COVID-19 alert
The AFA recognizes this is an extremely difficult time for Alberta's arts sector. Learn more about our COVID-19 response here.
The AFA recognizes this is an extremely difficult time for Alberta's arts sector. Learn more about our COVID-19 response here.
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent public health safety guidelines shuttered arts and cultural initituations across Canada and around the world for months. Now, museums, galleries and theatres are slowly starting to reopen, but will people go back to these venues right away or will they take their time returning?
Business / Arts, the National Arts Centre and Nanos Research have come together to gauge Canadians’ attitudes on returning to indoor and outdoor arts and culture events across Canada. Over 1,000 people were polled through the Arts Response Tracking Survey (ARTS). The results offer valuable insight for arts organizations across the country to help inform re-opening procedures and programming models.
ARTS Key survey findings:
For indoor cultural activities
For outdoor cultural activities the figures are more encouraging:
When asked specifically about returning to museums and galleries, attitudes are similar:
In all cases, for those willing to return immediately, the proper implementation of safety measures such as physical distancing (32 per cent for indoor performances, 47% for outdoor performances, and 45% for museums) and masks (27 per cent for indoor performances, 25% for outdoor performances, and 24% for museums ) are needed to ensure comfort.
For culture-goers who will wait to attend, a vaccine is more frequently mentioned as a precaution needed to make them feel comfortable attending in person events.
Encouraging and of note is that in the short term, Canadian culture-goers are embracing digital as an alternative for the lack of in-person cultural experiences.
While it certainly doesn’t replace the in-person experience, these findings reveal a possible new revenue and audience building resource for Canada’s cultural organizations.
Read the full survey on the Business / Arts website.
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