Unlocking Audience Engagement with Áine McCarron from Thrive

[00:00:00]

Ella: Hello and welcome to the Arts and Everything in Between podcast. My name is Ella, I am the Digital Marketing and Content Specialist here at Ticketsolve and I’m very excited to welcome you this week to quite a topical discussion which I think will be relevant for lots of our listeners. So we’ll be talking arts engagement in the face of the cost of living crisis, as well as audience engagement and loyalty, and how different demographics engage with art, especially in terms of their emotional response.

So this chat will be based on research from Thrive, who are based in Northern Ireland, and kind of support organisations in better understanding their audiences and audience engagement. We’ll be diving into two of their flagship projects from the past few years, so their Impact Survey and their Northwest Survey project.

Kind of both explore data surrounding audience attendance, which has been gathered over the past few years, with lots of interesting insights. And for now, I’m very happy to introduce our guest, Áine McCarron, who is the [00:01:00] Head of Sector Development at Thrive, and she’s been leading Thrive’s sector support work and research and advocacy since January of this year.

Hi, Áine.

, Áine. Thank you so much for having me.

You’re very welcome. And before we dive into the specifics of the surveys that I mentioned, can you share a little bit more about your time at Thrive and kind of what the projects are you’ve been working on?

Sure.

So I was delighted to join Thrive’s, uh, team in January. , I’m from, based in the Northwest here. Born in Derry, but now I’m commuting up and down to Belfast. Uh, one of the things I love about Thrive’s work is a real drive for sector support. Um, so working in audience research and development, I’ve learned so, so much coming from the sector.

It’s been really, really lovely to kind of lift my head a bit, um, to see the great, great work that’s happening in Northern Ireland with audiences. Um, it’s really hard to kind of, I think, describe sometimes what Thrive does. We kind of talk about, you know, like, what do you say when you’re doing the elevator pitch for what Thrive is?

Um, you know, cause we are audience development agency, but we’re very much based in sector support. Um, the projects that I lead are funded by the Arts [00:02:00] Council of Northern Ireland. Uh, and really all the work we do is trying to get to the heart of the reality of cultural engagement in Northern Ireland.

What’s actually happening in people’s hearts and souls when they’re accessing arts.

That’s amazing. We are huge fans of the work that Thrive does here at TickerSelf, and I’m sure many of our listeners will already know about you guys. What was your background before you joined Thrive?

Um, so my background, I actually trained as a journalist.

I had a short stint, um, both in Derry and Strabane, actually, and I spent some time at Strabane Weekly News, and it just kind of made me realize how much I love writing about art, you know, so I kind of sidestepped into the world of the arts, like, like so many people do, they come to the arts, You know, in lots of different ways.

Um, so I sidestepped into that world properly when I joined the Playhouse in Derry, um, 2010, which is really exciting because it was just in time for UK Study of Culture in 2013, which was so, so lovely. Like what an extraordinary year and like, what a, like a brand new idea because nobody knew what that was going to look like.

You know, it’s to be in the heart of that was just the most exciting thing. Um, the theatre itself produced like 13 pieces of theatre that year, which [00:03:00] is just crazy. Um, so it was real like, Amazing time. And so like I’ve been, I was with the players for 14 years and it gave me like a really busy and exciting kind of grounding and communications, audience development, um, a lot of community storytelling, uh, as well as the marketing and PR kind of fun aspects.

Obviously the PR, my, my journalism background all helped that. Um, but it always kind of, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s so lovely when I started, when I joined Thrive sector support team, we’re working and reach like in research and advocacy, because obviously a lot of what the work I was doing was based in data and audience data anyway.

But that, um, that sense of advocacy and storytelling about the actual impact that arts can have on people’s lives, arts, culture and heritage is just, it’s everywhere we go. It’s every day. And the way that we talk about that, um, it didn’t seem like a big shift. Do you know what I mean? To move from one to the other.

It just meant that I was able to lift my head a bit and start to support the organizations that Thrive work with. You know, there’s a bigger remit. There’s such a variety of amazing work happening. And the audiences for those different [00:04:00] organizations are all so different. Or the audiences for so many different types of art form are so different.

So it was fascinating for me to lift my head and not just look at. not just look at music, do a really deep dive into visual arts. It’s been fascinating to have a look at how heritage is just such a beautiful space to work in. Um, so it’s been a real, really exciting time to learn, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve pretty much said, I think I’ve had like six months to kind of catch up with, you know, 50 years of audience research and development.

So my full, my head is full of data and reading, but I hopefully I can keep a lot of it in my head when I’m talking to people.

That’s amazing. I will say that thrived as this storytelling aspect of Um, audience research really well, like you kind of think, oh, like a research, like a survey research is all going to be like data and numbers, but the, the kind of the nitty gritty of how people actually engage with us really comes through in your research.

. Thank you so much. And that’s so important to us too. The way we tell that story is, you know, it’s the way that we can access and make sense of the data and the numbers. Cause it can be a bit daunting, especially if you’re coming from a world where you’re not used to looking at spreadsheets or you’re [00:05:00] not used to looking at pie charts and data, and there can be a real reluctance.

