Ready to engage - Morris Hargreaves McIntyre · interventions to engage more deeply The research...

MORRIS HARGREAVES McINTYRE

Ready to engage Deepening public engagement with Newcastle Gateshead Cultural Venues

March 2010 Amended draft for circulation

Ready to engage: deepening public engagement with Newcastle Gateshead Cultural Venues

MORRIS HARGREAVES McINTYRE 9/4/10 2 of 42

A DVD containing video portraits of engagement

journeys accompanies this report


© 2010 MORRIS HARGREAVES MCINTYRE

50 Copperas Street, Manchester, UK M4 1HS Telephone 0161 839 3311 Fax 0161 8393377 Email [email protected] www.lateralthinkers.com



Giving money and time

to cultural venues relies on a deep appreciation

of culture and the value of venues’ work.

Audiences want to broaden their experiences

and deepen their engagement with culture.

But mass marketing doesn’t help most people,

as it doesn’t meet their needs. Personal relationships deepen engagement,

not brochures.

Our research suggests a radically different

approach, using targeted, personalised interventions to engage more

people more deeply.



Contents

1 Executive summary 5

2 What we did 9

3 Exploring engagement journeys 14

4 The engagement journey model 16

5 One-off treaters 19

6 Creatures of habit 22

7 Cautious gamblers 25

8 Confident explorers 27

9 Givers: time 30

10 Givers: money 32

11 Conclusions 34

12 Practical recommendations for action 37



1 Executive summary

A DVD containing video portraits of engagement journeys accompanies this report.

1.1 What is this project?

Morris Hargreaves McIntyre were commissioned by the Newcastle Gateshead Cultural Venues (NGCV) public engagement sub-group to investigate how to deepen public engagement with the venues, with the ultimate aim of encouraging more people to give time and money. This feeds into the wider collaborative NGCV project, facilitated by Missions Models Money (MMM), which aims to increase the financial resilience, impact and creative output of 11 cultural venues in Newcastle Gateshead.

This project differs to other studies on engagement because it focuses on relationships within a group of venues but also investigates a wide range of cultural, social, societal and sectoral contexts across each person’s life. The project looks in great depth at the experiences of 16 individuals, investigating what has led them to their current level of engagement (from birth to now), what currently dictates their behaviour and using action research experiments to investigate what could help deepen their relationships. This enables us to draw some fundamental conclusions about the factors that deepen engagement as well as a series of very practical recommendations for NGCV venues to work together to deepen audience engagement.

1.2 People give time and money because they are deeply engaged with cultural venues

Deep engagement with one or more cultural venues is a pre-requisite to cultural giving. If someone doesn’t understand the benefits of culture to individuals and to society, and an NGCV venue’s role in delivering these benefits, they won’t give. Getting more people to engage more deeply with NGCV venues is the route to getting more people to give time and money.



1.3 Audiences want to broaden their experiences and deepen their relationships …

The research has revealed there is vast potential to increase frequency and breadth of visiting and ultimately to grow the pool of potential donors and volunteers, by working with people who are already on our databases.

1.4 … but are stuck at their current engagement stage

The research has identified five main stages of engagement, which both describe a person’s current relationship with cultural venues and the reasons why they are not currently engaging more deeply. The main factors are illustrated below.

The engagement journey model: key factors determining cultural engagement1

© Morris Hargreaves McIntyre

Childhood experience determines which stage a person starts their cultural engagement journey from. People without early experience of cultural benefits will need more support to cross change points.

1 The full report provides descriptions of people at each stage and how to engage them more deeply.



1.5 Mass marketing doesn’t help most people to cross thresholds

The research has found that existing marketing practices of NGCV venues are largely ineffective in helping most people to deepen their engagement with cultural venues. This is because most arts marketing is aimed at confident explorers – people who have the commitment, experience, confidence and awareness of benefits to navigate the mass of information available and pro-actively guide themselves through the decision-making process. Most people lack these drivers, so whilst marketing materials may raise their awareness, they don’t spur most people to book or visit.

1.6 Personal relationships are the key to deeper engagement

New cultural experiences are almost always brought about by relationships between people: meeting someone, being taken by someone else, being invited, being made to feel welcome, having someone to go with, having a new type of work explained to you.

Personal relationships came up time and again as an overwhelmingly strong deciding factor in deepening engagement during the study. Whilst it would be impossible for a cultural venue to have a one-on-one relationship with each audience member, we have identified practical ways to encourage personal engagement between audience members and develop personalised ways of interacting with the public.

1.7 People at different stages of engagement need different, targeted interventions to engage more deeply

The research identifies the key factors that help people at each stage to overcome the barriers to deeper engagement, through personalised interventions. These are detailed in the full report and summarised in the model below. One size definitely doesn’t fit all – interventions need to be tailored to the needs of people at each stage, to scaffold their deepening engagement.

The full report details practical recommendations and pilot projects appropriate for people at each stage.



Key strategies for crossing change points


1.8 Radically different way of working needed

Engaging with audiences in a personalised way to encourage individuals on their engagement journeys involves the whole organisation (not just the marketing department) and is accelerated by collaboration between venues. It relies on a shared focus on audiences’ needs, shared commitment to deepening engagement and practical schemes that enable self-financing growth by engaging audiences more deeply. Detailed suggestions for collaborative pilot projects are given at the end of the main report.



