Public facing
Museums that are shut for redevelopment are using a range of initiatives to ensure people don’t forget them, writes Holly Black
Staying part of the public consciousness is a big challenge for museums that are closed for redevelopment. Without a physical site to engage people with, institutions effectively lose their “shop front”, which is particularly challenging during large-scale projects that take years to complete.
But a temporary closure can also serve as a time for reflection and refocusing, as museums look beyond their four walls and connect with new audiences.
One of the simplest ways of sustaining public engagement is by using other venues to show collections that would otherwise go into storage. If exhibitions are created in museums nearby, key audiences can continue to see the displaced collection.
This approach has been employed by the Burrell Collection, which is part of Glasgow Life, the trust that runs cultural and sports facilities for the city council. The venue closed its doors last year for a £66m revamp that will be completed in 2020. It is utilising Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which is also part of Glasgow Life, as a way of maintaining a presence in the city.
“We want to keep it in the public memory,” says Annika Joy, the content manager for the Burrell Renaissance Project. “There will be almost a generation of children who have had their first five years of life without us being open. Kelvingrove is part of us making sure that some of the collection is on display in the city. The current tapestry exhibition shows a well-loved part of the collection in a well-known art gallery.”
This show is the second in a six-part collaboration that has also served as an experimental phase for the Burrell.
“It’s easier to communicate work-in-progress ideas when it’s something off-site,” Joy says. “It is giving us a chance to see how people respond to the tapestries, how they are hung and what kind of physical barrier is appropriate. It all feeds into our activity around displays in the new building when it opens to the public again in years to come.”
Hitting the road
Traditional museum-hosted tours are one of several exhibition strategies employed by the Box, a regeneration scheme that brings together five Plymouth institutions, including the City Museum and Art Gallery, in a flagship building scheduled to open in 2020. Objects from the collections have travelled as far as Paris and Wittenberg, Germany, while closer to home the Council House, a local civic centre, has been used as an exhibition space for a show of paintings by Beryl Cook, who was born in Plymouth.
“It’s not a building that people usually go to for an exhibition, but once everyone knew it was there it became popular,” says the interim chief executive of the Box, Paul Brookes. “We have also done something different with an artist-led touring exhibition, We The People of the Work, which looks at protest over the past few decades. It has reached a different audience, particularly Plymouth’s large number of students.
“It’s the same with Plymouth After Dark, our events programme that explores the city’s night-time economy and encourages the public to recount their own memories of the area,” Brookes says. “It has an edginess that we can maintain when we’re not tied to delivering something in an everyday, open-to-the-public setting.”
London’s National Army Museum reopened in March after a three-year, £23.75m redevelopment. To increase awareness of the institution during the closure, the museum sent a pop-up 19th century-style pub on tour around the country. This was popular with a broad range of people who didn’t consider themselves regular museum visitors, and was successful in raising the institution’s profile beyond London.
Off-site projects may well form the backbone of audience engagement during closure, but a museum’s physical impression can still be a useful promotional tool, even if it is a building site.
“Hoardings can create an air of mystery or be used as an interpretation form to let people know about the project,” says Emily Hicks, the curator of Bridport Museum in Dorset, which reopened this spring after a £1.3m overhaul. “Our hoardings were painted by local schoolchildren, with big images of the collection. Photographs of the initiative remain in the museum, so they can come in and say, ‘Wow, I did that’.”
The illustrations also served as a way to engage audiences who might not have visited the museum for years. “We had a lot of people asking questions,” says Hicks.
People power
This kind of impact has also been important for the Museum of London, which will be moving from the Barbican to a larger space in nearby Smithfield Market by 2022. Sharon Ament, the museum’s director, is acutely aware of the effect this new site will have on the area.
“We don’t want to raise the rents around Smithfield and not give back to the community,” she says. “We want to support the businesses that make this place so special.”
To convey this message the museum commissioned the photographer Vicky Grout to produce a selection of huge portraits of Londoners, profiling the huge variety of people who work in or frequent the area of West Smithfield.
“We’ve included a butcher, a hairdresser and an apprentice goldsmith,” says Ament. “It’s all part of making people feel involved in the project.”
However, she adds that this sort of initiative can only get you so far. It is just as important to meet the community face to face to get a sense of how a project is being received and to listen to any concerns locals may have.
“We held a brunch at a nearby cafe so people could come and find out what we were doing and offer suggestions,” Ament says. “It was a great opportunity to meet people in a relaxed atmosphere.”
Sarah Saunders, the head of learning and engagement at the £80m V&A Dundee, which will open next year on the banks of the river Tay, echoes this sentiment.
“We have met more than 100,000 people in every charity and community centre in the city,” she says. “One of the best ways of consulting is getting people to decide on topics of conversations themselves. The results are often quite different to what you’d expect. Mental health comes up a lot, as well as social issues such as drug use. Those questions have shaped what we are doing with the programme.”
