Sectors | Outdoor Arts & Festivals

Evidence to help build an understanding of how audiences have engaged with Outdoor Arts before, during and moving out of the pandemic.

Key Findings from the Cultural Participation Monitor

Attendance & Intention	In the 12 months Pre-Pandemic, 18% had attended an outdoor festival, carnival or streets arts. Since the Pandemic began, 13% of respondents had attended an outdoor festival, carnival or street arts. Two Audience Spectrum groups were more likely to have attended during this period than others: 20% of Experience Seekers and 17% of Kaleidoscope Creativity - the latter usually being low engaged arts attenders. Moving out of the pandemic, 26% had plans to do this in the next two months.
Location & Motivation	Attending an outdoor festival, carnival or street arts tended to be done locally (32% said the journey was up to 30 mins, 31% said up to 1 hour and 23% said it was more than 1 hour). 17% of all respondents are looking to do this activity closer to home in future, compared to before the pandemic. By far the most prominent main reason for attending was to do something sociable, spend time with others (33%), followed then by a desire to relax, take your mind of things (16%) and to be entertained (16%).
Wellbeing & Safety	Audiences felt the risk of catching/spreading Covid at cultural events outdoors was a lot lower than indoors (45% saying risk Low/Very Low outdoors vs. 17% indoors). 81% were quite or very satisfied with the steps taken to ensure Covid-19 safety and, as of Winter 2021, 52% were prepared to return if these measures stay the same while 38% would with some reservations. 78% said the experience had a positive effect on their wellbeing.

Other Arts Engagement and Creative Activities

To contextualise, we've looked a little into Outdoor Arts audiences' more general cultural and creative interests and pursuits:

When asked about their leisure interests, 72% of all respondents to the Cultural Participation Monitor expressed an interest in the outdoors and nature more generally, beyond specifically cultural offerings.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, 7% of all respondents had taken part in an outdoor arts event as a performer e.g. carnival, street arts.
63% of those that did this activity did so in 2020, while 54% did it in 2021 - showing only a relatively small pandemic decline - while 70% said it had a positive effect on their wellbeing.
Looking at typical pre-pandemic attendance, we see that, unsurprisingly, Outdoor Arts attenders cross over massively with Museum and Heritage enthusiasts, and are also likely attenders of indoor Performing Arts.

Outdoor Arts cross sector.png

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