The Arts Society brings arts education and culture to a network of over 64,000 members. With over 300 Arts Societies across the UK and beyond, it connects people through a shared curiosity for art, culture and lifelong learning.
The Challenge
The Arts Society came to us with a rich cultural legacy, but an audience challenge that could no longer be ignored.
It had scale, credibility and community already on its side, but its audience was ageing, and for a younger generation, the arts often came with a set of barriers. Art study felt academic. Galleries felt quiet, slow and exclusive. Buying art felt like something reserved for the wealthy. The challenge was not simply to refresh the brand, but to reframe the role of art in people’s lives.
The Spark
We saw that a new audience would not be won over by asking them to appreciate the arts in the old way. They needed a more personal reason to care.
Gen Z are interested in art when it helps them understand themselves and the world around them. They also expect community to begin digitally, with physical experiences becoming the deeper layer rather than the starting point. This shifted the opportunity from “how do we get younger people into The Arts Society?” to “how do we make the arts feel like a route to becoming more curious, connected and fulfilled?”
The Breakthrough
The breakthrough became CULTURE.ART, a content platform designed to turn the arts into a source of insight, inspiration and personal growth.
It was a new kind of cultural hub: free, accessible, always-on and open to anyone with an internet connection. Through stories, perspectives, provocations and cultural content, CULTURE.ART created a place for a new community to gather around a shared belief that the arts can help people live more fulfilled lives. By positioning culture as something that connects the individual to wider society, politics and meaning, we gave The Arts Society a way to move from occasional engagement to deeper, more frequent connection.
The Impact
The platform helped diversify The Arts Society’s audience and created a more accessible front door into the world of arts and culture.
In its first two weeks, CULTURE.ART achieved 315.9K views, 176K channel visits and 23.7K likes, showing the appetite for a more open, contemporary and emotionally relevant way into the arts. It gave The Arts Society a platform for the future: a digital community that could grow beyond geography, beyond traditional membership and beyond the perception that arts education belongs only to academics or older audiences.
