Summary of key milestones, from 2025–30

The next five years will be transformative for Birmingham’s museums. If we get this right, they will feel like home to all our communities – and will be well placed to thrive beyond 2030.

Major milestones that this strategy will deliver

• 2026 - A new programme plan that learns from our audiences and presents events, experiences and exhibitions that reflect Birmingham’s people, across a wide range of formats.
• 2025 - 2026 - A museum service that becomes a beacon for the cultural sector, involving employees and citizens in decision-making.
• 2026 - 2027 - A comprehensive plan and set of tools to support our workforce and volunteers – who act as advocates for Birmingham’s museums.
• 2027 - A thriving and mature commercial business that supports Birmingham’s creatives, businesses and organisations, and helps sustain our core museum activities.
• 2028 - A refreshed Birmingham Museums Trust brand presence – updating how the people’s museums are seen in Birmingham and beyond, and developed in partnership with trusted local organisations.
• 2030 - Accreditation for our research organisation, the Cultural Citizenship Research Centre, delivering breakthrough insights on collections that matter to our communities.
• 2030 - A supported plan for a ‘City of Ideas’ Science Museum, to replace Thinktank.
• 2031 - Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery fully refurbished and reopened.
• 2032 - The people’s collections fully accessible online.

Implementation: What we will achieve by 2027

Experience

• Launch our Audience Development Plan.
• Develop a programme offer and experiences, mapped to the needs of our segmented audiences.
• Identify and start to implement a strategic approach to using our collections, to support community projects and partner programmes.
• Identify and start to deliver a refreshed Learning Strategy, focussed on the most relevant, financially viable and equitable core learning activities – including an ambitious, impactful and recognised formal and informal learning offer.
• Map the potential for digital engagement, skills and career development, in partnership with city organisations.
• Define our new research centre model, financial case for support, key partners, capacity, and a forward programme of research.

Infrastructure

• Temporarily reopen seven Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery galleries (until 2029).
• Submit Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery Phase 2 capital development plans to The National Lottery Heritage Fund and RIBA Stage 1+.
• Complete short-term improvements at Thinktank (shop, picnic area relocation, science garden access, third-floor visitor experience).
• Secure a long-term lease for Millennium Point (or an alternative), with Birmingham City Council support for the science museum.
• Develop medium to long term partnership models with third parties to enable community-led activity at select historic properties.
• Complete essential repairs, redisplay and improvements to visitor experience at Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, Soho House, Blakesley Hall, Sarehole Mill.
• Develop a roadmap to Net Zero and begin implementation (e.g. electrification, insulation, renewable energy).
• Pilot a collections access interface and complete mass digitisation of and cataloguing of oral history.
• Create a central data repository and develop a consistent approach to managing organisational and audience data, insights and processes.

People

• Deliver a Volunteer Strategy and Action Plan, alongside internal change programme to build staff skills in supporting volunteers.
• Develop a new community partnership volunteering offer and pilot programmes that reach previously unengaged demographics.
• Embed and evaluate our Circles structure.
• Secure funding for future projects to involve citizens in museum decision-making processes (e.g. Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Thinktank).
• Develop and embed equitable recruitment policies and processes.
• Roll out staff learning and development programme, including performance management and coaching.
• Implement an organisation-wide culture change programme, including an anti-racism plan and updated employee deal.

Finance

• Secure next round of four year funding Service Level Agreement with Birmingham City Council for 2026-30.
• Establish Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery as a top-of-the-market unique venue in Birmingham and invest in growing venue hire and associated catering incomes.
• Develop, market and deliver Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and other museum sites as venues for a range of filming activities, to grow filming revenue stream.
• Continue to build and hold a solid base of reserves to provide the organisation an ability to invest to maintain and improve the capital infrastructure.
• Identify a clear path to an operational break-even performance within 1-2 years.
• Diversify trading income sources to balance current reliance on Birmingham City Council funding and visitor spending.
• Develop a capital investment plan for Thinktank to support fundraising activities and to invest in its infrastructure to increase visitor numbers.
• Define and lay the foundations to deliver Birmingham Museums Trust's future fundraising strategy.

