The 2024 Museums + Heritage Show features more than 70 talks over two days (15-16 May) addressing a wide range of themes and issues facing the museums and heritage sectors.
Working with and engaging local communities
Many venues across the sector are exploring how to get closer to their local visitors and engage local and community audiences. This is a key theme for three of the talks, presenting helpful examples of different approaches and the lessons to be learnt.
The Museum of Croydon used built heritage to explore a local sense of place. They report on their Little Manhattan Project based on the Croydon skyline that developed between the 1950s and 1970s (Session 1). The work has many elements common to successful community projects – co-curation with local community groups and volunteers, a range of project partnerships, a year of community activities, an exhibition at the main Museum venue and a touring pop-up exhibition with linked talks and reminiscence workshops.
The Little Manhattan Project also included substantial digital outputs such as a new audio trail, digital posters featuring musical tracks by young people and a short film bringing memories collected from local people together with little-seen archival footage.
Migration is a theme that has potential to widen audience engagement, especially at a local level (Session 2). The Migration Museum is based in Lewisham Shopping Centre, south London and share their experiences and insights into their story-led approach and how visitors explore their own personal connections.
Suffolk Archives use their 900 years’ worth of records in their project Arrivals: Celebrating Migration to Suffolk to collect regional stories and to co-curate an exhibition and new installation.
The Thomas Wolsey 550 Project uses the links of a historical figure as a focus for local activity in Ipswich. aiming to increase a sense of pride (Session 3). Main foundations of the project were working with local businesses and key organisations across the town, taking a fresh approach to fundraising as well as awarding community grants to local organisations to deliver projects. This has resulted in an extensive programme of town centre events and activities, talks, guided walks, music, festivals, online content, public mural, central exhibition, touring exhibitions and project branding across Ipswich.
Building Partnerships
All these projects have a common thread of creating partnerships to build support, raise funds and develop activity. The Heritage Alliance give tips and advice on how to foster great partnerships (Session 6). They draw on their experience of connecting members, bringing together partners with shared interests and facilitating information-sharing and collaborative working. They also share examples of forming partnerships to deliver support projects across the UK.
Current Trends and Strategy
Two other sessions explore lessons for the sector. The Association of Leading Visitor Attraction has 2,200 members covering the UK’s most popular, iconic and important tourist sites across the UK, hosting over 119 million visitors each year. ALVA discuss the latest insights on visitor figures and business data and indicators on what domestic and overseas visitors want when they visit, their spending patterns and priorities as well as trends for the future (Session 4).
Oxford Cultural Leaders also look at the big picture, examining the current challenges across the sector and what lies ahead (Session 5). Based on their Oxford Cultural Leaders Programme, they examine the need for change along with insights and tips on ways of dealing with uncertainty, adapting and making the most of opportunities.
Visitor Experience and Retail
The closing session explores the importance of ambience in the experience of visitors (Session 7). Stephen Spencer + Associates look at how ambience can immerse visitors in your values and heritage, generate an emotional response and help in building a relationship, especially when considering branding and retail. You can also check out their Ambience Networking Lounge at the M+H Show.
Feel free to chat with Colin at the M+H Show about your work or contact him through the Colin Mulberg Consulting website.
For further details on the talks and to see the full 2024 Museum + Heritage Show programme visit the What’s On page
