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.

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.

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.

This comprehensive report from UK Theatre analyses sales data across a wide range of genres and venue types.

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 Northern Ireland, as well as differences by Belfast venues and regional venues.

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

Our Foundations report shows what the ticketed landscape was like in Northern Ireland in 2019-2023. It uncovers insights into audiences for venues and festivals across Northern Ireland and identifies benchmark figures for our region.

Our Foundations report shows what the ticketed landscape was like in Northern Ireland in 2019-2020. It uncovers insights into audiences for venues and festivals across Northern Ireland and identifies benchmark figures for our region.

Our Foundations report shows what the ticketed landscape was like in Northern Ireland in 2020-2021. It uncovers insights into audiences for venues and festivals across Northern Ireland and identifies benchmark figures for our region.

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

Interested in targeting young people? Or increasing loyalty in your current audience of young people? Then read on.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Get to know Jan, our accessibility persona created from the data collected during our Audience Panel.

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.

Get to know Frank and Nancy, our Older Frequent Attender 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Mystery shops to understand and improve your visitor experience.

Have the confidence to gather the data you need.

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

Uncover the insight in your box office data.

Get an evidence-based strategy to deliver your objectives.

Come join us at University of Atypical for a Bottomless Brunchmarking session focused on creating inclusive arts and culture spaces for diverse audiences.

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

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

There is a two-way relationship between you and your most loyal audience members. Understanding this relationship thoroughly and using this understanding to develop similar feelings of loyalty with other members of your audience is the key to increasing retention. Let's Talk Loyalty at our next free workshop!

Crescent Arts Centre/Belfast Book Festival + thrive + Arts & Business NI present this one-off special event for women in the Culture and Heritage sector in Northern Ireland. Viv Groskop will deliver an exclusive event about public speaking, confidence and ambition.

Are you a theatre company or producer showing your work in a receiving venue? The toolkit will help you prep all the info you and your venue need to market your show effectively.

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.

If you're a producer that brings work to receiving venues, you may think it's difficult to get a hold of your audience data for those shows. This blog clears up who has a right to the data. Plus, you'll get tips on how to work with venues to share this data, and increase audiences for everyone.

Before we can see the effects of GDPR, here's a breakdown of how well Northern Irish venues are capturing contact details and permissions for their ticket buyers.

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.

What our latest ticketing research says about customer loyalty in theatres and arts venues across Northern Ireland.

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.

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

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

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

What ticketing data can tell us about the effects of funding cuts on the arts in Northern Ireland.

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 popular is online booking with Northern Irish arts ticket buyers - and how does it differ between urban and rural contexts?

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

How receiving venues can make the most of their visiting companies' fans.

Author: Sian Dudley, Arts Professional

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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?

Good writing can be the difference between an amazing show, exhibition, or event enjoyed by many, or an amazing show in an empty venue. Here are our top tips.

Limited time to get the word out about what you do? Or not sure where to start? Download our communications plan template and get all angles covered.

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.

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.

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.

How you can use images to connect with your audiences.

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.

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

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 annual benchmarking report Foundations shows consistently each year that the vast majority of customers do not return the following year. And they don’t come more than once during the year. It sounds like we have a commitment problem. Áine explores how to use data to better understand audience engagement.

There are different ways to segment your audience. In this toolkit, we're giving you tips to create your own successful segmentation.

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.

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

Want to say hello? Here's how to find us.

How trying to serve and attract everyone can harm your cultural organisation.

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?

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.

Libraries are routinely reaching audiences that other cultural organisations struggle to. What can we learn from libraries about attracting a more diverse and representative audience?

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?

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

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

Make sure your research delivers the results you want. This toolkit will help you design a research brief to do just that.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

How National Theatre of Scotland is using digital creatively to improve access and grow Deaf audiences.

Your website is often where your audience member starts their visit. If it's not accessible - what message are you sending to potential disabled and d/Deaf audience members? Here are some practical steps to make your website more accessible.

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.

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.

In this blog post, our CEO Fiona explains her take on the differences, and how audience development is the only way to meaningful change.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Outburst Queer Arts Festival introduced their own ticketing strategy 'More if/Less if' to make their programme more accessible. They're one of our 2019/2020 Audience Delight Winner.

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

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.

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.

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.

Our CEO Margaret updates on the movement towards a citizens' assembly for the arts on the island of Ireland. How it could happen, and what it could mean for the cultural sector here.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sign-up forms, subscription confirmations, welcome emails... they're all opportunities to get the message out there about who you are and why a potential audience member should buy a ticket or plan a visit.

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.

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.

We recently deactivated our Instagram account. We're telling you why in our latest blog.

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.

Our latest Dreams guest blog is by Damien Coyle, Chief Executive of University of Atypical. He reflects on the past 12 months, what we can learn and what we must remember.

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

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.

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.

We recently designed and delivered research for Belfast Stories in which we took a creative approach to craft our questions.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

As we're noticing the impact of the latest Apple update on social media advertising, we wrote a blog to explain what it's all about and the challenges it brings to arts and culture 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.