Skip to Content

Knowledge hub

How we can help

Get involved

About us

Search our website

15th December 2021

Heritage Panel: First survey insights

Heritage Panel: First survey insights

Download report
Woman standing in a grassland

In the latest half of 2020, we created and conducted the Culture Beyond Covid audience research in the shape of a free survey for organisations to get insight directly from their audiences and see what the bigger trends are across NI.

We have evolved this research into a second phase – our Culture Beyond Covid: Heritage Panel. The heritage panel will track audience’s views on returning to heritage as we continue to navigate through the pandemic this coming year. We’re out to find out what has changed for these audiences, what has stayed the same and what their attitudes are after the pandemic, right from the horse’s mouth!

You can download the full report or download the At a Glance report for a full overview of our results. Scroll down for a short summary of the most interesting findings:

Here are some of the things we found out this month:

  • 26% have not yet returned to indoor heritage due to covid, with museums in particular experiencing a big drop in attendance.
  • Natural heritage has experienced a boost due to covid. A third of people are attending more than they did prior to covid.
  • Heritage is attracting a lot of families to their sites – both indoor and natural.

We were disappointed with the overall engagement in this particular study – from both organisations and audiences. For our results to have a stronger weight in the future and be richer in detail and data, we will all need to get involved! Maybe you would like your organisation to hop on board – we would love to have you.


The Heritage Panel is made of 85 heritage attenders in Northern Ireland who will be surveyed every two months until May 2022. The first survey ran between 26th August and 16th September 2021. In total, there were 166 responses. Culture Beyond Covid for Heritage is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. 

Funded by

Newsletter

Fresh ideas for building your audience straight to your inbox

Our emails are full of content relevant to you that you can jump into when you have five minutes spare. We’ll send one or two emails a month and you can unsubscribe any time.

Newsletter

By clicking Sign Up you're confirming that you agree with our Terms and Conditions.

Woman reading in Irish language bookshop

Contact us

We’re called thrive for a reason. Let us know how we can best support you – drop us a line any time.

Back of man looking at map on street

Search our website

Search for free reports, toolkits, audience development tips and more