Rebuilding the Foundations, National Lottery Heritage Fund

Rebuilding the Foundations was a National Lottery Heritage Fund project run by South West Museum Development to help secure an engaged, relevant and sustainable future for museums in Gloucestershire, UK. It aimed to empower ten participant museums to build capacity, skills and audience engagement.

As the audience development consultant on the project I worked with consultants in equality, diversity and inclusion, volunteering and safeguarding to help guide the museums towards a strong post-Covid recovery. The museums ranged from tiny (Tetbury Police Museum) to sizeable (the Museum of Gloucester) and included organisations that were entirely volunteer run, those with a single paid employee and those with a large professional staff. Museum themes ranged from science (Dr Jenner’s House), technology (Jet Age Museum), music (Holst Victorian House), art and design (Court Barn), town museums (Winchcombe and Tewksbury) and rural heritage (Dean Heritage Centre). All museums were sited in historic buildings with the physical infrastructure very much a part of the visitor experience and stories told.

I visited each museum, spending time with staff and volunteers to understand their needs, challenges and their current visitor offer. I explored and, in some instances analysed existing visitor data and made suggestions on audience segmentation and engagement, further data collection and analysis. I explored options for onsite interpretation and engagement through exhibitions and events as well as looking at the digital offer, off-site events, partnership opportunities and models of co-creation. Throughout I focussed on the stories that each museum told and the media they used in order to build visitor numbers and engage new and underserved audiences.

The outputs of the project were varied according to the needs of the museums but were always strategically driven and evidence based. They included audience development, activity and evaluation plans as well as recommendations for narrative development and interpretation. I wrote a template audience development plan, a how-to-guide for gathering audience data through Google forms, and also provided references and examples on subjects such as co-development, effective text writing and alternative stories and narrative journeys.