More about measuring engagement

I have found myself thinking a lot recently about how cultural organisations can measure the way that audiences, visitors and participants experience what they have to offer. It all started when I discovered that Scottish arts organisations had asked a session on measuring public engagement at the Scottish Cultural Forum in February. We’re clearly interested but, as I said in my article in March, what we tend to measure is what we think they ought to be doing and feeling.

Researchers in Australia looked at the impact of pre-performances talks on audiences’ enjoyment and their confidence in interpreting the dancework. The only difference between audience members who had been to the pre-show talk and those who had not was that their interpretation of the piece more closely matched the intentions of the choreographer. They didn’t feel any more confident and rated their enjoyment in a similar way. So, pre-show talks are not an effective tool for audience development unless our goal is to ensure the audience thinks like us. What made the difference was the time spent after the performance thinking about and discussing what they had seen as part of the research methodology. The researchers suggest that post-performance discussions where the audience gets to do the talking rather than listens to an expert would work much better…

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How do the public engage with culture?

Heather Maitland explores what we know about the way people experience the arts and what we are learning from this …

Research into public engagement with cultural activities divides into four areas:
· What kind of people visit, attend and participate in culture and who is missing?
· What types of activity do they engage with and what is the crossover between them?
· What motivates people to engage, and what prevents them?
· How do people actually experience a particular cultural activity?


Taking Part is commissioned by DCMS, surveying 29,000 people each year to answer the first two questions. Detailed findings for different regions and artforms are useful for benchmarking our own research into public engagement with our arts organisation and can be downloaded from the Arts Council England website. You can download an annual report with data on visits to museums and galleries from the MLA website.

Research into motivations and barriers to cultural attendance is abundant. Arts Council England commissioned extensive research as part of their Arts Debate published in February 2007…

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Measuring engagement

For decades, marketers have been trying to understand their customers’ experiences. Mason Haire first talked about ‘selling the sizzle not the steak’ way back in 1950.

And it’s not just marketers. Retailers worry about their customers’ emotional experiences when shopping because they know that improving the ambience of the shop means people buy more. Designers worry about how people feel when they use their products because they want to create things that work. There’s a whole research field academics have named ‘funology’ that tries to understand what makes a computer game engaging. Producers of political documentaries have borrowed techniques from the researchers who test TV ads so they can measure the impact of their films on people’s political beliefs. There’s a big debate going on among the geeks who design social networking sites about how to measure the depth of engagement that people have with their sites rather than just its usability. Mark Ghuneim from Wiredset identifies four levels of engagement from bookmarking at the shallowest level to creating a fan community at the deepest…

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The art of collaboration

Heather Maitland considers the sometimes tricky relationships between arts practitioners and their partners, and offers some tips for keeping professional relationships on the right track

When did you last check the health of your relationship? Here’s a litmus test, Cosmo quiz style:

You like Top Gear and your partner likes cookery programmes. What do you do?
a) ¨ Give your partner the channel changer – it’s more peaceful that way
b) ¨ Give your partner the channel changer – they’ll owe you one
c) ¨ Give your partner the channel changer – but refuse to talk to them for the rest of the evening
d) ¨ Buy another TV.


Buying that extra TV sounds like a simple solution, but is it really such a good idea to be sitting in separate rooms all evening? In a healthy relationship the give and take goes almost unnoticed. So how do we create work partnerships where the compromises necessary for collaboration come as easily?

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Reaching the unreachable

Engaging with hard-to-reach groups is, after all, what tackling social exclusion is all about. But how do you reach the unreachable? Heather Maitland makes some suggestions.

Some arts organisations exist to reach people no-one else engages with. Engaging with hard-to-reach groups is, after all, what tackling social exclusion is all about. But how do you reach the unreachable?

The government has set its agencies working with young people the target of reducing the proportion of 16 to 18 year-olds not in education, employment or training (NEET) by two percentage points by 2010. NEET young people are by definition hard to reach as they are not engaged with any part of the formal infrastructure. It reports that “the reductions [to date] in the proportion of NEET young people are the result of a wide range of organisations working effectively together to target the issue.” This multi-agency approach is adopted by most arts organisations who form partnerships with groups already in contact with NEET young people. But this means that arts organisations only work with young people already engaged in some way with the support system. Should they be targeting the genuinely unreachable instead of focusing on partnerships?

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Are You Stalking Your Audience?

Heather Maitland sees too many arts organisations squandering opportunities to use their customer databases for effective audience development

I come across too many organisations who are not making effective use of the information they hold about their ticket buyers. It’s not just that they are wasting a valuable resource, they are probably actively putting off their potential customers too.
Their strategy for using their customer database is to send direct mail about an event to people who have recently been to something similar at the venue. Sounds harmless, doesn’t it? But the trouble is that no-one is taking a strategic overview of who gets what. And the more often a customer buys tickets, the more often they get direct mail. Some venues are mailing their core customers at least once a fortnight. That’s stalking!

Not only does it mean that response rates to direct mail will be low because it’s predominantly the same people getting it, but also that the organisation’s most loyal customers will feel that their loyalty is not recognised and valued. They will probably view these letters as irritating junk mail…

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Developing International Collaborations

Heather Maitland has recently been delving into the world of international relationships and offers advice based on what she has found

Anne Roberts and I have been researching consortia for a forthcoming book commissioned by the touring department of Arts Council England. Those we spoke to said that collaborative working across borders can offer myriad benefits to group members both when importing (bringing work from overseas into the UK) or exporting (taking UK work abroad). This is the advice they gave us.

Finding partners

First, consider carefully what you want to achieve by joining a group, both as an individual and on behalf of your organisation.

Find a group that sounds as if it might help you achieve those aims. There are plenty of resources designed to encourage cross-border partnerships but that does not mean that finding partners and building relationships with them is easy…

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