Illuminate Updates and Insights

Arts Council England (ACE) recently shared updates to Illuminate. This post explains the Illuminate reporting requirements 2024 Arts Council England, outlines the changes, and shows their impact on funded organisations. I’ll break down:

what organisations must report on 2024/2025
key changes to Illuminate and why they matter
updates to the survey collection
challenges users are facing
learning and resources to help

What’s Required in 2024/2025

NPOs, IPSOs and CPPs must use Illuminate to report on funded activity and audience/participant numbers every quarter (referred to here as activity data).

NPOs and IPSOs do not need to (though are encouraged to) run audience surveys (referred to here as survey data).

CPPs are required to survey audiences for Illuminate as well as use the Impact & Insight Toolkit for at least four events per year.

Illuminate helps organisations understand who they’re reaching. The Impact and Insights Toolkit supports evaluation and tracks progress against ambitions.

Survey Updates in Illuminate

The 2024/2025 survey template is now live in the platform and on ACE’s website. It reflects the Illuminate reporting requirements 2024 Arts Council England.

Guidance is available for creating surveys, sharing them, and uploading offline responses. You’ll find this in the Training section.

Demographic questions now sit at the end of the survey. This is a welcome change.

The 2023/2024 template remains available to support the transition. Any data already collected stays visible.

You DO NOT have to undertake Illuminate audience surveys if your organisation is solely:

Touring
Business to business i.e., you provide a service rather than directly engaged with audiences/participants
Focused on artist/talent development
A publisher

Or if your audiences/participants are solely Under 16 or Vulnerable Adults.

New Features in Illuminate

ACE has added several enhancements to support the Illuminate reporting requirements 2024 Arts Council England:

Event collaboration – Tag partners and share data in one entry.
Unattended mode – Run surveys on devices without logging in.
Rest of world countries – List specific countries for international work.
Refreshed language – ‘NPO’ replaced with ‘Organisation’ across the platform.
General API – Ticketing providers can now connect directly to Illuminate.

Demographic Question Changes

The survey now follows this order: Event Info → Optional Questions → Audience Type → Demographics. Key updates include:

“Prefer not to say” moved to the top of each list.
Ethnicity question now matches Office for National Statistics (ONS) standards.
Disability wording better aligned with ONS.
Occupation options simplified.
“Intersex” removed from sex question.
Gender identity question removed.
Sexual orientation wording updated.

The Good News

ACE has listened to feedback. The PwC Helpdesk continues to offer swift, thorough, and helpful support.

Organisations have already submitted over 220,000 survey responses – a strong signal that the sector is engaging, even without a formal requirement. That’s a strong engagement level, even though surveys weren’t mandatory for most.

Unattended mode is a long-awaited feature. Offline collection would make it even better.

Demographics now appear at the end of the survey. That’s a big improvement.

The Challenges

Despite improvements, organisations are still struggling with the Illuminate reporting requirements 2024 Arts Council England. People may be using the Illuminate platform and survey, but they are struggling. I put the feelers out to see what kind of challenges users were experiencing…

No Data Processing Agreement

If you share personal data, you need a Data Processing Agreement (DPA). That’s basic data protection hygiene.

One NPO raised this concern directly with ACE. ACE responded: “ACE and their advisors concluded that DPAs were not required, as they were previously, as the data captured cannot be attributed to a single individual. As such, we have relevant privacy statements in place for users of the platform, but it has been agreed there is no longer a requirement for DPAs.”

ACE made that decision. But I disagree. When survey data links to postcodes and events, it can become identifiable. That changes the risk profile – and in my view, it changes the legal obligation. A Data Processing Agreement should be in place. No exceptions. Remember: this is your organisation’s data. You’re responsible for it. If there’s a breach, the ICO will ask about contracts.

Communication Gaps

Organisations can’t collect the right data if they don’t know what’s expected. Clear, timely guidance isn’t a nice-to-have – it’s essential.

ACE shared the Illuminate update on 8 April 2024. But many had already updated their frameworks and tools before then. That’s standard practice – you prep for the year ahead. The late guidance meant people had to redo work. Twice. It’s frustrating. It wastes time. And it’s avoidable.

Administrative Burden

ACE reporting requirements in general are an onerous process, with organisations having to report in multiple formats, in multiple ways, at multiple times. In January, a group of anonymous NPO Chief Executive Officers explained their frustrations and struggles with the reporting requirements to ArtsProfessional. ACE responded to these concerns and committed to continuing to make improvements to their processes.

For Illuminate, organisations must report activity data quarterly. If your organisation uses Spektrix or Ticksolve with full integration, that process is automatic. If you don’t, it’s manual. Hopefully the general API will go a long way to solving this current issue. However, with the time and development costs falling to the suppliers, we will have to wait and see how and if they will engage with it.

Survey Data

If your organisation uses a different survey tool, it won’t integrate with Illuminate. You must either manually upload your data or run duplicate surveys across two platforms. Both options add unnecessary complexity and workload.

Everything is event/activity level. Organisations cannot use one survey link for all their events – each event requires a unique link. Similarly, organisations can’t bulk upload their survey data. They must upload it one event or activity at a time – a slow, manual process that adds to the workload. This involves downloading a template for each survey, completing it, and uploading it. You cannot change the name of the file as the system won’t accept it back.

