"In 10 years performing arts will reach a more diverse audience.
The performing arts audience needs to reflect the diversity of the population much more,
and there must be developed new and different ways to reach and engage audiences
so the area's approach to the audience as a whole is more broadly based”
(Denmark and the Ministry of Culture, 2015)

In May 2015, the Ministry of Culture Denmark released a vision about how to reach a more diverse audience in the performing arts area without compromising the artistic quality. The Ministry of Culture Denmark defined three focus areas where one of them concerns a new term (or tool) called ‘audience development'. The concept of audience development has its origins in England, where it is a recognized approach to the challenge cultural organizations experience in relation to creating long term relationships with different audiences. Although audience development has existed for many years, it recently became popular in Denmark. It covers different ways to work with the audience and it is not about marketing or money – it revolves around how to incorporate communication and production.

We are probably not alone in distinguishing a paradox in the Ministry of Culture Denmark on the one hand awareness of the diversity of people's needs and cultural assumptions and on the other, striving to make performing arts more diverse by applying to the entire Danish population. We wonder why the performing arts area's obligation is to make sure that there is something for everyone?

We can not help by questioning why the audience should be developed, and why art must become a common property? Is a diverse audience the right answer to achieving a higher level of artistic quality or does the intention to attract the entire population in fact aggravate the artistic quality?

The focus of this thesis is to examine and discuss the use of audience development in four different theatres of whom we assume is working with it in practice. To examine this, we have collected marketing material from each theatre – a selection of their catalogue, website and social media. This data constitutes the analysis object for the audience development multifaceted content and as object for a discussion of the challenges raised working with audience development.

This thesis takes a social constructivist approach, which implies that the resultant conclusion is only one truth of a possible many. Further on, Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis is applied to analyze how the four theatres through linguistic usage indicates a work with audience development. The function of Fairclough’s model as analytical tool made it possible to connect at linguistic oriented dimension, where we identify the different discourses related to audience development, to the social analysis where we discuss the challenges raised working with audience development.