How it works?

You can either click on a letter, scroll through the terms, or search by a word you want.

I thought The Source presentation was excellent and you have really taken this idea and made it real and applicable. It will absolutely make a difference to the Scottish arts scene, I really believe that.

David Stark, Director of Marketing & Communications, Royal Scottish National Opera

Jargon Buster

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Isochrone

What does this mean?

A shape or contour drawn on a map connecting all the locations from which it takes the same time to travel to a central location such as an arts facility.

How did we get this definition?

Here this term does not relate to the broadcasting expression meaning ‘the time of day when people are travelling to and from work’. Rather, when used in relation to audience data, a drivetime (or isochrone) is a line drawn around all the places in an organisation’s catchment area that require roughly the same number of minutes car travel to get to a specific arts facility. (For instance, a 30-minute drivetime surrounds all those places that lie 30 minutes’ car travel away from the facility.)

Although it assumes that attenders and visitors always come to a facility using a car, it is still an extremely useful indication of a key part of a facility’s catchment area. As John Ozimek notes:

‘Very simple models may be couched in terms of crow-fly distance, but for short distances it is very dangerous to ignore the effect of the actual road and communications networks. A [facility] may be a very short measurable distance away from a potential customer, but be on the other side of a river or railway line, so drive time is usually a more accurate way of determining [the facility’s] catchment area.’9

Related and similar definitions

In Great Britain, the area profile reports take as their cornerstone the 30-minute drivetime area surrounding a given facility. Thus it should be noted that these areas are drawn using data showing the average and standard times for driving from one place to another on the types of roads available in that area (for instance, motorways, A and B roads). However, although this builds in an intrinsic accuracy that reflects the nature of the local road network, this is an indicative model, and should be used as such.

So each organisation might wish to consider using the area mapped for the area profile and – where necessary – making allowances for the different times of day that events actually take place (for instance evening rush hour, weekends, etc.)

When to use

Use to identify key parts of an organisation’s catchment as the basis for customer analysis and of targeted marketing campaigns. Also can be used as one way of substantiating the local usefulness of an arts facility to local authorities and regional funding agencies.