prepared by Chris Goldthorpe 11/13/2025
At the end of the tour we ask all artists to complete a visitors survey. Not all artists fill this in but we have been calling artists and do have attendance numbers from all artists. The pieces of information that we are looking to extract from the data are
- How many visitors?
- Has the number of visitors increased or decreased since last year?
- Has the amount of sales increased or decreased since last year?
- What went well?
- What could be improved?
- How did people find out about the tour
The question with the least answers was how did people find out about the tour.
For the open ended questions I have simply listed all of the responses. It would be fairly easy to throw this data into an AI program and ask it to summarize the data. I did try that but the process of summarization lost a lot of the detail. Anyone who wants an AI summary can easily take the data from this document and generate their own summary.
Here are the results for each of the questions:
How Many Visitors, Visitor Trend and Sales Trend
We have tried to collect this data from all studios but the numbers are missing two studios. Here are the numbers from the remaining 48.
Total number of studio visits for 2025 ( not including two studios ) was 4035
In 2024 the total number of studio visits ( not including one studios ) was 3136
40% of the increase in visitors is due to the 320 visitors to the Reser center.
For returning artists
16 had more visitors than their previous tour
9 had less visitors than their previous tour
13 had about the same number of visitors as their previous tour
19 had more sales than their previous tour
11 had less sales than their previous tour
8 had about the same amount of sales as their previous tour
Breakdown of number of visitors by studio type
| Number of Studios | Number of Visitors | Average | |
| Single | 28 | 1828 | 65.29 |
| Shared | 13 | 918 | 70.62 |
| Collective | 5 | 772 | 154.40 |
| Gallery | 3 | 517 | 172.33 |
Observations
- Even without the numbers from the Reser Center attendance is well up
- The year to year same studio comparisons look good
Comparison with Previous Years
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
| Average number of visitors | 58 | 67 | 65 | 82 |
| Average number of visitors to new artists | 48 | 60 | 62 | 59 |
| Returning artists with increase in visitors | 8 | 11 | 16 | 16 |
| Returning artists with less visitors | 11 | 7 | 9 | 9 |
| Returning artists with increase in sales | 5 | 16 | 14 | 19 |
| Returning artists with less sales | 16 | 11 | 14 | 11 |
| Number of responses to this survey | 42 | 42 | 48 | 48 |
| Number of studios and galleries | 44 | 50 | 49 | 50 |
| Number of visits to responding studios/galleries | 2416 | 2810 | 3136 | 4035 |
| Estimated number of visits to all studios/galleries | 2552 | 3345 | 3201 | 4060 |
| Percentage of artists who completed the survey | 95.45% | 84.00% | 98% | 98% |
Notes
In 2022 we had the passport program
2025 was the first year of the Artist Popup at the Reser center
What went well on the tour?
Below are each of the survey responses to this question in alphabetical order.
- A good number of people came and spent money.
- All went well
- As always, visitors very interested in how we do our art and they love seeing the studios.
- Conversation with visitors, demonstrations that led to “aha” moments, good vibes about art
- decent turnout
- engaging with the public was very positive
- Even though it was the No Kings Day protest on Saturday people still came on the Studio Tour…not sure it that’s good to bad 😉
- Everything
- everything ran well and people liked seeing artists spaces
- Everything was great.
- Everything went well
- good turnout and fair number of sales
- “Had a lot of nice conversations.
- “
- Having a helper
- Having, small $10 items, almost every visitor bought one
- I got a lot of compliments about how the studio looked great. Visitors could easily shop. I really liked that It didn’t rain (it only misted a little bit)
- I loved the conversation with people!
- “I think the board and workers did a tremendous job of covering all the needed parts. Congratulations on such a success! And thank you to all involved!
- Demos of painting and ceramics drew people in, got them asking questions. Interacted with kids and clay.
- People were well informed, knew about the website and used it. Many had map guides in hand. Social media seemed to reach lots of people. “
- I thought the team for advertising did a great job !!! Kudos to them.
- interested attendees, demos, advertising those studios close by, weather
- “It was a fantastic experience.
- All the people that came were polite and very appreciative of my artwork.
- I had 2-3 people who had directed art lovers to come see my studio and I thought that was very nice.”
- Liked the heavy social media blasts. Processes – like sign up, summer show, signs, etc. were smooth.
- Lots of posts brought in more people.
- Meeting new people from my neighborhood, from the signs
- Meeting people who were interested in art. Also reconnecting with a student that I haven’t seen in 20 years. (.who gave me wonderful feedback on how much my teaching ceramics has meant to him and enhanced his life! )
- Multiple artists in studio offering variety and helping each other with handling sales
- My family friends and neighbors showing up
- People already knew about the event, they saw the artwork in other places and they came looking directly for the artwork they wanted.
- People really liked the installation that I made
- People were happy and supportive.
- Sat weather was great. That helped with my space.
- Since it was my first time I didn’t know what to expect. I thought everything went well.
- Social media—the posts from Rebecca’s studio visits, and making them shareable
- Sunday was better. Bravo to whoever did the Social Marketing!
