Macao Cultural Centre: Macro-vision is Needed When Buying Programmes

11 2015 | Issue 11
Text/Yuki Ieong, Jason Leong and Roy Lei

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Macao Cultural Centre started running from 1999. Since then, it has been injecting art forces into the city. Pedro Lencastre has worked as the director of programme and marketing for the past 16 years, attending art events of all scales with his team. Sometimes they would spend over ten hours to appreciate a piece of work to ensure the Cultural Centre is showing what can respond to the citizens’ preferences. One of the main duties of Pedro Lencastre is to observe Macao people’s needs and intentions towards art events, and attend different art events everywhere to collect splendid programmes. He describes himself as the middleman between art performers and audiences. Lencastre doesn’t speak Cantonese, but he appreciates the costumes and performance style of Chinese operas. Before viewing Chinese art performances, he would read the translated scripts or briefs first to make sure he has grasped the essence of the story. Then he will feel the atmosphere and tension of the stories through actors’ interpretation, costumes and body languages.

 

Lencastre has witnessed the change in the consumer group of the Cultural Centre. In the beginning they were more inclined to classical music, and have gradually changed to diversified programmes, for example, performances suitable for the whole family, and other art consumers have nurtured other tastes. He also noticed that a more stable young consumer group has emerged lately.

 

Apart from hallmark classicals, the most popular art programme among locals is musicals. Lencastre said: “Local art consumers incline more to familiar performances like Swan Lake and the number of people who risk to see unfamiliar shows are fewer. But the Culture Centre still picks a number of non-mainstream, vanguard art shows for consumers’ choice. After all, our team needs to have macro-vision. We do not provide cultural events just to increase tickets revenue, but also to stimulate inspiration of local art workers and broaden their perspectives.”

 

The types of programmes in the Cultural Centre are all-inclusive, suitable for the needs for all ages, including topics like hallmarks, family and classics. Lencastre said that the most challenging point is that there is no particular target audience for the Cultural Centre, thus the promotional proposals and posters designs need to be changed often in order to understand characteristics and preferences of different audiences.

 

The Cultural Centre has hosted almost 1,000 cultural events and performances last year, with an attendance of 270,000, which is 8% more than the previous year. Lencastre thought that an art programme that is tremendously popular overseas might not be a bestseller in Macao. It depends on whether the programme’s topic and cultural background is related to the local scene, and other complicated factors like the interpretation style and current trend. For example, the attendance of the Cultural Centre is affected during the World Cup period.

 

Lencastre confessed: “No one can guarantee which type of programmes must be popular among local people. In addition to evaluating consumers’ preferences based on the selling of tickets, we also need to pay attention to media reports and discussions on social platforms. We need to communicate actively with audiences, and travel overseas to observe frequently.”

 

Lencastre did not agree that Macao lacks art programme consumers, and did not think it is necessary to evaluate the local’s art appreciation ability. He said: “Citizens who play music with a radio on street and farmers who hum songs while harvesting both have an eye for art appreciation. Cultural acts with local characteristics can be found everywhere, and anyone has the ability to appreciate artworks.”

 

As a place to nurture cultural consumer, Lencastre said that attracting citizens to purchase tickets is only the basic step of the Cultural Centre. The second step is to make consumers participate in workshops actively to learn and create arts. The third is to enrich art workers’ creations, and the last is to raise the attachment of importance of the society to the art culture.