There have been a few attempts to use the analysis in Caroline Felton’s report on the Tower Arts Centre to argue that a small minority of users make up a disproportionately large proportion of visits to the tower – and that therefore it does not deserve public funding – most memorably by Conservative City Councillor Harry Verney at the public meeting in the Guildhall.
Unfortunately, these attempts are wrong – or, to put it more charitably, based on a superficial estimate of how the numbers are calculated.
The analysis was based on the statistics in the Tower’s database, but there are two groups of people who aren’t counted under this system:
- Guests of the person buying the ticket.
When I buy tickets for Michaela and I to go to the Tower, that counts as two visits in my name. If I bought tickets for a group of six people (even if we all settled up later), that counts as six visits in my name. - Some of the people who pay cash.
Most people who pay cash get entered in the database. However, if someone arrives late, or if it’s one of the big youth rock events where people pay on the door, then their purchase may not get entered in the database.
Including both of these factors significantly increases the number of people using the Tower and dramatically reduces (by a factor or two or more) the proportion of visits made by the most active users of the Tower.
I have never yet bought a ticket for a performance at the Tower, but I have attended many. How? because my friend regularly buys 6, 8 or 10 tickets (as she lives 100yds away from the Tower) and our ‘group’ pays her. A clear case of ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics’