Minister for the Arts Senator Mitch Fifield has announced the launch of a new interactive Australia Council resource, which brings together research on arts engagement, employment and ticketing trends across Australia.
Developed by the Australia Council for the Arts, the resource brings together region specific data from the National Arts Participation Survey and new analysis of commercial ticketing data for arts and sport events commissioned from TEG Analytics, providing valuable insights into audience engagement with the arts by local area.
The online resource provides information on employment across the cultural and creative industries, using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Users can choose an electorate from a drop-down menu or map to display targeted data.
Information includes audience engagement with the arts, ticketing trends across arts and sport, cultural and creative businesses and cultural and creative employment in each electorate. How the resource can be used:
- Users can see audience engagement with arts and sport by area. This shows that most audiences engage in both, which debunks the myth of a divide between the two. This is particularly true in Australia’s sporting heartland of Melbourne, where people are much more likely than the national average to have bought tickets for both arts and sports events. In regional Australia, many people are strongly engaged with both the arts and sport and are prepared to travel to experience them in person.
- Arts planners can investigate the willingness of audiences to travel outside of their region or state for arts and cultural events. The resource shows that in addition to participating in local creative experiences, audiences across the country are buying tickets to events away from their local area. This highlights the keen appetite for arts and culture in all corners of our nation.
The Electorate Profiles online resource is the latest addition to the Australia Council’s strong body of research about the arts, which is publicly available on the Arts Nation research hub.