If this is 'failure', we could do with a lot more of it

I love the Taking Part Survey and I’d be the last person to try to rubbish the statistics derived from it.  It provides robust top-level data on participation and attendance in the arts and is a great way of tracking shifts in patterns of engagement over time.  The data has had other uses too: it was crucial in developing the brilliant Arts Audiences Insight model that has helped to get the heads of many artists and arts organisations around segmentation.

I would also trust the data as a measure for a national target (although reduced sample sizes in recent years do make it a bit less robust).  So does the lack of any statistically significant increase in levels of arts engagement in recent years recorded by the survey signal a ‘failure’? 

Some have argued that static figures are in fact a ‘success’ given the economic downturn.  Certainly when you compare the figures for the arts to the major declines in physical visits to libraries, the sector appears to be performing very well. But I think there is a more fundamental reason to be cheerful.

What the Taking Part survey does brilliantly is measure everything to do with arts attendance and participation.  If you have done any knitting in the last year, it counts.  If you’ve attended a reading group, it counts.  If you’ve attended a West End musical, it counts.  So the top line figures from Taking Part include every type of professional and unpaid experience from the funded and non-funded arts sectors.

So to shift these figures, logic states that you’d need a really big campaign that involves all sections of the arts community, from amateur groups to the commercial sector along with Local Authorities, commercial partners, media and much more.  Unless I’ve missed it, I don’t think we’ve had one of those in the last few years.

But wait – weren’t Arts Council England planning to run a campaign just like this?  Wasn’t it going to be called Arts Nation?  What’s happened to it?  Despite years of research and planning, it’s been a victim of the cuts.

So if the focus of Arts Council England and the Audience Development Agencies hasn’t been on the big, broad arts ecology cake in recent years, where has it been?  Largely on that small (but very important) slice that receives public funding on a regular basis.

One thing the excellent Taking Part Survey can’t do is tell you how many people have been involved in subsidised arts activities, mainly because most people wouldn’t have a clue about whether the event they attended last night was made possible by public funds or not, let alone the one they attended six months ago.  So to judge performance we need to go back to data from these subsidised organisations, handily provided every year in their ACE Annual Submission.

So what does this data tell us?  A very different story.  For the first year of the economic downturn (2008/09), ‘earned income’ (largely Box Office) was up by a massive 12% across a constant sample of organisations.  ‘Attendance at performances, exhibition and film screening days’ rose even more, up 14%.  And in 2010/11 earned income rose again (up another 3%) and attendance was up a further 9%. 

Whilst the Taking Part figure for overall attendance and participation across the broad arts ecology is really important, shifting it has not been the primary focus of politicians, funders or Audience Development Agencies in recent years.  Instead, Audience Development Agencies have been working with cultural organisations to help them understand and grow their audiences.  A 24% increase in audience numbers over just two years during the harshest economic downturn for a generation is hardly a ‘failure’.  It is a stunning success for all those cultural organisations and the skilled professionals that help support them and make the UK the acknowledged world leader in audience development.  

David Brownlee, Chief Executive, Audiences UK

This blog was commissioned by and first appeared on www.artsprofessional.co.uk