By sending her team into the community, Saunders has also been able to change the perception of the somewhat controversial museum project at the heart of the £1bn waterfront transformation in Dundee. Technology, including virtual reality (VR), has played a vital role in conveying exactly what it is the team are doing.
“I cannot stress the advantages of VR enough,” Saunders says. “We bring headsets so that people can get a real sense of what the museum and the surrounding waterside will look like. It has been a great investment and is not that expensive. People will see the drawings anyway so why not use your assets and create a VR experience?
“It’s the best way for people to engage and imagine themselves being there; that’s difficult to do just using plans.”
Audience outreach has been developed even further with an app that offers three-dimensional projections of the new cultural centre. Passersby can point their device at the construction site’s hoardings, which have been emblazoned with a gigantic comic celebrating the history of Scottish design. The panels trigger a panoramic augmented reality tour that offers a glimpse into what to expect in 2018.
Embracing new technology has proved fruitful for the V&A Dundee, while more obvious forms of digital promotion, such as social media, microsites and crowdfunding, remain crucial for any museum wanting to maintain and build their audience during closure. Ultimately, this is the fundamental link between on-the-ground initiatives, off-site projects and the wide dissemination of information.
“You have to fight hard to stay on the radar,” says Linda Stranks, the head of marketing and communication at the National Army Museum.
“We built our social media pretty much from scratch and used platforms such as Instagram to highlight projects that have both a regional and national reach. That included Soldier’s Stories, which shared veterans experiences that relate directly to the collection.
“Our online presence gave us a chance to communicate with the public via personal stories and engage with our new brand ahead of the reopening. We were able to reinvent ourselves.”
Whether online, in person or via other means, it remains crucial for museums to interact with their audiences during any periods of closure. No doubt the methods employed to do so will become even more creative in future.
To change these perceptions, Saunders has spearheaded a range of initiatives that encourage visitors to question what they consider design and how they can contribute.
“Kengo Kuma, the museum’s architect, described this building as a ‘living room for the city’ and this became the title for our first project,” says Saunders.
The public were encouraged to upload photos of their own living rooms to social media and comment on the design of a single object or its overall aesthetic.
Other outreach has included workshops that teach people how to design and build their own lights; a travelling exhibition on a bus called Design in Motion, which showcased seven designers in 85 Scottish locations; creative training for apprentices and the unemployed; and exhibitions documenting collaborative school initiatives, held in Dundee’s shopping centres.
The multi-faceted programme has been crucial in not only improving public opinion of the project, but also in laying the foundation for a new audience, which is fundamental to a new museum’s success.
Holly Black is a freelance journalist
But a temporary closure can also serve as a time for reflection and refocusing, as museums look beyond their four walls and connect with new audiences.
One of the simplest ways of sustaining public engagement is by using other venues to show collections that would otherwise go into storage. If exhibitions are created in museums nearby, key audiences can continue to see the displaced collection.
This approach has been employed by the Burrell Collection, which is part of Glasgow Life, the trust that runs cultural and sports facilities for the city council. The venue closed its doors last year for a £66m revamp that will be completed in 2020. It is utilising Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which is also part of Glasgow Life, as a way of maintaining a presence in the city.
“We want to keep it in the public memory,” says Annika Joy, the content manager for the Burrell Renaissance Project. “There will be almost a generation of children who have had their first five years of life without us being open. Kelvingrove is part of us making sure that some of the collection is on display in the city. The current tapestry exhibition shows a well-loved part of the collection in a well-known art gallery.”
This show is the second in a six-part collaboration that has also served as an experimental phase for the Burrell.
“It’s easier to communicate work-in-progress ideas when it’s something off-site,” Joy says. “It is giving us a chance to see how people respond to the tapestries, how they are hung and what kind of physical barrier is appropriate. It all feeds into our activity around displays in the new building when it opens to the public again in years to come.”
Hitting the road
Traditional museum-hosted tours are one of several exhibition strategies employed by the Box, a regeneration scheme that brings together five Plymouth institutions, including the City Museum and Art Gallery, in a flagship building scheduled to open in 2020. Objects from the collections have travelled as far as Paris and Wittenberg, Germany, while closer to home the Council House, a local civic centre, has been used as an exhibition space for a show of paintings by Beryl Cook, who was born in Plymouth.
“It’s not a building that people usually go to for an exhibition, but once everyone knew it was there it became popular,” says the interim chief executive of the Box, Paul Brookes. “We have also done something different with an artist-led touring exhibition, We The People of the Work, which looks at protest over the past few decades. It has reached a different audience, particularly Plymouth’s large number of students.
“It’s the same with Plymouth After Dark, our events programme that explores the city’s night-time economy and encourages the public to recount their own memories of the area,” Brookes says. “It has an edginess that we can maintain when we’re not tied to delivering something in an everyday, open-to-the-public setting.”
London’s National Army Museum reopened in March after a three-year, £23.75m redevelopment. To increase awareness of the institution during the closure, the museum sent a pop-up 19th century-style pub on tour around the country. This was popular with a broad range of people who didn’t consider themselves regular museum visitors, and was successful in raising the institution’s profile beyond London.
