Amy De Joija,
Director of Development,
National Museums Liverpool

In July 2003, we adopted a new statement of aims and beliefs, which was developed by staff across the organisation – setting out the vision, mission and values of NML – and placing accessible learning, at the centre of our agenda. This clarity of purpose has helped us in relation to our current policy of free admission to all events, exhibitions and venues. NML has invested in staff with 40 education staff representing 7.25 per cent of the staffing budget. The Learning Division has recently completed a detailed review and three year development plan. This means that education staff will no longer be site specific but will relate to the key areas of learning operation and integrate formal and informal learning. We have created a new senior strategy team. Our new team includes a learning research officer.

Underpinning all of the issues surrounding sustainable, accessible learning must be an understanding of the audience. Who is coming and why? Who isn’t and why? What do our actual and potential audiences want? What are the key target markets?

We know that we will have received at least 1.5m visits to NML in 2003 – an increase of 250k on the same period last year, and a great news story for Liverpool and NML. We know that of those some 38% are children, some 34% are C2DEs – the highest percentages of any of the English nationals, incidentally. We also know that c.60% of our visitors come from the region. And, we know that 115,000 children took part in formal learning programmes this year – and a real increase on the previous year, but there is still much capacity to build.

But we don’t really know much more about the people that come, and why they come. We need to – learning and marketing research need to work hand in glove now more than ever.

What we have found at NML was that, while our audience researchers were working hard to gather data, staff generally were not interrogating or analysing, or using information to develop strategy or programmes. In particular, for learning we found that - if we are honest – our understanding of our markets in the past has not been based on rigorous assessment of data and discussion with users/potential users, but it tended towards partial analysis, tradition, and even sometimes, perhaps, wishful thinking.

Again, things are changing at NML. The learning team is working with our marketing staff, curators, and other colleagues - and with external learning providers - to understand our actual and potential learning audiences. With, for example, more than 3,500 primary schools in the region, and more than 45,000 higher education students in Liverpool alone, on the one hand – and on the other, when the average KS 3 GCSE and truancy rates for local education authorities are compared, out of 150 authorities, Knowsley was rated at 149th, and Liverpool itself at 128th – there’s a lot of potential.

Our current work includes:

• Annual visitor profiling survey of visitors to all venues,
• ACORN consumer classification undertaken for all venues earlier this year -
• Personal meaning mapping
• We also exploring cost-effective ways of delivering meaningful non-visitor research, working, wherever possible, in partnership.

What it has showed us is that we are strong in some areas, yes, but there are many gaps. While some of those gaps may be for good reason, it is quite clear that we are not yet maximising our core offer – which will be critical to sustainability. We’ve got fabulous content and spaces and staff expertise, but we are not linking them to identified learning needs and interests as fully as we might. We are beginning to address this with a detailed 2004/5 programme drawn up by the learning staff in consultation across NML and with some of our key learning providers, and are building in our own targets and evaluation, which we hope will inform our future developments, and inform others who might be interested in our approach.

Crucial to our understanding of our markets is dialogue with actual and potential partners, locally, regionally and nationally – from the museum, wider cultural, community and educational sectors.

Many of our existing partnerships are funding partnerships. Most of those in the learning arena relate to our work with local, socially-excluded communities – which are enabling us to deliver specific time-limited projects. But by their very nature, they cannot deliver long-term sustainability in themselves. The opportunity - the challenge - is to build towards sustainability through successful project work.

I asked several of the Learning team and some of our partners who have been involved in recent projects to offer some practical advice on sustaining developments. And this is some of what they said:

• Wherever possible, integrate project-specific staff with the core team – both learn from each other
• Build in sustainable resource materials as part of the project, so that there is - at the very least - a valuable legacy of the project work, which can be used by other museums, organisations and communities. For example, our refugee and asylum seeker work has created detailed guidance notes for tutors and group leaders which will help them in future self-manage their visit.
• Build in project evaluation – and make it available to other museums so that lessons are learned, and future spend goes on building on success, rather than replicating unwittingly things that haven’t worked.
• From the outset of the project, identify elements that, if successful, could be built into a core programme – and realign budgets accordingly.
• In introducing new audiences to projects, remember also to introduce them to opportunities in the regular programme – it is through the regular programme that long term sustainability can be guaranteed.
• Don’t impose projects on partners – develop projects and programmes with them.
• Don’t rely on future funding or fundraising coming along to keep a project going. Be realistic and honest with project staff and participants, and don’t promise more than can be delivered.
• Don’t stop fundraising either! Never stop developing partnerships – they are the key to understanding new and diverse markets.
• Develop partnerships not just to realise our own projects – but to advocate on behalf of the sector for long-term funding, allocated strategically, without the seemingly endless bidding and delivery cycle.
• Call for a co-ordinated approach to sharing information - and training - on museums learning across the sector. A properly facilitated one-stop shop.
• And getting to the heart of this conference today, make the most of the project work through effective and intelligent marketing – and take lessons learned into the core marketing and communications activity of your museum.

Many thanks to David Fleming (Director of NML) Carol Rogers (Head of Learning at NML), Kate Rodenhurst (Head of Community Partnerships), and Barbara Hope (head of Marketing and Public Affairs) for advice, information and support in preparing this paper.