In 2019, PAC Australia launched the first Australian edition of WolfBrown’s CultureLab.
What is CultureLab?
WolfBrown created the CultureLab Research Community (CRC) to disrupt the system of privileged access to professional quality market research among non profit arts organisations. Drawing from the principles of crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and peer learning, CRC aims to drastically drive down the cost of market research and drive up the breadth and quality of field learning internationally.
The Process
- Together with PAC Australia, WolfBrown publishes a rolling schedule of study topics and launch dates.
- Arts organisations wishing to participate in the program go through a brief on-boarding process, after which they can choose from the menu of available studies.
- The cost of participating in the initial study ranges from $150.00 for PAC Australia members to $1,650 for non-members. Organisations enrolled in the program must opt into at least one study per year.
- WolfBrown prepares a survey protocol; study participants review and suggest improvements during a 7-day review period, after which the protocol is finalised.
- Participating organisations agree to send email messages to a minimum number of ticket buyers requesting cooperation with the survey.
- Participating organisations must agree to share their results with other participants, aggregated at the organisation level.
- Once the survey is launched and results are received, participating organisations access their results through individualised online dashboards created by WolfBrown, and participate in a peer reflection process, facilitated by WolfBrown, to make sense of the results – you’re not on your own.
- Key findings from the peer reflection process are summarised by WolfBrown and distributed to all participants, with a workshop for participating members at our 2019 conference. You can view Alan Brown’s presentation from the conference here.
The Research Project
Our initial study was of performing arts patrons: The Universal Customer Profile Study. The results of this study provided participating organisations with a multi-dimensional profile of their ticket buyers including data on preferences for types of performances, core values around arts participation, key buyer behaviours, and critical household information.
During the period of 10-24 July 2019, study partners sent an outbound email message to a minimum of 1,500 email addresses of recent ticket buyers, and then a follow-up reminder message one week later, with the goal is for each organisation to collect a minimum of 100 survey responses.
All study partners have access to results through WolfBrown’s online dashboard reporting tool, where partners are able to view and interrogate results by individual organisation and in aggregate.
To support the research costs, members were charged a small fee of $150 to participate in the study and the non-member participation fee was $1,250.
For further information please contact admin[@]paca.org.au or call us (08) 9221 8992.
Alan Brown’s presentation at the 2019 PAC Australia Conference.