We’ve been digging into the findings from our latest IMPACT 2025–26 Report and there’s still plenty to talk about. We’re exploring what the data tells us about audiences, picking out interesting patterns and looking at what organisations can actually do with that information. This time, we’re looking at how audiences feel after attending arts and cultural events…

What makes us happy? The arts do!

Our IMPACT research tells us that the most common emotion felt after arts engagement is happiness: 71% of respondents report that they feel ‘happy’ after attending an arts or cultural event.

We tend to think of happiness as a fairly straightforward emotion. Turns out what makes us happy is actually a bit more complicated.

Some of the post-event feelings of happiness that IMPACT audiences report are not that surprising: comedy audiences for example are the most likely to report feeling happy after an event (85%). It would be worrying if they didn’t – after all we expect comedians to make us laugh and if we’re laughing, we’re happy.

But the really interesting finding is that 82% of theatre audiences also report feeling happy. Witnessing the fall of Fantine, the demise of Mimi or any of the litany of tragedies in Shakespeare… these things don’t make us laugh but somehow these experiences all leave us feeling happy too.

So, what’s going on? Some theorists have talked about the cathartic nature of the experience, releasing emotions. For others it’s about the ‘liveness’ – the being present in a shared moment of being both here in time and yet somewhere else simultaneously. In short, it’s complicated. But IMPACT can help us dig into this and try and work out exactly what is going on.

Let’s compare those theatre and comedy audiences. 85% of people report feeling happy after comedy and 82% after theatre. Not a huge difference. But if we dig a bit deeper, we begin to see that behind those feelings of happiness there’s quite a bit that differs significantly: theatre audiences are seven times more likely than comedy audiences to report feeling ‘in awe’ or ‘moved’ or ‘transported’. Seven times!

We can compare other artforms too. Music leaves people feeling happy too (77%) but the difference with music is that it is the artform that makes us most ‘relaxed’ (42%) and the most ‘fulfilled’ (26%). 

Visual arts bring a whole new dimension to post-event emotions. Those reporting feeling ‘happy’ drops to 40% but those left feeling ‘Inspired’ rockets to 58% (which compares to 20% for music, 15% for theatre and 6% for comedy). Visual arts and talks audiences are both significantly (around 7-10 times) more likely to leave audiences feeling ‘knowledgeable’ or ‘curious to learn more’ too.

But what can we actually do with this data?

We can pass it on to the creators – the performers, the artists, the producers. For many creatives, knowing the effect your work is having on people matters. It can inform your practise or inspire more work. 

It’s important information for venues and programmers too. If 35% of visual arts audiences say they are left ‘curious to learn more’ that is a very clear request for more information – a talk or literature or even a sales opportunity. 

And this data is invaluable insight for building audience relationships. It is telling us what people get out of coming to an arts event. We can tap into that. Poke at the memories and evoke those happy feelings into action!

Most of all though, this is weighty evidence for the value of the arts sector: the arts make people happier! We should be celebrating this. And, as many have said before, if the arts was a pill, we would all be taking it!

If you want to know more about your audiences but haven’t started collecting IMPACT audience data yet, then get in touch with me at verity@wewillthrive.co.uk

And if you still need to catch up on all the findings from the latest IMPACT Report, you can download it at the top of the page.