Heritage Panel: First survey insights

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.