This year’s International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia offers one possible answer: listening.
In Minor Keys, conceived by Koyo Kouoh before her death in May 2025 and realised by the team she appointed together with La Biennale, asks visitors to slow down and tune into quieter frequencies. Kouoh described the exhibition as an invitation to listen to “the persistent signals of earth and life” and to the joy, solace, hope and transcendence that can also be found in the minor keys.
The curatorial proposition is not simply about looking away from the crises dominating our attention. It is about recognising what continues to exist alongside them: the people producing beauty in spite of tragedy, those recovering from displacement and loss, and the forms of collective life through which people repair and create.
The proposition feels particularly pertinent at a time when cultural organisations are under pressure to compete for attention, demonstrate impact and reach ever larger audiences. What if becoming more vital to a community begins somewhere else? Not only by asking what people need from an institution, but by paying attention to what is already there: the networks, knowledge, creativity and relationships that exist within communities.
Kouoh’s proposition made me think of Nina Simon’s book The Art of Relevance, which explores how arts organisations can become more meaningful to the communities they want to engage.
Simon argues that relevance is not simply about identifying what people need and designing programmes to provide it. That approach can place the institution in the position of the expert, while the people it hopes to reach become passive recipients.
Instead, she suggests exploring how needs and assets can work together. Needs reflect what people want or desire, while assets are the things they already have, value and consider strengths: the languages they speak, the stories they know, the relationships they have, the skills they possess and the creative practices they already engage in.
I see a simple example of this whenever I take my children to Tate’s Draw Room. The space allows visitors to create digital drawings and see them displayed on the gallery wall. What makes it engaging is not simply that it gives children something to do. It starts with something they already possess: the instinct to draw, make and share.
The museum does not first need to teach them how to become an art audience. It gives an existing interest and ability a place within the museum.
Perhaps this is another way of thinking about the “minor keys”. If cultural organisations want to matter to the communities around them, they may need to look beyond the pressure to attract attention and instead ask what people already bring with them. Not just what they need, but what they know, make, value and care about.
Relevance, then, may be less about bringing people into the institution’s world and more about finding ways for their worlds to have a place within it.
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