2 What we did

2.1 Background

This project is part of a collaboration between Newcastle Gateshead’s major public cultural venues (known as Newcastle Gateshead Cultural Venues), facilitated by the national Missions Models Money (MMM) programme.

The long-term aims of the group are to increase their financial resilience, strengthen their combined economic, social and cultural impact within and beyond the North East and increase investment in their creative output.

Newcastle Gateshead Cultural Venues (NGCV) includes:

• Theatre Royal

• Baltic

• Dance City

• Live Theatre

• Seven Stories

• Northern Stage

• Waygood Gallery

• Tyneside Cinema

• Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums

• The Sage Gateshead

• Centre for Life

NGCV set up a public engagement subgroup to look at how to deepen the involvement of the public with cultural organisations and their work and move people progressively into being more active in giving time and money. The group recognise frequent attendance as a type of giving, through increased ticket sales and secondary spend.

2.2 Aims of this research project

The overall aim of this research project is to inform NGCV’s longer-term approach to increasing depth of public engagement and encouraging new attitudes to cultural giving.

In order to do this, the project has:

• Investigated barriers to participation with particular focus on ‘change points’: what makes or could make people attend for the first time, become a regular attender, move across cultural form, or give time or money.



• Investigated behaviour at key ‘change points’ to deepening engagement with small representative groups

• Undertaken research to better understand perceptions of current cultural offer

• Tested potential ideas to deepen engagement to the point of giving time or money to cultural venues

2.3 What makes this research different to other studies on public engagement?

This project is valuable to the NGCV group because it looks at individuals’ relationships with a diverse range of cultural venues (in terms of artform, size, mission), within a specific cultural geography, in the context of the individuals’ life experiences and influences to date. This holistic and detailed approach has identified very practical steps to deepen individuals’ engagement with these cultural venues, and the ways in which cultural venues working together on deepening engagement can facilitate long-term financial resilience.

This project draws on a wealth of research already carried out into public engagement both in the UK and US over the past 10 years. This includes the studies carried out by WolfBrown2, John Falk and Lynn Dierking3, Jerry Yoshitomi and Diane Ragsdale. We are also building on 15 years’ research into cultural consumers by Morris Hargreaves McIntyre, including detailed segmentation studies for cultural organisations including Tate, the Southbank Centre and the National Trust.

This project also refers to the Arts Council England’s recent Audience Insight work, which developed a broad behavioural segmentation for arts attendance and is the basis of a forthcoming national engagement campaign.

2.4 Project process

Given the relatively small size of the project, we took a deep qualitative approach to this project in order to really unpick the interrelationships between the complex factors that predicate cultural engagement.

2 For example, the 2007 Major University Presenters Value and Impact study which included a segmentation of performing arts audiences and donors as well as an assessment of the intrinsic impacts of live performance. Available at http://www.wolfbrown.com/index.php?page=mups 3 Most recently, Falk, J. (2009), Identity and the museum visitor experience, Left Coast Press



Our approach was to track back through participants’ lives to understand how and why they had crossed change points to date, and to engineer situations

From this, we have formed a broad model of progression. This model is a lens to understand how best to engage people with the cultural offer in Newcastle and Gateshead.

Project approach

The process was:

1 Workshop to discuss change points, stages

Meeting with the public engagement sub-group to discuss the issues and suggested model for engagement.

2 Online survey to email lists, identifying some characteristics of the market

We conducted a short online survey about awareness and visiting NGCV venues, sent out via NGCV venues’ e-lists. Responses were incentivised by a cash prize draw. Whilst this is only a survey of those on e-lists who chose to respond, it identified some interesting issues, which refined recruitment and design of the qualitative research:

• A tendency to artforms: people visiting one art gallery are more likely to also have visited other galleries (compared to theatres, museums)



• Visitors going to the smaller venues (eg Live theatre, Northern Stage, Waygood) tend also to be going to a range of other cultural venues – they are on the cultural circuit.

• A significant group of visitors to Baltic and Sage haven’t recently been to any other NGCV venues.

• High proportion of audiences are shared: Northern Stage and Tyneside Cinema; Centre for Life and Seven Stories; Centre for Life and Discovery Museum; Northern Stage and Live Theatre.

• Low proportion of audiences are shared: Sage and Seven Stories; Centre for Life and Live Theatre; Tyneside Cinema / Northern Stage and Centre for Life; Theatre Royal and Baltic.

3 Recruitment of participants

We recruited 16 participants to take part in depth interviews, chosen to represent a range of depth of engagement and types of behaviour (eg frequent attender to lots of different artforms, frequent to one venue, less to others, volunteers). Participants were recruited via the online survey responses and through NGCV organisations.

4 Gathering rich personal data

Each participant took part in a two-hour, one-on-one exploratory interview. These sessions gathered lots of rich personal data, exploring worlds of participants, their current and past behaviour and drivers for this, and what was restricting their engagement at the moment. These interviews were recorded and notes produced in collaboration with the participants illustrating their engagement journey to date.

5 Tailored action research programme for 12 participants

Each participant not already deeply engaged with NGCV venues (ie giving time or money) was offered up to eight new cultural opportunities, specifically selected by us and the NGCV sub-group to test how best to engage them more deeply. This ranged from simply offering free tickets to a performance to personal tours, behind the scenes access and invites to previews.