So like, it’s really nice to know that our job is to hold people’s hands through that and say, look, here’s how we can wade through this together. Here’s how we can make sense of this, use the data in a really practical way to help the sector. Um, and it’s all about improving relationships with audiences.

So it’s about how they can practically use the data to do that, but also can use them to how like huge bodies of research can be used to, to help people. At policy level, you know, how we can start to report up the ways we can, we can actually paint a story or paint a picture of what they, how people are actually engaging with arts and culture and heritage.

Definitely. So that leads us very neatly, thank you very much, to our first little segment of this chat. So we’re going to have your impact survey, which is very impressive, the first of its kind in Northern Ireland, and this is definitely a subject which I think combines those two elements of storytelling and data kind of mentioned.

So can you kind of tell us a little bit more about survey and what it’s allowed you to conclude? It’s been such a fascinating project. It’s such an [00:06:00] interesting thing to work on because it’s, you’re, you’re completely right. It’s the first time we’ve ever done anything like this. I think there’s a lot of research out there about the impact of participation in arts and culture and heritage.

You know, we know the impact on wellbeing and health and mental health. particular and on society that you know the social impacts of all that is so so important but we felt like there was just not a lot of research into the impact of arts attendance especially in Northern Ireland.

We wanted to really dig into how different demographics engage with arts and culture, uh, their motivations, their behavior so specifically digging down into attendance not just not participation and just in arts and culture. And what we wanted to do was really allow a space for organizations to capture the same information on audiences.

Um, because we were just weren’t doing this before. We weren’t kind of having a, you know, one big, one big pot that everybody could look at if they were asking the same information. So then we could create like a really robust benchmark essentially for the first time, which kind of actually painted a picture of how people were engaging.

Why were they going? How did they feel afterwards? What’s motivating them to go? What they look [00:07:00] like? And all of that, like I said earlier, was about providing practical data that helps the sector make better relationships with their audiences. So really what we also wanted to do with this was provide, we wanted to Tailor the information that we were getting from this research to provide, like, basically the bones of a toolkit for audience development.

If you are brand new to audience development, you don’t even know where to start, you’re scratching your head going, what is audience development? Is it marketing? Is it PR? Is it audience numbers? Is it, um, that you have like a starting point? You know, if you can carry out this piece of research with your audiences, it’s just one simple survey.

We do everything for you. And then there’s your data. There’s what your audiences look like. Here’s how they behave. Here’s why they pick you, which is so important. Here’s the difference you make to your audience’s lives. And then you’ve got that in real time, but then you’ve also got the big pot of data for Northern Ireland to see what makes your organization different, but also gives you the context because it can be really hard.

It can be really lonely. So to be able to lift your head and kind of go, all right, okay, well, I’m not alone for a start. But, um, [00:08:00] also, you know, this is what makes me different, but this is also , how I sit in the bigger picture, which is really, really so important to us. Amazing.

That’s definitely something that we hear from venues, like they don’t know where to start gathering data, where they got the data, they don’t know where or what to do with it, um, and then they don’t know how to compare that to other organisations, so yeah, definitely filling a massive gap, um, from what we’ve heard from our communities.

Um, so obviously, Impact Survey is an incredibly large body of work, so we can’t really go into everything in this podcast. Um, so we’re going to kind of look at a few aspects of it. Um, and as I mentioned in the intro, one of, I guess, the most topical and most pressing findings in your research was the impact of the cost of living crisis on arts engagement.

Um, and your research provides some really clear insights into this and you also break it down, uh, by demographics, which is incredibly helpful. So I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about this and just kind of, um, expand on those sort of, sort of the survey. Absolutely, because like one of the main crux of impact was looking at [00:09:00] what audiences

look like, what’s motivating them, how do they feel afterwards, but also the external factors. We needed to look at the, you know, if we were, if organizations wanted to be able to lift their head and kind of see the bigger picture, then we need to do that as well in terms of what are the external factors that are affecting audiences.

And we know that the cost of living crisis is having an impact. Some of the research has shown us that. That’s and it’s nice to have numbers and figures on that. So essentially 58 percent of people reported that we surveyed reported that the cost of living crisis hasn’t has having a detrimental impact on their arts and culture engagement.

Now one of the nice things about impact is that it’s as it’s not a it’s not a baseline survey. So it’s not knocking on doors, kind of saying, how are you, you know, how do you normally engage with arts and culture and what’s stopping you? It’s about getting a real sense of the people that do come, that engage every day, the people that are visiting, that are literally, you know, spending their hard earned time and money getting to these spaces to support them, to be entertained, all those different motivations.

So it was really important for us to ask these questions of those people that were making that, that journey. And then [00:10:00] we want the nice thing about being able to break that down by demographics, as you mentioned. So the fact that the impact, the impact of the cost of living crisis is more acutely felt by, , deaf, deaf and disabled, and a long term illness, um, audiences and LGBTQ plus audiences.

So Both these groups are disproportionately affected. 28 percent of audiences reported they were going to arts and culture less often, but this raises to 37 percent for the deaf and disabled audiences and 40 percent for LGBTQI plus audiences, and actually 42 percent for audiences with slightly lower, significantly lower income.

