What we are going to do

In order to address persistent inequalities in museum attendance and benefit, this project brings together: scholars from a range of disciplines including museum studies, sociology, health and implementation science; leading museum professionals at Birmingham Museums Trust; leaders from a wider group of UK museums committed to transforming museums so that everyone benefits from them; and leaders from key professional, policy and funding organisations with the agency to drive change across the sector.

Together, we will:

• Generate unprecedented levels of interdisciplinary and university-practitioner collaboration;
• Bridge DCMS, regional, and local data to develop a deeper understanding of educational disadvantage in relation to cultural participation;
• Develop rigorous philosophical analysis to clarify key underpinning concepts;
• Distil and rank existing ‘what works’ evidence as a starting point for action research; 
• Integrate lessons from Implementation Science;
• Synthesise the above in a Democratising Museums and Heritage Research and Implementation Framework including actionable methodologies, ‘what works’ specifications, and implementation and evaluation strategies/tools that can:
  • enable a sustained, contextual and evidence-led focus on closing the attendance and benefit gap;
  • build understanding of causal connections between MHI innovations and changes in visitor demographics;
  • generate a new museum research and implementation culture;
  • nurture reflective individuals and engaged citizens;

• Test and refine this in the context of Birmingham Museums Trust;
• Identify processes, facilitators and barriers to change;
• Work with leading MHIs, policy and funding bodies to embed findings across the sector.

Research Questions

Our main research question asks:

What institutional changes and cultural policies are required to build the research capacity and capability necessary to close the attendance and benefit gap and enable MHIs to contribute more to achieving Arts & Humanities’ central and valued aim of nurturing reflective individuals and engaged citizens?

And in order to answer this question, we ask:

• How can we better understand the role of publicly-funded culture and the ethical obligations of public-service MHIs to socially-diverse populations in democratic societies?
• What do MHIs know and what do they need to know – about visitors and non-visitors, inequality and demographic diversity, and the complexity of social change – to address these ethical obligations? In particular what do museums need to know about the most significant predictor of museum visiting – level of formal educational attainment and educational disadvantage?
• What evidence exists of changes to museums driving increased participation amongst under-represented audiences (particularly amongst people who experience economic and educational disadvantage)?
• What evidence exists of formats and approaches – within and beyond museums – that create the conditions for individual reflection and generate bridging relationships amongst socially-diverse audiences, particularly in relation to place-based identities, shared human heritage, aesthetic experiences, contested sites, collections, histories and contemporary issues?
• How can we harness research, including all of the above, in order to challenge the attendance and benefit gap and maintain the central and valued aim of Arts & Humanities to contribute to the production of reflective individuals and active citizens?
• What can we learn from the field of Implementation Science? Is the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) a useful, accessible tool to generate a sustained focus on the attendance and benefit gap and to evaluate complex interventions in museums?
• How might our experience of and lessons learned from using CFIR to design, implement and evaluate a series of innovation and implementation strategies at Birmingham Museums Trust inform similar interventions across the museum sector? What other theories, frameworks and tools might we draw on?
• What forms of organisational change and planning/working are required to enable this work?