Regional arts leaders launch Lehigh Valley patron survey to guide programming and investment

Arts and cultural organizations in the Lehigh Valley launched a regional patron survey the county committee heard on Aug. 7, a data effort organizers say could help local arts groups and municipalities design programming, demonstrate unmet demand, and strengthen grant applications.
Marta (Director of Arts Marketing at Lafayette College) and Meg Mickovitz (assistant managing director and research coordinator, Lehigh Valley Arts and Cultural Alliance) described the survey as a community-driven study open to residents of Lehigh and Northampton counties and “fuzzy boundaries beyond.”
“The questions on the survey, it's about 70 items, though not everybody will hit all 70 items,” Mickovitz said, and organizers estimated the survey takes about 10 minutes to complete. The Qualtrics-hosted instrument asks about attendance behavior, barriers to access (including childcare and mobility needs), pricing sensitivity, where people find event information and basic demographics.
Organizers said the survey is free to participating organizations and that Lafayette College’s Qualtrics enterprise account will host the data. The survey launched in May and will remain open through December to capture differing seasonal peaks across organizations; initial analysis will begin in January and community reporting is planned in spring.
Marta said the project began in 2023 as an internal audience-research effort at Lafayette and grew through partnerships. Mickovitz and Marta emphasized broad distribution across arts organizations, municipal partners and nontraditional channels such as food markets and tourism groups to reach people who do not already appear on arts mailing lists.
Organizers said the data will support program design (who attends, when and why), identify access gaps and inform pricing and marketing strategy. They estimated a useful sample would be about 3,000 responses; they said 1,000 would still be helpful.
Committee members asked about outreach and partner participation. Organizers said they have engaged Discover Lehigh Valley, Easton Main Street Initiative and other organizations and encouraged committee members to share the survey. No committee decisions or funding were requested at the meeting; organizers asked for distribution and partnership.