At the end of March whilst we were in all in the throes of cancelling performances and watching the world as we know it collapse around us, I decided to help some of the cultural organisations I work with start to understand the likely impact of COVID-19 on their audiences. We created a short survey and asked their audiences to complete it.
What we didn’t anticipate was the overwhelming level of support audiences wanted to offer us. In the first survey over 130,000 audiences from over 300 cultural organisations felt passionately enough to respond. From the Royal Opera House to Dundee Rep, Sadler's Wells to Theatr Clwyd, 9 out of 10 people told us how much they missed the opportunity to attend live events and support their local venue. And over 80% were seriously worried about whether the organisation they love will survive.
“I am keen to support both local and national cultural events and will book as soon as it is possible to do so. I am very concerned about the survival of my local venue.”
In the following weeks, we’ve continued to ask audiences what they think and how they are feeling. Having now analysed the results from over 200,000 people and read many hundreds of their comments, I can’t underestimate the apprehension, concern and confusion the pandemic has created for organisations and audiences in how to plan for “after the interval” and a return to live performances. Fewer than 1 in 5 are actively booking for events now and only 3 out of 10 would consider booking a ticket within the next three months.
What’s becoming clear from our second survey is that there is a tension between what audiences want from us and what is economically viable for most cultural organisations. Two thirds of audiences say they would return to venues with social distancing measures in place, perhaps as they have seen in pictures of concert halls and theatres in Europe over the last few weeks. Their comments show real frustration in why we can’t do this.
“The sooner the better, mental health is very important to me, so the sooner we can get back to normality the better even if I have to wear as much PPE as the event stipulates”
But of course in the UK, with considerably less state funding and such a reliance on a high proportion of ticket income, to perform to one third of the auditorium is all but impossible for organisations at both ends of the spectrum – the large commercial venues, and the small local ones. Audiences are struggling to understand this – so we either have to get better at explaining this, or we need to think again.