- The advertising was amazing
- the amount of visitors for a first time , fun meeting new artist on the tour
- The overall enthusiasm of my visitors and positive reaction to my paintings
- The tour itself was wonderful. We put the address below the WCAA sign and people found that helpful. The subgroups was wonderful. Very helpful for people overwhelmed by the enormity of the map.
- We had a lot of first time visitors.
- We sold two paintings and had a good flow
What could we improve on for next time?
Below are each of the survey responses to this question in alphabetical order.
- A visitor suggested we advertise on the Beaverton city FB page and a page about free events in Portland. She found out another way, but was surprised we were not showing on those pages.
- Add Studio number to signs. Kimberley made some for me to stick on my sign and it was helpful in finding my studio.
- Better advertising like flyers not just maps , hand bills, paid advertising in art sections for both Portland and WACO and less social media as only 25 or less are liking the IG posts
- Can’t think of anything.
- Continue the good work with advertising – way more new people this time.
- encouraging support of artists/sales?
- Everything was great!
- Everything was great.
- Finding more serious collectors.
- I don’t think that all the time that was put into Instagram was well spent. More time should be put into advertising and attending local events.
- I had exactly the amount of maps map guides.
- I personally could have spent more time promoting my studio via social media
- I think its way to many meetings and emails. Sign pick up should be in October.If you are going to compete agaist PDX Open studios you need to do things more like them.The yard signs need to be bold studio numbers. The flyers need to be more clear without the word Oregon on them & it just needs to say “Washington County Art Alliance” presents open studio, it does not need Washington Country on there twice. I think you should print half of the maps that you did, PDX Open Studio does not print anything the visitors and studio’s print their own. As far as social media goes. We DO NOT need to promote artist that chose to not be on social media its mute point since we can not tag them. If they have chosen to not be on SM its not our duty to promote them on SM makes more work for the SM team. I also think the social media team should get a discount on the WASHCO fee in 2026 since its so much work.
- I think you did a great job for this. Everyone worked so hard to get the word out.
- I will do the same set up and the same style
- It all went so amazingly well, no idea at this point what can be improved
- let folks know they can support the art community by purchasing original works of art
- Maybe lend the artwork to different spaces, that way people can see it in daily life and
- Media presence. I felt like we were in the shadow of Portland Open Studio tour
- not having the No Kings protest
- Not sure. But it would be great for first timers to see before hand how other seasoned artists organize their studios and sales.
- Organizing the publicity at the start of the year, what will be expected of artists and when and a clear vision of who is coordinating would be very helpful. Also making volunteering for something a requirement for being in the show would be helpful.
- Spend less money on social media
- Survey is difficult to fill out during the tour and probably doesn’t capture data accurately
- The street signs are not really set up for people who don’t know what is going on. They are hard to read just driving by and might be betters suited saying “Art Sale” on them.
- There needs to be a space for general comments regarding how people found out about tour. One visitor indicated she always gets lost in this part of Washington County. Another visitor was using the interactive map from the website. Another visitor indicated they had been on the website and found out about the tours that way. Just FYI, there needs to be a comment. Space.
- Unsure
- We should try and get featured on TV
- You did great!
- You go way beyond making a great event.
- You’re doing a great service to the Art community. Please keep the date on the third weekend in October. People remember the date!!!
One More Thing That We Could Do Better
This feedback was given at the sign return meeting. Some places where we may want to place Map Guides will only display non-profit literature if our EIN is printed on the material.
How Did People Find Out About the Tour?
Not everyone filled out this part and others entered text instead of numbers, for example “more than half” instead of an estimate. I have filled these in as best I can to come up with these numbers. For that reason the numbers are not as accurate as they could be.
| Reason | Number | Percentage |
| Word of Mouth | 700 | 29.56% |
| Repeat Visitor | 601 | 25.38% |
| Picked up a Map Guide? | 490 | 20.69% |
| 202 | 8.53% | |
| Yard Sign | 159 | 6.71% |
| 86 | 3.63% | |
| oregonlive | 51 | 2.15% |
| Outside Event | 39 | 1.65% |
| Newsletter? | 30 | 1.27% |
| Portland Open Studios? | 10 | 0.42% |
How Did People Find Out About The Tour in 2024?
I was curious to see how this year’s results (2025) compared to last year (2024). Running the same analysis to the 2024 surveys yielded these results. We had far less answers to these questions in 2024 so the margin of error for that year is greater.
| Reason | 2024 Number | 2024 Percentage | 2025 Percentage |
| Picked up a Map Guide | 297 | 30.34% | 20.69% |
| Repeat Visitor | 214 | 21.86% | 25.38% |
| Word of Mouth | 202 | 20.63% | 29.56 |
| Outdoor Event | 86 | 8.78% | 1.65% |
| Portland Open Studios | 50 | 5.11% | 0.42% |
| Yard Signs | 46 | 4.70% | 6.71% |
| 39 | 3.98% | 8.53% | |
| 18 | 1.84% | 3.63% | |
| Other | 15 | 1.53% | N/A |
| Newsletter | 12 | 1.23% | 1.27% |
Observations: Facebook and Instagram have doubled since 2024. The 2025 numbers for Outdoor Event and Portland Open Studios are less than half of the 2024 numbers.