Participants booked their (free) experiences via box office / relevant venue staff, and were also able to bring a friend / family for free. They recorded their experiences in diaries and also took photos where possible.



6 Feedback sessions

At the end of the project, we met up with participants who had undertaken activities to discuss their responses, understand what worked and what didn’t, and to gather ideas for how to engage these people more deeply in future. These conversations were video recorded, and material used to develop video portraits of each group.

7 Analysis

The diaries, interviews and video material were analysed and workshopped within our team, refining the engagement journey model and building up a detailed picture of the key factors that help people to cross change points and deepen their relationship with cultural venues.



3 Exploring engagement journeys

3.1 Understanding visitors’ worlds

The public engagement sub-group developed an outline model of levels of engagement, based on Chantal Barriault’s science communication research model.

Barriault’s model is influenced by the socio-constructivist learning theories of Vygotski, Piaget and Bronfenbrenner, based around the assumption that individuals’ learning and experiences are constructed by the social context in which they happen. Bronfenbrenner’s model of the individual’s world illustrates this ecological approach:

This project assumes that the ways in which people perceive themselves and are perceived by others, the social roles they play and previous experiences they have had all have an impact on their motivations for engaging (or not) with cultural venues.

In order to investigate the causes and triggers to engagement, and the factors which might create the right environment4 for an individual to engage more

4 Referred to as the learner’s zone of proximal development by socio-constructivist theorists eg Vygotski



deeply and cross change points, we devised a list of areas to explore in our research. This was used as the basis of interviews with participants.

Factors affecting individuals’ cultural engagement investigated during this project

During the interviews, we traced individuals’ engagement journeys throughout their lives to date: much messier!

Example of individual’s engagement journey map



4 The engagement journey model

4.1 Original model from the brief

The NGCV public engagement sub-group identified a suggested model of potential groups:

• Initiation: those who are aware but not attending/engaging with NGCV venues, but do attend other venues/attractions and might be persuaded to participate.

• Transition: those who are aware, come occasionally to an individual organisation, particular about tastes, not attending other NGCV venues and are not particularly engaged

• Breakthrough: those who attend regularly and are engaged with one or more cultural form who could become advocates and give money and or time to support NGCV

4.2 The engagement journey model

Throughout the project, we refined the original model described above. This resulted in the below, which summarises the different stages of engagement, from extremely superficial on the left to deeply engaged on the right.

The engagement journey model


More detailed descriptions of the factors that create the conditions for engagement at each stage are discussed in detail in the following chapters.

The key factors – the needs that they believe culture can fulfil; their attitude to risk; their interaction with cultural experiences and venues; and their relationship with venues – are summarised in the model below.



Key factors determining cultural engagement


In addition to the above, we identified childhood experience as an overwhelmingly strong predicator of cultural engagement, which determines which stage a person starts their cultural engagement journey from. An individual is, effectively, born into one of the stages through parental cultural habits and influence, or has one or more formative childhood experiences of culture facilitated by an inspirational adult from outside the family – typically a teacher or family friend – that gave them first-hand experience of the emotional / spiritual benefits of culture.5 People without this early experience will need more support to cross change points.

4.3 Crossing change points

The model below shows engagement journeys with a summary of key approaches that help people move from one stage to the next. These are discussed in more detail in the following chapters. The recommendations at the end of this report give ideas for how NGCV could build pilot schemes based on these factors.

5 This is consistent with other research, including recent data from the Taking Part / Active People survey showing that those who attended cultural experiences in childhood were far more likely to have attended recently than those who had not been taken as a child.



Key strategies for crossing change points


When participants talked about change points they had already crossed, the common thread was human relationships. Almost everyone found new experiences, appreciated new art forms or visiting new places because of another person – it’s personal. Similarly, when talking about experiences that made them feel more engaged with a venue or artform, people often mentioned feeling a sense of relationship with other people – the feeling of collective experience, the relationship between audience and performer, feeling involved through immersive, interactive and/or participatory experiences. Many also talked about the importance of a personal welcome and personal relationships with people in venues: our recommendations attempt to build on this as well as facilitating individuals to bring others over change points.

Life stage and circumstances may temporarily slow, pause or even reverse an individual’s engagement journey: many mentioned how their interests had been put on hold whilst they had young family or other caring commitments. However, these people seemed to quickly catch up to where they left off once their circumstances allowed.



5 One-off treaters

5.1 Who are one-off treaters?

These people are infrequently visiting one or two NGCV venues on an infrequent basis. They tend to be visiting the larger venues as a place to bring visiting friends and family or relatives.

One-off treaters lead full lives – they may not have much free time, with work, family or voluntary commitments. They enjoy a wide range of leisure activities: culture is seen as just one of a range of enjoyable leisure pastimes, mentioned in the same breath as natural heritage, historic sites and sport as a fun way to spend time.

These people are looking for social benefits from culture, focused on spending quality time with friends and family in an enjoyable way and often focused on the needs of others (especially children).

Cultural activities, particularly the performing arts, are seen as a luxury – ‘the icing on the cake of life’ – something to go to as a special occasion. Many mentioned spending significant amounts of money on trips to London to see West End shows: it’s about the whole night out including the meal, the location, the travel.

