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 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

Cultural organisations in England get their overview of cultural audiences from the Taking Part Survey.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Find out how lockdown has impacted audiences in NI

In this snapshot, find out what arts and culture experiences represent for NI audiences, why they attend and what it gives them that other things don't.

Report of findings from Act 1 of the 'After the Interval' survey in NI and ROI

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.

Full report of findings from Act 2 of the 'After the Interval' survey in NI and ROI

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

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

What's the standard for digital marketing in the arts? Here are findings from a survey of 180 U.S. arts organisations by Capacity Interactive.

For the first time, we are sharing artform reports from our IMPACT Survey, using responses gathered from 29 organisations between September 2023 and July 2024. This report details the motivations, behaviours, and demographics of Theatre audiences.

For the first time, we are sharing artform reports from our IMPACT Survey, using responses gathered from 29 organisations between September 2023 and July 2024. This report details the motivations, behaviours, and demographics of Music audiences.

For the first time, we are sharing artform reports from our IMPACT Survey, using responses gathered from 29 organisations between September 2023 and July 2024. This report details the motivations, behaviours, and demographics of Visual Arts audiences.

For the first time, we are sharing artform reports from our IMPACT Survey, using responses gathered from 29 organisations between September 2023 and July 2024. This report details the motivations, behaviours, and demographics of Comedy audiences.

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.

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.

Who is attending outdoor events in Belfast and how you can increase your event attendees.

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.

Insights into film audiences in Belfast, and ideas for growing cultural film audiences.

Insights into arts and craft audiences in Belfast, and ideas for increasing visitors to your gallery.

Discover the insights from our Culture Beyond Covid audience research for ticketed and non-ticketed organisations.

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.

How engaged Older People (65+) are in Arts and Culture in Belfast and what art forms they are interested in the most.

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

How engaged Young Adults (16-24) are in Arts and Culture in Belfast and what art forms they are interested in the most.

Find out how NI audiences engage with culture online.

In this audience snapshot, find out what NI audiences first do when going to a venue, their pet peeves and how venues make them feel.

Find out what NI audiences think of emails and newsletters, and what they want to hear in your communication to them.

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

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.

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

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

We ran our first focus group with our Audience Panel and they had a lot to say about how they find out about upcoming arts and culture events.

How do NI audiences perceive arts and culture? Find out in our latest audience snapshot.

Find out what art form NI audiences connect with the most and what prevents them from engaging with some art forms.

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

Get to know Jan, our accessibility 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.

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

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

What does art mean to people's lives? This year, we are going places to meet 100 audience members in all 11 council areas of Northern Ireland to find out. Our ninth stop was at the Fermanagh House in Fermanagh.

What does art mean to people's lives? This year, we are going places to meet 100 audience members in all 11 council areas of Northern Ireland to find out. Our first stop was at the Duncairn in Belfast.

What does art mean to people's lives? This year, we are going places to meet 100 audience members in all 11 council areas of Northern Ireland to find out. Our second stop was at the Millennium Forum in Derry~Londonderry.

What does art mean to people's lives? This year, we are going places to meet 100 audience members in all 11 council areas of Northern Ireland to find out. Our tenth stop was at Carrickfergus Library in the Mid and East Antrim district council area.

What does art mean to people's lives? This year, we are going places to meet 100 audience members in all 11 council areas of Northern Ireland to find out. Our eleventh stop was at Seamus Heaney Homeplace in the Mid Ulster district council area.

What does art mean to people's lives? This year, we are going places to meet 100 audience members in all 11 council areas of Northern Ireland to find out. Our fourth stop was at High Rise in Lisburn, Lisburn and Castlereagh City.

What does art mean to people's lives? This year, we are going places to meet 100 audience members in all 11 council areas of Northern Ireland to find out. Our eighth stop was at Coleraine Town Hall in the Causeway Coast and Glens Borough council area.

What does art mean to people's lives? This year, we are going places to meet 100 audience members in all 11 council areas of Northern Ireland to find out. Our fifth stop was at Antrim Castle Gardens in Antrim, Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough.

What does art mean to people's lives? This year, we are going places to meet 100 audience members in all 11 council areas of Northern Ireland to find out. Our third stop was at Portico of Ards in Portaferry, Ards and North Down Borough.

What does art mean to people's lives? This year, we are going places to meet 100 audience members in all 11 council areas of Northern Ireland to find out. Our seventh stop was at Canal Court Hotel in Newry, Mourne and Down.

What does art mean to people's lives? This year, we are going places to meet 100 audience members in all 11 council areas of Northern Ireland to find out. Our sixth stop was at Millennium Court in Portadown, Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough.

