57-453 Art of Audience Engagement
6 units, Carnegie Mellon University
Art of Audience Engagement is a projectbased course that equips musicians with the tools to design innovative, audiencecentered musical experiences beyond the traditional concert model. Drawing on principles of entrepreneurship, students engage in market research, customer discovery, and experience design to better understand and reach diverse audiences. Working with real stakeholders, students develop and test new performance and engagement formats across educational, community, and artistic contexts. Each student completes three applied projects selected from options such as redesigning the undergraduate Convocation experience, creating new recital formats for CMU Preparatory School, producing a musicianled podcast, developing an interactive family concert, or presenting an audiencecentered lecture recital for seasoned concertgoers. Emphasis is placed on iterative prototyping, feedback, and realworld implementation. Students leave the course with practical experience, a portfolio of tested projects, and strategies for building sustainable, audiencedriven artistic initiatives. Course Objectives By the end of the semester, students will be able to Apply entrepreneurial frameworks market research, customer discovery, prototyping to musical contexts Design and deliver audiencecentered musical experiences across a range of settings Communicate effectively about music in spoken, interactive, and narrative formats Develop and test new engagement models through pilot projects and feedback Collaborate with stakeholders to align artistic work with audience needs Manage projects from concept through implementation and documentation Evaluate how audience engagement supports artistic impact, relevance, and sustainability
Prerequisites: none listed
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