By Erica Demarest

It’s been described as the best party in town.

Not exactly the image “opera outreach program” conjures for most people, but with live music, animated conversation and authentic paella, the Austin Lyric Opera’s La Noche de Opera feels more like a family gathering than an organized event, which chair Amalia Rodriguez-Mendoza says is part of its charm.

“It’s very warm and welcoming, very alegre,” she says.

La Noche has been educating Austin Latinos about opera for the past 15 years, drawing in hundreds of new attendees annually. Nationally, Latinos make up just 7 percent of opera audiences, a number managing director Kevin Patterson says could be a problem in the 40-percent Latino city of Austin.

“Within the next decade, the Hispanic population will be the predominant population of Texas,” Patterson says. “We can either embrace the Hispanic community or become very insular. It’s there, and it’s a vibrant, culturally robust, diverse and engaging community. If you don’t speak to Hispanics, eventually you kind of render yourself irrelevant.”

While the Austin Lyric Opera’s approach is unique, its situation is not. Arts attendance has declined steadily over the past decade, dropping 12 percent since 2002, according to a study by the National Endowment for the Arts. As traditionally older, white audiences are aging faster than the general population, many operas, symphonies, theaters and museums have begun to court younger, more diverse audiences.

In areas with large Latino populations, such as Austin, Chicago and Los Angeles, the focus has naturally been on Latinos. Business and marketing models are shifting as many institutions attempt to capture the attention of the largest and fastest growing minority in America.

If recent demographic projections from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Pew Research Center are any indication, these new audiences will be key to many institutions’ survival. By 2050 nearly one-third of all Americans will be Latino, white citizens will be a minority, and more than half of the country will be younger than 35, the Census Bureau projects.

“We’re going to run out of visitors,” says Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums. “If we’re not starting to reposition ourselves now and reach out, then as 2050 rolls around, there’s going to be a lot less museums.”

SUBHED: Breaking down cultural barriers

While most arts organizations recognize that reaching more diverse audiences could be the key to remaining relevant in their communities, establishing beneficial corporate partnerships and staving off potential closures, most don’t quite know where to start.

American Latinos are far from monolithic, representing a diverse range of languages, cultures and traditions that cannot be reached in one fell swoop by marketing. While about 65 percent of Latinos count Mexico as their country of origin, 35 percent come from a variety of South and Central American countries, according to a 2010 report by the New Policy Institute. And while about 80 percent speak Spanish at home, many speak indigenous languages or prefer English.

Accessibility is the first step, says Patterson.

“Let’s face it. In any culture, opera is seen as this elitist, white, Western art form,” Patterson says. “If you don’t self-identify with opera, you’ll say, ‘That’s not my thing, it’s not for me, I’m not going to do it.’ But La Noche says, ‘It is for you. Come join us.’ Art is already such a huge part of Hispanic culture. It’s just letting them know it’s there and available to them.”

Letting Latinos know it’s there often starts with the kids. The Austin Lyric Opera runs a music school that serves 12,000 families per year. Those who partake in the arts as children are significantly more likely to do so later in life, according to a National Endowment for the Arts study. Children who don’t, often report feeling alienated by arts institutions as adults.

“If you grow up going to museums and knowing what they are, you already know what to expect,” says Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums. “If you go to a banquet and have a place setting with five knives and five forks and five spoons, you’ll think, ‘What the heck am I supposed to pick up?’ If you go to a museum, there’s a lot of underlying knowledge of how it works, and who’s staffing it, and what you’re supposed to do, and what you’re not supposed to do. There are all these unwritten rules.”

SUBHED: Attracting younger audiences

Arts organizations around the country have begun education campaigns targeting low-income and minority children. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra offers free outdoor concerts in the Hispanic Pilsen neighborhood through its Institute for Learning, Access and Training. The Goodman Theatre in Chicago runs a free student subscription series and targets younger audiences through social media, such as Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook.

“The goal is to make theater a part of their lives, so when they get older and have disposable income, they’ll consider theater a viable form of entertainment, and then eventually bring their own kids,” says Denise Schneider, publicity director at the Goodman.

Targeting older audiences doesn’t make sense, says Henry Godinez, founding director of the Goodman’s Latino Theatre Festival.

“Audiences of my parents’ generation or even not much older than me, they’re either theater-goers or they’re not,” Godinez says. “Many of those first-generation Latinos in the country came here primarily to work or for political reasons, but their children and their children’s children – younger generations of Latinos – are more acculturated. They are proud of their Latino heritage, but very much American. They have expendable incomes, which their parents might not have. They like to go out, and they’re part of the cultural life of the city.”

The Goodman regularly integrates Latino culture into its subscription season and hosts a biennial Latino Theatre Festival. Featuring free and paid programming by local, national and international artists, the month-long summer festival has been successful since its 2003 inception, with attendance growing 40 percent from 2004 to 2008.

According to audience surveys, 34 percent of festival attendees in 2008 identified themselves as Latino. That same year, approximately 2 percent of regular season subscribers self-identified as Latino. While official 2010 numbers are not yet available, Godinez, who was born in Cuba, estimates this year’s audiences are about half Latino.

The Goodman’s dual approach – hosting a Latino festival and diversifying the standard season – helps draw and maintain audiences. Experts caution that becoming too reliant on separate Latino-specific programming can be a grave mistake.

“A lot of [organizations] with good intentions segment their efforts to reach minority groups instead of integrating it; it’s episodic,” Merritt says. “While this might be one good way to get an introduction, we need to remember that these audiences, once they get to know us, might like other things we do. Why should we assume they’ll only like Latino art or Latino festivals?”

SUBHED: Fusing style and business

Many institutions have begun shifting programming to include Latino works and new cross-cultural content. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, for example, has added more Latin American music to its repertoire since popular Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel became music director in 2009.

“The orchestras [in Venezuela] regularly play the music of North America and South America,” says Chad Smith, vice president of artistic planning at the LA Philharmonic. “There’s this amazingly rich repertoire from Latin America that we now have a real opportunity to program in a very substantive and meaningful way. That those interests potentially overlap with a huge audience in Los Angeles is something that we really want to explore.”

Others include the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago, which regularly integrates traditional classical music with Latin American instruments and beats, and the Miami Symphony Orchestra, which invited a popular DJ to perform with it at the orchestra’s 2010 annual gala. As America’s Latino population grows, similar fusion performances will be a likely consequence.

“You have to attract new audiences, and in LA many of those potential people are Latino,” says Shana Mather, vice president of marketing at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “It’s an issue of sustainability. I don’t think we will survive unless we can continue to tap into new audiences, and white folks aren’t going to fill that gap because the nature of the city is much more diverse than that. I definitely think it’s a survival thing.”

When asked what would happen to the Austin Lyric Opera if it didn’t have La Noche de Opera and similar outreach programs, Patterson said without pause: “We wouldn’t be here.”