Cultural and creative sector organisations are faced with making unprecedented changes and adjustments to all aspects of their offer and visitor experience. Along with this rapid pace of change, comes so many unknowns about returning audiences – who are they and how they will respond to cultural venues and sites when they are welcomed back?  


In response to this, nine new standardised COVID-19 question themes have been added to the Audience Finder premium question list. These themes have been designed to help organisations understand their visitors’ experience of and response to COVID-19.

Together with the core Audience Finder questions, organisations will be able to monitor the profile of their returning visitors and their experience once they have attended, providing vital insight and feedback into audiences in the time of COVID-19.

Other existing Audience Finder premium question themes that may be relevant in understanding post lockdown audience behaviour include:

  • Fundraising 
  • Transport 
  • Number/Age of children in household


You can find the list of COVID-19 questions, together with the rest of the Audience Finder premium questions here.

Additional premium questions over and above the five free Premium Questions are charged at £100 plus VAT, per question.

Things to bear in mind

Audience Finder participants need to be mindful that once an Audience Finder question has been added to the premium question list it cannot be amended for an individual or across the program mid-way through the benchmark year. Due to the changeable nature of the UK lockdown guidelines, the questions have been designed so that they remain as relevant as possible in light of any new local or UK wide lockdown restrictions or relaxations. 

If organisations feel that these questions do not cover in significant enough detail the visitor experience and behavioural research themes that they wish to explore, we would recommend the following 

  1. Organisations can add in bespoke questions of their own design into the Audience Finder survey. Each bespoke question is charged at £100 plus vat, per year. 
  2. Organisations conduct their own survey in addition to Audience Finder.
  3. Organisations ask the core Audience Finder survey questions within their own survey and submit the Audience Finder survey data at the end of the benchmark year. More information about how to do this can be found here. 
  4. Organisations can conduct a bespoke piece of research with The Audience Agency, which can be tailored to your specific research needs but also fed into Audience Finder. Talk to us to discuss a your bespoke project requirements.
  5. Check out existing research and resources on The Audience Agency’s Bounce Forwards Evidence Hub where you’ll find both general insight about audiences and engagement here, plus new opportunities to understand your own visitors and participants.