Museums Connections 2025

Speaking at Museum Connections 2025, Paris

Firstly, thanks to the good folks at Museum Connections for the invitation. I joined a great panel and 150 attendees to discuss how we’re trying to close the particapation gap at Birmingham Museums Trust. The headphones in the above photo were for the live translation not for the vibes!

My whole career to date has been about “helpful to people” so the focusing on those who visit vs those who don’t is a topic close to my heart.

Below is a mix of my thoughts and notes for the session. Hat tip to Sara and Mark O’Neill for their thoughts on the session in advance.

Inclusion, Solidarity: Welcoming people living in poverty

Over the past few years, the social role of cultural institutions has continued to evolve, adapting to contemporary challenges. Despite increasing pressure to generate revenue, cultural venues are redefining their social and solidarity efforts to meet current needs, moving beyond free admission alone. This panel discussion explores studies examining the real barriers that prevent people in precarious situations from visiting cultural institutions. We will focus on the role of these institutions in supporting ambitious, long-term inclusion programs and their funding. Additionally, we will address how cultural venues can raise awareness and advocate against exclusion, both internally and externally.

  • Marion Belleville (France)
  • Sarah Hugounenq (moderator)
  • Zak (me!)
  • Clement LaLot (Belguim)
  • Leanne Wickham( New Zealand)

Who’s it for?

BMT runs 9 sites in Birmingham, UK which is in the middle of the country with only London having larger population. Population of 1.1m with 6m people in the region.

We reach up to 1m visitors per year at our physical sites plus several million online AND up to 10m via objects on loan around the world. Birmingham is nearly 50% people of colour and has a young population.

The City Council has gone bankrupt (s114) and we are operating within the impact ofthe deepest financial crisis.

What’s it for?

Culture is a basic human right and therefore should be universal. We think Museum audiences should be broadly representative of society. If we have barriers then we are failing people.

In the book Culture is Bad for you, they focus on failings over 40 years between both the creation and consumption of culture and how this highlights the inequality.

At BMT we’re working on being part of the solution. One element of this is a research Project called Addressing the museum attendance and benefit gap with University of Leicester.

Survey data on who visits museums and decades of research in cultural sociology internationally tell us that museum visiting reflects the socio-economic gradient, closely tracking inequalities in education, income, employment, mental health and other indicators of social wellbeing. Despite the scale of existing evidence, including evidence that the attendance and benefit gap may be increasing, government policy, professional guidance and research undertaken by museums themselves continue with little or no recognition of this wider context and macro data and, as a result, have failed to develop sustainable evidence-based solutions to address inequalities in museum attendance and benefit.

This Network explores the hypothesis that a deeper understanding within museums and museology of (1) the nature and experience of inequality and (2) how large-scale social and behaviour change is approached in other fields, such as health, would open up the capacity in museums and amongst museum scholars to understand, theorise, design, implement, evaluate and sustain practices which may address the attendance and benefit gap.

Together we are asking:

  • How can we better understand who visits and benefits from museums?
  • What can existing population-level and museum data tell us about those who visit and those who do not?
  • What research can museums committed to representative participation draw on to understand audience development more strategically?
  • How might museums utilise research and strategies from fields such as implementation science to drive evidence-based decision making, understand which changes in museums successfully broaden visitor demographics and sustain progress towards representative participation?

Our Museum visiting reflects the socio-economic gradient, closely tracking inequalities in education, income, employment, mental health and other indicators of social wellbeing.

The graph shows a gap of approx 25% between cohorts. Change is needed at “population level change” as small interventions don’t move the needle enough.

BMT has 9 sites. We oeprate both free and charging yet the types of people who visit are the same for both FREE and paid which shows that chargign isn’t the barrier in the way we often think it is.

Mark O’Neill, a key collaborator says: Museums that are interested in increasing access create more accessible displays, using Universal Design principles and storytelling. They increase the representation of the culture and heritage of previously excluded groups and above all they create a welcoming atmosphere for novice visitors and their families. They also have a range of engagement programmes, involving activities under headings like Wellbeing, creativity, social inclusion and social mobility. CO-production, greatly inspired by Nina Simon’s book on the Participatory Museum is often seen as the key to radically improved inclusion.

As an aside the book Universal Design Principles was a key text for me when I was studying Computing and a copy still sits by my desk!

