We ran a series of workshops to support arts and culture venues to think creatively about how to improve their Access for Disabled People. This is what we learned.

In this blog, our former Client Relationships Exec Catherine talks about all the things to consider for filling your space with experiences audiences will love.

Our CEO Fiona attended the Family Arts Conference and learnt a lot about ticket prices. Read her blog to find out her key takeaways.

Read our latest guest blog from the Changed Future series, written by Holly Foskett.

Get to know Jan, our accessibility persona created from the data collected during our Audience Panel.

As festival season is in full swing, we thought we'd share some insights from a recent conversation with Belfast Festivals Forum.

The Continuous Household Survey is an annual public survey done by the Northern Irish Government. Here's how to access the results, and why you should read it.

Get to know Frank and Nancy, our Older Frequent Attender persona created from the data collected during our Audience Panel.

Get to know Jill, our Young Family persona created from the data collected during our Audience Panel.

Get to know Darren, our Young Infrequent Attender persona created from the data collected during our Audience Panel.

The raw data from our IMPACT Survey contains survey responses from 2,921 participants across 35 organisations in Northern Ireland collected from September 2023 to March 2024

The raw data from our North West Audience Survey contains survey responses from 4,420 participants across 39 Donegal County Council and Derry City and Strabane District Council organisations collected from April 2022 to March 2024.

This in-depth qualitative study looks at arts audiences from 20 organisations across the UK, uncovering why people attend shows, events, and galleries - and what holds them back from engaging more.

In this snapshot, find out how NI audiences' engagement with culture online has changed, what they enjoy about it and what they don't.

In this audience snapshot, find out how NI audiences feel about returning to in-person events.

This research explored UK audiences' behaviours during lockdown, their wants and needs post-Covid and marketing opportunities for arts & culture organisations moving forward.

Conversations and views from the public and the arts sector on what Arts Council England should focus on.

This report from NISRA gives the overall picture on who is living in Northern Ireland, and covers population growth, travel and transport, technology use and more.

Over the past couple of years, we have been working on an exciting venture known as the North West project. This initiative revolves around the collection of data concerning arts, culture, and heritage audiences in Derry and Donegal. Now, we've decided to put together all the stuff we've learned from it in one place.

Our IMPACT report helps us learn more about who audiences are, how they behave, why they attend and how they feel after attending a variety of artforms.

The iBeholder pilot was developed to help us discover new ways to gather audience data for non-ticketed visual arts organisations and boost the audience experience. This report details everything that happened throughout the project and the insights we uncovered during the pilot.

Have the confidence to gather the data you need.

Mystery shops to understand and improve your visitor experience.

Get an evidence-based strategy to deliver your objectives.

Uncover the insight in your box office data.

Book a free one-to-one chat about your audiences.

Practical ways to create an email strategy that increases sales and improves customer loyalty.

Join thrive for a day of discussion and creativity regarding the 4 key issues we've identified in the Arts & Culture Sector.

There is a two-way relationship between you and your most loyal audience members. Understanding this relationship thoroughly and using this understanding to develop similar feelings of loyalty with other members of your audience is the key to increasing retention. Let's Talk Loyalty at our next free workshop!

A webinar to share our findings for NI and ROI with the sector, 3 weeks into the 'After the Interval' survey.

Your website is often where your audience member starts their visit. If it's not accessible - what message are you sending to potential disabled and d/Deaf audience members? Here are some practical steps to make your website more accessible.

Eve reflects on recent accessibility training she's undertaken with Open Arts and University of Atypical, and what lessons it has taught her about how to be truly inclusive.

How Hull Truck Theatre improved the accessibility of their website and online booking process.

Author: Danielle McLoughlin

In this blog, we’re giving you some easy tips for writing great copy.

How and when does an interest in an artform translate into attending and participating in it? In June, our resident BOSS Eve attended the 'Interest Into Action' TEA Break session hosted by the Audience Agency. This session led Eve to doing some investigating into this concept of her own with some very interesting results.

Show Some Love used Belfast City Council's 'Vacant to Vibrant' Scheme to turn a former solicitor's office into a buzzing, multi-purpose arts space. Our Communications Executive Candice sat down with Becky Bellamy to hear about the long journey that brought the charity to this point.

How Dorset County Museum used focus groups to make their museum more accessible for visitors with autism.

