How it works?

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Other industries would kill for the data that we have in the arts. Little do our customers know how much they reveal about themselves every time they buy a ticket!

Roisin Jones, Marketing Analyst, Wales Millennium Centre

Jargon Buster

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Catchment area or core catchment

What does this mean?

The geographic area that is the source of the largest and most important proportion of actual users for an event, series of events, organisation or facility.

Generally speaking, it is preferable for an organisation to decide what is the size of such an ‘important proportion’. But if this is not possible, 80% of the attending audience should be used as a default (see below.)

Where the organisation is a ticketed one, a pragmatic approach here is to base the calculation on postcodes from addresses captured for bookers (unless figures for attenders are available). But if the analysis applies to the catchment for bookers, this needs to be stated.

For non-ticketed events, postcodes should be collected from a sample of users (e.g. through self-completion surveys, quick and short face-to-face interviews or data generated through a competition).

How did we get this definition?

This is the geographic area around an arts facility which is the source of the largest and most important proportion of actual users and attenders for an event, series of events, organisation or facility.

Related and similar definitions

There are a number of potential ways of visualising and depicting an arts facility’s catchment. Among these are:

  • drawing a regular distance radius from the facility (for instance 30 miles)
  • drawing the 30-minute drivetime (see below) or identifying the postal sectors that are the source of an important proportion of attenders.

In developing and using the area profile reports, a combination of the last two of these approaches are used. Thus, first the postal sectors falling within the 30 minute drive time are identified. Then any additional postal sectors that are not only adjacent and contiguous to them but also are a source of an important proportion of attenders are added. This process is continued until the area represents the source of 80% of a facility’s attenders (see diagrams.)

Depicting the core catchment area

[Diagram representing a catchment area]

Key: White oval = 30-minute drivetime (Grey ovals are additional sectors from which high proportions of attenders are drawn

30-minute drivetime catchment for Canterbury, Kent

[Map illustrating 30 minute driving area from Canterbury]

Leo Sharrock of AMH (formerly Arts Marketing Hampshire) points out that, in adding extra sectors, a balance needs to be struck between the catchment’s essential homogeneity and the degree of fragmentation created by adding other sectors. The proportion of 80% of attenders is used in creating such a catchment, partly because it has been a tried and tested convention to do so but also because this would seem to accord to the Pareto principle (i.e. roughly 20% of the area from which a facility is attracting users are generating roughly 80% of those users.)

When to use

When a greater understanding of a facility’s sphere of influence and its impact in attracting attenders is required. Can also be used to substantiate the level of service delivered to the local community.