Arts Centres Benchmark Report

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Arts Centres Benchmark Report

Caroline Griffin, Area Director, Midlands

June 2016

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Introduction

Arts centres are a rich and diverse part of the arts sector. Found across the country in a variety of rural and urban settings, these organisations offer a variety of arts activities – both performances and participation activities – to their local communities. Each arts centre offers its own distinctive programme of work, developed from its aims and

objectives, facilities and the needs of its audiences. This variety means that benchmarking across arts centres encounters some distinctive problems, not least, defining what an arts centre actually is. For the purposes of this benchmark, we worked with the sector to identify a cohort of organisations with enough similarity in aims, programme and outlook, to make a robust sample. Our definition was -

An arts centre is an organisation that presents two or more artforms, including theatre. Other typical features of an arts centre might include a film programme, workshops or other participatory opportunities and a café or similar social element. Methodology

A consultation group made up of six arts centres was brought together for an initial meeting to explore the key issues of interest to arts centres. From this a set of research questions was drawn up. These were selected on the basis of being of wide ranging interest to the sector and through which the use of the box office data held within the Audience Finder platform could be explored.

For the analysis we used data from 23 arts centres, of which five were identified as

university arts centres. Four arts centres from London contributed data, which has allowed us to identify differences between the audiences in arts centres in London and outside the capital. A full list of participating arts centres can be found at the end of this report.

Research questions

• Do university-based arts centres have a different audience make up?

University arts centres, that is, organisations that are part of a university and which are often, but not always, on campus, make up a significant part of the sector. These arts centres are still open to the general public and often play a very significant part in the local arts infrastructure and are vital to local audiences as well as their university audience. Arts centres are interested in the potential of partnership working and collaboration, but their difference in programme, outlook and governance can impede the understanding of what is shared and what is

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different. In order to support future collaboration and partnerships we have looked atthe overall audiences for arts centres, and contrasted that to university arts centres, looking at the similarities and differences between the audiences for university and non-university arts centres.

• What does audience crossover look like?

For arts centres audience crossover, that is audiences attending two or more artforms, is often a key part of achieving audience development aims, such as broadening audience taste or increasing audiences for less well attended artforms. Understanding crossover in more detail can provide opportunities and inspiration for new audience development, as well as supporting more nuanced programming decisions. Of course, understanding your audiences’ propensity to attend more than one artform opens opportunities for income generation and maximisation, aiding the arts centre in developing its financial robustness.

• What is the impact of live streaming on audiences?

For many arts centres, the advent of live streaming has been positive. There is a feeling that streamed events have brought in new audiences and provided fresh new content for existing audiences. Streaming is often financially beneficial to arts centres, coming with low overheads but with ticket prices more similar to those for live events than for other film. However, there is also concern that the ready audience for streaming might be having an impact on the audience for live events, for example small or mid-scale toured theatre. This is a relatively new area, so understanding audiences for live streamed events better is crucial to maximise the potential of this new programme strand.

Who are the Arts Centres Audiences?

Ticketed events at arts centres attract audiences that are highly engaged with the arts and who are regular or frequent attenders. We do not see high levels of attendance from those audience segments who we know are less engaged with arts and culture. However, this varies from organisation to organisation, with some being more effective at engaging the harder-to-reach groups.

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Aggregated Venues Audience Spectrum Segment Count % Index

Metroculturals 17,267 9% 855

Commuterland Culturebuffs 40,634 20% 183

Experience Seekers 22,076 11% 156

Dormitory Dependables 45,423 22% 141

Trips & Treats 31,265 15% 81

Home & Heritage 16,984 8% 70

Up Our Street 10,386 5% 51

Facebook Families 7,778 4% 30

Kaleidoscope Creativity 7,883 4% 78

Heydays 2,294 1% 19

Grand Total 201990 100%

We would expect to see more audiences from the less engaged groups if we analysed attendance at non-ticketed and free events. This area would benefit from ongoing survey research to broaden our understanding of the audience.

The audience profile of university arts centres is broadly the same as that of arts centres more generally. However, as expected, we see higher numbers of Experience Seekers (which is the Audience Spectrum segment with the highest percentage of students) and lower than average engagement with the less actively engaged segments, particularly with the Kaleidoscope Creativity segment.

