We recently partnered with The Audience Agency to present an event for the Scottish cultural sector to understand and engage with the public more widely and more deeply in ways that get results. The afternoon showcased new results from Culture Republic’s research into Scottish arts audiences, new models of collaborative working being pioneered in England and case studies from some of Scotland’s leading arts organisations.

50 organisations collaborating in Scotland to learn more about audiences @culture_public @AudiencesNI

— Margaret Henry (@magsh01) November 17, 2014

The afternoon was hosted in Edinburgh at  Dovecot Studios. It opened up with some key findings from Culture Republic’s Chief Executive Julie Tait, which highlighted recent insights into patterns of Scottish arts attendance.

27,000 performances, 4.1m tickets, £65m revenue = @culture_public's dataset which is helping to set context of Scottish audiences

— Culture Republic (@culture_public) November 17, 2014

Anne Torreggiani, Chief Executive of The Audience Agency shared how data co-operation is changing how her organisation is helping cultural organisations in England build audiences. In a presentation that highlighted the organisation’s give and gain model she explained how English organisations are pooling their data into one shared pot. This is facilitating arts marketers to make better, data-driven decisions. Shared data is also the foundation for the company’s segmentation tool audience spectrum that identifies ten distinct, sizeable, relevant and targetable audience segments.

To look at how audience engagement is working in practice with Scottish audiences, Culture Republic  invited a panel of four speakers who shared some of their own experiences applying audience insights practically to grow their audiences and strengthen relationships.

• Derek Allan, Commercial Director, Pitlochry Festival Theatre shared how he manages the theatre’s pricing strategy to make sure that the right people find their way into the right seats.
• Caroline Dooley, Marketing & Communications Director, Scottish Chamber Orchestra described the challenges for a touring company to gather customer data and how the orchestra is targeting first time attenders.
• Sam Eccles, Development Director, The Touring Network spoke on the notion of cultural equity so that rural and remote audiences in Scotland have access to the highest quality cultural productions.
• Elizabeth Burchell, Head of Marketing & Sponsorship, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society told audiences about the Fringe’s partnership model of marketing and unusual patterns of attendance.

The event finished with a wide ranging conversation which drew out some of the key threads from across the presentations – issues around data protection, communications strategy and planning and greater data sharing between touring companies and venues.

Beautiful photo RT from @PlatformGlasgow's Louise of the venue @DovecotStudios at today's @culture_public event pic.twitter.com/uyFReGmhSN

— Culture Republic (@culture_public) November 17, 2014

Photo by Louise Dingwall @LouiseDingwall, Audience Development Officer at Glasgow’s Platform.