WW Audience Focus: Trends and insights from across the network

21 May 2024

In 2023 Without Walls commissioned The Audience Agency to produce a benchmarking report covering responses from audiences across the Without Walls Artistic Directorate (AD) and the Touring Network Partnership (TNP).

The Artistic Directorate includes a broad mix of festivals taking place in city centres, woodlands, waterfronts, green spaces and beyond. The AD annually invests commissioning funds into a programme of new outdoor shows that go on and tour across England and internationally. The Touring Network Partnership is made up of festivals of all shapes and sizes across England in areas without regular arts activity. Without Walls works with these partners to create an appetite for outdoor arts across the country.

Using the new Illuminate research framework, partners used a core set of audience monitoring questions at their events to collate audience data.

Anyone working in the sector will know some of the challenges faced in adopting the Illuminate platform in recent months. Yet, partners persevered and collected 4,738 surveys in 2023 and collectively reached an estimated 160,960 audience members. This represents over 2% of all surveys collected by Illuminate across all art forms in 2023 which is significant, and highlights the benefits and importance of working in partnership.

Capturing audience data at outdoor events can be a challenge. Outdoor festivals are mostly free and take place in areas of easy movement, allowing audiences to come and go as they please. In this context, surveying audiences isn’t an easy task. We often have to remind ourselves of the ‘Why’ and what we have to gain from it.

As a network of 35+ festivals, many of which are located in areas of lower cultural engagement, collating robust audience data year-on-year is paramount. It enables us to get a better understanding of our audiences, their attitudes and behaviours, as well as study trends. In the current climate of funding cuts and limited resources, more than ever we need to demonstrate our impact, and for that we need evidence.

WHAT DOES THE DATA TELL US ABOUT OUR AUDIENCES?

Without Walls festivals audiences closely follow the profile of the England population. (23% highly culturally engaged for WW, 25% for England; 45% medium engaged for WW, 42% for England; 32% lower culturally engaged for WW, 33% for England).

TNP festivals attract lower to medium culturally engaged audiences compared to AD festivals (16% highly culturally engaged, 49% medium culturally engaged, and 35% lower culturally engaged). This reflects the make-up of TNP partners and their ambition to bring outdoor arts to areas that historically have had low investment in arts and culture.

AD festivals attract a higher proportion of higher culturally engaged audiences (37% highly culturally engaged, 35% medium culturally engaged, and 27% lower culturally engaged according to Audience Spectrum). This may indicate that through the work of these more established festivals outdoor arts is becoming more “mainstream” in some parts of the country.

Without Walls festivals attract younger audiences. There is a younger age profile of Without Walls festivals in 2023 compared to 2022.

Without Walls festivals have seen a slight increase in the proportion of audiences identifying as D/deaf or disabled compared to 2021 and 2022, with 11% identifying as such in 2023 compared to 9% in 2022, and 8% in 2021.

Without Walls festivals offer a chance to experience something new. A significant number of audience responses across Without Walls festivals were new attenders (40%). 15% of respondents overall said this was their first time attending an arts and culture experience. This was slightly higher for TNP events (18%) and significantly lower for AD events (7%).

LOOKING FORWARD

As the festival season begins, partners are continuing to explore ways in which they can continue to attract established audiences to return, whilst testing new approaches for engaging with new audiences.

To support this, Without Walls has awarded funds to eight partners to deliver audience engagement projects this year. From co-created large-scale puppets in Preston, visual arts workshops for SEND children in Mansfield, to building intergenerational audiences in Hampshire, these projects have in common the ambition to engage creatively with local communities and ultimately widen audiences for outdoor arts events.

With this work, we hope to build a growing body of case studies demonstrating how festivals, artists and organisations locally can reach and engage with audiences in a meaningful way, developing long-term strategic relations year-on-year. These case studies, alongside tangible data, will help us gather the evidence needed to continue advocating for the outdoor arts, ensuring that we continue to reach audiences far and wide in years to come.

Findings outlined in the article are drawn out from the 2023 Without Walls Benchmarking Audience report produced by The Audience Agency. If you would like to find out more about the research or access the full report please contact us.