Are you male or female? Other please specify?
What’s your religious background?
Would you prefer not to say?
Not exactly polite dinner party conversation, but questions routinely asked in audience surveys in the name of gathering demographic data. Demographics help governments make policy decisions and help organisations in the arts sector to measure whether they’re reaching underserved audience groups. But cultural, social and gender identity are often more complex than a yes/no question can capture – using demographics alone to make decisions could forsake a lot of the nuances that make each audience member different. Are we using a broken tool to fix a broken sector?
Our panel discussion will feature voices from across the sector, to tackle whether using demographics to make decisions about the future of the arts in Northern Ireland could do more harm than good. We’ll also discuss what alternatives exist and whether they’re in the sector’s power to achieve.
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