We've changed! Creative Carbon Scotland has a new name and brand
Close
Switch colour mode

Appearance

Guide to audience travel

Audience travel is for most cultural organisations the largest single source of carbon emissions. Although audience travel is not something you can control, and we aren’t suggesting you should try to reduce the number of people attending your events, there are things you can do to influence how audiences travel to you.

This guide will provide some advice and guidance around audience travel including:

Why audience travel is important

For most organisations, audience travel is often the largest single source of carbon emissions. Although it sits outside of a cultural organisation’s control and their formal carbon footprint, it’s important to think about the ways you can influence audiences to travel to experience your work in sustainable ways. Influencing, and where possible supporting, audiences to travel sustainably to your programme and events also supports the transformation of wider society and helps people realise the benefits of active and sustainable travel.

It is important to understand your audiences and their travel choices by collecting data where you can. Understanding audience choices can also help you see where you can make changes, for example you may be doing things that make sustainable travel harder for your audiences, such as putting on performances that don’t align with train times, or not having spaces for peoples to safely store bikes.

There could be wider benefits to considering this too, for example where performances might currently end after public transport finishes. Could scheduling an earlier show attract different and/or larger audiences? Are there groups and people you are excluding by only facilitating attendance from people who own cars? You will know your local area and potential audiences best.

Climate and social justice issues intersect when it comes to sustainable travel. Campaign group Bike is Best found that 47% of drivers believe they have no alternative to driving. We believe that arts and culture can help society see and imagine those alternatives, and engaging your audiences around these issues is a great way to start.

Measuring audience travel

It’s impossible to measure every single audience member’s travel accurately, but it’s important to measure what you can and make actions based on that. Surveys of typical audiences are often the best way to start this. This may seem daunting, but integrating the questions you need to ask in routine marketing surveys is a simple way to begin.

Some key things to remember:

  • The effort involved in collecting and recording data should not be disproportionate to the relative importance of the data. For example, more careful measuring might be appropriate for organisations with a regular audience, while organisations who tour, work with multiple box offices or have varied audiences in other ways might opt for a lighter touch method of estimation.
  • Getting started is the most important – approximate data is better than no data.
  • …but consistency and comparability is crucial.

The key things you need to ask is the mode of travel and the distance travelled. We have found at our events that often people make two different journeys if they come from work for example, or get a lift with a friend back, so sometimes we ask if they made the same journey back and to let us know if they travelled differently. To go deeper, you could ask about specific barriers that your audiences face when it comes to sustainable travel – this can help shape the actions you recommend and where to put your efforts.

You could ask these questions when someone purchases a ticket, using QR codes at entrances or exits or collect it during your feedback surveys.

Using your influence

Once you have the data, you can make decisions on where to act. These could be practical decisions such as installing bike racks at your venues and applying for funding through organisations such as Cycling Scotland and Sustrans. You could partner with Transport Scotland and local authorities to align your programming with public transport times, or incentivise sustainable travel by awarding discounts to audiences who travel by bus, train or bike.

For some organisations, it might not make sense for you to measure audience travel in detail, as you may be working with multiple box offices with widespread and varying audiences. In this case, it’s important to work with other organisations to raise audience travel as a consideration, and use your influence to start conversations with the venues you work with to ensure that audience travel is on the agenda and considered in marketing and promotion.

Collaboration is key, as audience travel is an environmental concern across the sector, therefore working together to highlight issues and imagine new ways of working is essential. The Scottish Classical Sustainability Group brings Scotland’s classical musical sector together to make sustainable change in a unified way. This year they produced a report that highlighted the key barriers preventing greater use of train travel for artists and audiences. The findings were shared with the arts sector and key policy makers in transport to influence future decisions and show the need for change.

The climate crisis needs collective action, and unifying with others in the sector sharing this concern and challenging the systems that prevent change is a powerful way to use your influence. There are many organisations outside the cultural sector working on issues around sustainable travel and you could consider how your organisation might be able to collaborate and join these movements. Reach out to organisations such as Sustrans, Transform Scotland, Scottish Communities Climate Action Network (SCCAN) or your local climate hubs to see how your organisation and culture could be included in wider action.

The Scottish Government scheme Place Principle, adopted in 2019, sets out the need to work collaboratively, across sectors, towards the most relevant outcomes for a place, including sustainable and active travel routes. There could be local partnership opportunities and funding available to be involved in wider programmes in Scotland, so it’s important to be a part of and stay informed about these. Reducing audience travel emissions takes a collective effort, it is beyond what one organisation can do themselves, and requires collaboration between sectors.

Sometimes funding becomes available to explore themes and topics around art and sustainable travel, so you could make it a part of your programme and explore how your organisation could be involved in wider conversations around travel and communities. For example, the ArtRoots Sustrans Funding offers grants of up to £6,000 for community-led art projects along their local, traffic-free National Cycle Network routes.

In 2023-24, Culture for Climate Scotland worked with Perth Theatre and Concert Hall on a new project with artist and filmmaker Helen McCrorie to explore and address how audiences travel to and from their venues. The project seeks to address challenges around audience travel for institutions like Perth Theatre and Concert Hall that are working on improving their environmental impact and playing an influencing role in broader local decarbonisation efforts.