Now, both these audiences earn less anyway. We know that. this from the data because one of the questions we ask about is earnings. If we look at the total data for people that are attending, 26 percent say they’re spending less on arts and culture experiences. That raises to 34 percent for deaf and disabled audiences and 37 percent for LGBTQI plus audiences.

Now there is difficulty in segmenting these groups. We can’t throw them all in the same pot together, as they all behave in different [00:11:00] ways within the group. But their story is important, as their demographics, motivation, and the behaviours. It differs from that of the total audiences, so we can’t ignore it.

These are just, there’s so many different. Um, aspects at play that we can go into more in this conversation later, but just to talk about the cost of living, it’s about kind of seeing the context, the fact that DDL and disabled audiences, they’re really engaged attenders, they go for very specific reasons, they’re more likely to feel belonging, to feel seen afterwards, they’re more likely to go to feel part of the community for practical mental health reasons to get out of the house.

So, So when we think about the factors that are making life more difficult for them in terms of cost of living, , that extra barriers that they face every day. And it’s not just about, you know, getting into the space and the space being accessible. It’s about public transport. It’s about, um, you know, it’s not just accessible websites.

It’s about the language that we use.

So, like, we could talk all day about just those audience members as it were, but I don’t want to But, um, go too far from what you were asking me about, which was cost of living. Um, there, [00:12:00] one of the things that we do dig into with impact is, um, the context that people are working in, in terms of ancillary spend.

Now, arts and culture still has a positive impact on local economy. If we’re thinking about the cost of living and the effect that that has on people, like, you know, 80 percent of our respondents, we’re still spending money on food or drinks, either at the venue or somewhere locally. Most like 58 percent got food and drinks at the venue itself, 40 percent went locally for food and drink, 14 percent are spending time in the local area.

So we’re also looking at that kind of context that people are operating in when they’re accessing their arts and culture, what they’re doing. Now that’s, that’s interesting to point because it’s good for funders, it’s good for us to know our economic impact as well as our social impact. But it’s also about helping organizations get a sense of their audience today.

So, um, how do we, how does the visit to my space fit in within their day? What else are they doing? Are they part of a bigger day that they’re having, are they, are they staying overnight locally with friends and family, are they going to other access and all those things beforehand?

That might [00:13:00] help when You know, when I’m thinking about programming times, how am I actually, um, making this easier? Am I thinking about public transport? And when somebody’s traveling, am I thinking about the nighttime economy? Am I thinking about, um, so we’re part of somebody’s day, they’re having food and drink somewhere else, but not with our venue.

What does that do for us? Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe that’s something we can do to work on and improve. So it’s about the practical things that we can do. A big thing that can come through when we’re talking about cost of living is, um, is value, you know, in terms of like, because obviously it’s very easy to see a statistic like that and go right.

Oh, ticket prices. I need to decrease my ticket prices. It’s not. You know, it’s not always about that, you know, because it’s about how organizations are like evaluating their pricing strategies, dealing with their own costs, but also the risk that they can take when they’re exploring models to, you know, to explore customers that avoid, you know, they want to avoid under overpricing.

So they’re thinking about cost of living. They’re also thinking about the day that somebody’s having when they’re visiting. Um, and then they also have to think about their, you know, the fact that they, as an organization have a real emphasis on earned [00:14:00] income. And here in Northern Ireland, that’s a big thing that’s happened, happening, and that sits in direct opposition to organizations when they’re like, really, they have such a strong desire and goodwill to stay affordable and accessible.

That’s what we want. Um, so it’s about helping them, you know, we want to develop an offer for those on low incomes. We want to develop an offer for us to make ourselves as accessible as possible. But how do we do that? Because we know that audiences value something in a different way.

They’re not always on the hunt for the best price value ratio. That’s not how the audience members behave. You know yourself as an audience member when you’re thinking about going to something. You decide what you want to go to and that you care about that. And then you think if it’s affordable or not.

Um, so look at some of the kind of. examples that we use is like the value that somebody puts on something at a different time. So like, if we’re thinking about an example, one that we like to use is like your local takeaway. Um, if you’re given an option of buying a ready meal that you could cook at home, it’s like say two meals for 750 and that might seem a lot when you’re standing in the shop, but you know, I could cook dinner for less than that.

I’m not going to do [00:15:00] that. But on a Friday night, you’ve come home from a long day and you don’t want to cook. You’re quite happy to spend on a takeaway from that place, from that same restaurant. So the same applies to ticket prices. If you really want to see something, you will pay a higher price if you can, but it’s about the value of that.

It’s about how your audiences value what you think, but you need to understand your audiences before you can start to make those decisions for them. Um, and you know, there’s also a big part of how do, how do we learn more about that when we’re in a sector that’s spending a lot of time, uh, in a situation where we’re not feeling like we can take risks.

Like we can test these models that we can kind of go, right, well, let’s have a go at this and see what works because that’s not the space that we’re, that’s being created by um, when we’re, we’re all worrying more about our earned income when, um, funders are in the exact same position as we are in terms of their, you know, like funding’s been cut.

Like we could have a whole session or whole podcast talking about underfunding in Northern Ireland compared to the south of Ireland, compared to Wales, it’s five point per capita. But we know that, um, Northern Irish [00:16:00] audiences, Northern Irish, Uh, organizations are facing a very, very different landscape from anywhere else.

