerings. This prior relationship (…) -
Culture and politics: the forgotten lesson of sanitary totalitarianism
Reflections on the submission of the cultural sector in the face of authority.
In 2025, the French cultural sector is alarmed by the rise of the Rassemblement National. However, its behavior during the Covid period reveals a (…) -
Rethinking the digital content strategy of cultural institutions
For a web presence that prioritizes editorial authority over social media dispersion.
Cultural institutions would benefit from concentrating their efforts on producing reference content rather than maintaining a dispersed presence (…) -
The artistic relationship with the audience
The paradoxical intimacy of live streams on social media.
Starting from the Belgian pop duo Candeur Cyclone on social media, I explore the dialectic of contemporary artistic encounters. Questioning our (…) -
The Non-Institutional Cultural Institution
For a citizen reappropriation of creation.
Rethinking culture beyond institutional walls: how spontaneous practices redefine our relationship with creation and question established cultural (…) -
The Accelerated Eye
Manifesto for a new ecology of the gaze.
What if speed were not the enemy of culture, but the instrument of a new form of sensitive intelligence? A radical reappropriation of our right to (…) -
The myth of recognition through cultural democratization
Rethinking artistic value beyond systems of domination.
Artistic recognition is less about talent than about a social game that some refuse to participate in. A reflection on alternative paths to (…) -
The Misguided Debate on Funding Cuts for Culture
Rethinking the Role of Public Funding Beyond the Numbers
In 2025, debates over funding cuts for culture are heating up, following unprecedented reductions in public subsidies and a political shift in (…) -
For a narrative revolution of territories
The urgency of a horizontal cultural democracy.
What if true cultural power resided in the stories we write, daily, from our positions, with our words? Each territory produces a narrative. Not (…) -
Implementing cultural dissemination
Towards a decentralized and participatory cultural network.
Faced with the crisis of cultural democratization and a growing disengagement of public action in the cultural domain, new forms of artistic (…) -
Culture and political power: from a marriage of convenience to a consummated divorce
From Louis XIV to Rachida Dati: anatomy of a rupture between subsidized culture and political legitimacy.
Culture is no longer the theater of power. Once an instrument of political influence, it now struggles to justify its public funding. How can we (…) -
What is a cultural policy? Why is culture political? And what is political in culture?
A critical approach to cultural policies through the lens of cultural rights.
All culture is political because it imposes rules of belonging and worldviews. Exploring this dimension illuminates the democratic stakes of (…) -
Dilapidation of resources in supply logic
For a democratic revolution of cultural practices.
Faced with the crisis in the cultural sector, it is urgent to shift from a top-down supply logic to a culture of connection and listening, (…) -
Formalizing the informal
Informality, essential to learning, resists structure while calling for it. How to tame it.
The absence of informal aspects in distance learning forces us to rethink its fundamental nature. This constraint becomes a laboratory for (…) -
Towards a distributed cultural sector
Hypotheses on the commons and digital diversity.
What if digital cultures showed us how to build the commons through distribution rather than centralization? This hypothesis invites us to rethink (…) -
France’s cultural sector faces the urgent need for a rethink
From 1959 to 2025, history repeats itself... in reverse.
French cultural sector funding is crumbling. Malraux’s “colonial” heritage (1959) is obsolete in the face of digital technology and political (…) -
Cultivating digital sovereignty
For a democratic reclaiming of our digital spaces.
Faced with our growing dependence on tech giants, digital sovereignty is becoming a major democratic challenge. It’s time to act collectively. The (…) -
Cultural investigation with artificial intelligence
Towards an open, non-directive methodology for revealing the unexpected.
How can we transcend the limitations of traditional cultural surveys? By combining spontaneous dialogues and AI analysis, a new approach could (…) -
Corporate memory at the service of cultural rights
Rethinking the relationship between cultural venues and people.
Cultural institutions, through their failure to collect and care for data, forget those they welcome, denying their dignity. This amnesia (…) -
Towards voluntary evaluation of cultural projects
For “cultural prevention” policies.
The subsidized cultural sector is going through a crisis of legitimacy after betraying its democratic values. I believe that a refoundation (…) -
Welcoming radicalized people to cultural venues
For a truly inclusive cultural democracy.
Do cultural venues filter their audiences, consciously or unconsciously, according to criteria of radicalism? This question reveals our (…) -
Cultural venues and social networks
How to turn audiences into ambassadors rather than chasing followers.