University arts centres

Other Arts Centres (exc London)

Audience Spectrum Segment Count % Index Count % Index

Metroculturals 3,805 8% 754 11,663 6% 572

Commuterland Culturebuffs 7,803 15% 141 32,402 16% 144

Experience Seekers 7,177 14% 203 25,455 12% 178

Dormitory Dependables 7,791 15% 96 33,151 16% 102

Trips & Treats 6,559 13% 68 27,128 13% 70

Home & Heritage 6,146 12% 101 22,053 11% 90

Up Our Street 4,683 9% 93 20,124 10% 99

Facebook Families 2,842 6% 43 12,404 6% 47

Kaleidoscope Creativity 1,911 4% 76 11,598 6% 114

Heydays 1,760 3% 58 8,081 4% 66

Grand Total 50477 100% 1634 204059 100% 1481

This chart also shows that the ‘Dormitory Dependables’ segment is well represented in the profile. This large group is made up of people who are described as ‘reliably dependable if not frequent’ in their levels of arts and cultural engagement. Arts centres are often

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located in suburban or rural areas and often have a focus on local community engagement and a mixed programme that caters to a range of tastes, making them a good match for this segment. The comparative size of this segment and its broad distribution across the country means that it is worth consideration for development as a core audience for most arts centres, with strategies to develop loyalty, depth of experience and with a view to maximising income.

The ‘Trips and Treats’ segment is also worthy of note in terms of audience development. They are currently quite poorly represented in arts centre’s audience profiles, yet we can see that they are engaging to some degree and their interests (family, community and fun social) relate directly to most arts centre’s offer. This is a very large segment and is worth consideration for sustained audience development activity.

Of all the harder to engage groups, ‘Kaleidoscope Creativity’ is the best represented, with high levels in some organisations’ audience profile (of these, some have a remit for

diverse programming, but not all). Where members of this segment are engaged for the first time they have a fairly high potential for a repeat visit within a 12-month period. This contrasts with ‘Facebook Families’ who are poorly represented across the board (apart from a couple of organisations) and who have a very low likelihood of re-engaging after a first time visit.

By and large, the Audience Spectrum profile is the same whether you are looking at the audience for university arts centres or other arts centres. The most significant difference is that university arts centres tend to attract more ‘Experience Seekers’ - the younger, highly engaged Audience Spectrum segment that most students fall into. The university arts centres tend to engage fewer of the harder to reach segments, even in comparison to the low levels of engagement of the sector as a whole.

London’s arts centres don’t attract quite as many ‘Metroculturals’ or ‘Experience Seekers’ as comparable arts centres elsewhere (excluding the university based arts centres). This is likely to be because of the large amount of appropriate product available in London to these highly engaged, experimental attenders, with most having opportunities to see events at a wide range of venues and locations. This suggests that arts centres outside London do play an important role in providing product for these highly engaged segments. Individual organisations may have very different profiles to the benchmark of the whole group. For example, the data shows that some organisations are very successful in engaging the more hard-to-reach segments.

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What are audiences doing when they visit Arts Centres?

The data shows some clear differences in artform engagement across the Audience Spectrum segment. Different segments engage with specific artforms in a way which differs from their overall attendance patterns, suggesting that some aspects of the arts centre offer can be seen as delivering to niche interests of both the more experimental and traditional audiences. So, for example, the younger and more risk-taking segments are not using arts centres for music or musicals, even though both are interested in these artforms. In contrast, ‘Dormitory Dependables’, who have an interest in traditional and mainstream work, are engaging across artforms.

‘Trips and Treats’ are highly engaged with dance, with similar numbers to ‘Commuterland Culturebuffs’ (‘Dormitory Dependables’ represent the biggest dance audience in terms of numbers attending). There would seem to be some potential in this market for many arts centres whose locations and programmes could be directly relevant to this segment.

What Does the Audience Crossover Look Like?

The three most significant artforms in the benchmark data set are film, music and plays/drama, these have by far the largest number of attenders and, accordingly, have the highest crossover with other artforms.1_{Specifically over 50% of the attenders for} plays/drama are attending other activity, compared with 40% of music attenders and 35% of film attenders (but see footnote below); beyond this, crossover levels are

comparatively low, with just a few significant behaviours worth noting.

