This week I attended a walk and talk facilitated group in the Yorkshire Dales. Time to unpick challenges and work through the next 12 months.
My word of the trip in relation to work was “frustrated”. Time to take action.

Transformation: making a ruckus
This week I attended a walk and talk facilitated group in the Yorkshire Dales. Time to unpick challenges and work through the next 12 months.
My word of the trip in relation to work was “frustrated”. Time to take action.
We want to be successful. One of the aims to achieve success is to know our individual fans/users/customers better. Knowing their needs allows us to design and run better services. A good service is an effective service. From the many anonymous interactions we have every day, we want to shine light on those touchpoints to know as many of them as we can.
Instead of just using generic terms like “total visitors to site (online and in-person), website visits per quarter, google review score, Spend per head etc there is an opportunity to be better informed. With better insights we can make data-informed decisions that don’t treat everyone identically the same. Kevin Kelly wrote about the benefits of having 1000 true fans which in summary says within any large group of people are die hard fans who give you momentum (MVP adjacent).
Find them by building services that allow you to identify who they are across your services (opt-in of course). Use their data test assumptions about how our worldviews collide. Spot something that doesn’t work and fix it. Fix it for the fans and you’ll probably be fixing it for everyone.
Firstly, thanks to the good folks at Museum Connections for the invitation. I joined a great panel and 150 attendees to discuss how we’re trying to close the particapation gap at Birmingham Museums Trust. The headphones in the above photo were for the live translation not for the vibes!
My whole career to date has been about “helpful to people” so the focusing on those who visit vs those who don’t is a topic close to my heart.
Below is a mix of my thoughts and notes for the session. Hat tip to Sara and Mark O’Neill for their thoughts on the session in advance.
Over the past few years, the social role of cultural institutions has continued to evolve, adapting to contemporary challenges. Despite increasing pressure to generate revenue, cultural venues are redefining their social and solidarity efforts to meet current needs, moving beyond free admission alone. This panel discussion explores studies examining the real barriers that prevent people in precarious situations from visiting cultural institutions. We will focus on the role of these institutions in supporting ambitious, long-term inclusion programs and their funding. Additionally, we will address how cultural venues can raise awareness and advocate against exclusion, both internally and externally.
Who’s it for?
BMT runs 9 sites in Birmingham, UK which is in the middle of the country with only London having larger population. Population of 1.1m with 6m people in the region.
We reach up to 1m visitors per year at our physical sites plus several million online AND up to 10m via objects on loan around the world. Birmingham is nearly 50% people of colour and has a young population.
The City Council has gone bankrupt (s114) and we are operating within the impact ofthe deepest financial crisis.
What’s it for?
Culture is a basic human right and therefore should be universal. We think Museum audiences should be broadly representative of society. If we have barriers then we are failing people.
In the book Culture is Bad for you, they focus on failings over 40 years between both the creation and consumption of culture and how this highlights the inequality.
At BMT we’re working on being part of the solution. One element of this is a research Project called Addressing the museum attendance and benefit gap with University of Leicester.
Survey data on who visits museums and decades of research in cultural sociology internationally tell us that museum visiting reflects the socio-economic gradient, closely tracking inequalities in education, income, employment, mental health and other indicators of social wellbeing. Despite the scale of existing evidence, including evidence that the attendance and benefit gap may be increasing, government policy, professional guidance and research undertaken by museums themselves continue with little or no recognition of this wider context and macro data and, as a result, have failed to develop sustainable evidence-based solutions to address inequalities in museum attendance and benefit.
This Network explores the hypothesis that a deeper understanding within museums and museology of (1) the nature and experience of inequality and (2) how large-scale social and behaviour change is approached in other fields, such as health, would open up the capacity in museums and amongst museum scholars to understand, theorise, design, implement, evaluate and sustain practices which may address the attendance and benefit gap.
Together we are asking:
Our Museum visiting reflects the socio-economic gradient, closely tracking inequalities in education, income, employment, mental health and other indicators of social wellbeing.
The graph shows a gap of approx 25% between cohorts. Change is needed at “population level change” as small interventions don’t move the needle enough.
BMT has 9 sites. We oeprate both free and charging yet the types of people who visit are the same for both FREE and paid which shows that chargign isn’t the barrier in the way we often think it is.
Mark O’Neill, a key collaborator says: Museums that are interested in increasing access create more accessible displays, using Universal Design principles and storytelling. They increase the representation of the culture and heritage of previously excluded groups and above all they create a welcoming atmosphere for novice visitors and their families. They also have a range of engagement programmes, involving activities under headings like Wellbeing, creativity, social inclusion and social mobility. CO-production, greatly inspired by Nina Simon’s book on the Participatory Museum is often seen as the key to radically improved inclusion.
As an aside the book Universal Design Principles was a key text for me when I was studying Computing and a copy still sits by my desk!
Library example
Libraries promote literacy through provision of books and support.
Throughout 2024 BMT ran the UK Museums first citizen Jury.
28 people who represent the city at population level. 30 hours of delibration and produced 21 recommendations which we share from the 30th January.
Quick examples
Socioeconomic Gradient (SEG) covers
The seven principles of universal design
Books
Thanks to https://www.theopticalpeople.co.uk/ for hosting. Tonight I got to test a pair of Ray-ban’s meta glasses. Wearable technology continues to be pipe dream but someone’s got to win at some point eh? The glasses have a camera function (yes it’s slightly creepy concept regarding privacy but not much more than a phone) to record both still images and video. The video can be live streamed for all those dancefloor moments, crossing the line running etc.
The audio from Spotify worked very well and they were just comfortable to wear.
As a non-glasses needer I’m always intrigued by how the industry will convince someone without the need. Interactively is the obvious use case or the live stream for niche activities (like the live F1 camera helmet camera) but neither work for those immediately around you – again raising privacy issues.
Anyway it was fun to see after a decade since my last dabble.
I’ve used Basecamp since at least 2013. Basecamp is an online tool for managing projects. I’ve personally used it for both enterprise organisation wide usage and freelance/consultancy. New for 2025 is the return of a free tier for managing one project at a time. This is good because it helps you try it without any cost.
in December 2024 new Research to understand and monetise the impact of engagement with culture and heritage on health and wellbeing.
Read the research https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/675b166a348e10a16975a41a/rpt_-_Frontier_Health_and_Wellbeing_Final_Report_09_12_24_accessible_final.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/culture-and-heritage-capital-research-and-outputs
I like reading. Every year I keep a list of “books” I read or listen to. Check out my previous years too.
As a I type, I have 163 tasks to review and/or complete. It is tempting to rattle through the list and choose a juicy one. Start 2-3 easy ones. Instead I am going to force myself to complete a whole task. Then do the same with the next one. Quiet progress step by step, one by one.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/charles-handy-obituary-corporate-philosopher-and-author-mczk5gm06
Maverick management guru whose strategy was to spend 100 days a year earning, 100 days writing and 100 days on fun, with the rest spent on volunteering