The Audience Agency
Audience Finder/ Outdoor Arts
Adrienne Pye
24th May 2014
Regional Director, South East
Exploring and
evaluating the
outdoor arts
experience
Outdoor Arts: what is it?
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Festivals
Community events
Melas and carnivals
Circus, theatre, dance, music, digital …
Pop up street events / paid for ticketed
Commissioned, touring, locally based
Venues/event managers, companies
Public, private, not-for-profit, commercial
What typifies outdoor arts?
• Thought to attract a more diverse public
than ‘mainstream arts’
• Frequently connects with big civic events and
festivals – something for ‘the people’
• Claims made for economic impact, place
making, cultural tourism
• Strong traditions and influences: street
theatre, circus, carnival, religious
celebrations
How does Audience Finder work?
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Quantitative research
Common sets of questions
Comparable robust methodologies
Aggregation of data (enabling bigger pictures,
comparisons, trends analysis)
• Work together in clusters – geographical or sector
• Reporting
• Understanding and working on results – working with
the sector to refine and develop research
Audience Finder Outdoor Arts Year 1
Research questions
• How far does OA reach audiences other arts do not?
• What are the implications for audience
development?
• What improvements would help to increase
engagement and public support?
• What is the economic impact of OA?
• What are the implications of paid-for models?
• What are the intrinsic and instrumental benefits?
• To what degree is the quality of the artistic
experience critical to these outcomes?
Methodologies
• Template questionnaire – choice from set of core,
recommended and bespoke questions
• Deliver face-to-face after event or as e-survey
• Handbook of recommended practices eg. around
counting people
• Creative ways that fit the event
• Further toolkits e.g. economic impact
• Use of postcodes to provide geo-demographic
profiling (eg. Mosaic and Arts Audiences Insight)
Outdoor arts – research is a challenge
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Getting enough responses to make research robust
Length of questionnaire
Interrupting people on their day out
Interfering with the performance
Going beyond the basics
Staff resources and skills
Particular problems for performers / companies
around collection of data
• Event organisers / festival not able or willing to share
research results
Nevertheless …
• 25 organisations / companies / festivals
participated in some way during 2013
• 7500 individual questionnaire responses
• Probably the biggest national data collection in
outdoor arts so far
• The aggregated data began to answer some of the
research questions
• Feedback from the sector has provided useful input
into changes for 2014 repeat research
Research methodologies – your views
• What research have you done?
• What methodological challenges did you face?
• In what ways did you overcome them?
What have we learnt so far?
Drive-time arts centres
Drive-time outdoor arts
The Audience
Geo-demographic profiling can also provide
Focus: Adding Value
useful guidance
Audiences are local
Mosaic Profiling – Outdoor Arts
Reasons for attendance
• The motivations for attendance were not always asked
in surveys, but when asked, showed a difference from
other sectors
• ‘to be intellectually stimulated’ and ‘to be inspired’ score
lower
• Social benefits are scored higher
• There are larger groups and being with family is important
• This does not mean that the cultural experience is
unimportant as such, it is more to do with the way in
which they interpret the experience
Top 5 Motivations
Three words to describe the experience
Information and explanation
• Audiences in these groups often want more rather
than less explanation
• What is obvious to the organisers and even to
regular attenders is frustratingly unclear for some
audiences
• This means information both in the sense of
practical details (where things are and what’s on)
and in terms of explanation of what they are
experiencing
Aside from the lack of info at the event,
The
Focus:
Adding
we
all Audience
had an amazing
day.
The Value
atmosphere was really special, great to
be able to spend time with good friends
in such a lovely environment. I also loved
the fact that there was lots to do for
young children.
Prior warning, so can
plan attendance (missed
a lot that I would have
wanted to see)
Signage, with children it is
difficult to read the brochure.
Needs to be more obvious,
visual around sites!
What’s still missing
• Better understanding of motivations to attend
• Links to/ implications for economic and social
impact, place making and cultural tourism
• The role of free v. paid-for models
• Better understanding of how people engage and
interact with events
Year Two
• Short postcard style self-completion surveys
• Web analytics testing range of communications
• Smaller sub-set of organisations to trial economic
and social impact studies using EI toolkit
Implications from 2013 research
• Localness: good at attracting the local community
and brokering local relationships
• Engendering sense of place-making and civic pride?
• Audience development based on understanding that
many attenders are not regular arts audiences looking for social benefits and day out
• Quality of experience is important, not just of
performance itself but total surround
• Audiences want more information and mediation to
make sense of their experience
Report from 2013
• Report of 2013 findings available at:
http://audiencefinder.org/understand/sector/outd
oor-arts/
• Other resources and articles also available on
Audience Finder website
www.audiencefinder.org
including Audiences on Tour and Audience
Development toolkits