Audience Research
From the feedback I received about further researching my audience this is my response.
I found three different surveys done by three different bodies online. The most relevant to my audience is the research done by the V&A 2011
The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A), is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects.
I am going to base my audience from the audience of the V&A as it the gallery that has the most similarities with the style of exhibitions to mine. The audience will be generally if not the same as mine.
Condensed summary of the demographic - V&A
The audiences of the V&A are generally:
- Employed with non manual jobs
- Majority have completed full time education and achieved a Degree or higher.
- Less then half of the people that visit galleries and museums are in the creative industry.
- Predominately white - Irrelevant to my audience
- Majority are English speaking
- Individual adults visit galleries the most followed by groups and friends.
- Majority of people are able bodies, which is interesting for me as the human senses may play a part in my exhibition.
- Larger amount of women visitors
- Predominant visitor groups were people aged 25-34
All of the Secondary research
National Museums
http://www.nationalmuseums.org.uk/resources/press_releases/record-visitor-numbers-uk-national-museums/
Record visitor numbers to UK national museums
Press Release
Date of release: 30 September 2010
This summer saw a record number of visitors to the UK’s national museums.
Over 5.7 million people visited UK national museums in August 2010. This represents an increase of 11% from August 2009.
Highlights include:
A total of 809,443 people visited the four branches of Tate in August, a 15% increase on last year.
The Victoria & Albert Museum and the Wallace Collection both saw a 24% increase in visitors compared to August 2009.
The Natural History Museum had 592,534 visitors, a 17% increase on August 2009, and the National Gallery had 568,375 visitors, an 18% increase.
In total the UK’s national museums welcomed over 42 million visitors in 2009/10.
The latest Taking Part National Survey of Participation in Culture and Sport results also show an increase in museum visits. The survey showed that in 2009-10:
46.7% of adults visited a museum, gallery or archive – an increase of 11% since the Taking Partsurvey began in 2005-06.
68.8% of children aged 5-15 visited a museum, gallery or archive.
DCMS-funded national museums have seen a 41% rise in visitor numbers since the introduction of free admission in 2001, from 28.5 million visitors in 2000-01 to over 41 million in 2009-10.
Highlights include:
National Maritime Museum – 197% increase in visitors since 2001.
National Museums Liverpool – 178% increase.
Natural History Museum – 159% increase.
Victoria & Albert Museum – 105% increase.
The Taking Part
Survey has run since 2005 and is the key evidence source for DCMS. It is a continuous face to face household survey of adults aged 16 and over in England and chidren aged 5-15 years old. This latest releases presents rolling estimates incorporating data from the first quarter of year seven of the survey.
http://www.culture.gov.uk/publications/9547.aspx
V&A
Report on British Galleries- follow up demographics
survey to compare with baseline survey and Creative
Research survey of May 2011
http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/15142/1/British_Galleries_Report_2011.pdf
4.2.2: Occupation and job related data Q4-Q11.
The majority of visitors to the British Galleries are from Occupation Group B at 53%. 31% are from
C1, 11% are from A, 3% are from C2 and 1% are from D.
77% of all the noted occupations are full time, with 5% working part time. Less than 1 % are
housewives. 13% are students 3% are retired on a state and personal pension, less than 1% are
on state pension only and 1% are unemployed. 82% are employees, 18% are self-employed.
12% have manual jobs and 88% have non-manual jobs. 66% have responsibility for staff and 33%
have no responsibility for staff.
Approximately 3 percent of the total National population are Group A, which mirrors the results of
those surveyed in the British Galleries. These are professional people, very senior managers in
business or commerce or top-level civil servants. It also includes retired people previously grade A
and their widows.
Group B is only 14 percent of the total National population they are middle management
executives in large organisations, with appropriate qualifications. Also included are principal
officers in local government and civil service, top management or owners of small business
concerns, educational and service establishments and retired people who were previously grade
B, and their widows. The large majority (53%), of visitors to the British Galleries are this group.