Author: Jack Welch, Medium

How Young At Art create relaxed performances and an accessible festival experience for their young audience members with additional needs.

In this blog, our former Research Executive Victoria explores the different benefits of having a ticketing system.

How National Theatre of Scotland is using digital creatively to improve access and grow Deaf audiences.

There is wealth of free information about your current and potential audiences available through your social media and website. Here's how to access it and build a picture of your online audiences.

A handy list of tips and links to keep in mind when thinking about accessibility within arts and culture venues.

Outburst Queer Arts Festival introduced their own ticketing strategy 'More if/Less if' to make their programme more accessible. They're one of our 2019/2020 Audience Delight Winner.

If you're a producer that brings work to receiving venues, you may think it's difficult to get a hold of your audience data for those shows. This blog clears up who has a right to the data. Plus, you'll get tips on how to work with venues to share this data, and increase audiences for everyone.

In this guest blog, Sarah McAvera from Golden Thread Gallery, shares her experience of attending "free" cultural events with her family, which often come with hidden prices. She explores whether this outcome is inevitable or if organisations can implement changes to provide more budget-friendly and accessible family programming.

This toolkit will help you to make small and easy changes to your venue and online presence to welcome disabled audiences.

The Kids in Museums Manifesto, created with input from children, young people, and families, offers simple guidelines for making museums and heritage sites more welcoming and enjoyable for all.

Want to say hello? Here's how to find us.

A run-down of all the ways to find out about your current and potential audiences. These range from simple and no-cost solutions, to more sophisticated box office systems.

A guide to language in Disability for Non-Disabled People

The Age Friendly Guidelines from Family Arts Campaign provide practical steps to welcome older audiences.

Working with the Barbican to gather insights into what young people want from their membership in future.

Last month, we sat down with representatives from organisations across Belfast to discuss their thoughts on the impact of various art forms on audiences. Find out how the meeting went in our latest blog written by our Sector Programme Coordinator Eve Murtagh.

How popular is online booking with Northern Irish arts ticket buyers - and how does it differ between urban and rural contexts?

Carrickfergus Museum transformed an empty space within their building into an area specifically designed for a new audience. We're looking at how they succeeded and how they integrated it into their regular programming.

Our CEO Fiona reflects on the latest trends in people's behaviours and attitudes post-Covid.

How many tickets for arts and culture events in Northern Ireland are offered at no cost? Insights from our Foundations Report have shed light on this. This prompts us to examine why organisations opt for free events and ticket giveaways. Are there benefits to sharing your valuable, often pricey, work for free?

As we move towards spring, it's a fitting time to take a moment and consider December, a pivotal time of year for the arts. With recent reports suggesting a downturn in sales for pantomimes and Christmas shows throughout the UK, it's worth examining whether this trend extends to Northern Ireland as well.

When audiences visit your organisation for the first time, what can you do to build a lasting relationship with them? Read our blog to find out.

Our CEO Fiona recently traveled to the North West to chat with a group of older people to understand more about their engagement with arts and culture. She wrote a blog to let us know what she learnt.

How trying to serve and attract everyone can harm your cultural organisation.

Some people who used to be regular audience members haven't yet returned to cultural organisations. There are ways to entice them back. Read our blog to find out.

For our new themes for 2021/2022, we take a closer look at a typical audience journey, from the first time they hear about you to when they become loyal customers, and all the steps in between. Read our introduction and first step of the audience journey.

Do you want to know more about your audiences and contribute to sector-wide research? Find out about our newest project and how to get involved.

In early July, Sarah and Maurane hopped over to sunny Brighton for the Arts Marketing Association
conference. Maurane was invited over as a speaker and Sarah decided to tag along and mingle with over 750 representatives from the UK’s cultural sector. The conference, themed "Be Bold, Be Brave," featured thirty-five talks over two days. Here are some key lessons in bravery that Sarah learned.

We've talked audience development with hundreds of organisations across Northern Ireland (and further afield!). So here are some of the most frequently asked questions we hear about understanding and growing cultural audiences.

Our former Client Relationships Exec Catherine talked to the person behind the hilarious (and informative) social media accounts of The Museum of English Rural Life. Read our case study to find out how they succeeded in diversifying their online audiences with a single tweet.

The Foundations 2019-2023 report was made to study look at the ticketing landscape in Northern Ireland in recent years, including festivals. We learned a lot from it. So, we decided to talk to a few Northern Ireland festivals that weren't in the report. We wanted to find out what they thought about the trends for the next year.