So even when we’re trying to benchmark against the UK and benchmark against the south of Ireland, we’re in a very different space. This is why this research is so important because it’s about giving that local context to where these people sit before they can make, before the organizations can go right there.

There’s the context I sit in. How do my audiences sit within that? How do I sit within that? And then how, what are my audiences telling me they want and need? The actual genuine audience development that comes with that.

And that point about, um, making sure you’ve got the context for your area and not just kind of the wider UK benchmarking is so important for organizations, I think. Um, and especially in something like the cost of living crisis, where there’s so many moving parts and it’s so easy to kind of make assumptions or jump to conclusions.

That’s why research like this is just so important to actually understand that. It might not be affecting ancillary spend in the way that you think, it might not be affecting people’s decision making in terms of pricing,

and actually I should say one of the most interesting parts of this research has been the open end responses to the cost of living [00:17:00] question because lots of people, you know, we have it. We always have an option for other and people are talking about how they’re being affected and lots of people love typing in their own answers and they kind of interesting because it kind of fell into three different camps.

There was the camp that we’re literally in. This is like a direct quote. Um, I will literally live on beans and toast before I’ll compromise the amount of art and culture I go to. There’s the people that, um, are in a different camp that are saying, I’m being more selective about what I go to. I’m going just as often, but I’m more selective about what I go to.

Um, I’m looking for ticket offers. And then there’s the people that are, um, it’s a small minority of people that are saying, I’m not affected personally by the cost of living, but a crisis, but my local space, my local venue is, I can see there’s less touring that I’m interested in. They can see the impact on the landscape as well.

So even within that statistic of 58%, there’s a lot going on within that, that we could dig right into. Definitely love an open ended question, , to get a bit more context around what people are actually thinking. And yeah, always love reading people’s responses. People get so passionate about the arts and it’s so wonderful to see [00:18:00] these actual responses to what people think and how they’re actually experiencing things like the cost of living crisis

We’ll kind of move on just to give people a bit of an idea of everything covered in this super rich, um, project. Um, so yeah, so the research also kind of dives into how audiences and very specific demographics, which you’ve kind of touched on, are experiencing up and how this has changed.

especially their kind of emotional responses, which I found really, really interesting and a really interesting way to consider arts engagement. Um, can you tell us a little bit more about kind of this part of the research and kind of the trends and the conclusions that you’ve observed from, from that part of the, of the project?

That’s, yeah, you’re exactly right. It’s been so fascinating because how do you, like, how do you make tangible the intangible, which is like the, we called it impact. It’s like, what is the impact of what we do? And that’s, that’s what everybody wants to know and what everybody wants to measure. And it’s a very hard thing to measure, but we’ve tried.

And like, the results have been fascinating. I mean, like, It’s always very encouraging to see it. I think it’s encouraging for organizations to feel like when they’re hearing [00:19:00] when they’re doing something right. So like most audiences had a positive experience during the resident. I wasn’t surprised to hear that.

But it’s nice to see the data to say that 94 percent were feeling a positive emotion after attending an arts and culture event. So like roughly three quarters of audiences are walking away feeling happy, similar proportion are feeling relaxed, energized, fulfilled, inspired. There, you know, there’s so many ways that this is filling people’s cup.

Younger audiences, so that’s the age that are like 16 to 34, they have more motivations for attending arts and culture, which we find really interesting. They’re looking to the sector to fulfill like a real variety of needs, like they’re, they’re looking to fill their cup in lots of different ways and lots of different things they’re looking at, you know, but in particular, they’re, they want to spend time with friends and family, they want to experience something new, they want to get out of the house, they want to feel part of a community as well.

Um, but they also feel like a really wide range, like variety of. Positive emotions after they visit. They pop in all the kind of, like, they’re more likely to feel awe, pride, feeling energized after their visit, but they also feel safe and comfortable, belonging, [00:20:00] empowered, seen and understood. They’re just, they’re, they’re, they’re popping all the emotions.

They’re feeling everything. Um, older people, you can, you can totally see a difference in the way that they’re behaving. Like, um, people age 65 plus, they’re more likely to be returning audiences, which really, which makes sense. Um, but they’re also, they’re more likely to attend theater, but they’re, they’re more motivated to attend arts and culture to support a space or a venue.

They’re looking, they’re seeking the kind of intellectual emotional stimulation. You can see why they’re, they’re going to be inspired and uplifted, but they’re also looking to learn something, they want to be challenged as well, you know, so that the intellectual kind of exercise that’s been, you know.

That’s, and the impact statements on the other side are showing that’s what they get after, like, that’s what they’re seeking, but that’s what they’re getting afterwards, which is a fascinating part of like, why do you want to go? And how do you feel afterwards? It’s a way that we can put those two together.

Um, so I mentioned that like, um, you know, we’re, if we’re looking at D/deaf disabled audiences, they’re more likely to attend for a variety of reasons as well. The biggest differences really are support their mental health. They’re more likely to want to get out of the house, feel part of a community. Um, no, they’re also not having quite as [00:21:00] positive an experience compared to non disabled audiences.

