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 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 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 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 sixth stop was at Millennium Court in Portadown, Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon 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 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 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 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 ninth stop was at the Fermanagh House in Fermanagh.

In July 2022, we began work on a fascinating project: Northern Ireland in 100 Stories. For the past year, we met with a total of 120 people from across all 11 council areas in Northern Ireland to find out what arts and culture means to their lives. As we near the end of the project, we wanted to gather in one place all the resources that came from it.

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.

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

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

Insights from the ticketing data of up to 343 cultural organisations across the UK, Ireland, USA, and Canada.

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.

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

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

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

Young adults aged 16-24, commonly referred to as Gen Z by marketers, are often considered a challenging demographic to engage. This report, developed by the creative agency We Are Social UK, offers deeper insights into their lifestyles and behaviours. You can read the complete report via the link or read the summary below, written by Alice Bresciani, We Are Social's former Senior Research and Insights Director. We recently created an audience snapshot for this age group and the art forms they're into.

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.

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.

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

Uncover the insight in your box office data.

It's easy to measure financial gains, but how can arts organisations with a social purpose measure their value?

Author: Matthew Brown

This short piece argues that defining company values can be a practical tool - not just a box-ticking exercise.

Author: Carter Cleveland, CEO of Artsy

The significance of arts and culture is frequently downplayed, yet it profoundly shapes people's lives. The Northern Ireland in 100 Stories project has gathered first hand accounts from people across the region demonstrating the impact arts and culture have on local residents. In this blog post, Laura examines the key themes from the project, highlighting how integral arts and culture are to are to local communities.

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.

A guest post from Robert Jones of brand consultancy firm Wolff Olins. Robert talks about how a clear purpose is becoming more and more essential for cultural organisations.

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.

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

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.

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?

Our Client Relationships Director Laura took a closer look at Taylor Swift's behaviour with her fans and realised it was exactly what we talk about when we talk about audience development.

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

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.

New Era, New Audience: How can we make the arts appeal to the wider public during the pandemic and beyond? is our first guest blog of 2021, written by playwright Rosemary Jenkinson.

Katy Raines, co-founder & partner at Indigo Ltd and Associate of thrive, writes about GDPR and COVID-19 for arts organisations.

Talking to your audiences online and encouraging them to post comments and interact is a great way to draw attention to your offer, and increase audience loyalty. Here are the best ways to get started, and deal with any negative comments too.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Our client relationships director Fiona Bell shares some thoughts on the arts sector after her travels across the length and breadth of Northern Ireland this year.

A guide to language in Disability for Non-Disabled People

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

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

Patrick O'Reilly from Tinderbox asks the right questions and suggests solutions for a thriving cultural sector in Northern Ireland.

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 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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

Are cultural organisations too focused on new audiences - at the expense of encouraging and rewarding loyal visitors? Here's how and why arts organisations should be promoting audience loyalty.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?