Time: 10:15 – 11:15 

Heather Maitland will present results of the 2008 Theatre Forum Audience Benchmarking Research. This looks at audience data from 39 venues and 11 festivals around the country and is the only quantitative analysis of audience carried out each year. It is a fascinating snapshot of audiences for the performing arts looking at everything from how frequently do people attend; group size; cross over between different artforms; ticket prices, etc. Come along and get up to speed with audience trends. 

Biography

Heather Maitland is an arts consultant and a Research Associate at the University of Warwick’s Centre for Cultural Policy Studies. She has worked with around 100 arts organisations in the East Midlands and East England giving marketing and business planning advice, support and training and has been director of two of the UK’s national Arts Marketing Agencies. 

 She has written seven books on marketing and audience development for Arts Council England, most recently Navigating difference: cultural diversity and audience development as well as the UK Arts Marketing Association’s Marketing Manual. 

 She has run arts marketing and management courses all round the world, most recently in India, Japan, Zimbabwe and Malawi. She was both a tutor and Course Director of ‘Druidstone – the Essentials of Arts Marketing’, a seven-day residential arts marketing programme run by Theatre Forum in 2006 and 2008. 

 Note: This session is one of a choice of sessions running in the same time slot . For more information please refer to the schedule.