Okay so i'm going to start sharing
the file now Okay so I'm going to start with the ALVA
research that's the Association of Large Visitor Attractions and what
they've been doing is collecting visitor intentions for coming back to
museums and heritage sites since April, and then
they've been publishing this research every month.
So I'll start with that and kind of looking at the challenges that this
raises for museums, particularly in terms of family visits
and then i'm going to look at some ways
that
UK and International museums have overcome some of these
challenges raised by the survey. So let's start with the survey information.
Confidence in visiting outdoor attractions is still higher compared to
indoor attractions and a lot of that concern is around how
other visitors will behave when you get on site. Having a warm
welcome and patience from staff has been important in all of the
surveys as is bringing flexibility to bring your
own food and we do know that families are more likely
than any
other museum audience to want to bring their own food particularly if they've
got younger children visiting with them. In
the July survey there's been a demand for services, so
not surprisingly toilets came out the top
service that people wanted to see followed by interactives, audio guides,
and cafes. 47 percent of respondents felt that their visit
would be less good without interactives and actually 22 percent
felt that they wouldn't want to visit at all if there were no interactives
available 53 percent of respondents felt anxious about
using interactives. And the good news is that there's been a five percent raise in their confidence in
families wanting to return back to museums. That's really good news.
So let's think about ways that you can overcome some of the challenges that
have come out of the ALVA research, so first
of all information that you might want to have
on your website. so obviously the government guidelines
say that having clear information about what
vi
sitors can expect on site in terms of safety measures
and also whether people have to pre-book is really important
but we have noticed that a lot of museums are putting this information on
their home pages but not on their families pages or their
access pages, so just making sure that information is consistent throughout
your website because different audiences might
actually access different pages of your website
not just the home page first. As well as safety considerations
and things that yo
u have in place thinking through how a family might
actually want, what facilities they might
want to have on site and what kind of restrictions might be in place
which would impact on their visit. so the Museum of London for example
they've got quite a good families page and they've thought
through about families so for example they have a
cafe which you can go and get take away food
but their restaurant isn't open at the moment so they've made that into an
indoor eating picnic space which is r
eally good
for families. They usually have a buggy park in the entrance which is not going
to be available at the moment so they've said that families can just
bring their buggies around the galleries so just thinking through those things
and putting that information on your website is going to be really important
another way to kind of clearly communicate that you're safe and
welcoming is by creating a welcome film.
There's some really good examples of these so Chester Zoo for example
is really
playful, as is the RAF Museum and
the Museum of Royal Worcester really kind of
shows you how families can kind of interact on site what kind of activities
they can do concerns that they might have
in terms of space and how to overcome those. So they kind
of thought this through really well on their welcome film. If you can't have
a film on your website then maybe having a visual story might be another way
that you can communicate this information to families.Visual stories you might already hav
e on your access pages
which are simple documents which have images and simple text
explaining how visitors might arrive on site
from different transport hubs maybe walking or
going through the car park what they might
expect when they get on site and also what facilities are available. So another way to communicate clearly to
families is through your social media For example featuring families having
fun when you are reopened and kind of what
activities are available is really important and al
so if
you get any families actually tagging you in when
they've gone for a day out making sure that you're sharing these more widely
to kind of have that really strong message that you are open you are
welcoming and families are still having a good
time on your site. I quite like this example from the Yorkshire Air Museum
when they reopened on the 4th of July they actually got a young super fan
he came dressed up in his top gun outfit he reopened the museum and
they got some really good coverag
e on local tv and radio networks
which also raised their profile. Kids in Museums have started off a hashtag
called Kids Back in Museums and we're asking families and museums to use this
and to share their photographs of families having fun back in museums.
The ALVA research has shown that a lot of families are more likely to
spend time locally and particularly kind of within walking distance or very
short trips so if you're kind of listing your
information on local say council listing sites or
maybe local facebook groups
you're more likely to raise your profile with this audience and encourage
families to visit. a lot of families can't actually come
back at the moment so families might still be shielding for
example they might have to do that for a few months to come,
so thinking through how you engage with those families, I quite like this
example from the National Museums Liverpool
and they have quite a comprehensive frequently asked questions on their
website so they've actually si
gned posted
families to their online activities which they created during lockdown
to make sure that families that can't come are still engaged with them. so now moving on to actually when
families get on site and so obviously for a lot of families
that might be say frequent visitors they might have a very different
experience of coming back to a museum than pre-COVID times so thinking
through how families will be welcomed when they get on site
by staff. Having that friendly welcome is even more
important.
