What are Area Profile Reports?

Area Profile Reports provide a profile of the population who live within a defined area – usually 45 minutes drive time of your venue or festival.

They are a widely used tool in the arts in the UK and used for marketing planning. Every theatre, arts centre, touring company and festival gets a free Area Profile Report from Arts Council England.

The reports give information about the population in the area as a whole, based on 2006 census data amongst other sources. This includes things such as the number of students, employed and unemployed; the socio-demographic class, the % of the population with second & third level education, the % owning a computer with internet access at home etc.

It then gives the same information broken down by DED. Alongside this you get a detailed visual map of the catchment area of your venue broken down by DED.

What’s a DED?

It stands for District Electoral Division. It’s used by An Post, local authorities and the census collectors. Since we don’t have postcodes throughout Ireland, these are small bite sized chunks of population, sometimes as small as particular housing estates. All of Ireland is divided into DEDs!

How are they used?
In the private sector similar reports are used to select locations for retail development and in setting sales targets.

Area Profile Reports have a similar application in arts marketing planning. They provide comprehensive demographic and other information. When used with box office data on the numbers of ticket buyers for a particular venue they can identify opportunities for developing sales or visits.

Some potential uses:

• providing a more realistic and accurate picture of the character of the population around a city or town than might be assumed from general perceptions of it.

• identifying factors which help in understanding venues’ different degrees of success in attracting visitors or audiences, showing the degrees of difference between the postal sectors in a drive-time area in demographic profile and potential arts attendance.

• measuring, in conjunction with the data on the actual numbers of ticket buyers or visitors, the extent to which a particular venue is reaching the potential for a drive-time area. This analysis can identify opportunities for increasing visitors and audiences.

• giving touring companies, which may lack first-hand knowledge of the areas they visit, a basic impression of the size and nature of the local population in a form which enables comparisons to be made with other areas – in terms of attendance potential and numbers of ticket buyers. This will assist in the planning of tours, setting visitor or audience targets and deciding marketing priorities.

Has anyone used them in the Irish arts world?

It’s a new tool here. A number of organisations who participated in our pilot project last year got Area Profile Reports. These include

1. Axis Arts Centre, Ballymun

2. Backstage Theatre, Longford

3. Cork Opera House
   

4. Dublin Theatre Festival

5. Dunamaise Arts Centre

6. Galway Arts Festival

7. Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray
   

8. Project Arts Centre

9. Siamsa Tire, Tralee
   

10. The Abbey Theatre

11. The National Concert Hall

You could ask them if they found it useful.

How to Order & what does it cost?

To get an Area Profile Report, you need to complete an order form and return it to GAMMA. The order form will ask you to specify which town or city you would like information on and the address where you want it centred (if not the town or city centre). Click here for the order form.

On behalf of Theatre Forum, Heather Maitland has negotiated a reduced fee with GAMMA of €500 + VAT per Area Profile Report. We’ve also arranged a standard layout to allow members to compare themselves with colleagues