Knowing Your Audiences

Museums, heritage sites and arts organisations are working together in cluster groups as part of the 'Knowing your Audiences' programme to find out more about their visitors and potential visitors and then develop effective plans to attract more and different people to visit.

The cluster groups are groups of organisations with interests or geography in common and have been working since 2005 with an aim of sharing learning across the region.

Renaissance East Midlands, the National Trust and Arts Council England, East Midlands recognised similar needs in understanding audiences and the three organisations have brought together the 28 cluster group participants including museums, heritage and arts sites. These venues are working in seven cluster groups, enabing them to share resources and capacity.

This was extremely cost effective with this first stage of activity costing less than 30 per cent of the total cost had each site undertaken the research individually.

The first stage of the cluster group work was to determine and pursue agreed audience research. Each group took a different focus depending on their interests, audiences and geographical location.

Renaissance East Midlands provided each group with an area profile, bringing together population data from the 2001 Census. The groups then worked with consultants, chosen by them, to investigate the missing areas or areas which didn’t have clear information.

The second stage of the cluster group work used the initial research to identify gaps and commission further work to provide more information to enable more effective audience development planning.

Further information about both stages is available below.   

The seven cluster groups are:

M1 Corridor Cluster Group

• This group included Snibston Discovery Park, Crich Tramway Village and the Richard Attenborough Centre (Leicester). All sites have similar visitor profiles with many people travelling longer distances to visit. They were also interested in discovering more about potential minority ethnic audiences and people with a disability and schools.

The group has commissioned a second report on their area, from Zebra Square, find the results below:
Second stage M1 Cluster Group findings (1778 kb)
M1 Cluster Group Phase 2 Report (1638 kb)
M1 Cluster Group questionnaire (97 kb)

Derby Cluster Group

• This included Derby City Museums, Derby Dance (Deda), Quad and Kedleston Hall, a National Trust property five miles outside Derby. The main areas for investigation were ethnic minority communities and people with disabilities, particularly people with hearing disabilities.
• The information gained from the consultants’ work did not provide a lot of new statistics but the information has been useful. All participants are using the information in their next plans for audience development work. For Kedleston this includes an HLF bid for a new outreach officer to work with groups and for Derby City Museums further work with community groups.
• Derby City Museums is also working with Crich Tramway Village on an HLF bid for work related to the Silk Mill as the gateway to the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.
  

Local Authority Cluster Group

• This partnership included Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, Leicester City Arts and Museums, Chesterfield Museum, Mansfield Museum, Buxton Museum, Nottingham Contemporary, New Art Exchange and Broadway. Most of the sites have a good awareness of their audiences, but not their potential audiences. Many didn’t have the time or money to try to find out more.
• Different sites looked at different audiences for example Mansfield Museum wanted to find out more about lone pensioners to link in with its ‘Growing Bolder’ outreach initiative and also to find out more about the increasing local Polish community. Chesterfield Museum looked at the new urban flat dwellers in the town; Buxton profiled two disadvantaged estates with an aim of increasing outreach with the local communities and both Nottingham and Leicester looked at BME communities, with Nottingham also looking at people with disabilities.
• The information is now being analysed and shared as the learning about new urban dwellers or Polish communities seems quite similar for different towns and cities.

Leicester City Council has carried out further research with focus groups visiting a number of local museums and the Richard Attenborough Centre. The results are outlined in the document below:

Audience Research Leicester (1222 kb)

North Nottinghamshire Cluster Group

• This included The Holocaust Centre, The Workhouse, Southwell, Galleries of Justice and Millgate Museum in Newark. All the sites involved are ‘non-traditional’ museums and the audience profiling was taken as 30 minutes drive time from the Holocaust Centre and Millgate Museum. The profiling showed an area with a greater number of people with disabilities than the UK average and a mostly white population. However, there was little information on the ethnic minority population, about the nature of people’s disabilities and no information on migrant workers.
• The Galleries of Justice focused on local groups and particularly those faith, youth, sports and interest groups.
• The Workhouse looked at young people aged 16 – 24 years but the research highlighted the need for better information.
• Millgate Museum looked at travellers and migrant communities, groups rarely included in the Census data.

Lincolnshire Cluster Groups

The Lincolnshire Cluster Group has developed into two groups, the East Coast Lincolnshire Cluster Group which includes Church Farm Museum, Ayscoughfee Hall and Tattershall Castle and the West Lincolnshire Cluster Group which includes: The Collection, Beacon Arts, The Hub and ArtsNK.  

• For the first stage of the project, data collection focused geographically on Church Farm Museum and Ayscoughfee Hall.
• Tourism proved the key for the areas, but with a short season the sites wanted to look at how diversification could extend the season and attract local visitors. Skegness is still a significant tourist area with repeat visitors, many coming by public transport and therefore less able to visit Church Farm Museum, which is out of the town centre. The stay in Skegness is longer than Spalding, which has mostly day visitors. 
• The area is mostly white, but with an increasing number of migrants who stay between one and three years. 
• The next step for the groups is to use the information to develop audience development programmes to interest the tourist market as well as local people.

Northamptonshire Cluster Group

• This includes Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, Rothwell Heritage Centre and Desborough Art Gallery, Manor House Museum, Kettering and Oundle Museum working with arts organisations Fishmarket and Fermywoods. The sites are geographically close and the consultant looked at East European migrant communities in the area (Northampton has the greatest number of UK-based Eastern European residents outside London). The profiling also looked at tourists.
• The research will lead on to further work by all the participants to develop the information about these different potential visitors.

The cluster group work continues and phase three, which is likely to start during summer 2008, will see the groups working together and independently to develop and implement audience development action plans.

A full copy of the Knowing Your Audiences report is available from the Knowing Your Audiences report page.