Barriers (for focus on this panel)

  • Focused onthe already well educated and neglecting those who may most benefit
  • the single most important predictor of museum visiting is not class, ethnicity or income but level of prior educational achievement.
  • Relevance – 80%+ of Citizen Jury started off by saying museums were not for them
  • require population level change
  • projects don’t stick or scale – too small
  • economic and educational disadvantage
  • Creation AND consumption of culture need to be considered not just consumption

Opportunities

  • The Network will test the assumption that if museums understand the extent to which the attendance and benefit gap is driven by societal factors, they may be able to develop interventions which are most likely to have an impact.
  • being People centred
  • critical to be data-informed – but sector needs to undersand how to use data better)
  • [Example] of staff wearing own clothes which leads some people to see themselves ((affiliation))
  • Deeper understanding of how museums need to change to be relevant and appealing to people with no/low educational qualifications
  • Redirect engagement resources to transforming the museum as a whole – key concept
  • From Nina Simon, Chapter 5, Desire for the input and involvement of outside participants, Trust in participants’ abilities and Responsiveness to participants’ actions and contributions

Library example

Libraries promote literacy through provision of books and support.

Citizen jury example

Throughout 2024 BMT ran the UK Museums first citizen Jury.

28 people who represent the city at population level. 30 hours of delibration and produced 21 recommendations which we share from the 30th January.

Quick examples

  • [Example] reopening the Art Gallery in 2022
  • more excluded peple come to big sites
  • [Tactic] We have a Community pass scheme which is one useful tactic but is targeted and doesn’t scale in current shape.
  • hard ot make itsystems
  • bolt on model seen as good practice but it isn’t as it doesn’t shift the needle in nearly all cases I’ve come across
  • Should a measures of success be repeat visits beign the goal?
  • [Example] As a kid I had a vey bad experience in Bristol at a Gallery which put me off for years.
  • Idea of class as a node

Socioeconomic Gradient (SEG) covers

  • Income
  • Race/ethnicity
  • Disability
  • Place of residence
  • Unemployment
  • Education

The seven principles of universal design

  1. Equitable Use
  2. Flexibility in Use
  3. Simple and Intuitive Use (ikea example)
  4. Perceptible Information
  5. Tolerance for Error
  6. Low Physical Effort
  7. Size and Space for Approach and Use

Books

What Matters Now

After several months planning, Friday 10th July saw a group of us meet online to hear 18 speakers and performers explain “What Matters Now” to them.

I was proud to have a small part to play in organising and opening the event. Each person was given 5 minutes to have the digital floor and do whatever they felt. We had petcha ketcha style, poetry, DJ, song, and open minds and hearts. The performers and audience came from across the globe and the energy was 11/10.

The videos will be available soon.

The internet was designed for openess and collaboration. Big check in the boxes for this event.

Thank you to Mike for bringing us all together.

Lots of Love.

REACT Lunchtime Talk: Elements of Interactive Storytelling

During his lunchtime talk Daniel Burwen explained that careful consideration of the four elements plus the four spaces equals coherence for storytelling using technology. Here are my notes for the talk Elements of Interactive Storytelling.

  • The four elements are User experience,  Story, Technology and Aesthetics
  • The four spaces are Hearth, Reading nook, Anywhere and Workbook
  • The spectrum of Narrative mechanics between Games (interactive and mechanic depth) and Films (passive and emotional complexity)
  • Doing (games) vs feeling (films)
  • 1978 laser disc
  • 1983 dragons lair – depth was press button to not die
  • 1985 Mario brothers run, jump’ stopm’ kick shoot
  • 1991 another world – cut scenes appear
  • 1993 virtual fighter – 3d games emerge, camera language and large data
  • Mechanical depth and emotional complexity
  • Uncanny valley for virtual characters
  • Last of us game – unified aesthetic between film and game. The game is built for mechanical depth and is highly abstract
  • Attention economies for TV, laptop, tablet and mobile vary but the longer the attention the higher the value.
  • TV is $10- $60, mobile is free to $5
  • Focusing on tablets gives a good trade-off
  • Game called winosill might be helpful for displays e.g. at blaise Castle Museum 🙂
  • Mouse and keyboard vs touch
  • Interactive narrative is a goal as you can get mechanical depth and emotion
  • New PS4 and Xbox enable body movement and may be tipping point beyond control pads
  • Oculus rift headset – the less abstraction in interface the more emotional connection we can have and this type of device may be the new era post control pad
  • So where is this going? from first moving image film to Citizen Kane was a breakout experience for its time and it has been 41 years since pong
  • Wii came put in 2006 and since then we have great things across all the devices eg the oculus rift’ and Xbox kinnect, maybe we are about to bring them together

Since making my notes I have stumbled across the talk as a slidedeck on Prezi which you should check out.

