We have today announced a new partnership with research agency More in Common.

Our first project begins in July and sets out to understand the role of arts and culture in the lives of people living in Britain in a changing political climate. Results will be shared in a webinar in September.

The partnership was catalysed by recent elections across Britain, which produced a fragmented political picture that arts and cultural organisations cannot afford to ignore.

More in Common, the organisation founded in the aftermath of the tragic murder of MP Jo Cox in 2016, developed the widely used Seven Segments of Britain. This model aims to help understand the divides and common ground that define the British public.

We bring to the partnership our experience of running wide-scale Hot Topic research projects with arts and cultural audiences. During the Covid-19 pandemic, our award-winning ‘After the Interval’ research generated the largest dataset of cultural audience sentiment data in the world and was used by DCMS to inform plans for reopening the sector. We followed this with sector-wide projects looking at sustainability, new audiences, accessibility, use of technology and models of membership. Our Hot Topics have been used by hundreds of organisations to understand their audiences and inform business decisions.

This initial project, the first step in a longer-term partnership, will draw on two datasets:

• Indigo’s UK-wide Audience Panel made up of 20,000 arts and cultural attenders
• More in Common’s nationally representative polling of the general population

By applying More in Common’s Seven Segments framework to both datasets, the research will reveal for the first time how arts and cultural audiences are distributed across the segments, how their attitudes compare to the wider public and what motivates engagement in each segment.

The results will be shared publicly on Wednesday 2 September in a live webinar co-presented by Indigo and More in Common.

Katy Raines, CEO of Indigo said:

“The political map of Britain has been redrawn. Arts organisations now face a new set of politicians and communities. To make the case for culture effectively – to anyone, of any political persuasion – we need to understand how people across the full spectrum of British society think and feel about arts and culture. Right now, we don’t have that evidence. This research will change that.”

Alex Newton, Deputy Director of More in Common said:

“Many arts and culture organisations have long known that their audiences don’t look like Britain as a whole. By applying the lens of our Seven Segments to cultural audiences for the first time, this partnership will give the sector a far richer picture of who it’s reaching, who it’s missing, and what that means in a fast-changing political landscape.”

Culture Central are in part supporting the research. Culture Central are a sector support and membership organisation, who focus on creating opportunities through culture for the people and places of the West Midlands. They have worked with Indigo to develop the region’s first mapping of people’s creativity (‘A Creative West Midlands’), and with More in Common as part of the West Midlands Cultural Response Unit.