Good Reads

Dissecting the data

David Brownlee shares his views on what the latest UK Theatre sales figures actually mean for the sector.

Frances Richens
1 min read

Not long after I started at the Theatrical Management Association (now UK Theatre), president Rachel Tackley shared her ‘statistics envy’: London theatre could demonstrate its growing size and impact with robust sales figures that it published on an annual basis, so why couldn’t we do the same for regional theatre?
This wasn’t a new idea. Since 1990, some TMA member venues had been providing sales returns. When these were amalgamated they didn’t add up to much, both literally and metaphorically. Conversations with the consultant who had worked tirelessly for years to try to extract as much data as possible from members revealed that the sample was small, inconsistent and unrepresentative of the membership as a whole. It seemed that larger and commercial organisations were less likely to provide data… Keep reading on The Stage