One-off treaters were not hooked into culture as children, although they were given a variety of experiences by family and/or other adults, they never had that key experience that gave them a taste for the intellectual, emotional or spiritual benefits of culture. One participant was even put off classical music by being made to sit through organ recitals from a young age!



They are highly risk-averse, sticking to mainstream choices. When looking for a new experience they will stick to well known names and highly endorsed experiences – and only take recommendations from people they personally know and trust.

Quality and value judgments of one-off treaters are based on spectacle and scale. As a result, many feel that NGCV venues are not as good as those available in London, and therefore not worth the time or money.

They are ambivalent about the value of NGCV venues. Whilst they recognise their role in making Newcastle and Gateshead a nice place to be, NGCV venues are not essential to culture in the area: they believe that culture is something that happens between people – village shows, murder mystery weekends, cinema with friends - and would carry on quite happily should the NGCV venues disappear.

One-off treaters also hold some negative preconceptions of NGCV venues: that they may be ‘hoity toity’, cliquey and ‘not really for people like me’. They may prefer venues that are more local or seem more ‘down to earth’.

One-off treaters described getting to their current level of engagement via experiences they had on holiday, through a friend taking them or the appeal of NGCV venues – particularly Baltic and Sage Gateshead – as tourist attractions / landmarks.

5.2 Engaging one-off treaters more deeply

One-off treaters need strong and consistent recommendation from people they personally know for that exact experience.

A very close variation on a known experience may appeal – one couple mentioned wanting to see The Buddy Holly Story having seen Mamma Mia!. Similarly, well-known names may help. Child-focused shows suitable for all the family may appeal. But they still probably won’t book.

Despite being willing to spend on other leisure and cultural activities, one-off treaters are very price sensitive to NGCV venues because they perceive that the experience is unlikely to meet their needs. Offering free or discounted tickets, especially for groups, may help to encourage them, but again won’t be enough to prompt bookings. They are more willing to take risks at free venues eg popping into the Discovery Museum to see what’s



changed. But even free kids’ activities are met with suspicion about the cost of travel, catering, parking and time risks – is it worth travelling in just for a short session? How good will the session be, really?

To break down their preconceptions, one-off treaters need hand-to-hand, personal attention. During our experience, people who had a pre-arranged brief chat with a real person at a venue were far more positive about the performances they saw than others, who left with their preconceptions largely unchallenged. Being made to feel welcome – being invited, being expected, being known by name – all help. Treatment by front of house staff was also essential to their experience.

Finding out about the venues’ community and education work also proved to be a very effective way to reposition a venue in one-off treaters’ minds. They don’t have to participate in the activities, but simply become aware of the wider work that a venue does and it’s values.



6 Creatures of habit

6.1 Who are creatures of habit?

Creatures of habit stick to particular venues, genres or seasons. These are the people who go to one performance in the RSC season every year, but no other performances. They may be fairly frequent attenders at one or two particular experiences – art galleries, or live popular music, or musicals – but rarely branch out.

Despite their relatively conservative attendance patterns, creatures of habit see themselves as very frequent cultural attenders. Being a ‘cultured’ person is an important part of their self-image.

Cultural experiences are opportunities to spend quality time with different people in their lives. This might be art galleries with children, live music as a night out with partner and cinema with friends.

As well as this social function, creatures of habit are aware of the intellectual and some emotional benefits of culture: ‘it gives you something to think about’, ‘something for myself’, ‘it gives you something to look forward to’.

These fairly fixed cultural habits are often set up early in life: ‘my parents took me, and that’s something that I’ve carried on.’ Older creatures of habit discussed patterns of cultural attendance set up in their early 20s and then picked up again in later years.

Whilst their current attendance is very predictable, creatures of habit are interested in trying new things and are open to a certain amount of measured risk. However, they are easily put off by bad experiences of a new venue or genre (although they can handle the



occasional disappointing experiences within a familiar venue or genre). Negative experiences with staff, not knowing how to understand the work and feeling out of place in the crowd cause creatures of habit to retreat to their comfort zone.

6.2 Engaging creatures of habit more deeply

Given that they are interested in the next step but relatively risk averse, creatures of habit need scaffolding structures that help build their engagement.

Each step needs to be connected to the last – all the creatures of habit participating in our research had good experiences where they experienced familiar work in a new setting, or new work in a familiar setting, or work that was the next step on from something they already knew. However, all also had less positive experiences where they felt out of their depth.

To take the next step, creatures of habit need help to identify relatively safe opportunities that will meet their needs, and reassurance that it is for people like them. Advice that shows how this new opportunity is connected to the last thing they experienced – the same team, similar themes or types of work, or collaborations and connections with trusted experiences – will help. They often look for advice on what to see from more knowledgeable or connected friends, so mass endorsement from other people like them – reviews by other people who share their tastes – is persuasive.

Creatures of habit seek out previews online, and especially like video clips and information that helps them know what to expect. They want to get the most out of a new experience, so advice on how to understand and appreciate unfamiliar or new genres is welcomed. They will also need to be sure that they will feel comfortable: that they will not feel out of place and will know how to behave.

Invitations to try new experiences on a taster basis – short, lower cost or free, with permission to walk away if they don’t enjoy it – are appealing. When taking even a small risk with the work, it’s important that the wrap around social experience is top notch, including the catering, travel and opportunity to relax with friends. That way, even if they don’t enjoy the artistic content they will still have a good night out.