Also making sure that interactions with staff throughout a visit
and kind of enforcing the social distancing rules etc
there's a lot of patience with staff. Chester Zoo for example they did some training with their front facing
team in advance of reopening and
they actually thought through scenarios that might come up
in terms of social distancing reinforcement etc
and they thought about some playful interactions so for example a Tapir
is an animal they have at the zoo and it can we
e up to two meters behind them so
use that example when trying to get families to social distance.
They also have a one-way system and so to make sure that families are
staying behind the line they're saying the other side of the line
has say lava or crocodiles in it so just
trying to be more playful with their interactions.
If staff and volunteers can't speak to all families that come on site then
having some signage which is family specific and has
information about the social distancing rules
or things
that you have in place but also things/activities that families
can do, particularly if you're taking out interactives
what alternatives can you offer families to do like trails for example.
I quite like this example in terms of signage obviously signage is going to be
increased in museums now this is from Te Papa
Museum in New Zealand and they say that they
they wanted their signage to be clear concise and consistent and that it's warm and welcoming so i've given example of this here
from Auckland museum in New Zealand so this is using a hedgehog from their
collections in their social distancing laminates they have on their floor and
this is Prickles and he says "two meters apart please
and don't make Prickles angry" which i thought was a really nice example of
using the collections but having that warm welcome and
consistent signage for their site so now thinking about facilities
obviously some of this was mentioned in the previous information,
but a few things to point ou
t here we'll see sanitizer dispensers are going
to be quite popular in museums now and
kind of throughout a site so just making sure some of these are
a low level so that wheelchair users and children can
reach them so that parent carers don't have to keep
picking up their children to reach sanitizer dispensers.
Going back to the kind of food and drink on site so if you don't have a
cafe or you don't have an undercover area, if you've got outside space can
you encourage families to maybe bring a
picnic blanket with them or have a
marquee or if you can't offer any of these
things making sure that's going on your website so that families can
eat before they come for a visit thinking through where you might have
rest stops if you've kind of got changes to your site which means you
might not have as many seating areas but maybe thinking through,
particularly if you're quite big sites where you might have seating or whether
you can offer things like portable seating still.
So Tate for examp
le they're still offering their foldable stools
and they're cleaning these in between use
also thinking about the accessibility of your site when you're making changes
and at the end of this presentation I've got a link
where you can have a look at our manifesto points in terms of family
friendly reopening and the "Be Accessible" point has got some
really good resources you can have a look at
around how to make your site accessible. So now thinking about the fact that
families come in all differ
ent shapes and sizes
so particularly if you are a charging site so you charge for entry for example,
thinking through about your ticketing so that is flexible. We have come
across a guardian article which stated that for a lot of single parents
they're finding ticket costs a real barrier for them to
visit because actually there's not a lot of difference between what they'd be
paying as a single parent compared to say two
parents and two or three children. Also thinking about whether you can
offe
r discounts for families to come back during the summer
so Cutty Sark for example in Greenwich they usually attract quite
a lot of tourists this time of year but they want a more local audience to
come and visit them so they're offering local people the opportunity to have
one adult and one child free. Also thinking about what families might
want to get out of a visit to your museum
so Chester Zoo for example, when you buy a ticket with them
then you get sent a link and that has information abou
t trails that you can
download before you visit and they've thought through some
different types of experiences that families can have through doing
these trails. They have a play based trail, they have a well-being trail and
also a learning trail. they've also thought about things that
families could do together on a journey particularly to try and
overcome sort of anxiety that children might have about coming back
to a museum. Having something to do on a journey.
And also thinking through whet
her you want to offer say if you are doing
time slots having a families only time slot.
So I know some of the museums in Manchester for example
they do quite a lot of early years work and they're thinking through whether
they can just offer a morning where it's parents with early years
children only. so now i'm moving on to interactives
so the first example is traffic light cleaning systems
is used in an austrian hands-on museum in Europe.
