Technology gurus claim the digital revolution is leading a museums makeover with the potential to transform familiar institutions into cutting-edge cultural attractions.
Visitors are promised multi-sensory journeys with user-defined content, immersive experiences and alternative histories via the web and mobile devices and at the same time social media aims to radically redefine the public’s relationship with collections and the people who care for them.
However, it appears that not everyone is getting with the programme. “Very recently, I was at a digital conference where someone said they were worried that no one would visit their museum should they put all their objects online,” says Mike Ellis, director of the thirty8 digital consultancy and a former head of web at the National Museum of Science and Industry (now the Science Museum Group).
“I thought we’d had that conversation 10 years ago but there are still a lot of fears, concerns and misapprehensions in the sector.”
It’s not too long ago that most museums and galleries were very suspicious of the internet, perhaps only dipping a toe into digital waters with a basic website featuring opening times, pixelated pictures of static objects and – if you were (un)lucky – a rarely updated blog.
Few now fail to see the potential for attracting new audiences but Ellis says museums must think before they jump into the digital world.
“They should fully understand what they want to achieve and how it will fit into an overall organisational strategy as well as how it will be paid for and measured,” he warns.
John Holt is freelance journalist
“New media and technologies work best when someone comes away thinking ‘that was a great museum experience’ rather than ‘that was a great digital experience’.
Digital thinking in museums needs to support and enhance the venue-based experience while, at the same time, having the potential to be a form of cultural programming in its own right.
Fifteen years ago, we weren’t all carrying around mini-Nasa-sized computers in our pockets but now we have incredibly powerful, liberating devices.
At Wellcome, we have successfully developed a number of playable online games in collaboration with curators and a games company, releasing them on our website and game-playing portals and attracting some three million plays. It’s promoting the museum to a far wider audience than any exhibition alone could ever achieve.
For our Charmed Life exhibition of amulets and other exotic objects, a mobile app took the visitor outside the museum walls on a geo-located quest to discover the origins of some of the treasures on show.
The High Society exhibition explored the history and culture of recreational drug use and we developed a game in which players could be 19th-century British opium traders in China trying to sell as much of their product as possible in order to buy tea to ship back to Britain.
Following the lead of Culture24’s Let’s Get Real project – which aims to help cultural organisations make the most effective use of digital – a lot of people are beginning to use big data and analytics about their audiences to understand better who they are and what they want.”
“We’re looking at ways in which digital media becomes part of our DNA; how we can use it to think, communicate and share ideas across the whole Tate organisation.
But the digital frontier is a little like the wild west; there are so many possible outcomes, so many directions in which we could travel. My litmus test is to work on areas where people already congregate as there’s little point in creating an amazing piece of technology that has no audience.
A stumbling block for many organisations is the mantra that ‘there must be an app for that’. Many have cost a lot of money and time only to have very few people look at them. We’ve certainly published some that have failed; it’s quite a thing to pull off an app that truly reaches people and has longevity.
Museums still have a long way to travel. Many commercial organisations are incredibly thorough when it comes to looking after their digital customers, whether that’s through providing impressive content to encourage you to buy, or short films that simply make you feel good about their products.
It doesn’t matter if you’re shopping with John Lewis or thinking about visiting an art gallery; we all expect a level of sophistication when we venture online.”
“A big part of the digital shift we’re making is the use of mobile devices. We’re looking to build exciting journeys that may actually start in the museum but could well continue on the bus or walk home.
But the technology has to be up to the job, of course. Infrastructure is critically important but it is not necessarily cheap and we’re all trying to wonder what the future will look like.
Many museums are based in old buildings with thick walls and interesting architecture that doesn’t always make life easy. We have to make technology lightweight in consideration of the fact there might not be a strong signal wherever you need to go.
Two of our sites [the National Museum of Flight and the National Museum of Rural Life] are particularly rural. One is an old airbase surrounded by land that is protected and these are things you have to consider when thinking about what you can deliver digitally.
