Plans and work programme

The 2007 Renaissance East Midlands museums consultation highlighted audience development as one of the priority areas as 93 per cent of respondents wanted to attract new audiences. Renaissance East Midlands will work with more and more museums, through a number of programmes outlined below, to support their audience work through research and innovative projects which engage diverse people to visit museums.

Understanding our audiences
Three new Cluster Groups will be developed to work alongside the existing six groups. The new groups will involve an additional 15 members of staff and volunteers from museums, heritage and arts groups.

Existing Cluster Groups will use their audience profiling information to consult with potential museum visitors from target groups and develop plans to engage them. The results of the work will be published and available through the Renaissance East Midlands website. The six existing groups will support the three new groups and they will all be encouraged to develop more work together and share their learning.

The new information will update the Knowing Your Audiences report which will continue to help inform outreach work for all regional museums.

For more information about the project visit:the Knowing Your Audiences page of the Renaissance East Midlands website.

Delivering diverse community learning
Building on 2007 successes, five Renaissance East Midlands partner museums will work in partnership with at least 10 small local authority or independent sites to develop and deliver work programmes that engage new audiences, particularly young people through the ‘buddy bursary’ scheme.

ONE8 festival
The next stage of Youth Culture Day, previously held at Lincoln Castle in 2006, is ONE⁸. This festival will bring museums, youth groups and arts organisations from across the region together at Nottingham Castle to engage young people aged 11 – 24 in activities and events run by young people. Museums will bring their 2007 and 2008 projects with young people to the event attended to give at least 4,000 young people from all backgrounds and areas of the East Midlands an inspiring introduction to museums and heritage. Students from De Montfort University are providing design concepts for the ONE⁸ logo, website and to build brand awareness among the target audience.

For more information visit:ONE8 page on the Renaissance East Midlands website. 

Museums and Galleries Month
Renaissance East Midlands has doubled the success of 2007 with almost 100 events and activities happening across the region during May, Museums and Galleries Month, including a number of sites that haven't been involved before. 

The East Midlands Museums and Galleries Month programme has been noted as an exemplar for all other British regions.

University partnerships
In 2008 – ’09 Renaissance East Midlands is piloting a new partnership project with Nottingham Trent University and De Montfort University. In both cases student placements will work with museums across the region to share learning and support museum development while providing valuable work experience for heritage studies, design and marketing and journalism students. If successful the project will develop to include more students, more universities and more museums.