 

Speaking: Mobile learning at Bath Spa

In my talk today at Bath Spa I set out to touch on key aspects of mobile learning, what is mobile learning and why we might be taking the time to care. Below are my supporting notes:

What is mobile learning

  • If you read nothing else, the JISC Mobile Learning infokit is a great body of work to get you started
  • It isn’t just about wheeling out devices, it is about seeking ways to enhance our teaching and learning by taking advantage of the opportunity and constraints
  • Mobility of people with devices opens new doors
  • Context is king
  • There are 100s of devices (demo’ed 3 tablets) and there can be social pressure on students to get the devices everybody else has
  • Mobile learning is leading to transformation in the classroom AND institutions are having to address this. Many institutions are are starting to address this with steering groups, research and initiatives such as “mobile clinics“.

Why Mobile learning?

Further signposts

Show and tell with UOB ebooks

I recently delivered 3 one-hour sessions to small groups of library types on the subject of all things ebook at the University of Bristol.

The University of Bristol has around 5,000 ebooks at the moment. Enough of a critical mass to get my interest in ebooks in the institution. John Hargreaves, Assistant Subject Librarian for Law kindly organised the 3 sessions which I was using to see what the problems are from the other side of the issue desk whilst giving them a brain dump of what I see as the opportunities and constraints.

Being the book reading type that I am, I was keen to wade in with using ebooks – that was until I actually tried to find and use any of them (more of that in future posts).

Problem #1 By using the library catalogue, ebooks as a “type of resource” are not easily surfaced without using an advanced search, which I believe is a huge barrier to “discovering” ebooks. I doubt very many people use the advanced search as the first port of call. My mental model is that I do a search and all results are shown, regardless of the ‘type of resource’ be that print books, journals, CD-ROM or ebook.

I came to each session armed with 1 print book and various ebook reading capable devices as to my surprise the library doesn’t have any staff ebook devices, each loaded with the same ebook:

  • Amazon Kindle 1st Gen
  • Sony ebook reader Touch Edition PRS-650 *
  • Desktop Windows computer
  • Apple iphone 1st Gen
  • Android Tablet *

* Thanks for the lend Mr Gray

#Problem 2: The libraries do not have the kit that they require – using ebooks from the other side of the issue desk is both theory and practice and in order to help folks with trouble they need to use the devices themselves.

After briefly explaining about the common ebook formats (EPUB, PDF, mobi) we had a play with each device using the “Responsive Web Design” ebook. The above list shows the most liked (kindle as best) down to the least user-friendly (pressure-sensitive tablet).

The test ebook also makes use of video which displays on devices that support EPUB3  video and this showcased why the ebook version may have an advantage over the print version.

Opportunity #1 Next I showed the ibis reader which I only have glowing things to say about it. I wonder if the platform could be integrated someday into the University system and act as the official ebook reader for desktop and mobile.

Then we tried a University ebook and things got really depressing.

We used the search keyword ‘china’ to find our guinea pig ebook.

It appears that the major education publishers ship ebooks using Adobe PDF as the ebook format of choice. Clearly this is to make use of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) but has the nasty side affect that none of the ebooks will run on a ebook reader such as the Kindle… thats right, ebooks that do not run on the most popular ebook reader device. So I think it isnt too much of a leap to connect the dots that access to ebooks and use on devices are two of the major barriers to ebook uptake. I sent an email to one of the major publishers to ask them about this but am yet to get a response.

We were all in shock. Say it slowly – “ebooks that do not work on ebook readers, are probably not ebooks”.

If you work in a library, what are the issues here and how to do you work with such barriers?

I hope to wade into lots more ebook stuff in coming months.

UPDATE 10th Jan 2012

The fantastic Ibis Reader has been acquired and so it is watch this space as  to the future of the platform as I know it.