Um, A few respondents, you know, they’re mentioning their experiences with seats, you know, we’re making sure that we’re taking extra care, they get a good view, but you know, but when we’re asking how they’re feeling afterwards, they’re feeling safe, comfortable, belonging, they’re feeling seen and understood, and disabled audiences are also really quick decision makers, like 78 percent of them are deciding as soon as they hear about it.

Um, they’re carving out time to go nearly half are traveling more than 30 minutes to attend something. So, you know, all this data, we’re putting this together and it gives a really clear picture of how this, how this audience might behave and how we could make life, you know, make that journey easier for them.

But then we also know that there’s, you know, yeah, there’s other things at play really because when we’re thinking about. The fact that, um, the representation generally, arts audiences for venues in Northern Ireland aren’t as representative of the population as we’d like. So what we wanted to do was take all this stuff and put it next to the, um, the census data.

You know, there, and there are fewer disabled audiences in the population who are accessing, uh, it was 12, 13 percent [00:22:00] versus 24%. But what’s promising is that 5 percent of our audiences were, um, identified as LGBTQ which is twice that of the population, which is really nice. No. Um, we want to be really careful with this data because it’s really important that we don’t give the impression that, um, that, if they’re D/deaf and disabled, that they’re not accessing arts and culture.

That’s absolutely not true. They’re doing it every day. They’re maybe just not accessing the more traditional venue spaces that we’re surveying them in. So we know from baseline surveys that Thrive has done throughout the years. We’ve done one in Belfast and we did one in the Northwest.

Like 94 percent of residents engage with arts and culture every day in Belfast. It was 98 percent in Derry, Strabane and Donegal. So really, and we know that disability has an impact, but overall the engagement levels are really, really high. At 87%. So we know that that this it’s really important that we think about representation in the in these spaces and that we’re not spinning narrative that’s not true about the access that people have and the value that the different audiences are placing on arts and culture.

Um, there’s also some really interesting stuff going on [00:23:00] when we look at the LGBTQ plus audiences now they make up only a small percentage of the survey but their story is important because their, their demographics motivations and behavior, they really do differ from the total audience, when we’re looking at it, they’re more likely to be younger, three times as likely to be under 40, compared to the total, but they’re actually also much more likely to be disabled.

Which is really interesting. So there’s a real overlap there. And again, we don’t want to be, we don’t want to lump all the, um, these audiences back in together and saying that they all have the same need, um, because they will have bespoke needs. And there’s so many different parts of that, you know, in terms of how would neurodiversity sit within it, how would mental health sit within that, how does physical mobility, sight impairments, we talked about all that.

Really, we need to dig into that much more. Um, but also, but they’re, um, they’re also most likely to be local to the venue and more likely to be last minute decision makers. So there are behaviors that are, that we can look at that, that can help us greater, create greater insights when we want to think about making our venues as accessible as possible.

. So in terms of like how venues might [00:24:00] use impact survey, um, I guess if we could use this. Specific, uh, section we’re talking about the demographics. How could they, um, tailor that offering and kind of change things to meet the needs of these different groups in these different segments?

I’m so glad you asked that ’cause it’s kinda like we have like a toolkit in our head as it were. Um, so like, there’s lots of different start points you could kinda come to. It’s a really good to think about like, um, starting off with the basics of audience development, which is about your relationship with your audience.

Uh, it’s, you know, marketing is a part of that. PR is a part of that. Uh, your programming is a part of that. All, you know, your venue, your space, and who accesses it, you know, it’s all part of that. But really, when we think about audience development, at its core is your relationship, how your audience feels about you, why they come, why they pick you, and how you, you What do you matter to them?

So what, we can’t do that if we don’t know what our audiences look like. But we also need to know lots of different things. So say your starting point or your audience development goal is somebody who says, right, I know my audience is like in my [00:25:00] heart or in my head, but I don’t have the data to back it up.

Um, feedback from our audience has been really limited. And that’s my starting point. That’s what I want to achieve. The way that we kind of break that down is that, well, what do you need to know if you want to get there? What your audiences look like, why they choose you, and what your audiences want and need.

And that needs to be at the core of everything you do, and you can’t learn that unless you ask. So that’s where the research comes in. We look at demographics, where they live, what they think of your organization, what motivates them, all these different kind of things that are at play. So then you can start to take action from that.

So like you avoid targeting everyone because not everyone is your audience member as much as we’d like. Uh, there are just some people and you know yourself, there’s some people that were literally have a band playing in their backyard. They’re going to close the window. It’s just, there’s some people that are just, I’m not going to that thing no matter what.

And that’s okay that you don’t, you don’t. It’s not about making a product and going, right, who do I sell it to now? It must be everybody. Cause everybody wants to, you know, like you’ve worked so hard on this art. why would everybody not want to see it? [00:26:00] It’s about understanding what people want and what people care about, and then building what you do around that.

And people do that all the time. Organizations talk about their mission. They talk about their vision and they put their community, they put audience members at the heart of that. So it’s about how do we back that up with the data? Yeah. So I mentioned actions would be avoiding targeting everyone.

