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

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

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

Find out the results from our fourth and final survey for Culture Beyond Covid for Heritage: the Heritage Panel

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?

Find out how NI heritage visitors have engaged with heritage organisations and sites since Covid and how you can use these insights to plan for the future.

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.

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

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

In its second year, the North West Audience Survey is currently gathering data on arts and heritage audiences in Derry and Donegal. Please find our first snapshot of our findings, which looks at audiences with disabilities.

In its second year, the North West Audience Survey is currently gathering data on arts and heritage audiences in Derry and Donegal. Please find our second snapshot of our findings, which looks at the impact of age on audiences.

Find out how NI audiences engage with culture online.

Find out who are the NI audiences willing to pay for culture online.

In its second year, the North West Audience Survey is currently gathering data on arts and heritage audiences in Derry and Donegal. Please find our third snapshot of our findings, which looks at the impact of who audiences attend with.

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.

Find out what NI visual arts audiences think about coming back, what they've been doing over lockdown and what they'll feel comfortable doing in the future.

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

Discover the insights from the Missing Audiences for Northern Ireland - Wave 2 survey.

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.

Discover the insights from the Missing Audiences for Northern Ireland - Wave 1 survey.

Global Web Index's report on millennials' online behaviors and their attitudes to digital and marketing.

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.

Surveys, postcode mapping, focus groups, and visitor profiling.

Unsure where to start? Book a free one-to-one audience development session.

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

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

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

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

A toolkit to strengthen your relationship with audiences post-pandemic

The lowdown on the newest ways cultural organisations can use digital to connect with their audiences.

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

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

We're looking for people working in the arts, culture and heritage to share with us their dreams and visions for the NI sector.

Advice from MOMA on using digital to connect with visual arts audiences, and a spotlight on creating a digital plan for heritage organisations.

Our definitive guide to audience development for arts, culture, and heritage. Use this guide to develop your own unique audience development strategy.

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

We're looking for people working in the arts, culture and heritage sectors to share their vision of the future in our new series of guest blogs.

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.

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?

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 CEO Margaret attended the Westminster Media Forum event recently, and came away with a lot of ideas and questions for digital transformation in the NI arts, culture, and heritage sector.

Mark Zuckerberg recently announced major changes to how Facebook prioritises content in newsfeed. How is this going to affect cultural organisations, and what can we do about it?

Margaret Henry talks about the importance of looking after your own well-being in the arts, culture, and heritage sectors and brings the top five tips back for increasing your resilience  from this year's CO3 conference.

VR is an exciting new opportunity for arts, culture, and heritage. But is there really an audience for it, and can it be used as an audience development tool? Fiona Bell reports from the Culture Geek conference.

Culture Hive's quick guide to developing a vision and mission for your organisation. 

How group visits can be used to increase engagement from hard to reach audiences.

Author: Jane Wells, First Art

A step-by-step guide to putting together a press release that will get you noticed. Contains ideas on where to send your story, and story angles that will appeal to journalists.

Two months since introducing our IMPACT survey, Research Analyst Laura has taken a first look at the data for early insights from the responses. Her initial review offers a pulse check – what does the data reveal about the impact of arts, cultural and heritage events and activities so far?

Stats from the US on how millennial visitors are different - and a key target market for cultural organisations.

Author: Colleen Dilenschneider

Thanks to funding from ACNI, we now have a suite of 8 iPads available for venues and festivals who want to run surveys on-site.

This toolkit from the Tourism NI walks through how to market your cultural product as a tourism experience.

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

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

The Arts Collaboration Network's statement following the announcement from Communities Minister Carál Ní Chuilín of a £4m Creative Support Fund.

Interested in digital and user-generated content? Here's how the Royal Ontario Museum used visitor photos as part of their visitor experience, and as a data source too.

Author: Ryan Dodge, Digital Engagement at Royal Ontario Museum

Use this toolkit to create your own GDPR compliant privacy notice.

Time to nominate your favourite NI organisation and celebrate how they have found new ways to connect with their audiences in spite of the year's challenges.

Clever use of social proof can help you use your current audience to encourage new visitors to your cultural venue or events.

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

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?

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

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.

Learnings from the Hull UK City of Culture conference around how we measure and talk about the benefits and impact of culture.

Three proven ways to get performing arts audiences to re-attend.

We want to grow the amount of research into cultural engagement in Northern Ireland. Read our blog to find out more about our plans for this year and how you can take part.

How GDPR still applies in times of crisis and tips on how to ensure you've got it right

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.

Welcome to this year's third theme: What is your real purpose? What is the change you want to see?

When you're starting any kind of research - the first thing to do is to check what's already out there. Here are our top free online sources of audience information.

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

How to design a membership scheme that increases customer loyalty and improves your organisation's bottom line.

We sent Fiona off to Culture Geek in the sweltering London heat. Here's some of what she brought back - the best examples of games to engage audiences in galleries and museums

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

We found that demonstrating the value of arts and culture, and the impact it can have on people and their communities is not an easy task. EastSide Arts' project 'The Gert and Friends' is a great example of how it can be done through co-creation.

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.

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

Here are the answers to some of the most common questions we've been getting from the cultural sector on GDPR.

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.

Our insights director Chris looks at the ticketing trends and what they say about where people get their cultural fix in NI. Do ticket-buyers in Belfast stick to city venues - and vice versa?

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.

Read our first guest blog from the Changed Future series, written by Lucretia Devlin.

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.

GDPR has had a major impact on email marketing. There are new and more rigorous standards on who you can email to. Here's what that means for marketers.