The Audience Agency announce new bespoke place-based services

The new suite of services will be delivered by a team of experts, guided by Head of Creative Places, Cara Pickering.

The Audience Agency champions and facilitates a people - and community - centred approach, giving people a voice in shaping a cultural offer that has meaning and purpose. Experience has shown that culture is often at its most transformative where it joins people together in a place, a catalyst for celebrating, animating, and reimagining it, therefore The Audience Agency has created these new place-based services to support the sector. The new offer provides tangible evidence of this transformative power, and better still, focuses on what works – on how to deliver workable, human-shaped creative initiatives that improve the quality of people’s lives. The newly crafted suite of services reflects a decade of support for evidence-led and people-centred creative place-making.

Services on offer include:

  • Planning and Feasibility
  • Engagement
  • Impact and Legacy
  • Leadership

Anne Torreggiani, CEO The Audience Agency says:

“Why Place? Why Now? Place and culture matter profoundly because they are intertwined with identity, belonging, and aspiration. Both can shape and share the narrative of our communities, define our stories, and influence the way we see the world. Place is not just geography; it directly affects the way we feel. Culture is not just a performance; it reflects who we are. Together, culture and place provide the foundation upon which our lives, our communities, and our future are built. And we always begin our delivery with the people. We look forward to sharing this exciting journey of cultural exploration, community building, and positive change with you.”


Cara Pickering, Head of Creative Places, The Audience Agency says:

“In these times of social, cultural and economic challenges, there are opportunities to re-think, collaborate and engage new ways of working - the crucial role of place-based solutions is essential and needed. Last week, we held a Place Forum in partnership with Creative Industries Council and hundreds attended. Local authority officers, researchers, creative industry workers and wider showed up to share best practice, support each other and learn. There is an incredible effort being made to grow and develop the unique locations that we live, work and play. Our place offer exists to support the collective effort to create better and more resilient places across the UK.”


Sarie Mairs Slee, Associate – Strategic Place Advisor says:

“Over the last year, it has been a pleasure working with The Audience Agency on their new strategic Place offer. As a term, ‘place’ bring together locale, community, history and heritage, the fabric of the built and natural environments, specific needs and shared aspirations. With so many intermingling meanings, it can be hard to work across these aspects to co-design and create the impact – social, environmental, educational, economic – that places want and need. The Audience Agency is uniquely positioned to bring together their knowledge of audiences, evaluation and data and their extensive experience in collaboration and cohort learning to offer something transformative. It’s a thrill to see this new, defined offer out in the world.”


Read more and get in touch about our Place-based services here.