Audiences still care about Covid safety measures

Audiences tended to be satisfied with the safety measures already taken by organisations, especially at heritage and visual arts venues. Musicals, plays and outdoor arts received the most mixed ratings, although remaining broadly positive.

People perceived a greater risk of catching Covid at indoor events, with 36% saying this was a high or very high risk (cf. 14% for outdoor events). All the suggested safety measures were rated highly important for both indoors and outdoors, finding ventilation the most important indoors and crowd management particularly important when outdoors.

These findings suggest that audiences are overwhelmingly in support of continuing to take precautions, regardless of the inconvenience. Most people said they would want ‘about the same’ level of measures if they returned, and more people said that they wanted more measures than said they wanted less. Notably, the high levels of satisfaction with current safety measures were also true for the 30% of people who said they ‘would consider attending, but with some reservations about Covid safety’ (and attended). This suggests that these reservations are not necessarily because the measures already in place are lacking.