Added experiences that make creatures of habit feel special and wanted – meet and greets, backstage tours – help them to feel at home in a venue and make them want to return.

Creatures of habit are often looking for routes onwards once they’ve had a good experience. If I liked Ballet Lorent, what should I go to next? Otherwise, they will just look out for that exact experience / work / company again.



7 Cautious gamblers

7.1 Who are the cautious gamblers?

These people are fairly frequent attenders to a wide range of venues and artforms, who see culture as important in their lives. But when pressed, they admit that they ‘don’t really go to the more obscure stuff’ because they’re not really sure it will meet their needs. They also may have slipped out of the habit of actually visiting certain venues, but still see themselves as part of their audience.

Cautious gamblers have had repeated experiences of the emotional and spiritual benefits of culture, normally stemming from a stand-out childhood experience. They also use cultural experiences to have a good time with friends and family and for intellectual stimulation, but will often be looking for an experience to move them.

Because of this knowledge of the deeper benefits of culture, they will often encourage others to attend – they are the organisers. They are particularly passionate about encouraging children to experience culture. For cautious gamblers, culture is ‘the real thing’.

These people treasure stand-out cultural experiences and are looking out for opportunities to experience something a bit different that might help them

However, many of the cautious gamblers we spoke to find it difficult to identify opportunities that might fulfil their needs: once they’ve had a good experience, there are few ways for them to tell what might suit them next because they have broad tastes across genres and venues.



And even when they do see things that appeal, they will often end up missing out because they forget to book or just don’t quite get there in time: all the cautious gamblers we spoke to talked about needing a reminder or final push.

7.2 Engaging cautious gamblers more deeply

These people respond readily to targeted stimulus that activates their latent desire for more. Cautious gamblers were very keen to take part in the action research elements of this project: many said ‘the tickets [you gave me] were the push I needed’: they are ready to engage more deeply.

Most of the cautious gamblers who took part mentioned the Amazon model of recommendation as a good way to know what to try next, and said this would work for cultural experiences. For them, this is successful partly because they don’t have to actively seek the advice – it is offered to them rather than requested by them.

Cautious gamblers need prompts and reminders to actually make the booking / go to the exhibition.

Because they understand the benefits that culture can deliver, they don’t mind upselling and welcome schemes that help them get that feeling again. One cautious gambler suggested that contact with the venue directly after an enjoyable performance would encourage her to book immediately for something else.

Financial incentives to try things out – particularly reductions when booking for multiple experiences at once – would also help.



8 Confident explorers

8.1 Who are confident explorers?

Confident explorers are actively searching for a very wide range of cultural experiences and visit as many venues and types of artform as often as they can, constrained only by budget and time.

Although they do have particularly treasured organisations or types of work, they are stimulated mainly by new experiences and delight in discovering new things.

They can also be powerful advocates for culture, speaking about their role with friends and family in evangelistic terms – ‘I’ve converted my grandson already’.

This behaviour is driven by an awareness of and near-addiction to the widest range of personal benefits from culture, including deep spiritual benefits. These people have transformative, self-actualising experiences and are renewed by engaging with culture.

Confident explorers’ cultural consumption is part of a wider philosophy to make the most out of life, sometimes driven by a sudden change in life circumstances or sometimes by a more gradual development catalysed by key individuals that have accelerated their engagement journey across change points.

They are inner-directed, looking to satisfy their own curiosity and have the experience and confidence to make their own decisions on what to see and where to go. They hoover up information distributed by NGCV venues and spend a lot of time sifting and selecting. Many have complex homemade organisational and funding systems (spreadsheets, diaries, bank accounts, alerts) that



help them to attend the maximum possible amount and range of experiences.

Confident explorers are also fiercely independent, defining themselves on their mindset, personal interests and attitude. They resent being defined by their age, sex, life circumstances or other demographic characteristics: one confident explorer was affronted by the suggestion that she might enjoy the Sage’s highly acclaimed Silvers programme, partly because she was the right age. They may not ever want to join a membership scheme, even if they visit regularly because they pride themselves on their eclectic consumption.

These people may already be givers of time or money at one venue, but the way they see venues is not consistent. Where they are not already giving, this is because they are unaware of the opportunities or benefits.

Because confident explorers are so independent and rely on their own judgement to select what they go to, they may miss out on new experiences that they are not looking for. However, during our project confident explorers were delighted to find new experiences – read-throughs of new plays, astronomy courses – that they never knew existed and instantly added these to their extensive repertoire.

8.2 Engaging confident explorers more deeply

Confident explorers appreciate having new, unusual or esoteric opportunities pointed out to them – more opportunities to say yes. As well as challenging artistic content, they are looking for novel experiences that help them get a different perspective on the material and explore from a different angle.

Giving time to a cultural organisation appeals to many confident explorers because it is a chance to go even further, and to support an organisation that they already have a deep appreciation of through attendance (NB this is a prerequisite for giving time – a deep engagement with that particular organisation). However, they are often unaware of the opportunities, what they would get to do (ie what personal benefits they could expect) and what the commitment would be. Communicating this clearly to confident explorers would attract many to have a go.

Trial experiences shadowing someone similar to them who is already volunteering may help by providing a taster without the commitment that confident explorers are wary of.



