The audience legacy of Covid

Five years since the first lockdown, are we far enough on from the pandemic to see the lasting impact of that moment of crisis? Perhaps not. Recently, a wave of venues and organisations that ‘survived’ it have succumbed to its aftermath. There may be more.

But we’re still in that ‘poly-crisis’ – a continuum of crises driven by social divisions, inflation, institutions at breaking point, environmental breakdown, widespread mental health challenges, turbulent international affairs, the threat of escalating war in Europe and more.

As these challenges arrived in waves, the effect on cultural organisations and audiences has been continual disruption.

Audiences least affected by one wave might be most affected by the next. The organisations best placed to respond to one challenge may be those most wrong-footed by the next.

New sources of insight

But as the picture keeps evolving, we do at least have some insight into audiences that we didn’t have before: the pandemic drove (or coincided with) a new thirst for data, and the emergence of new surveys, datasets, dashboards and reports to give us a richer view of what is going on.

If we’re aware of the turbulence in audience behaviour, it’s partly because we’ve been better able to see the complexity; the trends and fluctuations we’ve not noticed before, lacking the means to track attitudes and behaviour in sufficient detail.

At The Audience Agency we’ve responded to this new appetite by introducing advances to Audience Answers (formerly Audiences Finder), launching the Cultural Participation Monitor – our twice yearly population survey tracking changes in opinion and behaviour – and providing a free sector evidence service and monthly TEA Break sessions, all providing rolling insights.

These have helped users respond to trends and emerging needs, from vaccination status in 2021 to issues such as more widespread working from home and the experience of the rise in the cost of living.

A distorted view of audiences

Some factors have worked against getting a clear picture. For example, the difference in impacts in London and elsewhere has meant our understanding has been affected by where observers are based and which voices they hear.

Disruption in audience monitoring systems, or their need for evolution in the face of rapid change, has also been challenging, making longitudinal measures and baselines difficult, if not impossible.

The disjunction of the pandemic at times concealed trends and shifts already taking place or, at others, accelerated them.

Key trends to watch

But looking across all our sources, including deep dive analysis and research for individual organisations and place-based consortia, broad patterns emerge. These changes are the critical ones to watch, with significant practical implications.

• Staying local

 Audiences tell us they have got more local and their horizons have got narrower – attending a narrower range of places. The thinning out of public transport probably hasn’t helped. At the same time, the increased prominence of large-scale and ‘must-see’ events, and the thinning out of tour networks, has stretched travel distances in those cases.

• Attending less often

Frequency of attendance has dropped, perhaps attributable to a combination of less choice of desirable offers, greater price sensitivity and a growing demand for ‘wow-factor’ programming. An increasing dominance known titles, ‘must see’ and one-off events is evident in the data, with a tendency towards micro-niches or mass-market events, with less in between.

• Changing behaviours by segment

The types of people attending events have changed, with older segments having reduced attendance (our Home & Heritage, Commuterland Culturebuffs, Supported Communities). Among more cost-conscious segments with younger children, the immediate post-Covid rise in attendance has been followed by a strong downward trend as the cost of living has bitten (Frontline Families and Trips & Treats).

The pattern for educated, urban types has been different again, with early post-Covid returns diverging over time (Metroculturals overall ending at similar pre-pandemic levels, Experience Seekers growing). Overall, the proportion of younger and more urban audiences, and those with children at home has risen.

• Winners and losers

There have been shifts in levels of engagement by artform, location and scale. Sales are higher than pre-Covid in London’s West End, for larger organisations, for musical theatre, some forms of music, and for children and family events. They are lower in the wider Southeast, rural areas, in small- to mid-scale venues and for plays, dance and classical music.

• Booking late and booking small

Who people attend with – and when they book – is also changing, perhaps reflecting a need to manage risk. There’s been a shift towards smaller group sizes and later bookings (but with fewer on the day sales). Large group sales have also dropped significantly.

• Schools staying away

This is especially true for schools. Cost pressures, lower take-up of arts and humanities subjects and increased financial pressures on parents are having a direct impact on the number of school visits.

• Digital backwash

There are also some changes that we’ve notably not seen. The initial ‘rush to digital’ at the beginning of the pandemic was (necessarily) hasty and uncoordinated. There has been little long-term impact on audiences, reflecting the sudden drop-off in supply as organisations pivoted back to in-person, dropping their digital experiments and any nascent audience expectations.

There’s evidence of continuing audience appetite for digital content, and of the power of digital content to engage younger and more diverse arts-orientated audiences, but this potential has yet to be realised.

Implications

All of this suggests organisations need to watch their audiences closely, particularly using these filters. Is your catchment getting smaller, or larger for some types of product? And if so, where are your audiences coming from and what do they like? What do repeat bookers come back to, and can you spot price-sensitivity, perhaps more for some segments than others?

How are different segments responding to your offers? How does the performance of known brands/names and family-oriented product compare with that of other aspects of your programme? In this environment, anticipating audiences’ sense of risk and experimenting with potential solutions is going to help.

Audiences are different from how they were before Covid, even if not all the changes can be attributed to the pandemic. Successful audience engagement will require continuing to monitor these ongoing changes, using all the tools we have available.

The Audience Agency offers a free and fresh supply of evidence – open-access Sector Evidence – and tools to help with Audience Spectrum segments. We also host regular opportunities to hear more and pose questions at our TEA Breaks online events and in TEA Time News.