Meriel Royal | Audience insight, research, evaluation and strategy
Culture Bulb
I help organisations turn audience insight into decisions they can act on.
By combining creative research techniques with robust data analysis, I uncover meaningful insights from both existing data and new research. I then transform those findings into strategies, tools, resources and recommendations that teams can understand, remember and use.
I often act as an in-house audience analyst for organisations without dedicated insight capacity, uncovering valuable audience understanding from existing data sources such as ticketing systems, visitor numbers, membership data, surveys and CRM systems.
I also write audience development strategies based on both quant and qual audience and market research, providing both a deep and broad understanding of audience’s wants, needs and values.
Having spent more than a decade working within the audience insight teams at the V&A, National Gallery and Imperial War Museums, I understand what organisations need from insight and how to embed audience-centred thinking into decision making.
I have delivered projects for organisations including Art Fund, the Association of Independent Museums (AIM), Somerset House, the Natural History Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum and Japan House London.
𝗢𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵:
– Audience development strategies and workshops
– Audience resources, including pen portraits, personas, deep dives, insight repositories and infographics
– Full-cycle exhibition evaluation, including front-end, formative and summative research
– Research to inform interpretation, exhibition design and narrative development
– Project and programme evaluation, including capital redevelopment projects
– Research into existing audience groups, such as members, visitors, young people and retail customers
– Market research into new or non-visitors, including audience mapping, market sizing and tracking studies
𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗜 𝘂𝘀𝗲:
I combine quantitative and qualitative approaches to build a rich understanding of audiences, including:
– Creative qualitative research using innovative, arts-informed and participant-led methodologies
– Analysis of secondary data, including visitor numbers, ticket sales, membership records and CRM data
– Exit surveys and online surveys
– Omnibus and panel surveys
– Intercepts, interviews and depth conversations
– Vox pops and video-based accompanied visits
– Visitor tracking and observational research
– Online and in-person focus groups
– Online qualitative communities
𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗲:
– Formative and summative evaluation to inform the development and analyse the success of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition
– Scoping research to support the development of a new membership model for Somerset House
– Audience development strategy and pen portraits for Japan House London
– Research for AIM and Art Fund exploring how museums can use emotion to build greater public support
Email: meriel@culturebulb.com
Visit: https://www.culturebulb.com
