A new partnership between Baker Richards, Indigo and One Further, The Insights Alliance, has launched the Culture Restart Toolkit. This set of free tools is designed for cultural organisations at all stages of reopening, and will track customer sentiment over six months, giving organisations instant access to audience insight and building a national picture for ... Read more

This comprehensive guide by Spektrix helps lay the foundations for a successful reopening whether you use their CRM system or something else.

The Search for Audiences handbook is a tool for helping presenters (venues) build audiences. It details the research techniques CircuitWest and its participating members used for 12 Western Australian presenters in its projects involving focus groups (qualitative) and, in some cases, surveys (quantitative). It provides an overview of the main factors that influenced audience behaviour across the studies, as well as details the research questions ... Read more

BakerRichards take us through what arts managers can learn from the best of what airlines are doing with top tips on dynamic pricing.

The dynamic pricing innovator Sean Kelly, founder of Vatic (dynamic pricing for performing arts and ticketed venues) looks at how we can use dynamic pricing to better understand our audiences.

The dynamic pricing innovator Sean Kelly, founder of Vatic (dynamic pricing for performing arts and ticketed venues) takes us through his top 10 tips to make your pricing targets work effectively.

David Wakeman hosts a popular podcast, The Business of Fun. In this episode he interviews the founder of Vatic, Sean Kelly and gets down to the nitty-gritty of dynamic pricing.

A report by CultueLabel for Kids in Museums looking at opportunities to use flexible family tickets to develop new creative business models.

If you are currently charging and considering making the switch to free admissions – or vice versa – this guide will support you to make informed decisions. It provides examples and case studies from museums that responded to the AIM survey on admissions and pricing.

East Durham Creates and ARC Stockton share top tips on funding, pricing, social media and food health and safety.

This practical guide, by Baker Richards for the Family Arts Campaign, offers a framework for making pricing decisions for arts activities or events. Discover case studies, hints and tips.

Explore the practicalities of setting up a Pay What You Decide pricing strategy. ARC Stockton’s handy toolkit features results from their trial and advice on everything from box office setup to gift aid and donations.

A survey in 2013 by the Association of British Orchestras (ABO) of its members revealed a paradox that while audiences increased by 16% between 2009/10 and 2012/13, earned incomed declined by 11% in real terms. In this article, Mark Pemberton, Director of the ABO, considers whether there is a genuinely new “business model” that could be the salvation of ... Read more

How does an arts organisation set its annual budget? This short guide looks at the principles of budgeting, the income and expenditure budgets (including different methods of ticket pricing), monthly budget profiling and VAT.

How do we address the under-representation of under 26 year olds in our audiences? The first article debunks 13 myths about youth arts attendance, including ‘Young people don’t have any money’ and suggests that efforts to attract ‘young people’ might be a waste of resources; the second and third articles describe successful schemes at the ... Read more

The How Much? Project was an audience development scheme aimed at developing new young theatre audiences in Sheffield. This research summary discusses the findings – the changes relating to price, product and promotion.

For four weeks in April-May 2013, a new and fairly unknown company – Little Bulb – performed their show Orpheus at the Battersea Arts Centre’s Grand Hall. Orpheus is an unusual concept bringing together the Greek myth about Orpheus and the story of the legendary Jazz musician Django Reinhardt. In this case study, Katie Elston from the ... Read more

It is a marketing truism that getting a new customer costs five times as much as keeping an existing one. So, if you can sell that existing customer tickets to 10 performances, that makes it 50 times more cost-effective. Surely, then, subscription is the answer to all our prayers but if so, why have subscription schemes dwindled in the UK?

If you’re reviewing your approach to pricing then this article may prove useful. You’ll find an expert introduction to pricing theory, including the influences on pricing, how to understand value and the variables you can use to differentiate prices. There’s also a practical case study from City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) which discusses the changes they ... Read more

Kerry Michael explores Theatre Royal, Stratford East’s holistic approach to audience development in this report from the AMA conference 2005.