As with many other areas, volunteering is based on personal relationships: those who were already giving time did so because they had been invited along by a friend or invited by the organisation.

Surprisingly, many confident explorers are not already giving money to culture. The challenge is to convert their deep awareness of the personal benefits of culture to a wider awareness of the benefits of a cultural organisation’s work to other people. They generally will not give if they suspect their money will be used to repair the building or conserve work – it’s about people.

Some said they had simply never been asked personally by a member of staff from the venue.

Confident explorers also need to understand what the benefit / reward will be for them if they give money. Most are not looking for functional benefits eg discounts, advance booking. Instead, they want the opportunity to see the difference their money has made and get an emotional kick-back from their donation.



9 Givers: time

9.1 Who are givers of time?

These people are giving their time by volunteering in some capacity at an NGCV venue. Most of the volunteers we spoke to had fallen into it by accident through informal invitations from friends.

Volunteers at NGCV venues are driven by a variety of motivations. The strongest of these seems to be using their spare time to help others enjoy the benefits of culture. These findings are consistent with a Cabinet Office survey6, which identifies the most common reason for volunteering as to improve things or help others (53%) or because they had spare time (41%).

Whilst the volunteers we spoke to mentioned that they wanted to support the cultural organisation, this was actually about what the organisation delivers to other people and wider society, built on a full appreciation of the benefits of culture. There is little appeal in supporting the organisation in and of itself.

However, all the volunteers we spoke to also named several personal drivers for volunteering: being appreciated for their specialist skills or contribution (often when the volunteer is applying skills developed in their working life); enjoying meeting people; being part of an organisation; feeling useful; and intellectual stimulation. This is consistent with the Cabinet Office survey, which also identified more self-serving motivations such as meeting new people, making new friends (30%) or learning new skills (19%).

6 Low, N., Butt, S., Ellis Paine, A. and Davis Smith, J. (2007) Helping out: a national survey of volunteering and charitable giving, National Centre for Social Research & Institute for Volunteering Research, For the Office of the Third Sector in the Cabinet Office



Whilst all got a great deal of fulfilment from volunteering, all the givers of time mentioned that training, management and formalising the role and commitment expected from volunteers would help both sides.



10 Givers: money

10.1 Who are givers of money?

These people are giving money to one or more NGCV cultural venues without a tangible / functional return. All donors have a deep appreciation of all the benefits of culture based on personal experience. The engagement journey model below shows the relationship between existing membership and subscription schemes and the engagement stages.

The engagement journey: functional and emotional giving

This shows that people may ostensibly be giving money to organisations through membership schemes from a fairly early stage. However, the vast majority of these relationships are purely functional: because it’s easier, because it’s cheaper. We spoke to several creatures of habit who had membership at a venue, simply because they go often to similar things so the discount makes financial sense.



Only people with a much deeper relationship with cultural venues had joined friends or membership schemes because they wanted to support the work of the organisation.

Donors appreciate the power of culture to change lives.

They also, crucially, understand the importance of the NGCV venue in delivering benefits to both individuals and society more widely, including its role in the overall life of the city and region.

They are open to risk in their own cultural habits, and are aware that others will benefits from experiences that they are not yet aware of ie they trust the venue to take risks in order to deliver benefits to others.

These donors are kept engaged by personal connections and evidence that their money is making a difference: close personal contact with the organisation and chance to witness the benefits eg attending concerts given by people they have supported.

These findings chime with recent research commissioned by Arts & Business7 examining current patterns and motivations for giving money to art organisations, which support the idea that deep engagement is a pre-requisite to cultural giving:

• The overwhelming majority of donors to the arts attend three or more events in the organisation they gave to in the past two years, with many stating that they had ‘visited a lot more’.

• Three quarters of donors are deeply connected to the organisation in other ways, including friends, patrons, on mailing lists, volunteers or trustees.

• Most donors contribute to a number of charitable causes, including the arts.

• Being asked directly to give (which is the source of 40% of first-ever donations) and being asked to contribute to a specific project were the most effective methods for mobilising giving.

• Transactional or material benefits (eg priority booking) are far less important to donors than motivations stemming from their personal appreciation of the organisation’s artistic and wider programme, valuing the organisation’s wider contribution to society and local pride.

7 Gaio, G. (2009), Local pride: Individual giving to the arts in England – a study into donor motivation, Department of Cultural Policy and Management, City University for Arts and Business – available free from www.artsandbusiness.org.uk. Results are based on a survey with 51 individual donors.



11 Conclusions

11.1 Deeper engagement is a prerequisite to giving

All the evidence gathered and analysed during this research project supports the public engagement sub-group’s central assumption: that getting more people to engage more deeply with the NGCV cultural venues is the route to get more people to give time and money.

If someone doesn’t understand the benefits of culture to individuals and to society, and an NGCV venue’s role in delivering these benefits, they will not give.

This is not a quick process. As Arts & Business has noted recently, models that work in the US won’t easily translate to the UK because we don’t have an established culture of individual philanthropy.

Our model shows that an individual needs to be deeply engaged with a range of cultural experiences before they consider giving, and to have a deep appreciation of the work of the particular venue.

