What Golden Hour taught us about reaching new people—and giving them a reason to return.
Ten years in, we’re still introducing ourselves.
That might sound strange for an event with a decade behind it. But there is always someone who has never been to UNDSCVRD. Someone who doesn’t know the artists, hasn’t tried the food, or has passed through the Filipino Cultural District without realizing what’s here.
At the Golden Hour Night Market, we found an encouraging sign of just how much discovery is still happening: 80% of the 661 RSVP records we reviewed indicated it would be their first time at UNDSCVRD.
After ten years, new people are still finding their way toward this community.
In our recent anniversary reflection, we looked at the ripple effect: vendors becoming organizers, collaborators building festivals, and communities finding inspiration in what started here. Golden Hour gave us a chance to look at the next part of that story. How are people discovering us now? What do they experience when they arrive? And are we giving them a reason to return?
We looked at our press campaign, registration responses, and guest feedback to begin answering those questions.
Giving the story more places to land
For our ten-year campaign, we worked with Papalodown Agency to help tell UNDSCVRD’s story beyond our own channels. Through October 28, their report counted 19 pieces of press coverage.
Each placement created another opportunity for someone to encounter the event. A listing could reach someone making weekend plans. A radio mention could catch a commuter’s attention. A longer story could introduce the artists, entrepreneurs, and neighborhood behind the celebration.
The report listed a combined potential outlet audience of 6.31 million and an estimated 19,800 views of the coverage. It also reported 2.74 million in potential radio listenership, with coverage across 106.1 KMEL, KPFA, STAR 101.3 KIOI, and 98.1 The Breeze.
Those big numbers need context. Potential audience describes the audiences of the outlets carrying the story, rather than the number of people who actually saw or heard it. Audiences can also overlap, so we don’t add those figures together.
What the report shows is that UNDSCVRD had opportunities to reach people who weren’t already following us. Our registration responses give us another view of how people found their way in.
A post catches your eye. A friend gets you interested.
Among the 661 registrations we logged, Instagram was the most common way people said they heard about UNDSCVRD, accounting for 30%. Friends and family accounted for another 17%.
Together, those two sources represented nearly half of the records we reviewed.
How registrants heard about UNDSCVRD:
RecordsShareInstagram19930%Other13520%Friends or family11317%Email newsletter477%Google or web search467%
The remaining responses included previous participation, Facebook, community organizations and partners, flyers, TikTok, and Twitter/X.
There is something familiar about that combination. We put the invitation out into the world, and people carry it further through their own relationships. A friend saying “come with me” is part of how a cultural gathering becomes a community.
Our newsletter showed another pattern. Among registrants who selected email as their source, 36% said they had attended before—the highest returning share among the reported referral sources. That suggests email helps us keep existing relationships active alongside the work of reaching new people.
These answers don’t establish how much attendance came from press. Someone could hear a radio mention, see an Instagram post, and then register after a friend sends the link. A single answer won’t capture that whole journey. The 20% who selected “Other” also leave us with more to understand.
New interest from across the Bay
Of the registrations we reviewed, 526 identified themselves as first-timers, while 135 said they had attended before.
That level of first-time interest is meaningful for an event celebrating its tenth anniversary. Our history may be familiar to us, but plenty of people are just beginning their relationship with UNDSCVRD.
The registrations also reflected interest from across the region.
Where registrants livedRecordsShareSan Francisco30947%East Bay14121%Peninsula7311%South Bay325%Elsewhere or no valid zip10616%
For Kultivate Labs, that geographic reach connects to a larger goal: giving people a reason to spend time in the Filipino Cultural District and discover what is already here.
A cultural event can be someone’s introduction to a neighborhood. The opportunity is to help that first visit become a connection with its businesses, artists, and public spaces.
These are registration patterns, however, rather than a count of who attended. Our log covers 661 of the 991 registrations shown on Luma, and we have not yet matched sign-ups to arrivals. The findings tell us about the interest we captured, with more work needed to understand the full audience.
Once people arrived, did the experience connect?
Getting someone interested is one part of producing an event. What they experience when they arrive matters just as much.
At Golden Hour, 85 guests completed our day-of survey. Of those respondents:
98% rated the experience excellent or very good: 68 selected excellent and 15 selected very good. The remaining two selected good.
93% said they would return: 79 said yes, six said maybe, and no one said no.
86% of those who answered the spending question reported spending something related to the event.
Those responses are encouraging. They suggest that the experience resonated with the guests who chose to share feedback.
The survey also captured people making their way to the event from across the region. Respondents represented 45 zip codes, with 44% living in San Francisco. About 76% said they came from home that day, compared with 9% from work and 14% from somewhere else.
We can’t assume those 85 people represent everyone who attended. But their responses give us something useful to build on: enthusiasm for the experience and a strong stated interest in coming back.
Connecting cultural participation with spending
For Kultivate Labs, guest spending matters because creating economic opportunity is part of why we do this work.
Of the 84 respondents who answered the spending question, 72 reported spending something related to their visit. Twenty-three reported spending between $51 and $100, and 11 reported spending more than $100.
Reported spendingResponses$012$1–$5038$51–$10023$101–$2005$201–$5005More than $1,0001
The question included transportation, food, shopping, and other event-related expenses. These figures therefore cannot be treated as vendor sales or added up into a total economic impact.
They do show that participation involved spending for most respondents. That gives us a starting point for understanding how an event connects with economic activity—and a reason to ask more precise questions about where that spending goes.
The ambition behind UNDSCVRD has always included artists finding audiences and small businesses finding customers. Better measurement helps us understand how well we’re supporting those connections.
What we still need to learn
We want these findings to guide our decisions, so we need to be clear about how we counted.
The RSVP analysis came from registration notification emails logged between September 7 and October 24. It counts records, including repeat registrations, rather than verified unique people. First-time status and referral sources reflect the answers registrants selected.
The day-of survey was voluntary and received 85 responses against a target of 100. Spending percentages use the 84 people who answered that question; the other survey findings use 85. Percentages are rounded.
The two sources also asked different questions. We cannot use them to say that first-time guests were more satisfied, that Instagram referrals spent more, or that a particular press placement drove attendance.
Our next step is to reconcile the registration log with a full Luma export. That would let us check whether the patterns hold across all 991 registrations. Clearer referral questions and better attendance tracking would help us understand more of the journey from hearing about UNDSCVRD to showing up.
Making room for the next introduction
Our ten-year reflection looked at what grew from UNDSCVRD. Golden Hour reminds us that the story is still beginning for someone else.
The press campaign created opportunities for discovery. The registrations we reviewed showed substantial first-time interest. The guests who answered our survey gave us encouraging feedback and a strong indication that they wanted to return.
Each finding captures a different part of the work: reaching people, inviting them in, and creating an experience they want to have again.
For Kultivate Labs, that is how an event can help build lasting relationships with a cultural district. Someone discovers an artist. Someone finds a business they want to support. Someone comes back and brings a friend.
On November 13, we’ll gather again for the Mahal mural unveiling and Kultivate Labs’ ten-year celebration.
Bring someone who hasn’t been before. After ten years, there’s still plenty to introduce them to.