Off-site projects may well form the backbone of audience engagement during closure, but a museum’s physical impression can still be a useful promotional tool, even if it is a building site.
“Hoardings can create an air of mystery or be used as an interpretation form to let people know about the project,” says Emily Hicks, the curator of Bridport Museum in Dorset, which reopened this spring after a £1.3m overhaul. “Our hoardings were painted by local schoolchildren, with big images of the collection. Photographs of the initiative remain in the museum, so they can come in and say, ‘Wow, I did that’.”
The illustrations also served as a way to engage audiences who might not have visited the museum for years. “We had a lot of people asking questions,” says Hicks.
People power
This kind of impact has also been important for the Museum of London, which will be moving from the Barbican to a larger space in nearby Smithfield Market by 2022. Sharon Ament, the museum’s director, is acutely aware of the effect this new site will have on the area.
“We don’t want to raise the rents around Smithfield and not give back to the community,” she says. “We want to support the businesses that make this place so special.”
To convey this message the museum commissioned the photographer Vicky Grout to produce a selection of huge portraits of Londoners, profiling the huge variety of people who work in or frequent the area of West Smithfield.
“We’ve included a butcher, a hairdresser and an apprentice goldsmith,” says Ament. “It’s all part of making people feel involved in the project.”
However, she adds that this sort of initiative can only get you so far. It is just as important to meet the community face to face to get a sense of how a project is being received and to listen to any concerns locals may have.
“We held a brunch at a nearby cafe so people could come and find out what we were doing and offer suggestions,” Ament says. “It was a great opportunity to meet people in a relaxed atmosphere.”
Sarah Saunders, the head of learning and engagement at the £80m V&A Dundee, which will open next year on the banks of the river Tay, echoes this sentiment.
“We have met more than 100,000 people in every charity and community centre in the city,” she says. “One of the best ways of consulting is getting people to decide on topics of conversations themselves. The results are often quite different to what you’d expect. Mental health comes up a lot, as well as social issues such as drug use. Those questions have shaped what we are doing with the programme.”
By sending her team into the community, Saunders has also been able to change the perception of the somewhat controversial museum project at the heart of the £1bn waterfront transformation in Dundee. Technology, including virtual reality (VR), has played a vital role in conveying exactly what it is the team are doing.
“I cannot stress the advantages of VR enough,” Saunders says. “We bring headsets so that people can get a real sense of what the museum and the surrounding waterside will look like. It has been a great investment and is not that expensive. People will see the drawings anyway so why not use your assets and create a VR experience?
“It’s the best way for people to engage and imagine themselves being there; that’s difficult to do just using plans.”
Audience outreach has been developed even further with an app that offers three-dimensional projections of the new cultural centre. Passersby can point their device at the construction site’s hoardings, which have been emblazoned with a gigantic comic celebrating the history of Scottish design. The panels trigger a panoramic augmented reality tour that offers a glimpse into what to expect in 2018.
Embracing new technology has proved fruitful for the V&A Dundee, while more obvious forms of digital promotion, such as social media, microsites and crowdfunding, remain crucial for any museum wanting to maintain and build their audience during closure. Ultimately, this is the fundamental link between on-the-ground initiatives, off-site projects and the wide dissemination of information.
“You have to fight hard to stay on the radar,” says Linda Stranks, the head of marketing and communication at the National Army Museum.
“We built our social media pretty much from scratch and used platforms such as Instagram to highlight projects that have both a regional and national reach. That included Soldier’s Stories, which shared veterans experiences that relate directly to the collection.
“Our online presence gave us a chance to communicate with the public via personal stories and engage with our new brand ahead of the reopening. We were able to reinvent ourselves.”
Whether online, in person or via other means, it remains crucial for museums to interact with their audiences during any periods of closure. No doubt the methods employed to do so will become even more creative in future.
Co-opting the community in Dundee
One of the biggest trials the V&A Dundee team has faced ahead of its opening in 2018 is a misunderstanding of what the institution will be. According to Sarah Saunders, the head of learning and engagement at V&A Dundee, the early consensus by the local community was that this would be another art gallery, rather than an innovative hub celebrating Scottish design.To change these perceptions, Saunders has spearheaded a range of initiatives that encourage visitors to question what they consider design and how they can contribute.
“Kengo Kuma, the museum’s architect, described this building as a ‘living room for the city’ and this became the title for our first project,” says Saunders.
The public were encouraged to upload photos of their own living rooms to social media and comment on the design of a single object or its overall aesthetic.
Other outreach has included workshops that teach people how to design and build their own lights; a travelling exhibition on a bus called Design in Motion, which showcased seven designers in 85 Scottish locations; creative training for apprentices and the unemployed; and exhibitions documenting collaborative school initiatives, held in Dundee’s shopping centres.
The multi-faceted programme has been crucial in not only improving public opinion of the project, but also in laying the foundation for a new audience, which is fundamental to a new museum’s success.
Holly Black is a freelance journalist