Maybe you want to attract more people that look like your current audiences. That makes a, that’s a perfect starting point for me anyway, if I’m thinking about an audience development plan. So you can’t know who looks like your current audiences, so you can widen that net. If you don’t know what your audiences look like to start with, you can’t diversify your audience.

Maybe that’s what you’re deciding to do. You can’t do that again without knowing what your audience looks like. Um, maybe it’s about something as basic as developing your audience personas. What do they look like? We can, again, we have to ask before we do that. Um, maybe it’s, it’s, you know, a big part of that might be setting objectives.

Like, how are you going to measure success? If you’re like, right, okay, my audience development plan, I need to get from here to here. This is what I want to do. Um, we can give you a way of measuring that in a very simple way. It’s like, I. Basically want, [00:27:00] there’s only so many of our audience to say they want to come to feed part of the community.

There’s a percentage on that. It’s 14 percent of our audience. The benchmark say it’s 10%. The benchmark is 14%. Let’s get to 14 percent by next year. That’s a KPI. Let’s set that as a key performance indicator. I want to report that to my board. I want to put that in my development plan. I don’t want to say that’s my targets.

Um, and maybe it has something as basic around, um, you know, thinking about diversity or, um, You know, it could be a more specific thing than that. So say you want to be more inclusive. So your goal is I want to be more inclusive. What you need to know there are, you know, you need to know where the gaps are in your audience and what the barriers are there.

So what, so you need to look at audience demographics. So you need to look at socioeconomic background, if they’ve got children at home, then you can, you know, IMPACT is going to help you look at the missing audiences groups, um, if it is D/deaf and or disabled audiences, but then it’s also looking at the motivations of these diverse audience groups.

And how they’re sitting, how your audience sits and behaves and how the big benchmark sits. And then your current impact on [00:28:00] these diverse groups. So then the actions that come from that is always going to be making your space more welcoming because you’re listening to these audiences. You’re prioritizing a communication that’s just so much more inclusive, that’s so much more welcoming.

Um, and it’s also about being able to measure it. It’s about setting targets and saying, you know, if we’re, if we set out to say that we, you know, we have EDI targets so that, you know, that’s a phrase lots of people are talking about. Okay. How do we measure that? Here’s, here’s a way to do it that’s just very practical.

We’re sending out a survey and we can see where we’re sitting, where we were sitting last year, where we’re sitting this year and where we’re sitting in the bigger picture for the benchmark. So I hope that answers your question.

That’s amazing, a perfect little nutshell description of audience development there for our listeners, which is great. Um, so yeah, obviously we’ve touched on a few aspects of this before, um, but there’s so much more, um, to be discovered, and I do recommend that you go and discover the full survey, which will be, um, linked in the show notes of this episode.

Um, and just kind of before we get into how people could actually get involved with [00:29:00] projects, Um, and surveys. I just wanted to touch on the other project that I mentioned in the intro to this episode, which is the foundation, which kind of examines ticketing data, which is very much tick sales, and it provides some super interesting conclusions in terms of change in loyalty and audience engagement post COVID.

So, could you tell us a little bit more about the study and kind of be found through it and what the conclusions were. Sure.

Absolutely. So it was interesting that Foundations is kind of the other side of the coin. It’s like the box office data that’s, um, so if we look at like, um, our relationship with audiences, this is like, we, we, we looked at Foundations as like, what’s the ticketing landscape in Northern Ireland?

And we looked at from 2019 to 2023 by examining ticketing data from 25 organizations. So we were like, right, well, this is what the ticketing data tells us. And then Impact nicely follows on from that because Impact’s like, why? Yeah. You know, what do they look like? And what’s motivating them? Why is this data looking the way it is?

So foundations was really, really [00:30:00] interesting because what we’ll like, essentially it helped us explore the differences pre COVID and post COVID. So it was 25 organizations. It’s not a benchmark because obviously it’s only 25 organizations. It’s about performance monitoring. It’s about looking at those 25 organizations and monitoring change and performance.

How are things? How’s the landscape shifting and it showed so many fascinating things. And like on the 10, we could look at it and say, it’s shown a really good, good news picture. And it’s one that we’re seeing across the UK as well. I know that you guys are seeing it. There was a 30, 39 percent increase in attendance and a 39 percent increase in revenue.

So essentially 30, 000 more people, 300, 000 more people attended than pre COVID and we generated four, four million more at the box office. Now that’s like, that’s great news. That’s fascinating. That’s really, really great. And look, nearly a quarter, which is 23 percent appear, you know, like only appear in any of those organizations box office system in 2023.

So there we go. We’ve got 124K new bookers. Isn’t that great? That’s lovely. But what we’re not actually seeing in that [00:31:00] data is the fact that, um, 59 percent of the audiences hadn’t come back to those 25 organizations. So, essentially, we were having half of the audiences weren’t coming back, half, a quarter of the audiences were coming back, and then a quarter of the audiences were brand new.

And what we’re seeing is that there is a, there was a clear problem in terms of loyalty and engagement. So when I say loyalty, I mean, people come in year on year, and then engagement, I mean, how many times they’re coming within the year. Um, so essentially only 18 percent attended a venue more than once in 2022, 2022, the financial year in the UK, 22 to 23.