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

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

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.

Earlier this month, we were invited to take part in the Festivals Forum, where we presented some of our findings on festival audience attendance over the last 4 years. The meeting provided us with great insight into trends from across NI festivals. Eve discusses in this report.

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

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

Get an evidence-based strategy to deliver your objectives.

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

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

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

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

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?

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 this short toolkit, we are looking at different types of surveys and finding the one that works best for you.

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

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.

Struggling to get responses to your online survey? Here's how we worked with EastSide Arts to improve their response rate by over 500%, along with our top ten tips for improving your own online surveys.

Have questions on the IMPACT Survey? Read on for more information.

In order to reach diverse audiences, including the LGBTQ+ community, you'll need to track who is visiting or engaging with you. Here's how to ask about gender and sexual orientation in surveys in a sensitive and practical way.

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.

Results updated weekly from the Covid-19 'After the Interval' Act 1 National Audience Survey.

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.

Results updated weekly from the Covid-19 'After the Interval' Act 2 Audience Survey.

Thinking BIG! is a guide to building and using strategic marketing plans for arts organisations by consultant Stephen Cashman

Queen's University Belfast student Isaac Ellis looked at our audience survey data to identify hidden trends and insights.

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

How can the NI arts and cultural scene adapt to social distancing measures after the lockdown? Our Chief Executive Margaret Henry tries to find out.

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

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

Author: Kate Mroczkowski, Spektrix

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.

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.

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

In this short toolkit, we’re giving you tips on the different tools you can use to find out more about your new visitors.

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.

This toolkit from Indigo and BOP Consulting will guide you through choosing a new ticketing or CRM system for your venue or organisation.

Want to know why some of your most loyal audiences haven't yet come back to your organisation? There's a way to find out. Take part in Missing Audiences.

How Art UK and the Audience Agency increased visits to their online collection and resources from BAME audiences and those aged 16-24.

Authors: Katie Moffat and Richard Turpin

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

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?

Why you might already be doing research without knowing it... and how to choose the right research method to find out what you need to know.

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.

If you want to know what makes NI audiences click and stick, sign up to our Audience Panel newsletter to receive fresh insights straight to your inbox.

Watch our last Fourth Wall Session with Jenna Hall from Belfast Community Circus School to learn more about their evaluation process, how they do it and why they do it.

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.

A toolkit to strengthen your relationship with audiences post-pandemic

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

The lovely Laura Cusick, our Head of Sector Development, is transitioning to a new position within our company. She has written a blog post explaining her decision to take on this new role.

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.

Nicholas Penny, former director of the National Gallery in London, questions the attention paid to visitor numbers in determining the success of cultural institutions.

A roadmap for digital tailored to Northern Ireland’s arts and culture organisations’ needs

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

Our Client Programme Coordinator Sarah introduces our latest resource: Another reopening guideline, with an audience-focused twist.

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

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

In this guest blog Alan Ballany of Culture Republic gives his thoughts on what stricter standards around data anonymisation mean for cultural organisations under GDPR.

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

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

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

Kelly-Anne Collins shares her insights into how organisations can take an honest and effective approach to tracking their change and measuring impact.

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.

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

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.

The Around the Town Festival in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, highlights the impact of community-driven efforts on local culture. Led by Positive Carrickfergus, the festival aimed to showcase the town’s potential and boost its arts scene. For this case study, our Client Programme Coordinator Sarah spoke with Creative Producer Lynn McKenzie to find out how she and the team turned community aspirations into a successful festival through collaboration, planning, and responsive organising.

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.

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.

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.

What is the ultimate stage of loyalty? How can you bring your audiences to see you as their BFF so they will support you at all times? Read our blog to find out.

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

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 focus is often on new audiences coming through our doors, but what does it take to get them to visit your organisation time and time again? Read our blog to find out.

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.

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?

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.

YouGov and Experian have been collecting data on the cost-of-living crisis and its impact on consumers. We wrote a blog about the implications for arts and culture audiences.

The fifth and last step of audience development is the big scary evaluation. Reviewing what you've done and assessing the impact you've made shouldn't be a chore. Read our blog to see our take on the most important step of audience development.

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.

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.

With the new StopCOVID NI app up and running, Sarah looks at the implications of GDPR in contact tracing and what it means for your organisation.

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

How can you know more about your audiences? We're listing free tools that you already have access to and tips on how to use them.

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

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.

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 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?

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.

Grassroots venues play a vital role in maintaining the longevity of the music sector. In this blog, Eve explores the challenges facing local grassroots music venues and what could be done to support their long term success.

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?