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

The ISLAND Arts Centre is our Audience Delight Award winner for best socially distanced festival for families. Read our case study to find out how they did it, how their audience found it and tips for doing it yourself.

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

How engaged Adults (35-49) are in Arts and Culture in Belfast and what art forms they are interested in the most.

10 personas for UK cultural audiences. These are a great way to visualise your audience once you know where they're coming from.

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

In this audience snapshot, learn about NI audiences' summer plans.

Find out the results from our first Culture Beyond Covid for Heritage: The Heritage Panel

This report from Culture24 explores after-hours events in museums and their role in the night-time economy.

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

Young adults (16-24), or Gen Z, as marketers like to call them, are often seen as a hard-to-reach group. This report provides more juicy information about their lives and behaviours.

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.

How Buxton Opera House used audience feedback to make their venue and events more family-friendly.

Author: Kate Mroczkowski, Spektrix

Our family friendly toolkit will help you to welcome families and anticipate their needs.

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.

How London Symphony Orchestra changed their mindset and activities to make sure they are inclusive of all families.

Author: Fabienne Morries, London Symphony Orchestra

Open House Festival is in the unusual position of having moved location from Belfast city centre to the seaside town of Bangor. We explore why they made the move, and how it has affected their audiences.

How can we make classical music more representative of the real world? Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya argues for a variety of intentional approaches across many different job roles.

Author: Lidiya Yankovskaya

Durham Cathedral's lego-based fundraising campaign shows how arts, culture, and heritage organisations can create engaging fundraisers that appeal to families and young people.

Author: Catherine Hodgson, Durham Cathedral

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

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

A checklist of practical information to give to your potential visitors or event attendees.

Read our second guest blog from the Changed Future series, written by Beth Frazer.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How you can use images to connect with your audiences.

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 message from the thrive team to the Arts, Culture and Heritage sectors about COVID-19.

Read the Arts Collaboration Network's latest statement on 27th January 2021

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

We've asked Zoe Seaton at Big Telly Theatre Company what it's like to adapt live theatre online, how to price digital performances and tips for NI organisations.

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

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?

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

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.