What does it take to get you into a museum or art gallery? The Bay Area arts scene (or any art scene for the matter) can often feel hermetic if you aren’t in the know. And in this climate where funding dollars are scarce and people’s disposable incomes are dwindling, the staffs of all art spaces are acutely aware that attracting audiences (which in turn attracts funding dollars) is crucial for survival.

The NEA is making a push for innovative uses of technology to court the plugged in crowds, suggesting everything from tweeting during opera performances, to counting digital downloads of art and music performances as arts engagement. Local spaces like ArtSpan, are inviting Facebook users to vote to select artwork that will be included in their live auction and SFMOMA’s Open Space Blog allows invited contributors to curate online exhibitions from their permanent collection, but the argument could still be made that even all of these clever uses of technology and social networking is still preaching to their already converted choirs. What does it take to get interested people not already in tune with the insider art track to walk into a space and directly engage with art?

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts just might have the answer. Funded in part by the James Irvine Foundation, YBCA has started the YBCA: YOU, an art enrichment program individually designed for each participant. In January of 2011, YBCA put a call out through email, their website and Facebook for people to sign up for the free program. At first, the organizers were hoping they would get at least 50 participants—at last count they had over 130.

The YBCA:YOU program combines a free all-access pass (an incredible gift being that admission to YBCA’s Gallery is $7 and performing arts tickets are even more) to any and all YBCA events. In addition to the nine-month free pass, each participant will meet with a YBCA staff member to create an “Aesthetic Development Plan based on visual thinking strategies” which is a fancy way of saying that participants get to have actual conversations with a staff member about the art, dance, film or theater you are experiencing and learn how to critically understand that experience. Comparing the program to a personal trainer, YBCA is hoping art becomes a habit in people’s lives similar to exercising and eating well.

Participants provided detailed survey responses and YBCA relayed those back to the program’s primary funder. Initial responses from the survey as well as anecdotal evidence (this writer attended the YBCA: YOU orientation) suggests the participants represent a varied cross section of the city’s demographic. But what is more important is that the majority of respondents admitted that they almost never attend art events. YBCA: YOU has successfully enticed an entirely new
audience into its space and that may well prove to be YBCA: YOU's real power—the simple act of inviting (and getting) people to spend time in their space. The questions remain however:  Will participants actually become habitual arts consumers and, if they do, how can other organizations implement this kind of engagement?