COPPERGATE, YORK: AUDIENCE RESEARCH PILOT PROJECT GEORGIOS ALEXOPOULOS INSTITUTE FOR THE PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE PAST, UNIVERSITY OF YORK NOVEMBER 2009 Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................3 Introduction ...................................................................................................................3 Objectives ..................................................................................................................3 Methodology..............................................................................................................4 Potential for fulfilling long term objectives...............................................................4 1. Audience survey demographics.................................................................................5 1.1 Gender..................................................................................................................5 1.2 Age distribution ...................................................................................................5 1.3 Origin of respondents ..........................................................................................6 1.4 Educational background ......................................................................................7 1.5 Occupations .........................................................................................................7 1.6 Ethnicity...............................................................................................................8 2. Values attached to the historic environment surrounding Coppergate......................8 2.1 Main reason for visiting Coppergate ...................................................................8 2.2 Cultural heritage as a motivation for visiting Coppergate...................................9 2.3 Meanings and values attached to the cultural heritage surrounding Coppergate .................................................................................................................................10 3. Popularity and visitation trends to the heritage attractions around and within Coppergate...................................................................................................................14 3.1 Looking at awareness and visitation to specific monuments/attractions...........14 3.2 The York Castle Museum..................................................................................14 3.3 Fairfax House.....................................................................................................15 3.4 The Jorvik Viking Centre ..................................................................................15 3.5 Clifford’s Tower ................................................................................................16 3.6 York St. Mary’s .................................................................................................17 4. Satisfaction with street-level presentation of heritage places in the Coppergate area .....................................................................................................................................17 4.1 General views of the public ...............................................................................17 4.2 Comments/suggestions ......................................................................................17 5. Encouragement of the public for frequent visits......................................................18 6. Conclusions .............................................................................................................22 APPENDICES .............................................................................................................22 Appendix 1: Questionnaire employed for the audience research ............................22 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following members of the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past (IPUP) for their contribution to the preparation of this report: Nuala Morse for helping with the collection of the interviews, for undertaking their transcription and for sharing her views with regard the whole experience of engaging the public at Coppergate. Professor Helen Weinstein for supervising the project and for providing very useful insights and feedback throughout all the stages of this process. Martin Scott and Dr Adam Gutteridge contributed with useful comments at the various stages of this audience research project and also assisted in the editing process of the report. Finally, many thanks are also due to Martin Watts, Director of Learning and Audience Development at the Yorkshire Museum, for his very useful comments and suggestions for the preparation of the audience research questionnaire. Introduction Objectives The Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past (henceforth IPUP) offered to undertake audience research at the Coppergate shopping centre, York, on behalf of various cultural institutions – such as the York Museums Trust, the York Archaeological Trust – in October 2009 as part of a wider project to assess public George ! 25/11/09 08:31 Comment: Any others to be mentioned directly perceptions about the cultural heritage of York. One of the main objectives of this here? audience research was to investigate the meanings attached by visitors to the wider historical setting surrounding the area of Coppergate - Castlegate and the level of engagement with the latter. Within this context, the level of visitation to 5 of the main monuments/sites/attractions in the wider area was also assessed followed by an 3 examination of public views towards the street-level presentation of these places and the extent to which respondents felt encouraged to visit them. Methodology For the purposes of this audience research 100 open-ended face-to-face interviews were conducted at the Coppergate shopping centre. York. These interviews took place on the 25th and 26th of October 2009. People who were sitting on the benches and other areas of this public space were targeted as respondents in an effort to maximise the quality of the data (allowing respondents some time to reflect on the questions and to answer with the least possible haste). However, respondents were also derived from the vast number of people queuing to visit the Jorvik Viking Centre due to their dominant presence within the limited space available at this small square. The open-ended questionnaires, retaining the anonymity of the respective respondents, were digitally recorded to allow for careful transcription. The main part of the interviews consisted of specific questions about the level of awareness of and visitation to the five main historical sites/attractions of the area, the level of public engagement and presentation of the latter and the meanings/ values attached by the interviewees to these places and to York’s past in general (see Appendix 1). General background information on the interviewees – retaining their anonymity – was also collected in order to assist in the identification of any patterns with the regard the responses. Both the quantitative and qualitative data gathered from the interviews has been coded in line with the specific objectives of the audience research project and has been analysed with the use of Microsoft Excel. All of the transcribed interviews are included in a separate document (see …) which George ! 11/11/09 18:46 also includes the background information for all individual respondents. Every Comment: interview corresponds to the responses provided by one individual followed by a code that indicates the relevant audio file and the person conducting the interview (e.g. GA 1 or GA 17a and 17b respectively). Potential for fulfilling long term objectives The audience research conducted at the Coppergate shopping centre is part of a larger project for exploring public perceptions of the cultural heritage of York and has been carried out in conjunction with qualitative research at other areas within the city (e.g. Castlegate, Museum Gardens). This research can serve in the future as the basis for a 4 more extensive project for understanding the public engagement with the past and with cultural heritage and for informing the future development of York’s historic monuments and visitor attractions. The employment of qualitative research methodologies in particular has demonstrated the potential for identifying visitor needs and expectations as well as for engaging with both users and non-users of York’s cultural heritage. 1. Audience survey demographics 1.1 Gender From the total sample of 100 face-to-face interviews collected at Coppergate more than half of the respondents were male (%58) while female respondents accounted for %42 (Fig. 1). Fig. 1: Percentage of female and male interviewees from the total sample of 100 interviews. 1.2 Age distribution People belonging to the “45-54” age group accounted for around a quarter (26%) of the responses collected for this research. Interviewees from other age groups were rather evenly distributed with four categories holding under 20% of the sample (“16- 24”, “55-64”, “25-34”, “35-44”). Respondents belonging to the “Under 16” and “65+” groups constituted together only 14% of the total sample (see Fig. 2). 5 Fig. 2: The distribution of the respondents according to their age (total sample of 100 interviews). 1.3 Origin of respondents The majority of the interviewees (56%) were coming from elsewhere in the UK (outside