Introduction

Area Profile Reports provide a useful and powerful new tool to help cultural organisations and venues think about their audiences and plan strategy.
 

By using postcode sectors, and information garnered from Census statistics and research on people's propensity to attend arts and heritage events and activities, the Area Profile Reports offer the cultural sector rich regional information about potential audiences. 
 

What can I do with Area Profile Reports?

Area Profile Reports can be used most simply to identify your potential audience within a certain distance of your venue.  The reports provide useful ways of thinking about your local audience - detailing just how many people live in the different postcode sectors locally, their age range, occupation and propensity to attend cultural events and venues.

The reports can also help identify issues that may be a factor in attending cultural events - showing, for instance, the number of households locally with access to private transport.

If your organisation keeps data on its audiences, this can easily be compared to your local Area Profile Report to see how well you are doing in terms of attracting potential attenders.
 

How accurate are Area Profile Reports?

The headline statistics in the Reports - population, age breakdowns, occupations, etc. - are based on robust Census information and, whilst this data is now a number of years old, it is probably the most complete and accurate information available to us.

This Census data is supplemented by more recent research into people's likelihood to attend different types of cultural events and activities - from museums to plays.  Whilst only a representative sample of such behaviours have been conducted across Scotland, this has been used to predict how many potential attenders of cultural events and activities might live in each postcode sector, based on the Census profile information and on the principle that "people who live in a similar way are likely to have similar tastes".  In this respect, the figures are "best guesses", and the closest that we can practically come to putting a figure on potential attendance across a variety of regions.
 

How do I get the Area Profile Report for my organisation?

Area Profile Reports are available to not-for-profit organisations operating in the arts or cultural sector, or to venues receiving work from funded clients of the Scottish Arts Council. They are available to local authorities for arts development purposes.

Reports for the Highlands and Islands region are available from HI-Arts.  To request a report, please contact audiences@hi-arts.co.uk in the first instance.
 

How do I get help using Area Profile Reports?

The Scottish Arts Council's Guidance Notes on using Area Profiling can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.  You can also download maps showing postcode sectors across the Highlands and Islands from below.

In addition, HI-Arts' Audience Development Coordinator is able to offer pratical advice and assistance in using Area Profiling - just email audiences@hi-arts.co.uk.