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Marketing Cultural Organizations:
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Designing Missions, Building Audiences, Generating Revenue and Resources
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The Keys to Sustainable
Audience Development

A Guest Article by Ian Blackwell North East Museums Libraries & Archives Council

What is audience development?

Audience development is about improving services for regular visitors and taking action to reach out to new people. It's about giving a wider range of people the opportunity to improve their understanding, knowledge and appreciation of museum collections. And it's about building bridges with people by being responsive to their needs and enthusiastic about consultation and long-term partnerships.

Audience development is not the responsibility of any one individual or simply another museum specialism, but a way of working that impacts on the whole museum and influences every area of activity.

Why bother?

Museums recognise that regular users represent only a small proportion of the communities they would like to be serving. By reaching new audiences, museums can demonstrate their social significance and accountability, increase visitor numbers, volunteers and income, meet the criteria set by funders and improve services for all. By involving a wider cross-section of the community, museums can draw in people with a variety of new skills and experiences. By welcoming the contribution others make, museums will improve their profiles and become better placed to reflect the diverse cultures of the communities they serve.

 

What keeps people away?

There can be a number of social, psychological, financial, practical, physical and cultural barriers to accessing museums. Some people do not use museums because of a lack awareness of what's offered. Others stay away because of inadequate museum facilities, negative past experiences, or a lack of time, money, transport or interest. Others sometimes feel misrepresented, ignored, even insulted, by museum displays. And finally, people value social interaction, active participation and feeling comfortable in their surroundings; museums are often perceived as formal and formidable, with little to offer.

 

What can I do?

Build on what your museum does well, look at what you could do better, recognise the barriers (real or perceived) that restrict wider access to your institution, and then work to break down those barriers. Examine the circumstances of your community, your museum's image and current visitor profile, and the reasons why some people do not make any use, or full use, of your services. Make adjustments based on your findings.

Exhibitions aimed at particular under-represented groups can be staged, the collection policy can be reviewed to better reflect the diversity of the area, or specific projects can be implemented. Projects might aim to expand on an established audience, be directed at a group currently under-represented among existing visitors, or involve a completely new audience.

 

Thinking strategically

Each museum has its own existing and potential audiences, defined by the nature of the institution and the community it serves. Your audience development strategy will need to reflect the history, collections, current position, structure and aspirations of your organisation and your community.

To embed a sense of belonging, involvement and excitement about your work in a wider cross-section of the population, it is important that potential audiences -- as well as museum staff and management -- are consulted, can contribute and are supportive of your strategy.

• Assess and review current practice and policies
  
  
• Identify the people who infrequently or never use the museum and identify their geographical distribution
  
  
• Establish people's needs and aspirations through consultation, evaluation and research
  
  
• Value the aspirations, diversity and contribution of all those involved
  
  
• Develop a strategy and prioritise resources
  
  
• Establish a framework to maintain and develop the provision for regular users, such as schools
  
  
• Establish target audiences and draw up possible programmes to engage those audiences
  
  
• Support staff, especially with training, to enable them to carry out audience development work
  
  
• Consult the audience to ensure ownership and commitment, and to promote equitable partnerships
  
  
• Share your enthusiasm for the museum, but be prepared for criticism
  
  
• Be flexible and modify the strategy as things develop
  
  
• Recognise the work of others and target resources to where they are likely to be the most effective
  
  
• Work with partners: other museums, local authority departments, and arts, community and voluntary groups
  
  
• Establish a framework to maintain new audiences, especially by encouraging people to become independent museum users
  
  
• Evaluate, review and improve your work
  
  
• Celebrate success, learn from mistakes
  
  
• Have fun, make friends
  

Museums cannot deliver alone

The only sustainable audience development projects are those done in equal partnership with other experts and the audience themselves. Museums will, therefore, only break down barriers and broaden audiences if they tackle issues holistically by being part of a multi-agency approach.

Museums also need to demonstrate, clearly and forcefully, the positive impact a museum experience can have on the lives of many different people, because what is unknown is unlikely to be supported, funded and developed. We need to know if being involved with what's happening at the local museum does indeed contribute to people's learning, if it improves people's self-esteem and confidence, if we challenge stereotypes, if we improve job prospects, if we really are combating social disadvantage and increasing opportunities.

The challenge is to change external perceptions of museums by showing that we are exciting, dynamic and have a valuable contribution to make to the lives of people today. Museums are determined to do this and there is a chance now to seize the opportunity. If we want museums to be seen as socially useful and responsive organisations, then we have to take action and demonstrate that they are.

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Copyright © 2000 Ian Blackwell All rights reserved.

Ian Blackwell is Access and Lifelong Learning Policy Officer for England's North East Museums Libraries & Archives Council.

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