‘Seizing opportunities – when a corporate agenda can have educational outcomes’
Jean Hunter

So if museums have rediscovered their original raison d’etre, what is happening to bring education and learning back to the forefront of museum life? A huge investment in education has triggered this developme

AND a registered independent charitable educational Trust (no local/central govt subsidy) – core financial challenge to generate sufficient revenue for core conservation, maintenance AND educational/interpretation programme

CHALLENGE FOR HAREWOOD – to meet financial imperatives
- in order to meet educational/access imperatives
- and communicate appropriately to the diverse target audiences

ROLE OF MARKETING
Very clear in relation to generating audiences for the various products above:
To develop products/programme of activities and initiatives and promote them to the appropriate audiences to maximise visitor numbers and revenue to meet challenging annual revenue targets

What does this mean in relation to access and learning programmes – less clear as an active role.

HOWEVER – the marketing process – of identifying markets (audiences) and assessing their needs, and creating products (programmes, activities) that reflect these – applies equally strongly within an educational context – if within a different framework of reference and evaluation than in a regular ‘commercial’ marketplace

THE ONLY DIFFERENCE is that this process is currently an invisible, and often unconscious one.

THE QUESTION RELATING TO THE ROLE OF MARKETING AND EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY IS THEREFORE NOT WHETHER TO DO IT (AS IT IS HAPPENING ANYWAY, BUT USUALLY BADLY) BUT WHETHER TO DO IT IN A DELIBERATE, STRATEGIC AND THEREFORE (hopefully) MORE EFFECTIVE WAY

Another invaluable strategy FROM MARKETING PRACTICE IS IN EVALUATING RESULTS AND APPLYING THEM TO FUTURE ACTIVITIES – REFINING GOOD PRACTICE AND ROLLING IT OUT IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS. THIS IS BORNE OUT BY THE CASE STUDY.

CASE STUDY

The case study I’m going to outline today draws the two worlds of corporate marketing and educational activity very closely together. Unusually, it was the corporate initiative that triggered and enabled the educational activity, through a series of developmental meetings – and explorations of potential mutual benefit – that created a project with huge educational value.

Harewood was approached by Walker Morris, a previous sponsor, about being the Northern venue for an exhibition by Royal Academy postgraduate students. WM were already sponsoring the summer students’ show at the Royal Academy in London, and wanted a venue for a selection of the works close to Leeds where they could host some corporate entertaining.

Harewood were happy to take the exhibition for 2 weeks at the end of the 2003 season: it brought in another exhibition for repeat visitors at the end of the year; and might draw some other, incremental visitors (and revenue). Also reinforced a link with major national arts institution, begun in the previous year.

Because the Walker Morris/Harewood House Trust partnership had been successful in attracting an Arts & Business award in the past, we started discussions with A&B to see if there were any other possibilities for support – and found out that there was remaining budget to bid for - especially for an associated educational programme.

Complicated discussions ensued – involving WM and Harewood marketing and education officers – coordinating approaches to RA outreach dept; RA postgraduate dept; University of Leeds School of Education (involvement of PGCE student art teachers); and local secondary school teachers. The outcome was that a major A&B award £25,000 supported a unique, radical, innovative ‘access and learning’ programme tied into the exhibition:

EDUCATING THE EDUCATORS (PRESENT AND FUTURE)

• postgraduate students whose work was in the exhibition came to Harewood to speak with PGCE trainee art teachers
• an experienced RA artist spent 2 weeks at Harewood, planning and then actively mediating/ enabling the postgraduate students to work with the 40 PGCE trainee art teachers
• the same RA artist then led workshops with the trainee art teachers, and groups of secondary school students (and their teachers)
  100 secondary school students attended - broken into 5 groups of 20 organised vertically yrs 7-13, to trial working together across age ranges. Based on system of cascade teaching – the workshop provider would act as a model of good teaching practice outside a school environment.
  
• NB this was in response to the new teaching orders for teaching of trainee teachers issued in 2002 – specifying that trainee teachers have to have experience of teaching outside the classroom. A requirement now being followed up widely among musuems.

INSPIRING THE CORPORATE EMPLOYEES
iv experienced mediators worked with Walker Morris staff – c 20 solicitors and legal staff – using the RA exhibition as the starting point for creative workshops.

OH YES, AND PROVIDING AN EXCELLENT PLATFORM FOR CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS
v directly to clients (current and potential) at the corporate hospitality evening
vi via media coverage – extremely successful for both the sponsorship and the educational activities

The programme was hugely successful – evaluation required is still being completed, but feedback was uniformly positive from the artists; the pgce students; the established teachers; the secondary school students; the sponsors employees; visitors to the exhibition. A CD Rom is being produced to go onto the Harewood website to extend access to the project even more widely.

It created a framework for an extremely exciting intervention into art teaching practice; and has provided a case study for other similar projects (both at Harewood and elsewhere).

All from an initial simple corporate hospitality enquiry – but built via close marketing/educational teamwork, into a major educational initiative.

OTHER EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS

CHISWELL – TRANSPORT BURSARY PROGRAMME
Been running since 2000.
Initially matched by Arts & Business New Partners award
Part of an overall package extending access to inner city schools – targeted by Ed Dept.
Since started –
2001 21 schools 673 children 89 adults
2002 23 700 73
2003 20 618 86

SOCIAL INCLUSION – GREEN TRANSPORT PLAN
One such 'new' development was around the sustainable transport issue. Jean 'pitched' for, and was selected by, Transport 2000 (from 43 submissions) as the UK leisure attraction to develop a Green Travel Plan as part of their 'Tourism without Traffic' initiative in 2000 - the resulting paper 'Easy Arrivals' documents research and practical strategies adopted so far - which are, of course, ongoing. Initiatives include providing a free shuttle service up and down the drive; and promoting a half-price admission for public transport users.
Have built number of visitors by public transport from a handful in 1999 to:
2000 878
2001 2574
2002 3147
2003. 3459

OTHER POINTS
Educational activity often the iceberg below the surface of obvious activity – but it underpins all the public activity of any real worth.
BUT – can be very precious and selective – ed officers only really want to deal with particular groups that conform to their own criteria.
Need to roll out educational programmes more widely, to the widest audiences as part of a normal visit – not just make special attempts for specific audiences – this can be extremely patronising…..

Targeting new audiences – Walking with Dinosaurs and a half price entry ticket in Yorkshire Post has triggered more non-typical visitors than any other activity recently – especially those to target specific audiences. Sometimes we miss the obvious.