Image: Philanthropist Frédéric Jousset, launching a campaign to tackle cultural inequality through funding school visits to museums in the UK with his foundation, Art Explora, at the British Museum (David Madden)
French entrepreneur Frédéric Jousset’s Art Explora funds transport for UK schoolchildren’s museum visits after research showed 14% of teachers never take classes to museums due to cost barriers.
A French philanthropist and entrepreneur has funded travel for 100,000 museum visits for UK schoolchildren, in an effort to offset cultural inequality.
Frédéric Jousset launched the campaign from the British Museum this morning.
His foundation, Art Explora, has also teamed up with the museum, among other across the country, to launch ‘Time Odyssey’, a new interactive learning experience for 7-11 year olds.
The funding is announced after Art Explora commissioned research which found 14% of teachers have never taken their class to a museum. It also says over 60% had not organised a school museum trip in the last 12 months.
It also claims that more than half of the teachers surveyed identified cost as the main barrier to a school visit. It found a greater disparity of access for children from lower socio-economic backgrounds outside London.
Jousset, who co-founded and sold the company Webhelp for $4.8bn, created Art Explora and its investing arm ArtNova in 2019.
Last year the ‘Time Odyssey’ programme was piloted at five museums: The Yorkshire Museum, York; The Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter; The Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle upon Tyne; Manchester Museum; and South Shields Museum & Art Gallery.
The programme will expand in 2025 with new partners including National Museums Liverpool, Danum Gallery, Library and Museum, Doncaster and Tees Valley Museums.
During the period, ‘Time Odyssey’ engaged over 5,000 children, with schools travelling up to 65 miles each way to take part.
The programme will expand in 2025 with new partners including National Museums Liverpool, Danum Gallery, Library and Museum, Doncaster and Tees Valley Museums.
The interactive experience will continue to cover the school transport costs over the three years, the programme expects to take over one hundred thousand children on school trips to museums across the country.
Frédéric Jousset said: “School trips offer enrichment that cannot be experienced in the classroom. This should be a fundamental right for young people, not an optional extra. Time Odyssey levels the playing field, making sure that all children have access to culture, no matter what their background.”
Keith Merrin, Director of North East Museums, added: “Through our longstanding work with schools in the region North East Museums has seen at first hand how visiting museums can have a transformative effect on the lives and educational attainment of young people.
“With Time Odyssey we are able to widen that opportunity and particularly to those young people most in need of that transformative power of museums but who may otherwise not be able to visit.”
