• Project will undertake a major survey of ‘what works’ to open up museums to audiences that are more representative of the UK population

• Research team will test out new approaches to implementing and evaluating innovations in public programming in situ at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery

• Final year of project will identify lessons for the whole museum and heritage sector.

Birmingham Museums Trust is one of the partners in a major new research project to share the benefits of museum attendance and deepen museums’ contribution to social cohesion.

The Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) at the University of Leicester has been awarded £1.49 million by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to undertake a four-year research partnership with Birmingham Museums Trust, University of Birmingham, UCL and a range of partner organisations, exploring how museums can reduce inequalities in who benefits from museums and deepen their contribution to society.

Nationally and internationally, museum visiting continues to reflect wider social inequalities. Despite decades of effort, most people who participate in state-sponsored cultural forms, including museums, continue to be more highly educated and more economically advantaged. Population-level studies in the epidemiology of culture show that simply visiting a museum may have positive health benefits, which emphasises what is at stake in this unfair distribution of cultural resources.

The funding will support a major survey of what is already known about ‘what works’ to open up museums to audiences that are more representative of the UK population as a whole. It will enable the research team to test out new, research-led approaches to implementing and evaluating innovations in public programming in situ at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.

In particular, the project will explore the practical implications of the fact that the most significant predictor of museum visiting is level of educational attainment - visiting increases at each educational level, with the most significant jump at degree level.

Building on earlier AHRC-funded research involving Birmingham Museums, the project will combine expertise from museum studies, sociology, implementation science and leading-edge museum practice to build the key output from the project - a new research and implementation framework which will support museums to work in ways that close the attendance and benefit gap and further the role of culture in nurturing reflective individuals and engaged citizens.

The final year of the project will identify lessons for the whole museum and heritage sector and work with Museums Association, English Heritage, National Museums Liverpool, National Museums NI, Paisley Museum, National Trust, Art Fund, National Portrait Gallery and DCMS to embed the learning.

Sara Wajid, co-chief executive of Birmingham Museums Trust, said:

“At Birmingham Museums Trust, our vision for museums is as centres of democratic renewal, where citizens - no matter what their level of income, educational attainment, ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality or disability status - feel at home with their fellow citizens in a rich, inspiring, civic cultural space and we are taking important steps towards this.

“Over the next four years, we will be working as part of the Addressing the Attendance and Benefit Gap project to build a detailed understanding of how we can ensure that we prioritise projects and innovate in ways that drive fundamental changes in our visitor demographics. As far as I know there is no other research project which has so much potential to transform museums’ capacity to contribute to a culturally richer, more democratic and less polarised society.”

Project lead Professor Suzanne MacLeod from the University of Leicester School of Heritage and Culture, said:  

“We need new levels of research rigour and strategic analysis to understand and address population-level inequalities in attendance. Asking how change management insights from the Health Sciences might be adapted in the cultural sector so that museums can use their research resources to really understand and remain focused on what it takes to shape a democratic, public museum has great potential. The Research Centre for Museums and Galleries and Birmingham Museums Trust are ideally placed to lead this research for the sector.”

Project co-lead Dr Mark O’Neill, previously head of Glasgow Museums, said:

‘’We know that museums can enrich people’s lives, enhance their wellbeing and create the social cohesion needed in our fragmented and polarised society. We can only realise this potential if we attract audiences that are representative of our communities. This research will generate the breakthrough knowledge about ‘what works’ in creating genuinely inclusive museums.  Birmingham Museums are committed to using evidence-based methods in democratising every aspect of their service and are the perfect partners for this work.’’  

Laura Summers, head of programme delivery at Art Fund, said:

‘’At Art Fund, not only do we believe that art is vital for a healthy, happy society but we also believe that art and culture should be accessible to everyone. We are supporting this important research and implementation as we have a long-standing commitment to equality and inclusion. While it is great to hear that participation in museums overall has increased, it is concerning to read that the gap between upper and lower socioeconomic groups who participate has also increased. We wholeheartedly support RCMG’s mission to generate meaningful, evidence-based insight into what effectively closes the gap.’’

The project is supported by a wide range of sector partners including National Museums Liverpool, English Heritage, National Portrait Gallery, National Museums Northern Ireland, OneRen (Paisley Museum), National Trust, Museums Association, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Art Fund.