Shifting gears - Watershed’s journey on the road to unlocking the power of data

Who are we?• We are a cross art-form venue and producer• We produce and present original ideas and content

and curate a diverse programme of talent development, cinema exhibition, events and festivals.

• In the building we have three cinemas, a large Café/Bar, three flexible conference and events spaces and the Pervasive Media Studio, a multi-disciplinary lab where a brilliant community of artists, creative companies, technologists and academics work on commercial and cultural projects in the area of pervasive media

• We also house an online youth led magazine (Rife) with an in house team of content creators

• We employ an equivalent of 70 full time staff, and are open 7 days a week, 363 days a year.

What have we achieved so far on the journey?....

Outcomes:•Since 2012/13 we have been developing our use of Google Analytics to internally monitor web traffic and inform development of our website (which was redesigned in 2011) using an iterative approach to the site’s development

•Developed a dashboard to report on key online metrics and plot those against box office sales data to establish trends

•Been able to benchmark our online activity, through using Google Analytics as a consistent tool, with other culture sector organisations e.g. Culture 24’s collaborative action research programme Let's Get Real and the Bristol and Bath Cultural Destinations Project’s Digital Asset Audit

•Used Google Analytics internally to regular report online data to site section owners and reporters, engaging them with online activity which previously had been seen as remote and unconnected

Developed our Internal Online M&E Strategies

weareculture24.org.uk

Outcomes:•Creation of an excel based centralised activity database which can be queried based on funding report or KPI, timescale (with a future aim to create a dashboard to summarise this data)

•Creation of visualisations to provide digestible insight into targets and trends

Consolidated our Quantitative Reporting to meet both organisational and funder needs

Outcomes:•Development of Watershed evaluation framework (pictured)

•Completion of two face to face audience surveys to measure our audience demographic with sample sizes of approx 500 people for each.

•Production of two reports evaluating strands within the cinema programme

•Dissemination of the report findings throughout the organisation

Formulated an Evaluation Working Group

Enabled by ACE catalyst funding, we invested in a new Box Office System

Outcomes:•100% increase in % of online sales and in members of our loyalty card scheme

•Greater understanding of what we are trying to achieve from our box office data set as an organisation

•Motivation and buy in across the organisation to use the new system as a tool for development

•Improved capability for segmentation

•Improved efficiencies in front line box office transaction times

•Launch of an individual giving campaign

Embedded the Importance of Data Strategy within our Business Plan

Outcomes:•Enabled a focus to embed understanding of evaluation, data, and business analysis across the organisation, giving staff the information and confidence to follow their instincts and take risks within a blame free organisational culture.

•Staffing restructure to continue to build organisational capacity to focus on our strategic use of data.

Key Operating Principles and Priorities as outlined in the business plan: Fundraising Grow audiences for cultural cinema Increase engagement from young people and BME population Reduce our environmental impact Constant evaluation and learning Optimising deployment of organisational capacity

Restructured our Staffing Model to Build Capacity for Development of a Data Led Strategy

Outcomes:•The role of Head of Operations will adopt a more defined focus to lead this area of development and will be re-titled Head of Data Strategy and Operational Systems.

•Box office will have dedicated leadership to support and enhance systems integration and data management (formally this was a combined role of Operations Manager which had line management of both the front of house and box office departments – with the continuing development of the organisational focus on data it became clear this role had too broad a remit).

Consolidate our Quantitative Reporting

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

New BoxO System

Development of internal online evaluation strategies

Business Plan

Achievement Time Scales

Our Approach and Key Learnings

Not working in silos - Establish working groups with representatives from key stakeholder depts across the organisation, and at different levels (front line / management / senior management).

Constant Communication across the Organisation - Gaining buy in and embedding new learning across the organisation by disseminating progress and findings within established meeting structures and knowledge sharing events

Utilise peer to peer dissemination - Rather than management to staff. This maximises buy in.

Having data champions – identify staff members in key departments with a passion or interest in data and use this passion to motivate others, whilst also investing and developing their skills.

Our Approach and Key Learnings

Context is key - Use the data to tell stories, and frame those stories within the real life context (remembering the importance of visualisation in conveying the message).

Ensuring constant evaluation and learning to inform your thinking – We are now generating a lot of intelligence ourselves and actually acting on it on a more regular basis.

Understanding it’s a journey – It’s going to take time! Mapping out milestones but be prepared to remain flexible around them.

Solid Knowledge of Excel is extremely useful in more contexts than you think! - A solid understanding of excel can promote much more efficient working practices as well as being a useful data analysis tool.

The (ongoing) Challenges

• Standardising metadata, and language across the organistion

• Working with legacy or rigid systems which give less scope for segmentation

• Re-engaging and retraining staff on their systems; developing understanding and importance of the data structure, embedding best practice to ensure most efficient operation, unlearning bad habits!

What Next?

• Continuation of work undertaken by evaluation working group

• Organisation Data and Workflow Audit to establish and document what we have and also how people are using it. This will also enable documentation of workflows (and data/information flow) across the organisation in order to look at more efficient ways of working

• Integration of key systems to enable greater insight into customer behavior

• Development of operational systems to build capacity and enable efficiency

• A focus on using newly established key tools for the sector (Audience Finder - audiencefinder.org)

Thanks for listening…

References:Culture 24 ‘Let’s Get Real’: weareculture24.org.uk

‘Counting What Counts’: nesta.org.uk/publications/counting-what-counts-what-big-data-can-do-cultural-sector

Layla BarronHead of Operations

layla.barron@watershed.co.ukwww.watershed.co.uk

@wshed