Five questions with… Sanj Jagait
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Image credit: Wiltshire Creative’s production of Breaking the Code, 2019. Photo credit © Helen Murray
1. Hi Sanj! Let’s start from the beginning - what’s the new platform and why are we launching it?
As part of our 2023-26 Investment Programme, we procured three tools to help organisations collect and analyse data on their audiences, their environmental footprint and evaluating their work. By using the audience data platform, organisations will have a free tool to aid their audience development strategies as well as promote an informed and effective data culture.
We remain committed that a publicly funded dataset is open and can be used for the greatest public good. That’s why we’re futureproofing both the data collection process and the valuable dataset, as sole owners of the platform. As well as organisations being able to see how their data compares with the wider anonymised and aggregated dataset, it also allows organisations to share their data with the partners and consultants the work with.
For the Arts Council, it will help us continue to make the case for investment in creativity and culture and deliver our ambitions for our strategy, Let’s Create, by deepening our understanding of audiences - who they are, and what they want.
2. What difference will the platform make to the work of creative and cultural organisations?
Fundamentally it will support creative and cultural organisations to explore meaningful insights about who engages with their work (as well as who doesn’t) and strengthen their audience development approaches. They will do this by collecting their data (through surveys, direct box office connections and/or direct uploads) and viewing it through the platform’s insight tools, which will be completely free to access.
We want to make it as easy as possible for this to happen. There will be a small, core set of questions that National Portfolio and Investment Principles Support Organisations will be required to ask, which will enable a consistent view across the dataset. However, users will be able to add other questions to suit their audiences and activity needs flexibly and easily.
We’re also streamlining our data collection and monitoring for NPOs, with some of the information we usually collect in our Annual Survey on audiences and activity moving across to the new platform. This will mean your audience information will be in one place, making it easier to analyse across different data points.
3. Can you tell us more about PwC and why we’ve contracted them to build the platform?
Earlier this year, we made the decision that running an open procurement process was the best way to secure the best possible audience data tool. As part of the procurement, it was important for us to ensure that the organisation awarded the contract doesn’t own the platform or the dataset, nor can they benefit commercially from it.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) submitted the winning proposal, outlining a user-friendly and comprehensive solution that meets our needs. The team have a huge amount of expertise and resources in audience development, as well as significant experience in building technology solutions and implementations across a range of sectors.
This includes creativity and culture, with large scale audience analytics projects for the BBC, London’s West End theatre district and a number of NPOs. They have expertise in turning audience data into actionable audience development and marketing approaches, and we’re looking forward to our portfolio and the wider creativity and culture sector having access to that.
4. Who’ll be able to use the platform and when will it be ready?
The platform will be open to all creative and cultural organisations.
If you’re a National Portfolio or Investment Principles Support Organisation for 2023-26, you’ll need to submit data to the platform. Organisations using their own or existing systems to gather data will be able to submit that into the new platform via a .csv upload function. We’re aiming for the platform to ensure the inputting of data – either directly through a box office, surveys, or via direct upload – can be done as seamlessly as possible.
The platform is due to launch from 1 April 2023 in line with the start of the 2023-26 Investment Programme.
There will be iterative development over the next three years, to ensure the platform continues to work for as wide a range of organisations as possible. We will take on board feedback on the features and consult with specific groups to feed into key development areas as they emerge.
5. Will support be available to help people navigate the new platform?
We understand using something new takes some getting used to. To help you get to grips with it, there’ll be a comprehensive onboarding that includes training sessions and online learning modules and other more tailored support.
To complement this support for using the data tool, two new ‘Evaluation Champions’ will also be added to our expert team at the Digital Culture Network. These champions will be on hand to provide one-to-one support and offer advice on collecting data and making the best use of it.
We’re really excited to be launching the new platform alongside our new Evaluation Champions and we believe they’ll go a long way to helping organisations understand and grow their audience so we can all continue to deliver life changing creativity for people across the country.