The reason this group is so much higher than the National average may be due to the fact they
have a greater disposition to visit heritage sites than some of the remaining occupational groups.
C1 nationally represents 26 per sent of the population. This group is made up of junior
management, owners of small establishments, and all others in non-manual positions. Jobs in this
group have varied responsibilities and educational requirements. It also contains retired people
who were previously grade C1, and their widows.
C2 nationally is 25 per cent of the population. This group comprises of all skilled manual workers,
and those manual workers with responsibility for other people. It also contains retired people
previously grade C2 with pensions from their job and their widows.
Group D is approximately 19 per cent of the population and is all semi-skilled and unskilled manual
workers, apprentices and trainees to skilled workers. It also contains widows of partners
previously grade D who receive a pension from their late husband’s job.
4.2.3: Completion of full time education (Q12)
As can be seen from table 4.2.3 the percentage of those visitors who have completed full time
education varies little to visitors surveyed in the British Galleries last May. 74% of visitors to the
British Galleries have completed full-time education.
4.2.4: Highest Level of Qualifications (Q13)
Table 4.2.4 shows that at least 69% of visitors to the galleries have achieved a Degree or higher.
This shows little change to previous studies.
4.2.5: Involvement with the creative industries (Q14)
Table 4.2.5 shows the percentage of visitors to the British Galleries who are involved in
professions within the creative industries. 34% in total are involved in creative industry as opposed
to only 23% last time. Figures were not available at the time to compare with the original baseline
study in 1997 of Creative Professionals.
4.2.6: Ethnicity (Q15)
88% of all visitors to the British Galleries are of white. This is slightly lower than in previous
studies were 93% of visitors, were of white.
4.2.7: First and Second Language (Q16)
77% of visitors have English as their first language, which is similar to previous research. 32% of
visitors have English as their second language (higher than previous data). 26% of visitors had
French as a second language. Only 10% of visitors had no second language. This low percentage
would be due to the high number of overseas visitors to the V&A over the Christmas period.
4.2.8: Capacity in which visiting (Q17)
The most popular type of group is family & friends at 19%.
Individual adults at 59% are the
largest audience type.
4.2.15: Illness and ability to enjoy visit (Q24&Q25)
Very few people have a long-term illness only 4%. Of these visitors half did admit to having their
visit affected by the limitations of their illness or old age but this was only 6 people. These results
are very similar to results in the previous survey.
4.2.16: Gender (Q26)
The majority of respondents were women (64%), however, even when all people in the group are
accounted for 62% of all visitors to the galleries are women. This differs to previous results. There
is no obvious explanation for this result.
4.2.17: Age of respondent and of those in their visiting party (Q27)
It can be seen if all children’s’ age
groups are combined, there are 10% of children under the age 17 visiting the galleries with their
families or with a secondary school party. There were no primary school parties visiting during this
survey period. That amounts to 24% of visitors under the age of 24.
The predominant age group visiting the galleries is the 25-34 year olds, which is consistent with
both the baseline and Creative Research data.
It should be noted however that the baseline age groups differ slightly as mature age groups were
55-64 and 65+.
4.3. Some extra comments from visitors to the British Galleries
There is a general agreement that the majority of labelling and text size on labels is fine for
most. However, there are difficulties with the lighting. Some times reflections make it difficult
to view instructions, labels and text. Perhaps more can be done to alter the reflections of the
lighting so labels do not glare.
There are very few noticeable differences between recent results from the demographics
questions asked and those asked in the May 2002 survey, apart from the presence of more
children in the galleries.
There are children visiting the British Galleries. When all age groups under the age of 24 years
are combined the baseline equates to 21% and MRG surveyed 24%. Even though there were
children in the galleries it may be necessary to promote the galleries to families and schools
more as the children who were there were freely using all the interactive materials and enjoying
themselves.
There was a sizeable amount of positive feedback volunteered from many of those who were
interviewed. The general perceptions were that the V&A had excelled itself with the new British
Galleries and the percentage of people who had visited on more than 4 occasions in one year
is a testament to that.
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