RCMG-led partnership will develop implementation framework to close museum benefit gap, drawing on implementation science and sector expertise.
A four-year research partnership is to examine how museums can reduce inequalities in visitor demographics and societal benefits.
The project, led by The Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester, has secured £1.49m from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
The ‘Addressing the Museum Attendance and Benefit Gap’ project brings together Birmingham Museums Trust, University of Birmingham, UCL and multiple sector partners to develop evidence-based approaches to widening participation.
The research team will conduct a major survey of existing knowledge on opening museums to more representative audiences and test new approaches to public programming at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Why educational attainment correlates with increased visits
The University of Leicester says nationally and internationally, museum visiting continues to reflect wider social inequalities, and more specifically, that most people who participate in state-sponsored cultural forms, including museums, continue to be more highly educated and more economically advantaged.
In particular the project will explore the practical implications of the fact that the most significant predictor of museum visiting is level of educational attainment – visiting increases at each educational level, with the most significant jump at degree level.
Professor Suzanne MacLeod from the University of Leicester School of Heritage and Culture said: “We need new levels of research rigour and strategic analysis to understand and address population-level inequalities in attendance.
MacLeod said there was great potential in “[a]sking how change management insights from the Health Sciences might be adapted in the cultural sector so that museums can use their research resources to really understand and remain focused on what it takes to shape a democratic, public museum”.
The project will develop a Research and Implementation Framework combining expertise from Museum Studies, Sociology, Implementation Science and museum practice. This framework will support museums in closing the attendance and benefit gap and advancing culture’s role in developing reflective individuals and engaged citizens.
Dr Mark O’Neill, project co-lead and previously Head of Glasgow Museums, said the research “will generate the breakthrough knowledge about ‘what works’ in creating genuinely inclusive museums.”
Sara Wajid, co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust, said: “As far as I know there is no other research project which has so much potential to transform museums’ capacity to contribute to a culturally richer, more democratic and less polarised society.”
Embedding learning with partners
The project’s final year will identify lessons for the wider sector, working with Museums Association, English Heritage, National Museums Liverpool, National Museums NI, Paisley Museum, National Trust, Art Fund, National Portrait Gallery and DCMS to embed the learning.
Professor Theano Moussouri, project co-lead and Professor of Museum Studies at UCL, said: “We aim to generate robust evidence on how education as well as social class, gender, and ethnicity influence access to and engagement with museums. Our findings will inform strategies to make museums more inclusive and ensure that their cultural, social and educational benefits are equitably shared across society.”
The project builds on earlier AHRC-funded research, which explored who visits and benefits from museums, and who is missing from museum audiences (available at museumattendance.le.ac.uk)