11.2 Audiences are amazing: interested and interesting

At first, we thought we’d struck it lucky with the participants in this research: 16 articulate, open and incredibly enthusiastic individuals who were willing to give up their time, take risks and share deeply personal experiences and reflections just to help NGCV venues. Even though some of them rarely visit, and many hadn’t heard of lots of the NGCV venues. These are normal local people: they were selected at random from our email lists and said yes. They want to engage with us.

This shows there is incredible potential to deepen engagement, increase frequency and breadth of visiting and ultimately to grow our pool of donors and volunteers, simply by working with people who we already have on our databases.

11.3 It’s personal.

Throughout this research, everything has kept coming back to the personal. Everything that helps to deepen engagement is about a relationship between people. And these people want to engage with us. So NGCV’s audiences are



not customers, they are people. The task is customer relationship management.

The action research phase showed that the more a venue invested in building opportunities for personal contact, the more the participants responded. The more we engage, the more they engage.

This really emphasises the importance of relating to each individual on a personal level throughout their interactions with our venues. Creating an appropriate personal interface is vital to deepening engagement, and can be achieved in every function of the organisation, from visitor services to the website.

11.4 Most arts marketing is aimed at confident explorers

The research has shown that most arts marketing is only really effective for one group. Confident explorers who have the commitment, experience, confidence and awareness of the benefits they will gain for their efforts to guide themselves through the decision-making process.

Whilst everyone else is interested (remember they were mostly recruited from our email lists) they struggle to find their way through the information we provide.

Crucially, arts marketing assumes that audiences are proactively and confidently seeking out new experiences. Most people are simply not doing this. They are interested, but they need help that comes to them.

11.5 Mass marketing is ineffective in crossing thresholds

Most people are stuck at a particular engagement stage because they lack something they need to drive them to the next step.

Mass marketing alone does not provide the necessary tools to scaffold an individual’s transition over a change point.

On the AIDA model below, mass marketing only gets as far as raising awareness for most people who receive brochures and emails.



AIDA model

11.6 Targeted action from venues encourages engagement journeys

This research has found that targeted intervention from NGCV venues can help move people at all stages of engagement across change points. Venues need to encourage, support and prompt people to alter their habits, take a (small) step outside their comfort zone and extend their repertoire. We need to help them by creating the conditions that will help them engage more deeply.

11.7 Engagement is not a top-up for old-fashioned arts marketing

This is not business as usual. Truly engaging with the audience to encourage individuals on their engagement journeys involves the whole organisation rather than just the marketing department.

The research shows that individuals need to be consuming diverse experiences to deepen engagement. So engagement journeys can be accelerated by collaboration between NGCV venues and artforms.

To facilitate this, the NGCV group need a shared understanding of their market (which all the venues share) through regional market intelligence, and a sophisticated way to segment this market in order to identify groups to target.



12 Practical recommendations for action

12.1 Overall points

The specific recommendations over the page are based on the following broader principles.

Built in, not bolt on

Schemes to deepen engagement need to be integrated with the everyday processes of NGCV venues – to become the norm across departments and organisations – rather than an added extra.

Schemes, campaigns and practice that meet needs

Practice to deepen engagement needs to be targeted to the specific needs of people at each stage of the engagement journey.

From individual experiments to industrial scale pilots

This project has taken a deeply qualitative approach: just 16 people were involved. This has meant that we were able to explore in depth the exact conditions that help people at different stages. These findings now need to be converted into larger-scale pilot projects to create practical schemes. Suggestions are provided below.

Establish efficacy and ROI - self-financing growth

The ultimate aim of encouraging engagement journeys is organisational sustainability. It is essential that pilot projects have built-in processes to capture and measure how effective they are at deepening engagement, sustaining this engagement and creating a substantial return on investment for the organisations involved. Rather than evaluation at the end of the scheme, this needs to be built in from the start and integral to the running of the project.

‘Golden Questions’ to identify, screen and tag databases

In order to identify groups of people to target with the pilot projects, the NGCV venues would need a shared set of questions / characteristics to find people at each stage.



Needs regional market intelligence and sophisticated segmentation

The NGCV group will also need a robust shared picture of their market: its size, shape and a way of understanding the market which allows the group to target interventions with an understanding of what drives both existing visitors to a venue and those who have not yet visited.

Morris Hargreaves McIntyre are currently conducting a nationally-representative population survey of cultural attenders with a North East sub-sample. From this, we are developing a segmentation of the cultural audience. The key findings of this project will be published later this year.

Most importantly, all the below must be PERSONAL

Engaging people more deeply relies totally on creating personal relationships. This must be at the core of every scheme and approach.

12.2 Specific ideas to use as basis for potential pilots

1 To move one-off treaters to creatures of habit: creating risk-free increments

These ideas try to eliminate risk, provide super-endorsement and build on one-off treaters’ desire for a special experience.

a) VIP invites

During the action research phase of this project, one-off treaters were most receptive to new experiences when they were given the red carpet treatment: meet and greet with the director, meet the cast, the best seats in the house. Replicating these experiences on a larger scale by hosting special events with guest lists, personal welcome and indisputable quality of work (preferably with big names / famous content / spectacle) could help break down preconceptions of the venues.



b) Bring friends (4 for 2)

One-off treaters don’t have strong relationships with NGCV venues, and are far more likely to trust people like them than frequent culture goers. Invitations to bring friends for free would be a good way to reach out.

