2016 Congress - Visitor Studies: From Data to Knowledge, from Knowledge to Management

Coordination: Antoni Laporte, Joaquina Bobes, Xavier Ulled 

Audiences are at the heart of the action in heritage institutions. Museum organizations therefore dedicate efforts to offering exhibitions, activities, and services that are of interest to the diverse audience groups they aim to reach.

For this reason, museums need to understand their audiences in order to establish effective communication, evaluate their services, and build a community with which to develop stable and ongoing relationships over time.

The Observatory of Audiences of Cultural Heritage of Catalonia aims to support museums and other heritage institutions in the country in understanding their visitors and users, in order to create, maintain, and grow new audiences and improve the social use of cultural heritage.

The Audience Observatory carries out its mission by providing tools to museums and collaborating in the training of heritage professionals in audience research and the evaluation of their activities.

This conference, the first to be held by the Audience Observatory, marks its public launch and seeks to present both national and international case studies on how museums turn the data gathered from their studies into useful tools for improving relationships with their audiences.