Disconnected Bodies
Get in Touch
Audience strategy for arts and culture.
The strongest cultural strategies are built on evidence, behavioural understanding and a realistic picture of how communities engage with culture.
We help organisations translate audience insight into practical, long-term strategies that strengthen participation, demonstrate impact and support confident decision-making.
Winners of the Arts & Culture Social Enterprise Award 2025.
Turning audience insight into confident strategic decisions.
Supporting cultural organisations, local authorities and funding bodies to develop evidence-led audience strategies that provide clear direction, strengthen participation and create practical roadmaps for long-term cultural growth.
THE CHALLENGE
Audience data is common, but not audience intelligence.
Demographic segmentation can describe who audiences are, but rarely explains why they participate, return or disengage. The sector now collects more data than ever… yet attendance, demographics and satisfaction scores still fail to reveal the behavioural drivers of long-term cultural participation.
SECTOR INFLUENCE
Contributing to the UK’s cultural future.
Authors of the UK Cultural Strategy Review 2026. Developers of Sandbox™, the Strategic Maturity Index™ and the Five Pillars of Modern Cultural Strategy™.
We contribute evidence and analysis on cultural participation and audience behaviour that informs policy and strategy at national, regional and local levels.
THE PROBLEM
Challenging audience stereotypes
The sector has over-relied on demographics; behavioural understanding is the next evolution. Organisations are making strategic decisions using demographic data while attempting to solve fundamentally behavioural challenges.
Sandbox™ was developed to bring behavioural understanding to the heart of audience strategy and decision-making.
The audience intelligence gap
Most audience research has become increasingly effective at describing who audiences are. It remains far less effective at explaining why they participate, return, disengage or never engage at all. Comfortable methodologies continue to produce comfortable conclusions.
WHY COMMISSION AN AUDIENCE STRATEGY?
Connect insight to impact.
Audience development strategies help organisations make confident decisions about who they want to engage, how they’ll engage them, and how success will be measured.
What are you trying to achieve?
An Audience Development Strategy can help you create meaningful change and deliver-long term impact.
Broaden:
Reach people who aren’t engaging
Identify barriers to participation and discover opportunities to connect with communities that are currently under-represented or less likely to engage with your organisation.
- Priority under-engaged groups identified
- Barriers and realistic entry points mapped
- Targeted engagement recommendations
Strengthen:
Turn first-time visits into lasting relationships
Build stronger, longer-term connections with your audiences by encouraging repeat participation, increasing loyalty and creating more meaningful experiences.
- Drivers of repeat participation defined
- Loyalty and belonging factors clarified
- Pathways from first visit to ongoing engagement
Unblock:
Remove barriers to participation
Understand the practical, emotional and behavioural factors preventing engagement, then develop strategies that make participation more relevant.
- Practical, emotional and behavioural barriers prioritised
- Highest-impact barriers highlighted
- Changes to improve access and relevance
Prioritise:
Optimise audience strategy
Identify where the greatest opportunities for participation and impact exist, then focus strategy and resources on the actions most likely to make a difference.
- Clear strategic priorities set
- Highest-potential opportunities ranked
- Practical roadmap for where to invest time and resource
Audience development plan
A clear roadmap for audience development.
Our audience strategy documents provide a structured, long-term framework for engagement, participation and growth, removing guesswork and supporting confident decision-making. Designed to be both practical and funder-ready, they translate insight into a clear roadmap that guides delivery, strengthens reporting and supports future funding.
We analyse your context, communities and operating environment to build a clear picture of where you are now, and the opportunities and challenges ahead.
Using bespoke research and our Sandbox™ tools, we gather and interpret qualitative and quantitative evidence to understand behaviours, motivations and barriers.
We develop rich audience profiles and segments based on behaviour and attitudes – not just demographics – to reveal needs, motivations and participation drivers.
We identify where you can make the biggest difference, setting clear strategic priorities that align with your artistic or social mission, audiences and financial goals.
We translate strategic priorities into a practical implementation plan, setting realistic timescales, responsibilities and phased actions that enable your organisation to move confidently from strategy to delivery.
We define success and build a robust framework to track progress, demonstrate impact and support learning, informed decision-making and future growth.
INTRODUCING SANDBOXTM
A behavioural operating system for audience engagement
Sandbox is the behavioural operating system at the heart of Disconnected Bodies. It enables cultural organisations and policymakers to design, test and learn what engages audiences-using real-world evidence, not assumptions.
Built on behavioural science and refined through practice, Sandbox helps the sector move beyond intuition to create experiences that connect, inspire and drive lasting participation.
THE SANDBOX EVIDENCE BASE:
YEARS
researching cultural participation
PARTICIPANTS
reached and studied since 2006
PSYCHO-SEGMENTED
profiles
ENGAGEMENT MODELS
and frameworks
The Sandbox Toolkit in action
The Sandbox Toolkit can be applied across the engagement journey; helping organisations translate insight into practical action, strategy and measurable impact.
Insight:
Reveal behaviour
Uncover the motivations, barriers, lived experiences and behavioural drivers that shape participation.
- Audience dialogue and focus groups
- Understand lived experiences
- Research methodologies
Development:
Shape participation
Identify engagement opportunities, strengthen loyalty and create pathways for new and under-engaged audiences.
- Refocus existing audiences
- Develop new or under-engaged audiences
Application:
Influence decisions
Shape programming, communications and engagement strategies.
- Design your offer based upon audience profiling
- Structure marketing and PR strategies
- Ensure accessibility and inclusion
Evaluation:
Record impact
Reveal the mechanisms behind audience outcomes rather than simply recording attendance, satisfaction or participation figures.
- Behavioural evaluation
- Audience feedback
- Outcome measurement
The future of audience development belongs to organisations that understand the psychology of participation.
Audience research
National Maritime Museum, London
Increasing access through community engagement and audience insight.
Community engagement research fed into the content and design of the landmark ‘Our Connection to Water’ exhibition, supporting the museum to reach and reflect the diversity of its local communities.
100,000+
visitors to the exhibition
18%
increase in visitors from diverse communities
Strategy and evaluation
The Culture Trust, Luton
Evidence-led evaluation across a multi-site cultural portfolio.
Delivered evaluation across four heritage and cultural sites, synthesising consultation, stakeholder engagement and audience data to inform strategy and improve impact.
4
cultural sites evaluated
250+
stakeholders engaged
Participation and engagement
Pedestrian Arts, Leicester
Reviving local stories and inspiring new generations.
Supporting the delivery of Tell Tall Tales, a National Lottery Heritage Fund project uncovering and retelling local folklore through creative outputs and community activity.
1,200+
participants
8
school and library partners
FREE CONsultation
Book a 30-minute
consultation
A strategic conversation about your project, challenge or opportunity.
A strategic conversation
Speak directly with Disconnected Bodies Founder Pablo Colella about your project, challenge or opportunity.
What happens next?
Choose a convenient time and we’ll explore your project, discuss possible approaches and answer any questions about our research, evaluation or strategic planning services.
TELEPHONE
020 3633 7617
Trusted by the cultural sector
Supporting cultural engagement across 200+ organisations (2025), projects and partners
We build long-term partnerships grounded in trust, insight and shared ambition; working with organisations across the UK and internationally to deliver meaningful cultural impact and value.
2025 HIGHLIGHTS