Cultural venues are on social media out of obligation, without a clear strategy or convincing results. We need to rethink their presence: no (…) -
Documentation and artificial intelligence
Rethinking professional practices.
Generative AI can profoundly enrich our professional practices. To exploit their potential for constructive synthesis and analysis, we need to (…) -
For a virtuous dispersal of the cultural sector
The end of traditional cultural influence.
The cultural sector is going through a major crisis that reveals a paradigm shift. In my opinion, we must now cultivate culture everywhere, in all (…) -
The marginality of cultural institutions
Lucidity of a paradigm shift.
Traditional cultural institutions, once central, have become marginal in the face of digital practices that now dominate citizens’ attention. This (…) -
On the role of artists
For a politics of the artist.
The political role of the artist is never neutral. Whether they want it or not, their social position and aesthetic choices reflect an engagement, (…) -
Primary and secondary cultural practices
For a cultural dialectic of public proposals.
Daily cultural practices (internal) are underestimated compared to external cultural offerings, yet the latter are secondary in people’s lives. (…) -
Re-engaging France’s public cultural sector as a good corporate citizen
Avenues of action for a permanent future.
Facing budget cuts, the public cultural sector must reconnect with its democratic mission. Beyond corporatism, professionals must strengthen their (…) -
Evolving forms of artistic creation
An anthropological reflection on the forms of subsidized artistic creation.
Subsidized art must distinguish itself from the commercial sector through a fundamentally democratic approach, favoring shared experience over (…) -
Beyond walls: video as a vehicle for cultural democracy
When digital mediation transforms the relationship between citizens and heritage.
Video in museums represents a challenge of cultural mediation and the democratization of heritage. In the digital age, it transforms the (…) -
Legitimizing unfamiliar cultural practices
Anthropology of the future.
To foster intercultural dialogue, we need to legitimize cultural practices that are unknown to us, without ranking them above our own. This (…) -
Putting Artificial Intelligence to good use in the cultural sector
Methodological approaches.
By 2025, it seems essential to enable employees and stakeholders in the cultural sector to share the challenges of AI within their professional (…) -
Overcoming the fragility of public funding for culture
Anthropological point of view, to sketch out future paths.
Public funding for culture is currently perceived as being under considerable threat, and so the cultural sector seems to be in an extremely (…) -
Systematize mutual discoveries between cultural players
Removing obstacles to cooperation.
Common-sense proposal for better mutual understanding among cultural actors in the same territory. Why don’t we know each other well enough?In (…) -
Pour une robustesse coopérative des projets culturels
Réflexion sur les modalités de coopération territoriale et d’évaluation.
Pour que les projets culturels puissent trouver pleinement leur sens social et devenir plus robustes face aux attaques politiques qui les jugent « (…) -
“Donotdo”
Methodological concept of setting the world in motion.
The neologism “donotdo”, which I develop here, describes the capacity we have to set the world in motion at great depth, to transform it in a way (…) -
New directions
A film by Emmanuel Vergès and Benoît Labourdette (1’25s, 2021).
"What if we gave ourselves new directions by seeking new points of view?Text by Emmanuel Vergès.Direction, image, sound by Benoît (…) -
Balance and supports
A method for the sustainability of projects.
Based on the way the human body balances itself, for a sustainable approach to project management.Observation of nature is often very good (…) -
Build antifragility for cultural projects
Methodological proposal.
What methodology should be adopted to build cultural projects that have the capacity to tame uncertainty and thus become more deeply rooted in (…)
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Dilapidation of resources in supply logic For a democratic revolution of cultural practices.
Faced with the crisis in the cultural sector, it is urgent to shift from a top-down supply logic to a culture of connection and listening, (…) -
Towards a distributed cultural sector Hypotheses on the commons and digital diversity.
What if digital cultures showed us how to build the commons through distribution rather than centralization? This hypothesis invites us to rethink (…) -
Cooperative Narratives Creating polyphonic narrative devices to transform academic knowledge into living and operative knowledge.
How can we overcome the limits of academic narrative to create truly shared knowledge? A concrete experience of collective writing devices that (…) -
“Cultural participation”: interview with Benoît Labourdette. Interview with Benoît Labourdette (4’39s, 2020).
Video presentation of Benoît Labourdette’s approach to the democratic dimension of cultural action. -
“Territorial approach, participation, youth and digital technology”: interview of Benoît Labourdette by Serge Saada (52’, 2021) Observatory of cultural mediation in the social field.
As part of the Observatory of cultural mediation in the social field, Serge Saada interviewed Benoît Labourdette on the impact of the (…)
