Since early 2003, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) has been looking into audience development and ticketing needs across the province, writes Andrew Muir. The first major recommendation of this review was the establishment of an Audience Development Agency (ADA) for Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland?s ADA will be the first such Agency to cover the entire geographical remit of a UK Arts Council, and it is hoped that the Agency will open up new, and in some cases, unexploited opportunities for cross-border collaboration with colleagues in the Republic of Ireland.
With most venues still selling their tickets manually, the next key proposal was that every arts organisation that regularly attracts attenders should acquire their own computerised ticketing system: and a total of 37 arts organisations are attempting to upgrade or install new computerised ticketing systems. The following step is to link each ticketing system to a data polling service, with the details of each transaction extracted on a regular basis and transferred, via the Internet, to a ?virtual data warehouse?. The ACNI will soon seek tender responses for such a service, which, profiled against the recently reorganised ?Mosaic? consumer-classification system for Northern Ireland, will provide the impetus to diversify and increase levels of arts attendance.
Instead of one centralised system, with the significantly higher costs and data ownership and maintenance issues that can arise, Northern Ireland looks certain to follow the lead taken by Major League Baseball in the USA and Riksteatern in Sweden in setting up an Integration Portal. We aim to link the ability to buy online, contained within the various individual ticketing systems, to artslistings.com, the all-Ireland arts and entertainment events guide. All the major ticketing system suppliers have already agreed in principle to integrate their systems and will soon formalise their willingness and sign up to the project.
The development of the Integration Portal, alongside the news that Northern Ireland will be the first region in the UK to enjoy 100% broadband coverage in 2005, will be a ground-breaking venture in ticketing. With credit and debit card ownership in Northern Ireland much lower than in the rest of the UK, we also intend to give the province?s network of Tourist Information Centres enhanced access to the portal, with the ability to print off tickets on site and accept various payment methods (including cash) from residents and tourists, remitting monies due to the venues via electronic funds transfer. It is intended that the network of ticket re-sellers will be extended at a later date possibly to include Northern Ireland?s network of newly computerised libraries and Post Offices across the province.
After many years in which Northern Ireland hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, the integrated ticketing system provides the opportunity for Northern Ireland to, as our Chief Executive puts it, ?trail blaze?.
Andrew Muir is Project Manager for the Audience Development Agency and Integrated Ticketing Initiative at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
t: 028 9038 5200;
e: amuir@artscouncil-ni.org