Obviously hands-on museums they won't be able to reopen
if they didn't
have some interactives open so what they've done is they've
introduced this traffic light system where say a family has a go at an
interactive and then that family changes the interactive colour to red to show
that they've used it and it's now ready to be cleaned and so
staff can then clean it and then the staff change it back to green again
so that the next family knows that it's been cleaned and they can use
it. a lot of museums in the uk seem to be
going down the route of using
hand sanitizer gel
before or after using interactives and then having staff cleaning them in
between as well not every time but quite frequently throughout the day. A lot of schools are using hand sanitizer gel so say if children are sharing things like
whiteboard marker pens and then the children will use the hand
sanitizer gel before using the whiteboard marker
so that's one way of doing it the museum of london
they have tried to overcome touch screens by
having infrared technology installed
with their touch screens
so that visitors just wave their hands in front of the screen
to turn pages. A lot of US museums are thinking through about using disposable
styluses obviously that does have an
environmental impact but can be one way around touch screens
and also if you are taking out things like colouring in areas
also dressing up areas maybe providing more playful areas within your
museum can be another alternative so this example here is pre-COVID
from the people's history museum but
shows a good example of this so
they've looked at how people protest throughout the ages
and so they set up these taped areas on the floor so that
families can can lie in these positions and so if these were say two meters
apart that could be one way of doing it. so now i'm going on to think about kind
of portable things that you could give out to
visitors or people could bring with them on a visit so obviously using things
like smartphones and having trails digital trails for families to do
ar
ound a museum and families downloading those in advance can be one way of doing
it Bletchley Park are giving out earbuds to
all visitors so they can put those on the top of
their earphones before they come for a visit they take those
with them so they don't have to clean them in between use.
Also the idea that you could if you've got say dressing up areas you're
not able to offer this anymore then enabling children to maybe come
dressed up already or if you've got activities on your
website say
hat making or mask making that children can make these in advance
and wear them when they come to the museum.
The Czechoslovakian museum are giving out family kits so this is the example
i've got here. In those kits they've got things like pencils, paper,
scissors, an anti-stress ball which i thought was a really nice idea
to help with any anxiety that children might have when they're on site
and also things like binoculars and magnifying glasses so you might already
have things like explorer pa
cks with these things in
which can either be cleaned in between usage or maybe even quarantined
so on most surfaces the disease dies out within 72 hours so thinking
through whether you can quarantine things instead.
Obviously things like paper-based trails can be another way to go
but thinking through particularly if you've got limited space around objects and whether
you want to have specific objects referred to in the trail or
whether you want to make them more open-ended, obviously for smalle
r children things like: can you spot anything that's
the colour red, for example some museums that haven't been able to
reopen have thought through or kind of have limited spaces reopened are thinking about using walking trails so you walk around a town or
an area and the museum is included in that.
And finally thinking through about staff and volunteer-led
opportunities so if you're lucky to have an outdoor space maybe doing your
activities in an outdoor space where families feel more safe
so t
hat could be under a marquee for example or the Museum of Water and
Steam in London they've got a few activities in their
outdoor spaces particularly for younger children
so this example here at the bottom you sanitize your hands first and you can
help water their garden. in terms of kind of staff led
activities there may be doing things like
guiding so the the Roald Dahl
museum for example they have a lot of hands-on
areas in their museum and so what they've decided to do is have
family bubble
tours around the museum instead obviously we talked a bit in terms of the Chester Zoo example with kind of playful interactions with staff
so some of the hands-on museums in Europe for example
are getting their children to show the staff how they wash their hands
because obviously most children know how to do that really well
now and before they start activities If you want to do things like craft
activities, then having say a plastic wallet with all the things
they might need to make their cra
ft activities rather than sharing things
which obviously you can't do is something that some of the US
museums are doing a lot of US museums are also thinking
through whether they can do foot based activities
so say for example could you do object handling but using your feet instead
and then it can be a really good opportunity to try something temporary
because of the covid restrictions and so things like using chalk for
example so again sanitizing your hands using chalk
something that can be w
ashed away from outside spaces so has anyone got any questions now what i'm going to do is just give an
overview some of the things that we've got coming up
so as i mentioned throughout this presentation we've got
our manifesto plan for reopening document which has got some of the
information that I've given you throughout this
presentation as well as extra information including the access
information you can have a look at there that's the
link to the ALVA research for the most recent
way from
July as I mentioned about the Kids Back in Museums
social media campaign we're encouraging families and museums to use this. Where's Wally: last year some museums took part in the Where's Wally
campaign which we did in partnership with Walker
Books and that was where Walker Books sent out some little mini
Wallys which you could hide amongst your collection and then also some
trails so that families coming to the site
could find those throughout your collection
we did find a lot of museums that t
ook part in this
found that they had lots of extra families coming during October half term
last year and so we're asking if museums are
interested in that if they fill in the form
by the 31st of July. We also have our National Play Day event on the 5th of
August so that is in partnership with
Charlotte Derry from Playful Places, a messing around in the museum
event so she's going to be looking at ways that you could use things like
loose parts so things like chalk and other things
the kind of m
ore playful ways of families interacting with your museum
and also we're giving 10 museums the opportunity to get some
one-to-one mentoring from Charlotte to find out what would work on their site
and then we're asking those museums to create a case study for us which
we'll then share with the rest of the sector.
That's my email address if you want to get in touch but thank you very much for
listening.
Comments