Sandbox: master arts audience psychology and engagement
A toolkit of over 150 frameworks that helps you understand how audiences think, act, and engage; designed for cultural organisations seeking deeper participation insights.
challenging generic segmentation
Strategies based on generic segmentation and profiling are discriminatory and fail to capture the nuanced nature of cultural audiences. Grouping audiences solely through demographic data is highly presumptuous; overlooking the diverse psychographics of audiences and perpetuating outdated stereotypes.
Shaping THe UK’s cultural future
Our cultural engagement expertise has contributed to policy change for two decades, with our contribution to the Arts Council England and DCMS 2025 reviews influencing the national conversation on cultural access and creative participation; we frequently setting the standard for engagement practice.
Arts Council England agrees a change is needed
From the ACE published report Developing Participatory Metrics, ‘measuring people’s engagement with ‘arts and culture’ is fraught with challenges for a number of reasons. In the words of ACE:
The surveys and tools that have traditionally been commissioned by for example Arts Council England to measure cultural engagement, such as those used in this study, are by definition skewed towards the forms of culture that are funded, or are part of the cultural ‘establishment’.
The basis on which cultural engagement is measured does not therefore currently take into account less ‘traditional’ forms of culture, and in particular cultural activity that does not take place in cultural places and spaces.
“We advocate for bespoke methodologies that are shaped by the organisation they serve. This means researchers immersing themselves in your organisational culture, practices and values, and working collaboratively to design research that responds to what is specific, meaningful and unresolved within your context”.
Audience Spectrum is heavily based upon booker behaviour concentrated on mainstream artforms in established / funded venues, but even so is the least consistent measure when trying to predict patterns of ‘actual attendance’ at such types of events. It is limited in its usefulness as the data set is too small to be used at anything below local authority level’.
Sandbox: practical uses
Sandbox is a practical toolkit of over 150 adaptable frameworks and models, designed to be shaped and used at different stages of the Engagement Journey, just like toys in a child’s sandbox.
Identify any kinks in the flow of an existing audience’s journey that’s causing poorer quality engagement, and be proactive in providing new access points, deepening satisfaction and extending impact.
Sandbox provides a structure to guide intuition about new or under-engaged audiences to anticipate sticking points and in turn plan engagement strategies that address these.
As conversation prompts that hone in on the nuance psychology of their engagement, especially useful when they find it difficult to verbalise this engagement; ensuring the complete audience journey is explored and maximum benefit is gained from time spent with audiences.
Appreciate the personal, situational, cultural, institutional and historical factors of audience groups, that may be influencing their willingness to engage.
With a wide range of adaptable frameworks and models to implement and a clearly defined audience engagement journey, research planning becomes a personalised and efficient process. Methodologies become highly relevant to the intended outcome.
Be efficient despite limited resources by designing communication and PR strategies around an audience’s ‘engagement priming’ process of awareness, contextualisation, decision making, preparation and anticipatory meaning making.
When considering new offers Sandbox can be used as the exploration tool to determine an audience’s profile around which future programming can be designed.
Consider not only practical and physical accessibility and inclusion across the complete audience journey, but also psychological accessibility, i.e raising participation confidence.
Arts Council England funded clients
Heritage Fund funded clients
Arts Council England NPO clients
Higher and Further Education clients
download our sandbox toolkit information pack
Sandbox is a practical toolkit of over 150 models and frameworks designed to shaped and used at different stages of the engagement journey.
