Alison Gilbody
Head of Marketing, Development and Public Programmes
The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester

The Museum was founded in 1883 and was originally funded by Manchester City Council. Following the disbanding of the Metropolitan Borough Councils in 1986, the Museum became funded nationally. This continues today, as the Museum (and its designated collection/s) is one of the DCMS funded Museums that went free in December 2001. Despite having being funded nationally, the education service continued to be delivered through the local authority for a number of years, and therefore much of the marketing activity was carried out separately through education specialists and the LEA.

A market research study was carried out in 2000 as part of a collaborative project between Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester Museum and The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. All three venues had found that visits from Manchester schools were dropping. One of the striking things to come out of the survey was that there was a lack of baseline data about education visitors and no plotting of long term trends.

Alison then went on to say that this research suggested that there was a need for education and marketing departments to work much more closely together, not only at MSIM, but at other institutions. Alison then went on to explain that although MSIM still had a long way to go, they were making headway in terms of cross departmental working with Access & Learning, Public Programmes, Marketing and Curatorial functions within the Museum, and that the collaborative collecting and sharing of visitor data, through new initiatives such as a site-wide booking system and database, were really pushing things forward. She also highlighted that MSIM recognised that there were further opportunities in terms of;

a.. sharing and developing market research information collaboratively;

b.. ensuring that marketing and education specialists were included in museum/gallery developments and that visitor/gallery evaluation, whether it be from formal education visits, or from the public, be fed back into the planning process;

c.. understanding that there were opportunities to enhance and complement the work of education specialists - by not treating the schools audience as a homogenous mass, and recognising the differences and benefits of marketing to different audiences;

d.. working in partnership with other institutions as a means of sharing costs, audiences and marketing intelligence.