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.

The Taking Part Survey researches engagement with museums and galleries in England between 2005 and 2016.

Research into the media preferences and habits of over 25,000 US performing arts customers.

This resource from The Wallace Foundation in the USA gives some refreshingly fact-based strategies for attracting millennials.

This research from Museums Libraries and Archives in England gets to the core of why people use libraries, why they don't, and what would get them through the door.

How to engage with family audiences - from your programming, to customer experience and marketing.

This report from Arts Connect explores how people aged 10 to 19 relate to arts and culture.

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

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.

A national survey from Arts Council of Ireland looking at attendance and participation in the arts in ROI.

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

Colleen Dilenschneider argues that free admission matters less than we may think - and backs it up with ticketing and attendance data from the US.

Author: Colleen Dilenschneider 

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?

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.

Practical steps that arts and cultural organisations can take to get more working class people employed and leading in the sector.

Author: Danielle Rose

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

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

Covid had an impact on how cultural organisations are collecting and using audience data. With our last thrive survey, we were able to find out what changed and what it means for audience data in NI going forward.

Our latest Foundations report, indicates a fresh wave of individuals engaging with arts and culture in Northern Ireland following the pandemic. We wanted to take a closer look at both emerging and diminishing audiences more closely.

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

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.

A comprehensive toolkit and checklist to help you welcome LGBTQ+ audiences to your venue, festival, or event. Produced in collaboration with Outburst Arts.

Audience development. It’s an objective that is close to our hearts here at Thrive. This summer, we decided to delve deeper into it, meeting with people from various parts of Northern Ireland’s arts and cultural sector (festivals, producers, galleries, and venues) The aim? To get an insight into the unique challenges each group faces around building and maintaining audience relationships.

We are now taking registrations for wave 2 of Missing Audiences in Northern Ireland, which will open on 31st January 2022.

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.

We ran Hitchhiker's Guide to the Arts in 2014 to see if planned group visits could increase engagement from those who don't normally attend cultural events.

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

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

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.

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.

Our Client Relationships Director Laura Cusick is back from maternity leave. Read her blog to find out more about how she plans to lead our team to further support you and the rest of the sector.

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?

We have partnered with the Insights Alliance (Indigo Ltd, Baker Richards and One Further) to deliver the Missing Audiences survey in Northern Ireland.

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.

A guide to language in Disability for Non-Disabled People

Happy New Year! We're opening the year with a new theme: strengthening your relationship with your audiences and loyalty. It is as important as ever when our cultural spaces remain closed. Read our blog to find out more.

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

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.

In 2018, six museums across Northern Ireland hosted late-night events to attract new audiences and change perceptions about museums.

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 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?

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

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