Good writing can be the difference between an amazing show, exhibition, or event enjoyed by many, or an amazing show in an empty venue. Here are our top tips.

Why green issues matter to audiences and how the cultural sector is well-placed to make a positive impact on the environment.

What ticketing data can tell us about the effects of funding cuts on the arts in Northern Ireland.

Change in the cultural sector is often associated with fighting funding cuts - but organisational change is essential to survive and thrive in our fast-paced environment. Our CEO Margaret Henry shares her thoughts and experience on the challenges and benefits of change.

In this guest blog, Paul Kane from Belfast Over the Hill Music Collective shares his views on the way art and artists are perceived in our society and what he wants to change.

Libraries are routinely reaching audiences that other cultural organisations struggle to. What can we learn from libraries about attracting a more diverse and representative audience?

Today is a new chapter for Audiences NI as we launch a new brand but also a new name – Welcome to thrive.

Our Client Programme Coordinator Sarah looks at examples of how organisations outside of the arts and culture sectors exceed their audiences' expectations. Read her blog to find out her key takeaways.

Audience development is about building relationships and this is what we will be focusing on to support the sector over the next 12 months.

Want to know more about the details of the IMPACT project? Read our FAQs

How much will your audience pay for a show or experience? And do lower prices de-value your product? Here's the research behind effective pricing strategies.

Fiona Bell asks whether arts venues go out of their way to be truly welcoming to everyone - or are we in danger of simply talking the talk?

How you can use images to connect with your audiences.

Read our third guest blog from the Changed Future series, written by Charmain Jones.

As we're noticing the impact of the latest Apple update on social media advertising, we wrote a blog to explain what it's all about and the challenges it brings to arts and culture organisations.

Every year, we mine box office data to uncover insights into audiences for venues and festivals across Northern Ireland. Data includes overall benchmark figures for NI, as well as differences by Belfast venues and regional venues.

Community Asset Transfer (CAT) has been successfully utilised across the UK, yet Northern Ireland has seen only one major success story so far – the Open House Festival's ownership of the Court House, Bangor. Its triumph prompts an important question – Why aren't more Northern Irish communities trying out asset transfers to revive cherished local buildings?

An interview with Sarah Hughes, on how business partnership can be as an audience development tool.

When it comes to collecting audience data, free, non-ticketed spaces always ask us the same question: how can we learn more about the people who come through our doors without a ticketing system?

Avoid the awkward when you're writing surveys that ask about gender, and be sure you're asking about the right things in the right ways.

Thrive's visitor profiling project to learn more about the visitors to six Northern Ireland museums.

Our top tips for designing and running a survey. Find out how to create useful survey questions and get the response rates you need.

A recent visit to Dundee shows a city that is investing in people-focused culture and heritage. What are the lessons for Belfast's future cultural strategy?

Our client director Fiona shares her tips on how to facilitate a meeting or ideas session. How do you get everyone working towards the same goal, get those ideas flowing, and actually agree on some practical action points by the end of the day?

Using scenarios can help develop a rounder view of your audience, and give insights where personas just don't apply.

Last June, The Crescent Arts Centre decided to try something new for their Belfast Book Festival: a Pay What You Want scheme. Read our case study to find out how it went.

The Duncairn is our Audience Delight Award winner for Best Community Vibes. Read our case study to find out what is it about them that makes their audiences click.

Last August, we invited Olly Davies from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to share his experience of using audience data to make positive lasting changes to their overall strategy.

Read our third guest blog from the Changed Future series, written by Paul Connolly.

How using focus groups helped The Crescent understand how their audience sees them, and led to a new brand and website that's showcasing the best of what they offer.

The Earagail Arts Festival asked their audience and wider public about their motivations and barriers to attend the festival. They uncovered data that helped them to evaluate their impact and refine their purpose.

'Legitimate Interests' could be the saving grace for many arts and culture organisations who want to hold on to their marketing lists.

In our latest guest blog, Niamh Kelly, Youth Ambassador at Reimagine, Remake, Replay writes about co-curation with audiences, and in this instance, with young people. Could it change museums' relationships with their audiences for the better?

Our latest Dreams guest blog is by Damien Coyle, Chief Executive of University of Atypical. He reflects on the past 12 months, what we can learn and what we must remember.