The same people seeing more: Audiences' engagement with culture during the COVID-19 pandemic

Mantell, Oliver, Torreggiani, Anne, Walmsley, Ben, Kidd, Jenny ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0188-2140 and Nieto McAvoy, Eva 2024. The same people seeing more: Audiences' engagement with culture during the COVID-19 pandemic. Walmsley, Ben, Gilmore, Abigail and O'Brien, Dave, eds. Pandemic Culture, Manchester University Press, pp. 95-117. (10.7765/9781526168375.00012)

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted cultural production and engagement in ways we do not yet fully understand. It manifested as an interlude, an acceleration and an inflection all at the same time. Little remained the same: some things reduced then returned, while others reduced for good; some things kept changing in the direction they were already heading, and some sped up; others changed in new ways that have persisted beyond the immediate crisis. This observation holds as much for audience trends and dynamics as it does for institutions and practitioners. It is difficult to divine whether we will witness a gradual return to old patterns of engagement or a radical switch, pushed to further extremes by the cost-of-living crisis. The prolific shift to digital distribution made a wealth of new arts content available to audiences stuck at home, but did it have the democratising, game-changing effect on audiences that many thought they were witnessing? This chapter investigates how audiences and the wider UK population engaged with cultural content during the pandemic, in both live and digital spaces, and explores how their behaviours and attitudes are evolving as we emerge from the COVID-19 crisis into the cost-of-living crisis. It presents, contextualises and discusses the findings of the Cultural Participation Monitor, a bespoke longitudinal tracking survey of the UK population that analysed changing digital engagement habits and attitudes towards re-engagement. Led by The Audience Agency, the Cultural Participation Monitor has been asking a representative sample of the UK population across multiple waves about their cultural experiences and expectations before, during and beyond the pandemic. Our exploration of audiences’ digital behaviour change includes a deep-dive analysis of social media by Jenny Kidd and Eva Nieto McAvoy at the moment the UK went into national lockdowns in March 2020. The chapter interrogates how society’s relationship to arts and culture may have shifted over this time of significant change and tells a story about the kinds of cultural content and interactions that people found valuable in a period of unprecedented uncertainty and anxiety. The chapter concludes by assessing the signs of longer-term trends in audience behaviour and engagement and by exploring the implications of these trends for artists, cultural organisations, funders and policy-makers.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Journalism, Media and Culture
Additional Information:	This chapter is available open access under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
ISBN:	9781526168351
Last Modified:	25 Apr 2025 15:13
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/177755

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