Bookers for children’s shows demonstrate very low levels of crossover into other artforms. Where there is some crossover, it tends to be associated with other ‘family’ events, such as Christmas shows (8% crossover), and we also see 8% crossover into plays/dramas. However, the profile for children’s shows bookers is made up of the higher engaged Audience Spectrum segments (except for ‘Experience Seekers’ which are not as well represented), so it seems likely that these people are taking an attendance ‘break’ themselves, probably while their children are young and constraints on their time more pressing. The majority of work categorised as children’s shows is for the under-12s, so the classification matches most closely people with younger children.

Musical theatre is a very interesting artform in the context of arts centres. In the context of Audience Spectrum segmentation, it has been noted that musicals are an ‘everyman’

1_{While the three audiences are comparable in size in the benchmark data, we need to bear in mind} that data capture levels for film are significantly lower than for the other artforms, and so film is likely to have the largest audience in total.

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activity – that is people across the segments have some degree of interest in musical theatre. However, this is not the case at arts centres, which seem to attract only the older and more traditional segments to their musical theatre (eg ‘Commuterland

Culturebuffs’ and ‘Dormitory Dependables’). The younger, more risk-taking segments – and those most interested in contemporary work – do not seem to be engaging with musical theatre at arts centres. The analysis suggests that while musical theatre is very popular, audiences are very discerning, with some preferring only the large-scale musicals and highly commercial musicals that are unlikely to be mounted at a traditional arts centre. Music is another interesting artform in the context of arts centres. It is clear from the range of organisations involved that events classed as music can vary widely from one organisation to another. However, we also know that when looking across the board a very wide range of music is offered, including popular or mainstream work and much less well-known performers. Although individual organisations vary significantly, as a whole, the arts centres are not drawing a particularly large audience for music form the younger segments, particularly the ‘Experience Seekers’. As a segment, we expect ‘Experience Seekers’ to be interested in music, but their comparatively low representation in the benchmark data suggests that they prefer other music styles and venues. This is

understandable as they are likely to be interested in contemporary, popular music (in all its wide variety of genres) and preferring gigs in pubs, festivals or commercial music venues.

The Impact of Streamed Events on Live Audiences

The arts centres participating in this benchmark were particularly interested in the impact of live streaming on the rest of their programme. For many of them, the new revenues being driven by streamed events are welcome, but there were some concerns that there might be a knock on effect, with people substituting a streamed event for attendance at a live event. Also, there were questions about whether the audience for streamed events were new attenders, or whether they were adding a new strand of programme for the existing audience. Through the benchmark we have looked at these questions and the results are interesting and useful.

To answer the questions briefly, yes, live streaming attracts new attenders and, no, live streaming does not dissuade people from trying a live experience. The data shows that attenders to live streaming are more likely to re-attend within a 12-month period than attenders at any other artform. It also shows that when they re-attend they are more likely to cross over into other parts of the programme than the new audiences for film or

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live events. We can also see that attenders to live streamed events attend more events per year than other audiences, suggesting that streamed events are attracting a strong and engaged set of new attenders, who go on to engage widely with the organisation’s programme.

Streamed Other Film Live Events

Bookers % Bookers % Bookers %

Returned to the same artform "group" 782 7% 12,585 21% 34,377 20%

Returned to a different artform "group" 3,232 28% 3,858 6% 5,674 3%

Returned to both 2,363 21% 6,387 11% 5,440 3%

Churned (Did not return) 4,964 44% 36,536 62% 123,157 73%

Total Returned within 12 months 6,377 56% 22,830 38.5% 45,491 27.0%

Another piece of good news about attenders to streamed events is that their average ticket yield is similar to the average ticket yield of attenders to live events, which is more than twice that of attenders of film. This finding suggests that this audience has high regard for the streamed experience and sees it as distinct from a traditional film experience, and more akin to the live experience.