It’s crucial to have a sense of what’s going on in the digital world. There’s an active conference circuit that takes in the arts and cultural heritage but I feel it is sometimes far too insular; we need to look more broadly at what other sectors are doing.
Twitter can keep you up to date but you need a good filtering system when there’s not a huge amount of money to spend. Our approach has been based on prototypes, working with researchers on small projects and listening to user feedback.
When I was head of interactive media at Oxfam, the big digital push was firmly driven by return on investment. Goals within the cultural sector can be somewhat woollier, less tangible; everyone talks about engagement, but few are really able to properly pin that down. It does allow us to be a little more experimental, though.”
“There’s no easy answer as to how much museums should embrace digital technologies; it’s all very context-dependent on things like the type of collection it displays, where it is located and the types of audiences it is trying to attract.
The natural reaction, by and large, is for museums to jump at the chance to install digital as they see it providing some easy answers to some of the challenges they face. Whether that’s the right thing to do is another question.
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is an interesting case because while its online services provide access to its paintings – you can download high-resolution images of many masterpieces – hardly any digital technology is used in the actual galleries.
The museum made a conscious decision to encourage people to focus on looking at the actual objects rather than viewing them through screens.
With funding the way it is, the cultural sector has to be certain it is doing the right thing and is not tempted by technology for technology’s sake. It is just the enabler and you need to think about the future in terms of the user experience and how they will interact with culture; you should always start with the people.
3D printing has so much potential. A lot of artists are already using it and museums could allow visitors to design and produce their own pieces or re-create famous artworks from the collection to take home.”
“We don’t have a huge budget for digital projects – there’s just me and a part-time colleague looking after eight sites, applying for funding, talking to interesting people with interesting ideas and forging important partnerships.
Through one of these partnerships, we were able to receive two touchtables we couldn’t otherwise have afforded – one in the Birmingham History Galleries and the other in the Staffordshire Hoard exhibition. They’re large and can be used by 10 or 12 people at once.
Most interactive devices tend to be used by one or two people at a time, but the tables are a much more social experience. I was a bit dubious in the beginning, but having seen people use them, I have become a total convert.
The Museums Computer Group (MCG) is a good way of keeping up with digital developments because there are so many people with so much experience willing to give up so much time online to answer questions.
And there’s a complete range of answers that depend on the size of your budget. People might recommend one solution that would cost a lot of money and then someone comes along to say, ‘you can do that more cheaply using an open source platform’.
A limited budget can be a very liberating thing. It stops you blundering down a very expensive technological cul-de-sac.
Five years ago, people were a little scared to post on [the MCG email list] there because they were frightened of looking stupid, but there’s been a real change, probably because a lot of people now involved in digital didn’t originally come from a geeky background and have inherited the mantle as part of their jobs.
Let’s not forget that it’s only a few years ago that museum people just did not see the point of the internet. I remember having to print out some Facebook pages to persuade our senior managers to let us use it.
Now they’re all on chirruping away on Twitter, which makes my life much easier.”
Visitors are promised multi-sensory journeys with user-defined content, immersive experiences and alternative histories via the web and mobile devices and at the same time social media aims to radically redefine the public’s relationship with collections and the people who care for them.
However, it appears that not everyone is getting with the programme. “Very recently, I was at a digital conference where someone said they were worried that no one would visit their museum should they put all their objects online,” says Mike Ellis, director of the thirty8 digital consultancy and a former head of web at the National Museum of Science and Industry (now the Science Museum Group).
“I thought we’d had that conversation 10 years ago but there are still a lot of fears, concerns and misapprehensions in the sector.”
It’s not too long ago that most museums and galleries were very suspicious of the internet, perhaps only dipping a toe into digital waters with a basic website featuring opening times, pixelated pictures of static objects and – if you were (un)lucky – a rarely updated blog.
Few now fail to see the potential for attracting new audiences but Ellis says museums must think before they jump into the digital world.
“They should fully understand what they want to achieve and how it will fit into an overall organisational strategy as well as how it will be paid for and measured,” he warns.
