This Monday past, we held our Volunteer Appreciation Party, to recognise the work and contribution of the volunteers who work on our Granting Committee. It was held in Calgary Opera's Arrata Centre, a beautifully restored church in the Beltline district. Part of our entertainment that evening were the performances of two young artists, Whitney-Leigh Sloan and John Conlon, both of whom are participants in Calgary Opera's Emerging Artists Programme. The pair sang a duet and then each performed a solo.

What intrigued me was the way in which Whitney performed. Instead of standing at the front of the room, next to the piano, she walked amongst her audience and shared her song with us. This was a completely different way in which to engage with an audience and it effectively included us in her performance.

Engaging with an audience is something which is crucial to the arts and indeed, any business. In our service orientated world, ensuring that we are catering to what our client, customer or consumer wants is vital to the success of any organisation. However, the challenge in the arts is often to engage those who are non-traditional audiences as well as maintaining a core audience. Key to achieving this is to identify and break down barriers, which can be as simple as taking the art to the audience, much in the way that Whitney brought the song to us by coming down off the "stage" and walking amongst us.

The Arts Council of England has addressed this issue in an innovative way by conducting a national Arts Debate. This will result in a report, based on recent consultation with arts organisations and arts audiences. This research is designed to discover both what the public perception is of "art" and to ask the question "if you were the Arts Council, how would you do the job of supporting and promoting the arts?".

This resonates with us at CADA as we continually look for new ways to support the arts community in Calgary, as well as ways of promoting access and awareness of the arts to Calgarians. In both cases, the issue is catering to audiences and engaging them in the development and enjoyment of the arts.