- The Activist Museum Award
- Addressing the museum attendance and benefit gap
- Articulate
- Birmingham Museum Trust Vision
- Books connect 2
- Building inclusive museums
- Buried in the footnotes
- Cabinet of Curiosities
- A Catalyst for Change
- The Cinematic Musée Imaginaire of spatial cultural differences [CineMuseSpace]
- Contested Desires Constructive Dialogues
- Cultural activity within historic houses
- Developing learning advocates in the East Midlands
- Developing learning advocates in the North West
- Developing new audiences and promoting social inclusion
- Disorder, dissent and disruption
- Encountering the Unexpected
- Engage, learn, achieve
- Engaging archives with Inspiring Learning for All
- Engaging the City
- Cultural value of engaging with museums
- Cultural value of engaging with museums
- EuNaMus
- Evaluating Creativity
- Everyone Welcome 2019-2021
- Everywhere and Nowhere
- Exceptional & Extraordinary
- EXILE at Kingston Lacy
- Generic learning outcomes
- girl.boy.child
- Growing social role of botanic gardens
- HumanKind
- Impact of generic learning outcomes
- Imperial War Museum North
- Including Museums
- Inspiration, identity, learning: the value of museums
- Inspiration, identity, learning: the value of museums, second study
- Leaders in Co-creation?
- Learning impact research project
- Learning through Culture
- The Madonna of the pinks
- Making Meaning in Art Museums 1
- Making Meaning in Art Museums 2
- Mapping the change phase 2
- Mindful Museum
- Mirror
- Museu do Samba, Brazil
- Museums and an ageing population
- Museums and social inclusion: the GLLAM report
- Museums health and wellbeing
- Co-production Framework at National Museums Liverpool
- New Walk Museum vision
- Not for the likes of you
- Open House
- Open minds
- Participatory practices at the Science Museum
- Permissible Beauty
- Prejudice & Pride: exploring LGBTQ lives at the National Trust
- Prisoners, Punishment and Torture
- Redefining the Role of Botanic Gardens
- Research network to advance museum ethics
- Researching Learning in Museums and Galleries 1990-1999
- Rethinking Disability Representation
- shOUT
- Small museums and social inclusion
- Stories of a Different Kind
- Supporting Decolonial Futures
- Talking statues
- TCS project
- The Museum as a Space of Social Care
- The Queer Heritage and Collections Network
- Their Past Your Future 2
- Seeing the museum through the visitors’ eyes
- Trans-Inclusive Culture
- Museums and the Transgender Tipping Point
- Unfinished portrait at Felbrigg Hall
- “In the past we would just be invisible”
- What did you learn at the museum today?
- What did you learn at the museum today? Second study
- Return to the start of the menu
- RCMG
-
Research archive
- The Activist Museum Award
- Addressing the museum attendance and benefit gap
- Articulate
- Birmingham Museum Trust Vision
- Books connect 2
- Building inclusive museums
- Buried in the footnotes
- Cabinet of Curiosities
- A Catalyst for Change
- The Cinematic Musée Imaginaire of spatial cultural differences [CineMuseSpace]
- Contested Desires Constructive Dialogues
- Cultural activity within historic houses
- Developing learning advocates in the East Midlands
- Developing learning advocates in the North West
- Developing new audiences and promoting social inclusion
- Disorder, dissent and disruption
- Encountering the Unexpected
- Engage, learn, achieve
- Engaging archives with Inspiring Learning for All
- Engaging the City
- Cultural value of engaging with museums
- Cultural value of engaging with museums
- EuNaMus
- Evaluating Creativity
- Everyone Welcome 2019-2021
- Everywhere and Nowhere
- Exceptional & Extraordinary
- EXILE at Kingston Lacy
- Generic learning outcomes
- girl.boy.child
- Growing social role of botanic gardens
- HumanKind
- Impact of generic learning outcomes
- Imperial War Museum North
- Including Museums
- Inspiration, identity, learning: the value of museums
- Inspiration, identity, learning: the value of museums, second study
- Leaders in Co-creation?
- Learning impact research project
- Learning through Culture
- The Madonna of the pinks
- Making Meaning in Art Museums 1
- Making Meaning in Art Museums 2
- Mapping the change phase 2
- Mindful Museum
- Mirror
- Museu do Samba, Brazil
- Museums and an ageing population
- Museums and social inclusion: the GLLAM report
- Museums health and wellbeing
- Co-production Framework at National Museums Liverpool
- New Walk Museum vision
- Not for the likes of you
- Open House
- Open minds
- Participatory practices at the Science Museum
- Permissible Beauty
- Prejudice & Pride: exploring LGBTQ lives at the National Trust
- Prisoners, Punishment and Torture
- Redefining the Role of Botanic Gardens
- Research network to advance museum ethics
- Researching Learning in Museums and Galleries 1990-1999
- Rethinking Disability Representation
- shOUT
- Small museums and social inclusion
- Stories of a Different Kind
- Supporting Decolonial Futures
- Talking statues
- TCS project
- The Museum as a Space of Social Care
- The Queer Heritage and Collections Network
- Their Past Your Future 2
- Seeing the museum through the visitors’ eyes
- Trans-Inclusive Culture
- Museums and the Transgender Tipping Point
- Unfinished portrait at Felbrigg Hall
- “In the past we would just be invisible”
- What did you learn at the museum today?
- What did you learn at the museum today? Second study
Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG)
Addressing the museum attendance and benefit gap: inequality, representative participation and implementation science
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.
To move beyond ‘intuitive’ approaches to inequality and social change, make credible claims about their contribution to society and positively impact deeply entrenched and unequal patterns of attendance and benefit, museums need new knowledge, new strategies and significant analytical support.
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.
It brings social science scholars with deep expertise in inequality, poverty and low educational attainment, experts in culture and health, public health, epidemiology and cultural attendance and scholars of Implementation Science with expertise in rigorous approaches to intervention development and harnessing research towards large-scale change, into dialogue with museum leaders committed to representative participation and research-led practice, cultural policy makers and museum scholars.
Find out more about the Network on the extended project website.