The Audience Agency: UK Resource

The Audience Agency is an audience research agency in the United Kingdom that does incredible work with psychographics of audiences of arts and culture. They’re a nonprofit organization themselves that surveys a huge number of audiences and analyzes ticketing data directly from arts organizations through their Cultural Participation Monitor longitudinal study.

They’re on my mind today because they offered a webinar on the current state of arts audiences in the UK. When the video is shared, I’ll write more about it.

One of their main tools is Audience Spectrum, a segmenting tool that blends demographics, buying patterns, and psychographics. I wish that psychographics would catch on more in the United States; arts organizations seem to be stuck on demographics. There’s some good reasoning for that, given the lack of diversity in the audiences of large arts organizations, but psychographics are a much more actionable tool and can help avoid falling into stereotypes about race, age, gender, and more.

This is one example of how centralized resources can be helpful. The results of their Cultural Participation Monitor gives a true sector-wide picture of what’s happening that arts and cultural organizations can use to make informed decisions. In the U.S. we tend to resist centralized resources because they don’t provide as much nuance. Well, from what I can see with the Cultural Participation Monitor, with a great deal of effort, smart and dedicated people, and some patience, understanding audiences can be done both at scale and with detailed insights.