Reconnect:
Audiences and Cultural Content in the Digital Environment

An Intercultura Consult project with the support of the National "Culture" Fund, Bulgaria realized in partnership with creative organizations and experts.

The "Reconnect" micro incubator project was finalized successfully in August 2021. The project gathered valuable data and feedback about the interests and habits of audiences in Bulgaria towards cultural content in a digital environment. The project provided opportunity for creative production via innovating the value chain in a shared incubation process. Four experiments with new digital content were piloted and assessed for their effectiveness. See detailed information below.

Project publications & output

2021

Reconnect: Audience's Attitudes Towards Cultural Content in the Digital Environment

Authors: Milena Berbenkova, Nelly Stoeva, Petya Koleva

2021

Reconnect: Results Presentation, July 2021

Authors: Milena Berbenkova, Petya Koleva, Nelly Stoeva, Petya Boyukova, et al.

2021

Creation and distribution of creative and related to creative production content for digital environment

Authors: Lidiya Peycheva, Emil Denev

2021

Reconnect: First Insights from the Research on the Interest towards Cultural Content in the Digital Environment

Authors: Milena Berbenkova, Petya Koleva

Public Events

"Audiences in the digital environment" - online workshop
August 26, 2021

Together with 12 representatives of cultural organizations in the country we developed target audience profiles and shared methods for connecting and maintaining communication with them in the digital environment.

Final Results Presentation
July 13, 2021, at Swimming Pool art space

Together with our creative partners, we shared data from the audience analysis, experience with digital content experiments, and guidelines for working in a digital environment, with cultural organizations from Sofia, Elin Pelin and Gabrovo. The event was also broadcast live on Facebook. See the recording in Bulgarian here.

You can read the presentation from the event in Bulgarian here.

Guidelines for Cultural Organizations in the Digital Environment

Based on the project research and the analysis of the creative partners’ work, we created guidelines for work in a digital environment for cultural organizations. Audiovisual content experts Lidia Peycheva and Emil Denev have compiled a set of strategic and technical guidelines for planning, creating and distributing content online. See the document in Bulgarian here.

Experimental Content from our Creative Partners

Our creative partners used insights from our research in the creation of their content and the planning of their events.

“OCAAC - 36 Monkeys” presented a series of online play readings as their first experiment. They presented “The Pipiloti Mist Case”. You can see the episodes here. Their second experiment involved presenting their video project What about Bats? on Instagram.

Puppet theatre “Malle-malle” held a hybrid event on 16 May 2021 – an episode of their online show “The World of Malle-malle”. For the first time the organization conducted an episode with live audiences on the spot. You can watch a recording of the live stream here.

Meeting Points Foundation created a digital prototype of their Food and Spices tour, taking place in the region of the Women’s market in Sofia. The digital format gives users the opportunity to pass through part of the tour route individually. The digital tour was available in both English and Bulgarian.

Research and data analysis

The research was conducted in three stages:
● Analysis of the current digital audiences of the creative partners - data
● Online survey of the general public which took place from December 2020 to February 2021. More than 700 people took part.
● 4 focus groups with representatives of the general public in March 2021.

Read a summary of the main insights from our first analysis of the survey and focus groups HERE.

Key insights from the survey on the audience’ interests in cultural content online:



The project was executed in partnership with: Meeting Points Foundation, CAAC - 36 Monkeys Association, Malle-malle Puppet Theater, Lidia Peycheva, Nelly Stoeva, Petya Boyukova, Emil Denev and physical event host Swimming Pool, Sofia.

Reconnect aimed to investigate audience attitudes towards today's cultural offers in the digital environment. In partnership with organizations and creators working with theatre, music, performance art, cinema and visual art, it conducted research on a wider spectrum of views and the needs of the public in relation to diverse cultural offers.

The needs and interests of the audience were explored through analysis of the digital audiences of partner organizations, a public survey, focus groups, and experimentations with new cultural content. The collected data and feedback were analysed and led to the creation of guidelines on strategic approaches for cultural operators to improve their reach to specific audiences and enhance the quality of the digital cultural experiences.

Reconnect is based on earlier findings of Intercultura Consult (March 2020) on the ways the independent creative sector in Bulgaria has adapted to working during the pandemic. You can find it HERE.

Partners: