Intro

In 2025 New Performance Turku created a pilot to develop a more organic link with local communities, the Audience Ambassador Program. The pilot ran for four months and involved an open call, training a team of ambassadors, supporting pedagogical experimentation, and bringing ideas to life during the 2025 performance Biennale week. The pilot reimagined how local audiences who do not belong to the art field could engage and actively participate in a performance event and connect with this very experimental form of art. Our proposal was to create the figure of the Audience Ambassador (a translator role moving between art and society) and to design a training and production scheme to put it to practice. 

This online publication, prepared and edited by NPT Curator of Audience Engagement, features the stories written by the ambassadors about their work with local communities and reflections on the learning process. It also includes an overview of the concept with the aims of the pilot, pedagogical approach, and components of the implementation.

A full report prepared by the Curator of Audience Engagement, María Villa Largcha, is available explaining in detail the approach to audience engagement and assessing the design of this pilot training, as well as challenges and discoveries from the implementation that are essential to carry out future versions of the program. 

We hope this publication will be useful to our local and international partner organizations, and to anyone interested in the promotion of a closer and richer relationship between art and its publics.