The Tastes and Preferences Survey examines patrons’ tastes and preferences across artistic disciplines and deeply within your organization’s specific discipline(s). The results will help you gain a bigger picture of your patrons’ programming interests, understand their appetite for new work, and assess interest in digital or immersive programming. Artistic team members are key stakeholders in this survey.

Depending on the discipline, the survey will cover these and other topics:

• Cultural interests (i.e., countries or regions of the world)

• Past involvement in the art form

• Interest in attending specific types of live programs within the discipline

• Interest in specific genres and subgenres within a discipline

• Satisfaction with selection of program offerings

• Indicators of trust and adventurousness

• Preferences for different presentation formats

• Interest in thematic programs (if applicable)

• Interest in immersive experiences (if applicable)

In the media and around boardroom tables, many assumptions are being made about the kinds of artistic work that audiences want, post-pandemic. In offering this survey we hope to replace unfounded assumptions with actual data. While we would never assert that arts organizations should acquiesce to audiences’ tastes, we do think that clarifying preferences for formats and types of artistic programs can be a valuable input (i.e., one of many inputs) to organizational thinking about programming.

In 2024, this survey focused on classical music preferences, and painted a picture of growing diversity in music preferences and appetite for alternative formats. We also piloted a version of the survey for theatres that delved deeply into knowledge of playwrights, what pushes people out of their comfort zones, and interest in a range of theatrical forms, formats, etc. Presently, these two surveys are available on-demand. For 2025, we will focus on tastes and preferences in dance.

Level of customization: This is a highly discipline-specific protocol, only available for specific disciplines within the performing arts. Otherwise, no customization is involved, although several questions are optional.

To maximize cohort learning, participants in all cohorts must agree to share their results with other participating organizations through the WolfBrown dashboard. After the cohort concludes, aggregated results will be shared with the larger field through the Audience Outlook Monitor Community.

For more information about this survey, contact Erin Gold, Consultant at WolfBrown at erin@wolfbrown.com