Did we connect with new audiences through Let’s Connect?
I mentioned in my last post that 2,226 ballots were submitted and 21,658 votes were cast during the two weeks that Let’s Connect was open to the public. This post will look at who cast those ballots and take a deep dive into how we’re measuring impact.
Breaking Down the Ballot Holders
2,226 ballots were submitted; 62 of those ballots were submitted by local curators throughout the Philadelphia region that we asked to participate, along with the public. 551 of those ballots were from those who registered on site at the Barnes — the biggest percentage of those were from people in our general audience who were visiting the collection, happened upon the exhibition, and wanted to register to vote. For the purposes of this post, we’re going to look at those who were pre-registered and were coming onsite specifically for Let’s Connect — 1,675 people.
This group was surveyed at the time they checked in and received a ballot. To give you a sense of how persistent we were in this data gathering, we surveyed 1,060 of 1,675 — every person was asked on slow days. On busy days, we asked at least one person per party.
Engaging New Audiences
67% of those surveyed reported they were engaged or newly engaged as part of Let’s Connect — 39% were first time visitors to the Barnes and 27% had not visited within the last two years. This represents a big win.
Diversity
The project clearly brought new audiences to the Barnes, but did it bring a more diverse audience to the Barnes? We didn’t quite get as far as we’d like in this respect and hoped to see these percentages more in line with the city averages.
29% of the Let’s Connect audience defined themselves as non-white. When we slice the data by artists and voters, it’s roughly the same — 32% of artists defined themselves non-white, 29% of voters did so.
That said, there is a big win that can’t go unnoticed. Of those non-white audiences, 13% of artists and 10% of voters defined themselves specifically as african american / black— this population in the Barnes general audience is just 3%, so for Let’s Connect to see overall 11% participation among this audience is an incredibly welcome shift in the right direction, close to quadrupling this audience.
The big learning here is obvious. In a project like this one, the artists are the baseline— the more diverse the base, the more diverse the amplification. If we decide to do Let’s Connect again, we’ll be devoting more resources to reaching diversity among the artists to help encourage participation more in line with the city’s census.
Income
The progress made on welcoming those with lower household incomes represents a stunning success for us. 42% of the Let’s Connect audience made under the PA average household income of 56k per year, while only 22% of the Barnes general audience is under this line — we almost doubled this percentage. This is by far one of the highest percentages we’ve seen of any program we’ve run and, historically, this has been one of the hardest needles for us to move.
Access
Let’s put those income figures into perspective with a comparison to our Free First Sunday Family Day. Family Day sees, on average, 31.5% making under 56k household income, whereas Let’s Connect demonstrated a substantial rise at 42%. This was a big win for the Barnes, but there’s an important learning here, too.
Both of these programs — Free First Sunday Family Day and Let’s Connect — are/were totally free. The biggest difference between the two is Let’s Connect was free every day for an entire two weeks — this meant that you could get free access to the Barnes at a time convenient for you. First Sunday only offers that access at a specific time. Many institutions have free programs and we see success in these providing pathways for new audiences. The big takeaway here may show us that providing access all the time, even through longer programs of longer duration like Let’s Connect, may help us realize even more gains because the program is, overall, more convenient.
I should take this opportunity to talk a little bit about just how much access we gave away as part of Let’s Connect. The program was entirely free to all participants — there was no registration fee to enter as an artist, artist visits were free, and a voter’s visit was free if they pre-registered. Joining our email list was an opt-in, so there was no exchange of information to participate unless you defined that you wanted it.
During the entire project, we logged 550 free artist visits during the 5-week open call and 1,198 free visits during the two-week exhibition. I’ll let you do the math on that, but with a normal ticket price between $25-$30, this opened the doors for a lot of people, specifically 67% of those newly or re-engaged by Let’s Connect who had not come otherwise.
Holding On Tight
Will this group continue to engage with the Barnes moving forward? This is a tough one because it’s clear that the visitation patterns were based on providing something of value — a participatory project where everyone’s voice mattered — combined with free access.
We have thought about this how to hold onto these audiences and when artists come to pick up their work this Friday and Saturday they will get a keycard that admits the artist and a friend to come to the Barnes for free during the next year, visitation we can easily track. We’ll also be creating some programming for Let’s Connect artists and friends to continue these relationships that we so value.
If you participated in Let’s Connect — thank you. This was an effort to creatively grow a new audience and something we remain very committed to — your participation made it happen and made it something special.
Let’s Connect is a project of the Barnes Foundation in partnership with Mural Arts Philadelphia.
Artist Open Call: March 19–April 30, 2018
Exhibition: May 21–June 4, 2018
Artist Announcement: June 14, 2018
Artist Residencies: July 1, 2018–June 30, 2019
