Sue Underwood
Chief Executive
NEMLAC

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 development.

The investment in education ranges from £20m - £50m - £100m? more? Among these investors is the Heritage Lottery Fund (£2.8 billion in heritage since 1995, 28 per cent of this has been spent on projects with an educational element. DCMS with the £1m Education Challenge Fund in 2000, the investment in National Museum programmes, and more recently the National and Regional Strategic Partnerships, with £2.5m announced in June 2003 as part of the Renaissance Programme. DfES has allocated £3.5m to MPEG. DCMS, via MLA Council (Resource), allocates major funding for learning through the Designation Challenge Fund and, of course, Renaissance in the Regions has seen £12.2m for school education programmes in the English regions over three years; £8m for the Phase 1 hubs; £2.1m in North East; £2.8m in South West and £3.1m in West Midlands, with the remaining £3.2m for the other regions.

And then there is local authority funding directly and indirectly (as leverage) and the funding from MLACs, Arts Council and Arts Council Lottery…. and then there are the charitable organisations, for example the Clore Duffield Foundation has invested £1m since 1998 in museum education projects

And our own re-education as a profession has been dramatic, the dissenting voice of staff unwillingly to recognise the role of education or communities is now, on the whole, a lone one. All major museums have education staff, and looking at the job titles of people in this audience here today, the range of roles is astonishing. In the North East, the number of education staff working in museums in the region has increased by 50% since 2000. Our challenge is to ensure we have a more diverse range of employees who will challenge us to think anew.

She quoted from Catherine Rose’s excellent work, ‘Building Better Relationships with schools’:

‘’ What marketing can do for education…find existing research to assist planning; plan and undertake action-research to inform strategies; carry out database analysis; identify target groups; provide audience profiles; organise mailings; and build collaborative audience development projects into business strategies.

What education can do for marketing… share direct contact with participants; help match events with appropriate groups; convey real experiences and information; evaluate how well communication is working between the organisation and the audience; offer specialist education advice; and help organise events to ensure they are more accessible.

What marketing and education can do for each other… be part of each other’s teams; present a unified front by bringing information on all aspects of the programme to the senior managers; work together to raise the profile of the organisation through different but complimentary channels; develop together strategies for future activities; share access to different internal and external budgets; develop real strategies for on-going relationships with audiences; and share each other’s knowledge and skills’.

The next few years…. will depend on us obtaining and using knowledge to our advantage, on being prepared to work collaboratively perhaps internally as much as externally, on being able to translate people’s responses into meaningful testimonies, and being advocates of our successes. Thankfully, we have a Framework, which Sue Wilkinson will shortly explain, and a number of toolkits to allow us to respond to these challenges. We have come a long way, and it may look like a long and winding road ahead, but we at least now, with the Inspiring Learning Framework, we have a map.

Thank you.