PAC Australia serves as the national peak body for performing arts centres, presenters, and producers, connecting the sector through advocacy, training, and industry-leading insights.
Since 2017, Culture Counts has partnered with PAC Australia to deliver the biannual Australian Venue Benchmarking Survey, a key resource for understanding the trends, challenges, and opportunities in the performing arts sector. First launched in 2003, the report has become an essential benchmarking tool for performing arts centres (PACs) across Australia, offering actionable insights into operational, financial, and programming benchmarks.
“As arts organisations in their own right, our member performing arts centres have cemented their role as proactive programmers, facilitators of creative resources and the key connector to audiences across Australia.”Katherine Connor, Executive Director, PAC Australia Read Report
Requirements
Almost half of PAC Australia’s members operate a performing arts centre, with many producer members also managing their own venues. These spaces showcase a diverse range of art forms while serving as community hubs for meetings and events.
Recognising the importance of understanding the sector’s trends and challenges, PAC Australia conducts a benchmarking survey every two years to assess and report on the operational and programming aspects of managing performing arts centres. The findings are published in two reports — the Venue Charges and Salaries Report and the Economic Activity Report.
Culture Counts has supported PAC Australia since 2017, initially providing a custom-built dashboard to help members visualise and interpret their benchmarking data. In 2021, we collaborated with PAC Australia to update the data collection methodology, consolidating multiple venue operation areas into a streamlined data-collection spreadsheet, managing its collection and aggregation.
In 2023, the evaluation project reached a significant milestone.
Culture Counts took on full responsibility for analysing the benchmarking data and producing the report. This version introduced innovative analyses and visualisations, providing fresh perspectives on sector performance and equipping PAC Australia with the tools to navigate an evolving landscape.
Approach
For the 2023 benchmarking survey, Culture Counts took on a central role in the project, managing every stage of the process to ensure a robust and insightful report. Our approach included:
- Survey Design and Distribution: Building upon the 2021 methodology, we developed a comprehensive questionnaire tailored to PAC Australia’s priorities, including new data points related to venue sustainability. PAC Australia managed the distribution of the survey to members and key stakeholders.
- Data Management: Culture Counts managed the collection of survey responses, ensuring high participation rates from both member and non-member venues. This included cleaning and aggregating the data to prepare it for analysis.
- Analysis and Insights Development: We conducted a thorough analysis of the dataset, applying advanced methodologies to uncover trends and actionable insights. This included addressing common challenges, such as outlier effects, to ensure the findings were accurate and representative.
- Reporting Framework and Outputs: We designed and delivered the final reporting framework, producing two distinct publications, alongside an ‘open-data’ spreadsheet:
- The Economic Activity 2023 Report, publicly available to provide sector-wide insights.
- The Venue Charges and Salaries Report, an exclusive resource for PAC Australia members.
- The Open Data CSV, available to PAC Australia members with complete responses to those who agreed to share their full data.
This comprehensive approach ensured the benchmarking report not only captured the current state of the performing arts sector but also provided deeper insights and practical tools to support strategic planning and advocacy efforts.
Outcomes
The Economic Activity 2023 Report introduced significant advancements in data analysis and visualisation, providing deeper insights into the performance and challenges of Australia’s performing arts sector. Two key innovations in the report were:
- Scatterplot Analysis of Space Utilisation: A detailed visualisation illustrating the relationship between audience capacity, utilisation rates, and venue types. This analysis provided a granular view of how performance spaces were utilised across the cohort, revealing trends and patterns previously obscured in aggregate reporting.
- Venue-Level Attendance Interquartile Range (IQR) Analysis: By focusing on the IQR of attendance instead of aggregate figures, the report offered a more accurate and venue-specific reflection of typical attendance. This allowed venues of varying sizes and turnover levels to benchmark themselves more effectively.
Improved comparison insights for venue utilisation
Utilisation, which measures the percentage of days a venue is actively used compared to its availability, was explored in greater depth in 2023. The new method of analysis segmented utilisation into different types of activities (performances, events, and other uses), while the scatterplot visualisation provided nuanced insights into the relationship between space type, capacity, and utilisation rates.
Key findings of this analysis included:
- Correlation Between Capacity and Utilisation: Larger theatres reported higher levels of utilisation, suggesting that hirers were more likely to prioritise ticket sales in larger venues – though only if they expect to fill the space. Comparatively, ‘multipurpose’ spaces showed less consistent utilisation, reflecting their broader range of applications, likelihood of being secondary spaces within a venue and possibly less targeted demand.
- Pandemic Recovery: Median utilisation for primary spaces increased to 62%, a strong recovery from the 35% recorded in 2021. However, this remains below pre-pandemic levels of 67% in 2019, highlighting the ongoing challenges in returning to full operational capacity.
Enhanced Understanding of Attendance Patterns
An interquartile analysis of attendance provided a clearer and more equitable view of attendance across venues. This approach mitigated the skew caused by large venues dominating aggregate data and allowed for meaningful comparisons across the sector.
Key findings included:
- Artform Preferences: Contemporary music (18%), musical theatre (17%), and ballet/dance (15%) were the most attended artforms in 2023. This represents a shift from previous years, with contemporary music emerging as a newly dominant category. Unlike earlier analyses that relied on aggregate attendance and skewed results toward larger venues or productions, the 2023 analysis revealed a more balanced view, highlighting the wide variability in attendance across artforms and the diversity of audience preferences by venue.
- Attendance by Turnover: Attendance recovery has been uneven across venue sizes. While smaller and mid-sized venues have nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels, larger venues (over $3M turnover) are struggling, with median attendance in 2023 (78,283) significantly below 2019 levels (125,379).
Conclusion
The Economic Activity 2023 Report represents a significant step forward in PAC Australia’s efforts to provide meaningful insights to its members. By incorporating new analyses and refining existing methodologies, Culture Counts delivered a report that not only reflects the current state of the sector but also equips performing arts centres with the tools needed to navigate future challenges.
The public availability of the economic activity report ensures that the broader sector benefits from these insights, while the exclusive Venue Charges and Salaries Report provides PAC members with a deeper understanding of operational benchmarks. Together, these reports solidify PAC Australia’s role as a leading advocate for the performing arts sector.
Image credit: Zoom by Patch Theatre. Photo by Matt Byrne.
