A lot of people still don't feel safe to attend

September 2021

Cultural Participation Monitor Wave 4 | Autumn 2021

This research is from The Audience Agency's nationwide longitudinal (ongoing) panel survey of changing views about participating in creative and cultural activities through the recent and ongoing crises, and beyond, the Cultural Participation Monitor.

Contents

Themes

Willingness to attend has not increased since June and people remain worried about others' behaviour, though they don't appear to think there is much more organisations themselves should be doing to make them feel safe.

Willingness to Attend

Cultural participation graphic - ratio and reasons of people not comfortable to attend

The proportion of people 'happy to attend' has not increased (29% in June, 28% now). In fact, the only major change is an almost doubling of the 11% to 20% of those who said they were 'not interested' in attending.

This significant increase is largely at the expense of those who previously said they 'were not comfortable attending until there has been a significant reduction in risk from COVID', suggesting that opinions may be hardening up.

Safety Concerns

Cultural participation graphic - Indoor safety measures

The measures considered 'very important' most frequently to make people feel comfortable attending indoor events were:

  • Crowd management 46%
  • Hand sanitiser 45%
  • Only vaccinated or those with negative tests allowed to attend 41%
  • Masks 40%
  • Social distancing of >1m 37%

The importance given to hand sanitiser, over masks and distancing, is a little surprising, given that Covid-19 transmission is predominantly airborne, rather than from surfaces contact.

People had substantial concerns about the presence or behaviour of others in terms of return to attendance (% who answered Strongly agree):

  • Only vaccinated or those with negative tests allowed to attend INDOORS 35%
  • Unsafe behaviour of others puts me off attending 32%
  • Only vaccinated or those with negative tests allowed to attend OUTDOORS 26%
  • Boosters would make me feel much more comfortable 28%
  • Cultural organisations could be doing more to make visiting 'COVID safe' 19%