Opening doors with Art Tickets

Art Tickets is the only free ticketing system built by museums, for museums. Run by Art Fund, in the last 12 months it has helped over 120 museums safely re-open their doors between lockdowns and generated much needed income. Merrin Kalinowski outlines what the team have learnt working with organisations to meet these twin challenges and how Art Tickets is growing.

Soothing ticket headaches

Now more than ever, having an online presence and reaching new audiences isn’t just an ambition or an objective, it’s a necessity. And that’s why Art Fund created Art Tickets; the only online ticketing system created by museums for museums. And it is completely free to use for all.

Launched in 2018, Art Tickets has proved its worth by providing a huge boost to reopening plans, having grown to almost 200 organisations using the system to reopen their doors safely to the public. It is easy to use, quick to set up, and works effectively for timed entry, giving every organisation total control of their visitor flow.

When developing Art Tickets, timed ticketing had been an important factor for organisations with small but free-to-enter spaces, so the platform has the functionality in place to manage capacity and visitor flow. This practical support helps you not only to safely re-open and welcome your visitors back, but also generate income.

Nicky Brier, who leads Business Development at Macclesfield Museums, summed up the relief of many who were facing the future with trepidation: “Ticketing has been a major headache. And I now feel as an organisation we can move forward.”

Donations and data

The system is more than capable of handling tickets for general admission, events and exhibitions – whether those tickets are free or paid for. It has helped museums refine their customer service and reduce front of house administration and can be used for over the phone and front desk bookings, as well as online, putting an end to the juggling of several lists. Another important feature of the system is the way it encourages donations when a visitor buys a ticket – as a top up – handling Gift Aid along the way.

Crucially, Art Tickets also allows museums to get to know their audiences better. The visitor data gathered is hugely valuable for planning post pandemic. As well as opt-in data to grow your online audiences, an analytics dashboard pulls data from Google Analytics and Art Tickets to give you an overview of where your visitors are coming from.

Nicola Kalinsky, Director of The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, has been delighted with both the system, and the information it generates: “Art Tickets is very easy to use – simple and elegant. It’s also providing us with postcode data and mapping info, which we never had previously, and it’s free! And we can sell membership on it! And ask for donations!”

Looking ahead

The past 12 months has shown us that no-one can see into the future, but we can start to plan for it. The data from Art Tickets can provide us with some certainties about our audiences that will enable us to do just that. This year sees the launch of our partnership with The Audience Agency, meaning Art Tickets museums will be able to get even more intelligence about their audiences. All Art Tickets users will have access to Audience Finder – the world’s largest cultural database – again, completely for free.

We are continuing to develop the platform to ensure that the technology goes on performing strongly and meeting the needs of museum partners. What’s more, our dedicated Art Tickets team are on hand for one-to-one support to help you get started and answer any questions you have about using the system.

To find out more about getting Art Tickets for your organisation, book a one-to-one with a dedicated member of the Art Fund team, or visit artfund.org/arttickets for more information.

Merrin Kalinowski is Museum Marketing Relationship Manager at Art Fund.