Reach and engagement

Twice a year at All About Audiences we host a Forum for senior staff from our subscribing organisations to debate and discuss current issues in the sector. This week we met with a small group in Liverpool to talk about the recent guidelines to Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations. This was not a whinge about Key Performance Indicators which are exercising some of those 700 NPOs in England and being dissected elsewhere. It is curious that under a Conservative-led Coalition, such statistical measures are introduced – they speak more of the previous administration’s almost obsessive belief in evidence base and continuous monitoring – but National Portfolio Director Roddy Gault does a good job of defending them on the Bad Culture blog (here) not “a pass or fail measure, instead we hope ... a tool for self-improvement”. However at this session I was more interested in whether the language, definitions and guidance behind the KPIs are an indication of a more subtle policy shift in economically challenged times.

All About Audiences works with organisations and partners of all scales and from different parts of the cultural sector. Only a quarter of those attending represented new National Portfolio Organisations – others were funded nationally or regionally or represented local authorities – but as ACE takes on responsibility for museums and libraries in England its influence is spreading across the cultural domain; and will anything enshrined in its strategy documents, guidance or actions create a ripple effect across the wider cultural ecology or into other nations?

ACE’s guidance notes provide definitions of ‘reach’ and ‘engagement’ (plus some standardised metrics for digital activity in line with Central Office for Information). These are slightly reductive compared to classic marketing definitions of the terms but are (initially) fairly unambiguous: ‘reach’ means “more people attending and taking part in the arts (numerical, geographical, demographic)”; and ‘engagement’ means “more people feeling that the arts are for them (quality of experience for audiences / public / participants)”.  There is an expectation that reach and engagement will increase year on year. With reduced funding and resource and a ‘pressure’ to hit targets could this lead to short-term, ‘easy win’ interventions to mine a small core of highly engaged audiences, participants and visitors?

From our discussions, my latent concern was not borne out by experience or intention – all participants, whether NPOs or not, had articulate examples of how, and a passionate conviction for why, they were engaging different audience groups: loyal regulars, infrequent occasionals, first-timers and the non-engaged. And again beyond the initial KPIs, ACE’s guidance supports this: “All NPOs should be looking to extend their reach and encourage engagement amongst the 66% of the population as defined by the ‘some engagement’ segments” (All About Audiences, &Co and Audiences North East are currently finalising tool-kits to support working with the ‘Dinner and A Show’ and ‘Family Community Focused’ segments)..... plus ”Many NPOs will be going further – for example, those planning to make a significant contribution to the priority to reach the least engaged”.  

I could spend another whole post on the debate about digital and reliable and robust measures of ‘popularity’ and ‘engagement’ we had. Instead I will simply quote from Culture24’s “Let’s Get Real – Evaluating Online Success” report that “challenges ...assumptions and raises the question of whether we are actually reaching new audience segments online, or just engaging with a larger number of the same type of people”.

So there is a shift in how the main English arts funder is monitoring the impact of public money amongst a small – but significant - portion of the cultural sector but this is neither an invitation or excuse to neglect wider responsibilities and sensible business practice. As David Brownlee, outgoing Chief Executive of Audiences UK in his final blog post last week said “a sustainable arts sector needs to understand and increase its focus on the needs of its current and potential future customer base” (my italics). Language and definitions may be in flux but the challenge is still for the same for organisations and practitioners to devise sensible and appropriate strategies for public engagement: sustaining loyalty, nurturing relationships, creating awareness and appreciation.

Reassured and inspired as I was by the work of our subscribers, it was sad to hear in the same week that part of the infrastructure to support English cultural organisations will not in place next financial year; Audiences North East announced they will close at 31 March 2012 – read about their achievements over the last seven years here with more from The Stage here A sad consequence of a turbulent year. There’s some things that KPIs just can’t measure.

Ivan Wadeson, Chief Executive, All About Audiences