Chatting about audience research at Russian conference

I had the total pleasure of taking part in Culture 2.0 yesterday, an open lecture series organised by the St. Petersburg International Forum.

I was invited to take part in a panel discussing Museum Audience Study Strategies and Methods alongside Varvara Korneeva, Head of Visitor Experience, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Egor Sanin, Head of the Audience Department, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Irina Erisanova, Head of the Pasternak House Museum, The State Museum of the History of Russian Literature; and moderated by Alena Yasinskaya, The Head of the Department on Work with the Forum Program, Directorate of the St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum.

There were a couple of firsts for me: being the only virtual contributor via Zoom as the rest of the panel was seated on stage at the event in Tyumen, Russia; and secondly relying on simultaneous interpretation in order to understand and by understood by the moderator, fellow panel contributors and audience members. I was bowled over by the excellent interpretation by Andrey Lesokhin.

The 90 minutes flew by in a fast-paced discussion with questions from the moderator and audience members watching in-person and from the online streaming.

After a year of no work travel, it felt great to be transported into a global setting, and so interesting hearing about practice and thinking in audience research in Russia.