So essentially, yeah. We were looking at this going, well, this is only half the picture really, isn’t it? You know, so if we’re thinking about, um, these, if there’s a new audience in time for start, what they look like. So then we need to, we need to unpack more because we need to say, well, what would they look like and how are they attending?

And it’s looking like, and we’re seeing data benchmark across the UK and America that’s showing very, very similar numbers. It’s showing there’s a new audience in time, but they’re less engaged and there’s less loyal. Now there’s [00:32:00] always been a problem, I should say in the data, there’s always been a problem with engagement and loyalty.

It’s a very, very difficult thing to do. So what we needed to do was look at people, the organization’s relationship with audiences. So it’s about the audiences that they have, how are they keeping them, how are they keeping them loyal, how are they keeping them engaged. And to do that they need to improve their relationship with their audience members and that’s all anybody wants to do.

They want to learn more about their audience and improve that relationship. So the way we saw it, um, in Thrive, and I know a couple of all the different organizations might see it in the same way as like, if we wanted to see audience development, just like dating, you know, like it’s like getting a, getting a partner, you’ve, you’ve heard this kind of, uh, analogy before.

So like, if we look at our, you know, maybe an organization’s website as like, you know, the, um, the dating app or the plenty of fish or, you know, um, whatever that might be, and then the first time that somebody comes to you, it comes to an advantage, your first date, and then you’ve got your second date, which is the person, you know, that’s the, the more we see the engagement I talked about a comment more than once in a year.

They’re loyal. They’re coming year on year until they move up the engagement matter and they get to the marriage proposal. You know, we get to the space where it’s like, right, okay, [00:33:00] we’re a big donor. We’re, we, we’re advocates for what you do. We talk about what you do. And if we looked at this data and we said, Oh, great, you know, we’ve got more people attending and, you know, uh, attendance and revenue is up 39 percent where revenue were generated more at the box office.

That means, Oh, great. We’re going on lots of dates, but they’re all first dates. Do you know what I mean? They’re not, nobody was, we’re, we’re have a problem with loyalty engagement and these audience members weren’t coming back. We weren’t getting a second date. We weren’t putting a ring on it essentially.

And what we know is that it’s really, really hard to get a new audience member. We know that it’s really hard to, you know, if you’re going on a first date, you have to buy a new frock. You have to go for dinner. It’s very, very fancy. If you’re, if you’re in a comfortable long term relationship with somebody, you could, you know, that commitment, that trust, all the stuff you look for in a relationship that’s built for free on the sofa in your jammies.

Do you know what I mean? Cheaper. It’s cheaper to get the audience that you, that you’re working with already. They’ve already invested in you. You know, you’ve done the research, you know why they come, you know how they feel afterwards. You’ve asked them how they feel and you’ve built up that trust. You’ve built that relationship.

It’s so much easier to [00:34:00] do, to see what they look like and learn more about them. So essentially we want, we’re very happy the way these two pieces of research kind of fit next to each other, but it’s only, again, there’s only just pieces of the puzzle we need to keep digging. Yeah, that makes sense. I think you’ve found our title of our episode, why audience development is like dating.

It’s a lovely analogy because it really helps. It really does. Yeah, it’s really helpful. And it makes you smile and think about things. And it is literally perfect. It literally fits perfectly.

Kind of talking about how, um, foundation and impact both go together as sort of surveys, um, you mentioned something else, um, in our preliminary chat about how, um, foundations kind of reveal some things about free ticketing and how it doesn’t necessarily, um, increase audience numbers.

Um, which goes quite nicely with our conversation earlier about, you know, the cost of living crisis. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about that as well.

Absolutely.

Aine: so one of the things that Foundation provided was a [00:35:00] bit of myth busting around assumptions around free tickets and events. If 12 percent of the events from the 25 participating organisations had no charge for entry, the research showed that overall Average Ticket Yield in Northern Ireland was 14.

That increases to 15 when you exclude free events. But if we also take out the complimentary events, it jumps to 17. So there’s something really different going on in terms of the sector when we’re, we’re giving away a lot of complimentary events and how we use those free tickets and free events.

The research actually, and it’s so, so easy to think, especially with the data that we were talking about with cost of living, when you’re thinking, um, free events is the easiest way to, to create the accessibility that we need. But the research in Foundation showed that we actually had a 10 percent lower capacity for free events than paid events.

So there was something, like, and this backs up, I suppose, conversations that we’ve been having a long time, that there are other barriers that prevent people in Northern Ireland from engaging in the arts. Some of the stuff that we touched on earlier, health issues, lack of transport, feeling uncomfortable [00:36:00] about, about, You know, attending certain venues or events like this, this, this stuff that we work so hard to fight against and the additional support that they might need, say, from a companion or something like that.

So essentially it helped us kind of tell ourselves that really, you know, price isn’t a problem that free will solve. We talked about price. There’s other barriers. Um, you know, if you’ve got, you know, the fact that it’s not as straightforward as make it free and they will come there are barriers exist.

And there’s, it’s, it could be the cost of getting there. If you’re aiming to diversify the different types of people free won’t give you the results you’re looking for. And then, um, and one of the things that the baseline survey that I mentioned earlier that we, we did that looked at the reality of engagement, like literally knocking on people’s doors and saying, how do you engage with arts and culture and why?