Implementation: what we will achieve by 2030

Experience

• Collaborate actively with Birmingham’s cultural, heritage and leisure organisations, as well as business and industry partners.
• Launch a compelling brand proposition and organisational identity that speaks to the wants and needs of Birmingham audiences.
• Establish key partnership agreements and research funding opportunities; define and form internal and external links to support research and its outcomes.
• Create a research centre and programmes that enable collaboration with partners and the sharing of best practice work; achieve Independent Research Organisation (IRO) accreditation.

Infrastructure

• Begin Phase 2 construction of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (RIBA Stage 5).
• Develop a long-term, phased proposal for the ‘City of Ideas’ science museum.
• Complete phased heating improvements across the Museum Collection Centre site.
• Audit 15,000 objects at the Museum Collection Centre.
• Remain on track to deliver a digitally accessible collection by 2032, through the Dynamic Collections programme.

People

• Fully embed our community partnership activity.
• Roll out a new corporate volunteering offer.
• Implement a new budgeting process and clear responsibilities.
• Develop our internal capability to run future Citizens’ Juries or similar participatory processes.
• Deliver our staff diversity strategy.

Financial

• Balanced trading income sources including recurring income from repeat events and rental income.
• Achieve operational break-even performance with a path to surplus generation.
• Continue to build and hold a solid base of reserves to provide the organisation an ability to invest to maintain and enhance the capital infrastructure.
• Develop and grow revenue fundraising streams including individual giving and fundraising partnerships.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): measuring our success during the next five years

We are committed to measuring our progress, and have identified 13 organisational performance measures to monitor regularly. Over time, we also plan to measure progress towards our Theory of Change outcomes, by calculating our Social Return on Investment.

How we will measure progress:

Experience

• Visitor satisfaction.
• Total number of visitors across all venues.
• Percentage of visitors with one or more underrepresented characteristics.
• Combined web, video and social media engagements.
• Percentage of programme uptake, including learning visits across all venues.

Infrastructure

• Capital funding secured vs targets.
• CO2e emissions.

People

• Employee satisfaction.
• Number of volunteers or volunteering days vs target (including through Citizens’ Jury).
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) impact measures (to be defined through a forthcoming EDI plan).

Financial

• Admissions income.
• Sales income and Return On Investment (ROI).
• Fundraised income and Return On Investment.

We will continue to use four key service metrics to measure the performance and improvement of both external and internal-facing services. These also feed into the broader organisational performance framework.

• Take-up
• Completion
• Satisfaction
• Cost per transaction

Beyond 2030, we will continue to change and evolve – in line with the spirit of Birmingham

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery opened in 1885, one of many progressive initiatives which made it ‘the best governed city in the world’ (Forbes magazine 1890). However, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery's public entrances had steep flights of steps, both inside and outside the building: people with mobility issues were simply excluded. It took 110 years and decades of activism before the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) enshrined equal access in law. This paradox captures the nature of democracy – not a finished state, but a continuous struggle of increasing awareness and recognition of the rights of hitherto neglected, excluded or stigmatised groups. We will build on Birmingham’s progressive tradition, and Birmingham Museums Trust's experience of community engagement, to continuously address our blind spots, so that our museums remain at the cutting edge of democratisation. Equality of experience for all, no matter their class, level of educational attainment, gender, ethnicity/race, sexuality, will be a non-negotiable baseline. We will embed deliberative democracy in our work, building on our work with a Citizens’ Jury, in which a representative jury of 28 Birmingham residents made recommendations about the future of their museums.

In 1885 Britain was the dominant power in the world. Birmingham’s innovative industries were intrinsic to this history and its collections reflect the city’s global influence and networks. This history, in turn, profoundly shaped Birmingham itself, not least through providing thousands of jobs, and has important living legacies today. Birmingham is one of the most diverse cities in Europe. The spirit of innovation lives on today and Birmingham is still a city of makers, creatives, innovators and learners. Birmingham Museums Trust will celebrate and nurture the creative work of the city’s residents, as well as enabling them to see world class international artists in their home city.

We will contribute to Birmingham City Council’s tourism and place-making agendas, and foster a sense of belonging to this place, nurturing social trust and modelling the skills of intercultural dialogue, creativity and understanding.