The results of the third Heritage Panel survey from thrive, Northern Ireland’s audience development agency. The Heritage Panel tracks audience’s views on returning to heritage, what has changed, what has stayed the same and what their attitudes are.    

Katy Raines, Indigo takes us through the first waves of findings from their national research on audience views to returning to live cultural events, booking tickets now and in the future and missing out on events during lockdown. Includes full, downloadable report, summary of findings and link to interactive dashboard.

Digital Culture 2019 is a study on the impact and use of technology in the arts and culture sector, from Arts Council England and Nesta.  

An abstract from the Spektrix Insights Report 2019 that focuses on maximising individual donations.

Laura Cusick, Research Executive at thrive, the Belfast-based audience development agency guides as through what makes a great survey and how quantitative research can give you the insight you need.

The first in a series of snapshots by The Audience Agency focused on engaging audiences with specific profiles and needs

A major piece of new research that maps and analyses engagement approaches across the Creative People and Places programme. Written by Sarah Boiling and Clare Thurman. Commissioned by the Creative People and Places Network.

This publication by Bob Harlow, published by The Wallace Foundation, provides guidelines to help you design and manage your own audience research. It explores how research can help you learn about potential audiences, create more effective promotional materials and track progress towards your audience-building goals.

Catherine Rose’s Office and Pam Jarvis share guidance, information and ideas on evaluating family festival events and researching your audiences. Commissioned by the Family Arts Campaign.

This report provides an overview of the research undertaken into audiences for the outdoor arts sector (OA) as part of Audience Finder. The Independent Street Arts Network (ISAN) has been our main partner for this work and has acted as an adviser, interpreter and disseminator of the project.

In 2011 Dr Sharon Lockyer and her colleague Lynn Myers at Brunel University, undertook research into understanding live stand-up comedy from an audience perspective. The project consisted of both an online survey and a series of semi-structured qualitative interviews with stand-up comedy audiences. In this article Dr Lockyer reports on the five main themes that were identified in the semi-structured interview responses. This article was ... Read more

Lisa Baxter from The Experience Business explains when it’s best to use focus groups as a method for collecting audience research.

Lisa Baxter at The Experience Business offers her Ten Top Tips for Great Focus Groups.

This guide provides useful advice on how to prepare for a meeting with a potential corporate partner to ensure your ‘ask’ is presented in a way that complements your potential partner’s business activities.

This resource will help you understand why tracking your audience’s online motivations is important and give you practical suggestions about how you can use online surveys effectively to explore these motivations within a logical research orientated methodology. This is one of ten digital guides commissioned by The Audience Agency from Culture24 as part of Audience Finder, the ... Read more

This research paper highlights opportunities for collaboration between arts and cultural organisations and public sector commissioners. It provides an overview of the current cultural landscape, examines both the providers and commissioners perspectives and identifies the key areas where their interests match. This report also contains key recommendations and messages for public service providers, commissioners and ... Read more

It’s usually not cost-effective or practical to collect and examine all the data available. It is often necessary to draw a sample of information from the whole population to enable the detailed examination required to take place. Sampling provides a means of gaining information about the population without the need to examine the population in ... Read more

The arts have a broader role to play in business in areas such as corporate creativity and human resource strategy. This research charts the development of the relationship between business and the arts examines and proposes new possibilities for how the arts and business might work together.

The Art & artists section of Tate’s website – their online collection – is the most visited area of the site, with around 500 to 600K visits per month. Tate carried out audience research to understand who their users are and what their motivations are for visiting the site. This document summarises the results of ... Read more

To develop a successful partnership with a corporate sponsor takes time, effort and planning. This factsheet identifies five steps that arts organisations should take, each step requiring a number of questions to be answered. By following each step you should be able to make a successful approach for sponsorship and develop a long-term relationship.