And what stops you? Because that’s what we want to know. Um, like it’s, you know, barriers weren’t always financial. It tended to be scheduling. That was the kind of top answer that came up. There’s other things at play. It’s family. I have friends and family. I have other things that I’m working on. So essentially one of the things that we [00:37:00] wanted to look at.

So that’ll tell you so much as it were it would tell you right okay so there’s there you know box office data will only tell you so much essentially was one of the things we were looking at and one things we learned from foundations. So say, if we’re looking at just ticket yield or we’re just looking at ticket amount that we’re not realizing their first dates.

So that’s one thing the box office can’t tell us. And one of the other things I wanted to mention about Unpacked was, um, say you’re looking at your box office system, and it’s really easy to look and go, right, there’s how many people come alone to my events because I’ve got single ticket buyers. Great.

Happy days. I’ve got so many people come alone. I’ve got a, you know, and it’s really high. Great. I’ve got a wee lonely arts club that I can start in my area. And let’s, let’s start putting these people together and doing some matchmaking. And that would be nice. But, um, one of the things about Impact is we ask who people go with, um, and 10 percent of audiences come alone, and that, like, what we were looking at, we were going, actually, the, the, the box office data wasn’t going to tell us that, because we know that the way that people behave, say that you’ve got two friends who go to an event, and they tell you about it, they’ve booked their tickets, and they tell you, and then you book your ticket, [00:38:00] it’s the third ticket, it’s on its own, but actually that’s a group of three people, they’re going for friends and family, it’s not a lonely arts club at all.

So one of the things that came out is, is using the data for the best way in terms of like, sometimes you just physically have to ask, who did you go with? Yeah, definitely. It’s so easy to like make conclusions from data that maybe, uh, yeah, not, not necessarily correct. So that’s super interesting. I’m quite just, it’s just kind of.

Looking at the data a bit differently and considering what questions you need to ask that little picture. Absolutely. And sometimes you just have to ask your audience member and audience members don’t mind telling you because it’s, it’s like the dating thing. It’s like, what would you like to do for your next date?

Do you want to, if you’re feeling a bit busted, post 11 is happening, should we go for a free picnic? Should we go for a walk in the park? But you can guarantee they’re not going to want the second date if you haven’t even asked them what they like doing. Maybe they hate, maybe they hate the park, maybe they hate picnics.

That’s true. Essentially we don’t do this, we ask. People like to talk about why they’re there and what they’re doing, from my experience, from someone who’s stood and asked you [00:39:00] those questions. People are going to tell you why they’re there and what they’re doing next.

We are almost out of time, very sadly. Um, I do wish we could carry on talking all day because your passion for audiences and data is just so infectious Áine. Um, but if the organizations did want to get involved with Thrive’s research or just kind of use insights from the studies, um, or your benchmarking and your toolkits, what would be the best way for them to get involved?

Aine: Absolutely. I mean, everybody’s welcome to take part in this research. It is like, I mean, because we’re, it’s funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, so like it has to be accessible. We had to make this as easy as possible for anybody to access. So essentially with the impact, if you’re doing any event, arts and culture events that people attend, you can take part and you can learn from this.

Um, but then there’s also, um, we’re doing a separate project in the Northwest of Ireland. So that’s Derry, Strabane and Donegal. That’s slightly different, very similar research in that we are trying to get a picture of the reality of cultural engagement in, in that region. But that also includes participation in heritage.

So if [00:40:00] you’re in the northwest of Ireland, talk to us as well because we’re working very closely with Donegal County Council and Derry City Council, Derry City and Strabane District Council, they funded that part of the project.

Our research is available. Even the raw data, the spreadsheets are right there for any of the spreadsheet nerds. If anybody’s working in academics or they really want to dig into the data, that’s all available on our website as well. Anybody can have a look. So you can take part in the research. You can access the research and, um, you know, come along and talk to us because we’re always here.

We’re here as sector support. That’s what we do. We’re funded by the Arts Council. So if you have any questions about audience development, anything research, anything audience development, that’s what we do. And that’s what we’re here for. So, so visit us. We’re at wewillthrive. co. uk.

Ella: All of that will be in the show notes. And so to our listeners, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Arts and Everything in Between podcast. Please, please check out the show notes for more information about Thrive’s projects, links to their research, and more information about how you can get involved with them.

Until next time, be sure to download, subscribe, and share the Arts and Everything in Between podcast. And thank you so much for [00:41:00] listening. Áine, for joining us.

Aine: Thank you so much.

Charlie: ReCharge, the Ticket Solve event of the year, is back for 2024 and it’s bigger, better and more energising than ever. This autumn we’re bringing together delegates from across the arts and cultural sector for two incredible events. Join us in Dublin on the 26th of September and in London on the 3rd of October for a day of immersive learning with workshops, panels and talks from top arts and culture leaders.

You’ll have the chance to connect with professionals from across the UK and Ireland, share experiences, build lasting relationships, and get inspired by success stories and innovative projects. Register now at recharge. ticketsolve. com. [00:42:00]

‍