By the end of the biennium, Tate had recorded more than 28.4 million visitors to its programme: 12.7 million at the four Tate galleries, 1.8 million to Tate exhibitions in the regions or abroad, and 13.9 million unique visitors to Tate Online. At the foundation of this achievement was a programme of breadth, texture and authority, which was delivered on budget to great critical and public acclaim. Another contributing factor to the continuing success of the galleries were the improvements made to Visitor Services across the sites.
Communicating Tate's programme to new audiences remains an important part of our work and developing younger audiences is crucial to our future success. During 2005, Tate Britain launched the hugely successful BP Saturdays, a series of three, free, annual events aimed at children and young adults and supported by BP. Tiny Tate in July 2005 was aimed at local families with under 5s, Loud Tate attracted over 2,000 13 – 19 year-olds and Dotty Tate, an event for families with children under 12, was attended by over 3,500 people.
Whether it be working in a localised way with Sure Start in Westminster to attract local families to Tiny Tate activities or working in collaboration with BBC One on A Picture of Britain, which reached over 6 million viewers for some programmes, working in partnership with other organisations continues to be fundamental to reaching audiences. One ongoing collaboration between the major national galleries and museums, Visit London, the Mayor's Office and Transport for London has highlighted the amazing collections available for free in the capital. The London for Free campaign particularly targeted younger overseas and domestic tourists visiting the capital on a budget.
A major contributing factor to the continuing public success of the galleries were signal improvements made to visitor services across the sites. A major qualitative visitor audit, Anatomy of a Visit, made a number of recommendations for improving the quality of the visitor experience to Tate Modern and Tate Britain. A design agency was employed to create a new on-site communications scheme and the first components of this scheme (new directional signage, a new Map and revised information boards, including a screen-based Visitor Information System) were implemented in September 2005. A cross-Tate Visitor Experience Group was formed, which established a set of Visitor Service Principles and a training programme intended to refresh Tate's approach to visitor care.
Over the last two years, Tate continued to track the demographic profiles of its visitors, helping to spot visitor trends and informing future communications campaigns. At Tate Modern and Tate Britain this was done three times a year around the exhibition programme and has been undertaken for the last five years by the research agency BDRC. After wide consultation on the shape this research should take in future, MORI were appointed to continue this research.
One of the priorities over the coming two years is to gain deeper knowledge of our growing international audiences, and in order to do this, we will carry out foreign language questionnaires.
Tate has worked closely with colleagues in the NDC group and the DCMS to bring about consistent data reporting across the sector. In the future it will be possible to share research amongst the group and gain a better understanding of audiences generally.
Tate has also undertaken a number of special research projects during this period, including focused work around the Schools programme and around the initiative that encouraged younger visitors to see Frida Kahlo by extending free admission to 12-16-year-olds. Research established that 2,760 young people were at Tate Modern specifically because they could see Frida Kahlo free and that 1,319 of them were visiting Tate Modern for the first time. Crucially, it also looked at what motivates this audience, how to reach them and what they enjoyed about their visit to Tate Modern – all of which helps us shape future strategy.
