Invitation to Tender: Audience Research

National Dance Company Wales are looking for a partner to deliver audience research that will provide insights and recommendations to support our Bloomberg Philanthropies funded digital transformation project. This work will help us develop a deeper, more actionable understanding of our audiences. It will also form the foundation for strategic audience development and give us the insight we need to focus our digital presence and new CRM processes.

National Dance Company Wales (NDCWales) creates and presents ambitious, engaging dance work across the UK and internationally.

As a repertory company, we create work by a range of choreographers to reflect different perspectives. Our artistic programme is driven by a commitment to create new work, discover and develop new artists and to inspire audiences and communities through high quality and enriching dance experiences.

The company performs at our home base, The Dance House in Cardiff Bay and at other venues in Wales, the wider UK and internationally.

Equally important is the work we deliver to engage people in dance themselves, to tap into the wellbeing benefits of dance and experience its many benefits. Our talent development programmes support those with aspirations for a career in dance, on and off stage. By enabling artistic innovation at all stages of career development, we seek to make a significant contribution towards a diverse dance ecology in Wales.

We're embarking on a new journey to connect audiences to our work. We're implementing a new integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and ticketing platform, plus a new website - with a key strategic objective to enable effective audience insight and analysis.

This project is funded through Bloomberg Philanthropies' Digital Accelerator Programme which helps cultural organisations strengthen their technology and management capabilities to improve operations, drive revenue, increase fundraising efforts, and engage wider audiences.

This research will help us make informed decisions about our new CRM system and digital presence. By understanding how we show up in the world, what our audiences are looking for, and how we can best meet their needs, we'll see how much of this is currently reflected in our activity. It will also help us spot any important gaps we need to address, ensuring the project delivers real value and impact for everyone.

We want this research to guide decision-making by helping us answer some key questions about who our current audiences are, how they prefer to engage with us, and what motivates them. We want to identify gaps in perception and opportunities for growth, understanding the wider appetite for dance across Wales and beyond. We also want to develop actionable audience segments that can be integrated into our new CRM.

Key questions we want to answer through this research:

• Who are our current audiences? What is the demographic, geographic, and behavioural characteristics of people engaging with our performances, classes, events, and channels?
• How do audiences prefer to engage with us? What are their interactions, content engagement types, and communication preferences across different touchpoints?
• What motivates our audiences and what do they want from us? What drives their engagement, what needs are we meeting (or not meeting), and how can we better shape our programme, activities, content, and communications around these needs?
• Where are the gaps and growth opportunities? Who could our audiences be, where is representation lacking, and what does external data from touring venues reveal about the wider appetite for dance?
• How can we use audience segmentation in our new CRM system? Looking at our activity at Dance House and on tour, what segmentation models and methods will allow our CRM to group people based on their behaviour and interactions? What might work within its capabilities, and how can we best manage this over time?

As part of this project, our website partner will also be carrying out research focused on digital users. This will provide one lens for understanding audience behaviour and…