Highlights and initiatives

Mapping audience development

Audience development continued to focus on projects to help museums attract more and more diverse people to their sites, particularly younger people, those from ethnic minority groups, disabled people and people from deprived areas in the region.

Renaissance-funded outreach staff work with Renaissance East Midlands partner museum services to develop their audiences and have started partnerships with independent and smaller local authority museums to support their audience development work. Museums have also received funding to take part in national initiatives like the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the Festival of Muslim Culture and Museums and Galleries Month.

The audience development area of work has included the following projects:

Understanding our audiences

• A baseline review showed what visitor and non-visitor information museums collect and how they are using the information to develop new audiences. his survey is the foundation from which Renaissance East Midlands is working with museums to develop their awareness of visitors and non-visitors, is recording data and is reaching out to new audiences.
• From this information, six cluster groups of 35 museums, museum services, arts organisations and National Trust properties, were brought together to profile particular audiences in their geographical or themed areas of the region.
• Twenty-five area profiles and ten community profiles have been completed focusing on the deprived areas of the East Midlands including the coast of Lincolnshire, north Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire, the M1 corridor, north Derbyshire and urban areas in Leicester, Nottingham, Mansfield, Chesterfield and Derby. 
• The 38 staff and volunteers who are members of the cluster groups have developed their skills to undertake community profiling and are more confident in collating and interpreting data which is already being used to influence policy and practice.
• All cluster groups are using the audience information they have learned to develop a five year vision for work within the cluster group partnership.
  The second phase of the project includes consultation with the identified community or non-visitor groups leading to an audience development plan which should be complete as phase three by autumn 2008.

The cluster groups are extremely successful and are already demonstrating the cross sector and cross region working that Renaissance East Midlands is aspiring towards. Cluster group members are working together on new projects and cluster groups are building links with other groups that have similar target audiences or aspirations. Museums not involved in the current groups are also benefitting from the audience information which covers almost all the East Midlands region. 

Delivering diverse community learning

This area of work focused on delivering projects that are bringing new audiences into museums and providing the inspiration and activities that will keep them there. It has included three discreet projects (Out of the Box, Creative Thought and Identity) continuing from the 2004 – 2006 Renaissance East Midlands business plan.

Most projects were led by Renaissance East Midlands partner museum services, working in partnership with independent and smaller local authority museums where possible. In total more than 41,000 people engaged in the initiatives, activities and exhibitions including members of key target groups, almost double the target set by the Department for Culture Media and Sport.

Creative Thought

This focused on building capacity by engaging adult learner service providers to use museum collections to stimulate creative thought and activity with their groups.

• In Lincolnshire, this resulted in 68 reminiscence sessions with older people in rurally isolated areas through facilitated use of loans boxes and outreach.
• In Nottingham, museum staff received training to develop and deliver an artefacts loans box specifically for adults with learning disabilities, which resulted in ‘my museum’ boxes developed in sessions with community groups.
• Leicestershire continued to build on its Write:Muse programme, connecting writers and artists with collections, and has designed a regional best practice guide.
• Derby has been working closely with Adult Learning Services and led ceramic, textiles and creative writing workshops and Leicester has worked with ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) providers to develop six resource boxes.

Identity

This included projects to engage young people aged 11-24 with museums through informal learning programmes and included activities linked to the 2007 Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Festival of Muslim Culture.

• Erewash Museum worked with young people to develop new audio tours for the museum.
• Harborough Railway developed a Second World War loans box targeted at schools and young people.
• Nottingham museums worked with young migrants to develop two films about young people’s experiences of life in Nottingham. A number of the young people involved are now looking in to careers in film making.
• Leicester worked with young people celebrating their heritage through a carnival performance.
• Derby worked with young people to develop 'Woven Word Story Sacks' which will be loaned out to schools, nurseries and community groups.
• Lincolnshire has worked with several groups of young people to develop films which highlight how young people identify themselves with their local areas.

In 2006, museums involved in audience development activities brought their ‘Dresscodes’ projects together at Lincoln Castle as Youth Culture Day, a one-day festival bringing 1,500 mostly young people together. The audience included target groups of young people from ethnic minority or socially deprived backgrounds and young people with disabilities. The event was so successful that it will be repeated in 2008 as the ONE8 festival. Find out more on the ONE8 page of the Renaissance East Midlands website.

Out of the Box

This built on earlier work and aimed to engage diverse and hard to reach communities by developing accessible collections and resources available to people in their communities.

Northampton’s Hands on History worked with five artists to reinterpret the vessels that museum artefacts are loaned out in, making the boxes part of the experience. The new boxes, including part of a First World War soldier’s uniform, a shoe box, pair of handcuffs and a globe all contained items linked to the designs theme and a DVD created by students at the University of Northampton gave an insight into the work, providing inspiration and ideas for other museums to creatively work with artists. The aim is to use the boxes to reach new user groups across Northamptonshire.

At Crich, the Seeing Aloud project worked with groups from the Derbyshire Association for the Blind and The Sensory Trust to trial new technology to enhance the visitor experience for people with visual impairments. 

The Lazarus project in Nottingham has developed seven new community loans boxes from a collection threatened with  disposal. The new boxes have been developed to meet the needs of with new community groups including Sure Start groups and after school clubs.