2 To move creatures of habit to cautious gamblers: guided discovery

The suggestions below provide the reassurance and knowledge of what to expect that creatures of habit need to take more risks, and the low-risk opportunity to do so.

a) Guidance

Creatures of habit are concerned about ‘fitting in’ – they need reassurance that the experience is for ‘people like me’, they will know how to appreciate the work and how to behave. Introductory talks aimed at those new to the artform and jargon-busting guides would help reassure them.

b) Previews

Many creatures of habit mentioned looking on You Tube, Wikipedia and Googling the performance names so they knew what to expect in advance. Routinely providing video clips of the performance and clear information on what to expect on the venues’ sites (embedding You Tube and other appropriate web tools) would help reassure this group to book for something new. Creating a personal element to this (for example, the video clips by actors, directors etc used on the National Theatre’s website) would be even more effective.

c) Tasters

Creatures of habit would welcome opportunities to sample new experiences without committing lots of time or money. Many suggested that the late show sort of experience appealed to them: open days or evenings which offer tasters of different experiences, which they would be free to wander between.

d) TelePrompt

This group need targeted activities that encourage them to book for more of the same / very similar performances.

For example, TelePrompt is a scheme Morris Hargreaves McIntyre designed as a 'soft sell' approach, using highly trained telephone operators and persuasive copy to 'prompt' people to book tickets. We have recently run Teleprompt schemes for Opera North and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – these have proved to be very successful, with clients finding that for every £1 invested, £3 additional income is taken at the box office.



e) NGCV Test Drive

Test Drive is a scheme developed by Andrew McIntyre that uses unsold capacity in arts venues to encourage audiences to take risks. But rather than giving away (and devaluing) tickets with no way of tracking impact, this scheme develops a long-term relationship with each test driver. Participants must register and answer qualifying questions to get the first free tickets. They are asked to give feedback on their experiences, and are then offered more opportunities to further deepen and broaden their engagement.

A Test Drive scheme across NGCV venues targeted at creatures of habit (from a particular performance eg RSC) could offer carefully chosen experiences, selected as the next step on from what they’ve just seen – at a new venue, in a new art form or slightly more challenging work. This would also allow the venues to provide information (reviews, previews, what to expect / look out for, etiquette guides) to reduce risk.

Several Test Drive the Arts programmes are running in Australia at the moment, and Test Drive Northern Ireland has recently launched: http://www.testdrivesa.com.au/about.html http://www.arts.vic.gov.au/testdrive http://www.testdrivetheartsni.org/

3 To move cautious gamblers to confident explorers: invitations and opportunities

The suggestions below build on cautious gamblers’ desire to broaden and deepen their engagement by offering them recommendations and final prompt to actually book / go to something new.

a) Amazon-style recommendations

Many cautious gamblers spontaneously said the ‘if you liked this, try this’ model works for them in other areas of their life. Whilst they are interested in trying new things, they struggle to identify something new that they’re likely to enjoy in large brochures.

Building on research findings, Edinburgh International Film Festival developed a tool on their website – the suggest-o-tron – which helps audiences take more risks based on existing positive experiences (http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/whats-on/suggestotron). Arts Council England are planning a similar recommendation tool as part of their national engagement campaign.

By act ive ly sending this sort of message to cautious gamblers – perhaps via targeted email – cautious gamblers can easily identify their next step.



b) Upselling and targeted reminders

Cautious gamblers are looking for reasons and routes to book more. Multibooking reductions that encourage these people to book for more than experience at a time would encourage this.

Many cautious gamblers mentioned needing the extra ‘push’ to actually make a booking, and ways to help them not to miss events that would interest them. A targeted reminder scheme similar to TelePrompt (described above) would give these people that extra push and, given that these people are looking for new opportunities but not quite getting there, is likely to have significant returns.

c) Venue Test Drive

Cautious gamblers were very keen to take up the opportunities we offered them during the action research in this project, and are likely to respond positively to similar offers from venues they are already attending.

Venues could use unsold capacity at ‘riskier’ shows to give cautious gamblers the chance to try something new without the financial risk, and deepen their relationship with these individuals.

(Test Drive concept is described at 2e above)

4 To move confident explorers to givers of time

The suggestions below build on confident explorers’ desire to go further in their cultural engagement and the personal mechanisms needed to scaffold this transition.

a) Trial experiences

Would-be volunteers need to become aware of the offer, understand the potential benefits and find out what the commitment is. Awareness-raising schemes need to be followed by ways to get a taste of volunteering for example through open days or schemes to shadow a volunteer for a day (NB volunteers would need to be carefully matched to their area of interest.

b) Volunteer get volunteer

Most volunteers fell into it through a friend or other connection to the organisation. Volunteers could be encouraged to bring other interested people along to specific events, or to volunteer-lite opportunities.



5 To move confident explorers to givers of money

The suggestions below build on confident explorers’ desire to help others enjoy the benefits of culture and the deeply personal structures that may help encourage this.

a) Deeply personal ask

Many of the people we spoke to mentioned that they would be open to giving if they were simply asked by someone from the organisation in an appropriate way. Being invited to an event where the benefits to others and themselves were explained – emphasising the personal at all times – could be effective.

b) Emotional rewards

Events and other mechanisms that help donors see the effect of their contribution are essential in creating the reward.

Ready to engage - Morris Hargreaves McIntyre · interventions to engage more deeply The research...

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