Audience Research & Insight

Audience Research & Insight

Audience research & insight is a crucial tool for museums, galleries, creative heritage organisations to understand their visitors and non-visitors, physical and digital, as well as their preferences, and their needs. Museums, galleries and heritage organisations are not just buildings with exhibits, but living institutions that engage with their communities, and audience research helps in this engagement process by providing a better understanding of prospects, visitors and communities and their expectations.

We outline some of the key use cases for audience research in museums below, based on the extensive experience of our team who have worked with a wide range of organisations in the sector:

One of the primary benefits of audience research is that it allows museums, galleries and heritage organisations to tailor their exhibits and programming to the interests of their visitors. This not only helps to attract more visitors, but it also ensures that visitors have a more satisfying experience. For example, if a museum finds out that its visitors are interested in interactive exhibits, it can create more of these exhibits to meet their expectations. Similarly, if a gallery discovers that its visitors prefer a certain type of content, it can focus on creating more exhibits that cater to this interest.

Audience research can also help museums, galleries and heritage organisations understand the demographics of their visitors. This can help to create exhibits and programming that are more inclusive and diverse. For instance, if a museum finds out that its visitors are mostly from a certain age group or ethnic background, it can take steps to attract visitors from other groups. This can include offering exhibits and programming that are specifically tailored to different demographics or actively reaching out to underrepresented communities.

In addition, audience research can help museums to improve their marketing and outreach efforts. By understanding the motivations and interests of their visitors, museums can create more effective advertising campaigns and outreach initiatives. This can help museums to attract more visitors and build stronger relationships with their communities.

Audience research also helps museums, galleries and heritage organisations to measure their success and impact. By tracking visitor attendance and engagement, museums can determine which exhibits and programming are most successful and make data-driven decisions about future investments. Organisations can also use audience research to gather feedback from visitors and make improvements to their exhibits and programming based on this feedback.

Finally, audience research can help museums to remain relevant and adapt to changing trends and interests. By staying up-to-date with the changing preferences and interests of their visitors, museums can ensure that they remain relevant and continue to attract visitors in the future. This can be particularly important in a rapidly changing world where museums need to adapt quickly to new technologies and shifting social attitudes.

Example projects

The M·E·L Research team have extensive expertise in undertaking audience research and insight projects including:

• On-going tracking research for National Museums Scotland across digital and physical audiences including surveys via face-to-face intercepts, membership surveys, supporting the learning and events team and conducting mystery shopping of the visitor experience across four sites in Scotland
• Working with the Royal Shakespeare Company to deliver a year long (initially) online community of n=250 audience members and potential audience members, drawn from a range of different audience types, testing a range of initial concepts and ideas to develop the RSC in terms of productions, outreach and education, as well as providing a conduit for feedback directly curated by the community members themselves
• Large scale qualitative research with Museum leaders, Community Leaders and the general public on behalf of Art Fund and the Association of Independent Museums to understand the deep-seated emotional drivers which influence the extent to which people support museums. We provided a full, published report as well as several webinars and conference presentations to promote the new model for emotional engagement which resulted from the reseach
• Quantitative reseach with audiences and communities in Liverpool to understand the pre- and post-event attitudes and experiences of Eurovision
• Support for the Museum of London to create and develop a whole-organisation approach to monitoring and evaluation of the impact of programmes, content and outreach and education across vairous different teams
• Provide a platform and on-going advice and support to Creswell Crags, a museum and heritage site on the border of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, to deliver their audience experience research across a porous site with multiple entry points and limited ticketed offer
• Delivery of a large scale process evaluation for the Creative City Grants programme, a strand of Birmingham 2022 Cultural Festival, which funded more than 100 heritage and creative organisations. We undertook multiple in-depth interviews with stakeholders on the funding and producing sides, as well as gathering significant management information to provide a full process evaluation

We have a face-to-face fieldwork team who are experienced at conducting surveys in a range of settings and utilising specific sampling approaches which provide an accurate sample of visitors and audiences.

If you would like to speak to a member of the team about our audience research and insight offer please do get in touch with us today!