Audience engagement and development at a town and gown cinema

Topp, Dominic and Brydon, Lavinia (2022) Audience engagement and development at a town and gown cinema. In, Tsitsou, Lito, Rana, Helen and Wessels, Bridgette (eds.) The Formation of Film Audiences: Conference Proceedings. The Digital Humanities Institute.

Abstract

This paper presents the initial findings of a research project investigating the audience engagement and development strategies of UK ‘town and gown’ cinemas. These are independent cinemas located on a university campus or strongly affiliated with a local university that cater to both the academic community and the general population. While there is growing scholarship on audience formation and regional cinema culture in the UK, there is little understanding of the particular challenges such cinemas face as they seek to offer a wide range of films while simultaneously serving a wide range of audiences.

The paper takes as a case study the Gulbenkian cinema, situated on the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data about the cinema, as well as interviews with its programming and marketing team, it examines the Gulbenkian’s current programming strategies, the relative success of different types of film screened in 2019-20 and the different types of audience that attend the cinema. It then outlines strategies that have been developed to tap into the various demographics that the cinema serves, including a number of student-focussed initiatives. In doing so, the paper offers an overview of some of the negotiations that must be made by a cinema that seeks to appeal to diverse and distinct audiences.

Dominic Topp is a Lecturer in Film at the University of Kent. His current research explores the storytelling strategies of post-World War II French cinema. His work has been published in Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind and Significação: Revista de Cultura Audiovisual, and in the edited collection Mapping Movie Magazines: Digitization, Periodicals and Cinema History (2020).

Lavinia Brydon is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Kent. Her interests centre on issues of place and space in film, extending from questions of representation to current debates regarding exhibition sites, location filming and screen media tourism. Much of her recent work is community-engaged and positions her film expertise in the wider cultural domain. She has published in various journals and edited collections, including Film Studies and Leisure/Loisir.

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Contributors

Author: Dominic Topp

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