It is also worth noting that Illuminate will not accept any exports that have blank responses (where respondents have skipped a question rather than answer “Prefer not to say”) to demographic questions. In short, if you don’t make every demographic question mandatory, you might need to do some manual data formatting. One organisation chose not to make demographic questions mandatory – a reasonable decision to support respondent comfort. Now, they have to manually change every blank response to “Prefer not to say” – otherwise, Illuminate rejects the upload. That’s not just inefficient; it punishes organisations for respecting respondent choice.

Add to this that there is no easy way to download ALL data or ALL postcodes. Instead, you must download results spreadsheets for each survey and then combine them, making analysis more manual and time consuming. Again, all this takes up valuable time.

Some consultancies are offering support in doing this for you. E.g., Indigo Share offers this to their subscribers as part of their service. Similarly, Audience Answers provides users with raw data downloads for surveys, and, for an additional charge, can format the data so that it is ready for Illuminate.

That means it’s not just organisational staff feeling the pressure. One evaluation consultant, who asked to remain anonymous, shared:

“I’ve spent an additional £3,500 worth of work on this that I haven’t billed the client for/wasn’t in my contract but felt I needed to help with… Replicate this by all the evaluation consultants and the extra time people are putting in – blogs, sharing their views in their networks, sharing their expertise in forums when we’re allowed to go to them. That stuff isn’t paid for (or baked in) – most of the time we’re doing it because we really, really want to get this working!”

On a personal note, I’ve also spent a lot of additional time making updates to on-going survey collections for clients as changes to Illuminate have occurred. So far, I’ve absorbed the extra time myself. It isn’t the clients’ fault, and their budgets often don’t stretch to cover it. Whether that is sustainable going forward, I’m not yet sure. I will not always be able to work for free.

Some organisations are also facing technical issues. One NPO told me they couldn’t export any data from the Insights panel – the option simply wasn’t available. That’s a basic function, and its absence adds yet another layer of frustration.

Demographics: Survey Data

There’s no getting away from the fact that there are still a lot of them. In fact, they make up 58% of the survey. Some audiences also find them intrusive. Aside from clients reporting customer complaints, I regularly review survey data and often see feedback such as “How is that question relevant?” and “Don’t agree with these questions” (comments taken from recent client survey results).

So, what can you do to reduce complaints? Well, if you’re an organisation that is collecting data outside of the Illuminate platform, and your survey tool allows you to add explanatory text, then include some! It’s important that individuals understand why you’re asking the questions that you’re asking, and what that data will be used for. For all client surveys, I include an introduction to the demographics section. This functionality is limited in Illuminate but if you are collecting outside the platform, I have shared the text I use on the surveys I produce in an earlier blog post – please feel free to cut and paste!

Activity Data Doesn’t Add Up

One thing that remains an issue for some organisations is reporting on activities that are ongoing or happening regularly. As I’ve already covered, reporting is quarterly. The issue some organisations are facing is that when they input their monthly attendance to these events/activities, the “total attendance” doesn’t add up gradually (e.g., Q1 = 10, Q2 = 15, TOTAL = 25). Instead, it saves the last number that’s been updated (in this example the “TOTAL” would be saved as 15 because this was the last number logged). To have factual audience numbers in quarterly reports, the data must be added up manually, again adding to the administrative burden.

Survey Data Benchmarks

Illuminate offers you the option to benchmark against other organisations in your area as well as against other organisations that share your discipline(s). However, this functionality is currently limited. For example, one organisation I spoke to reported that the functionality currently only works on the “occupation” question. Another organisation shared that they can only access occupation and ethnicity, but the results are only available as percentages for occupation, and as numbers for ethnicity. Organisations can also use the Understanding Your Areas tab to explore available Census data.

In fairness, benchmarks cannot be created until there is enough available data. But if the survey collection was not mandatory last year and won’t be in 2024/2025 (except for CPPs), it may be a while before they do become available. In Audience Finder days, organisations could compare their results to the regional and national picture – some could also compare them to regional organisational clusters. This simply isn’t possible at the moment with Illuminate. However, sector benchmarks are still available with Audience Answers and Indigo Share both offering these insights.

Final Thoughts

Arts Council England have listened to feedback and taken some really positive steps. However, with survey data still not mandatory (except for CPPs) for 2024/2025, there is the risk that some organisations will not engage with it if they don’t have to. I would encourage all organisations to collect the data regardless – whether that be in the Illuminate platform or via another survey tool or service. There are still some challenges and issues that need to be overcome, and as Illuminate beds in, I hope that ACE continues their dialogue with the sector and listens to the experiences and challenges organisations are facing and continue to make improvements.

Thank You

I would like to extend my thanks to anyone who reached out and shared their experiences. I understand that that people are a bit nervous about saying anything publicly, especially if they work at an NPO, IPSO or CPP, but if you are experiencing any challenges or issues and would like to share them, please feel free to contact me – anything you say will be treated in confidence.

Also, a huge thanks also to my sector colleagues who were kind enough to give up their time to peer-review this article before publishing – you know who you are, and I am truly grateful.