Creative Places

Investigate how audiences' cultural engagement habits are affected by place, including the working from home effect, the rise of localness and more.

Geography and place play key roles in cultural engagement, in several ways. There are, of course, patterns in where different types of people live, which are connected to the type and levels of cultural engagement (something which informs Audience Spectrum and which the mapping tool illustrates).

These patterns can be regional (most notably the difference between engagement in London and elsewhere) and our Place events show some of these differences. These include variation between different types of place within regions (e.g. shown by Indices of Multiple Deprivation figures, or rural/urban classifications). But we’ve also seen cross-cutting themes around place, such as a tendency for people to attend more locally since the pandemic and the rising influence of working from home on engagement for some (particularly professional, middle-class) groups.

From The Audience Agency

Place is a broad theme, but one which is - ironically - everywhere at the moment... It can include place-making and strategic planning of place, but also the way that where people are affects what they do and how they do it. We also recognise that different people live in different places, so place can also be a route into understanding different audience groups too.

Oliver Mantell, Director of Evidence and Insight, The Audience Agency

Sources from elsewhere

Geographies of Creativity Report

Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre

A Creative PEC State of the Nations report arguing that place matters when it comes to creativity.

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