Streamed Other Film Live Events

Bookers % Bookers % Bookers %

Returned to the same artform "group" 820 7% 13,572 23% 37,427 22%

Returned to a different artform

"group" 3,344 29% 3,820 6% 5,927 4%

Returned to both 2,608 23% 7,018 12% 6,038 4%

Churned (Did not return) 4,569 40% 34,956 59% 119,256 71%

Average Party Size 2.1 2.1 2.7

Average Ticket Yield £14.30 £6.16 £14.26

Average Frequency 1.90 2.30 1.70

If we look at the Audience Spectrum profile audience for live streaming we can see that it is largely made up of the older and more traditional segments, typically ‘Commuterland Culturebuffs’, ‘Dormitory Dependables’ and ‘Home and Heritage’. ‘Metroculturals’ are also well-represented, indicating that they are happy with the streamed experience to see work which they are interested in. However, ‘Experience Seekers’ are not so well

represented, which may be of interest for organisations with access to significant numbers of ‘Experience Seekers’, particularly the university arts centres. Their response to the live streamed offer would merit further investigation, in order to help develop this product line.

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The following is a summary of our key findings about audiences for this work.

• Live streams do attract new audiences, with 17% being new to the box office.

However, this is considerably less than new attenders attracted by film (32%) and live events (45%), so we can conclude that existing audiences are taking up the opportunity to see streamed events.

• People whose first experience at the venue is of a streamed event are more likely

to re-attend than those for other artforms (28% of first time attenders to streamed events re-attend within a year, compared to 17% of first time attenders to film or 15% of first time attenders to theatre.

• When first timers to streamed events re-attend, they are more likely to cross over

into other parts of the programme than new audiences for ‘film’ or ‘live events’, suggesting that streamed events are effective at introducing attenders to live programming.

• Over the course of the year, live stream attenders attend considerably more events

(in total) than other attenders.

• Their average ticket yield is the same as the average ticket yield of attenders for

live events, this is more than twice as much as the average ticket yield for cinema attenders.

• Some existing audience groups are now engaging with streamed events as part of

their arts centre programme. That is, they were attending and are now attending streamed events. This is particularly true of the older segments, notably

‘Commuterland Culturebuffs’, ‘Home and Heritage’ and ‘Heydays’.

• Streamed events seem to be generating new audiences from other segments,

particularly ‘Experience Seekers’ who are indexing high for first time attendance at streamed events, and who also index high for subsequent visits to arts centres.

• Streamed events also seem to be attracting ‘Facebook Families’ as first timers –

but this audience is not returning within 12 months of that visit.

• This pattern is broadly similar to the pattern for film, which sees an ongoing repeat

attendance from the older segments and high first time attendance from ‘Experience Seekers’.

• It is interesting that the ‘Metroculturals’ index is very low for both streamed and

film – suggesting that their engagement is much more about the live and the immediate. We can see this as they index highly for live events. Interestingly, attendance at live events is fairly evenly distributed across the data for the other segments, though we do see high levels of first time attendance among ‘Facebook

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Families’ and ‘Kaleidoscope Creativity’. These two groups fare differently though after that initial attendance with high levels of ‘Kaleidoscope Creativity’ going on to re-attend, but much lower levels of ‘Facebook Families’ repeating their

experience.

Notes:

• The analysis in this report is based on box office data only. The data set is large

and robust for ticketed artforms, but contains only limited information about other events and activities, such as visual arts exhibitions. As many arts centres have large programmes of non-ticketed work, we would like to be in a position to look at the complete picture by using survey and box office data in future iterations.

• It is also important to note that film, which is often a key part of an organisation’s

programme, tends to have much lower data capture rates at point of sale. This affects the relative robustness of some sections of the analysis, eg crossover between film and other artforms.

Appendix 1 Participating Arts Centres

Arts centres marked * were also part of the steering group that helped to set the research questions.

• The Albany • Arnolfini • arts depot

• Attrenborough Arts Centre* • Battersea Arts Centre • Brewery Arts Centre • Cambridge Junction* • Colchester Arts Centre • Courtyard Herefordshire* • Creative Foundation • The Drum

• Gulbenkian • HOME

• Lincoln Performing Arts Centre • Live at Lica

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• The Lowry * (contributed to steering group only) • mac Birmingham*

• The Maltings (Berwick) • New Wolsey Theatre • Quad

• Roses Theatre

• SSalisbury arts centre • Stratford Circus • Warwick Arts Centre

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Contacts

London Office Unit 7G1

The Leathermarket Weston Street London SE1 3ER

Manchester Office

Green Fish Resource Centre 46–50 Oldham Street Northern Quarter Manchester M4 1LE T 0300 666 0162 [email protected] www.theaudienceagency.org

Arts Centres Benchmark Report