The Philadelphia Science Festival (PSF) is an annual, nine-day community-wide celebration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics organized by the Institute and created through the collaboration of 200+ of Philadelphia’s scientific, cultural, and educational institutions. Launched in 2011, PSF has more than 100 events that attract a diverse audience of 85,000 to venues across the city and region.
The purpose of this project is to understand and strengthen PSF’s impact on under-served audiences by visualizing attendees’ demographics and where they travel from in relation to event location, format, and pricing.
By the start date of this project, the Institute will have five years (finalizing year 5 data) of attendee zip code, sex, age, gender, and satisfaction data for each event, as well as event location, format, and admission price. Public data the Institute will make available to layer on the PSF data include IRS income data by zip code; US Census data by zip code (age, sex, ethnicity, income, language); and SEPTA public transportation routes.
Foundational visualizations would show longitudinal trends in the geographic reach (attendees’ zip codes) of PSF overall, and disaggregated by event type (e.g., Carnival, neighborhood-based, ticketed events). The next layer of analysis is how the geographic footprint and attendee demographics vary with event type, and with proximity to public transportation routes. Ideally, we imagine a web-based interactive tool that would allow PSF managers to explore patterns in the data through real-time visualizations.
The maps and reports produced by the fellow will inform strategies for designing future events to maximize reach to underserved audiences. By reviewing closely the geographic patterns of audience draw and demographic correlations with zip code, our team will be better equipped to strategize new and interesting approaches to determining event formats, locations and pricing.
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