John Holt is freelance journalist
Danny Birchall, digital manager, Wellcome Collection, London
“New media and technologies work best when someone comes away thinking ‘that was a great museum experience’ rather than ‘that was a great digital experience’.
Digital thinking in museums needs to support and enhance the venue-based experience while, at the same time, having the potential to be a form of cultural programming in its own right.
Fifteen years ago, we weren’t all carrying around mini-Nasa-sized computers in our pockets but now we have incredibly powerful, liberating devices.
At Wellcome, we have successfully developed a number of playable online games in collaboration with curators and a games company, releasing them on our website and game-playing portals and attracting some three million plays. It’s promoting the museum to a far wider audience than any exhibition alone could ever achieve.
For our Charmed Life exhibition of amulets and other exotic objects, a mobile app took the visitor outside the museum walls on a geo-located quest to discover the origins of some of the treasures on show.
The High Society exhibition explored the history and culture of recreational drug use and we developed a game in which players could be 19th-century British opium traders in China trying to sell as much of their product as possible in order to buy tea to ship back to Britain.
Following the lead of Culture24’s Let’s Get Real project – which aims to help cultural organisations make the most effective use of digital – a lot of people are beginning to use big data and analytics about their audiences to understand better who they are and what they want.”
Jane Burton, creative director, Tate Media
“We’re looking at ways in which digital media becomes part of our DNA; how we can use it to think, communicate and share ideas across the whole Tate organisation.
But the digital frontier is a little like the wild west; there are so many possible outcomes, so many directions in which we could travel. My litmus test is to work on areas where people already congregate as there’s little point in creating an amazing piece of technology that has no audience.
A stumbling block for many organisations is the mantra that ‘there must be an app for that’. Many have cost a lot of money and time only to have very few people look at them. We’ve certainly published some that have failed; it’s quite a thing to pull off an app that truly reaches people and has longevity.
Museums still have a long way to travel. Many commercial organisations are incredibly thorough when it comes to looking after their digital customers, whether that’s through providing impressive content to encourage you to buy, or short films that simply make you feel good about their products.
It doesn’t matter if you’re shopping with John Lewis or thinking about visiting an art gallery; we all expect a level of sophistication when we venture online.”
Hugh Wallace, head of digital media, National Museums Scotland
“A big part of the digital shift we’re making is the use of mobile devices. We’re looking to build exciting journeys that may actually start in the museum but could well continue on the bus or walk home.
But the technology has to be up to the job, of course. Infrastructure is critically important but it is not necessarily cheap and we’re all trying to wonder what the future will look like.
Many museums are based in old buildings with thick walls and interesting architecture that doesn’t always make life easy. We have to make technology lightweight in consideration of the fact there might not be a strong signal wherever you need to go.
Two of our sites [the National Museum of Flight and the National Museum of Rural Life] are particularly rural. One is an old airbase surrounded by land that is protected and these are things you have to consider when thinking about what you can deliver digitally.
It’s crucial to have a sense of what’s going on in the digital world. There’s an active conference circuit that takes in the arts and cultural heritage but I feel it is sometimes far too insular; we need to look more broadly at what other sectors are doing.
Twitter can keep you up to date but you need a good filtering system when there’s not a huge amount of money to spend. Our approach has been based on prototypes, working with researchers on small projects and listening to user feedback.
When I was head of interactive media at Oxfam, the big digital push was firmly driven by return on investment. Goals within the cultural sector can be somewhat woollier, less tangible; everyone talks about engagement, but few are really able to properly pin that down. It does allow us to be a little more experimental, though.”
Josef Hargrave, senior consultant, foresight, research and innovation, Arup, and author of its recent report, Museums in the Digital Age
“There’s no easy answer as to how much museums should embrace digital technologies; it’s all very context-dependent on things like the type of collection it displays, where it is located and the types of audiences it is trying to attract.
The natural reaction, by and large, is for museums to jump at the chance to install digital as they see it providing some easy answers to some of the challenges they face. Whether that’s the right thing to do is another question.
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is an interesting case because while its online services provide access to its paintings – you can download high-resolution images of many masterpieces – hardly any digital technology is used in the actual galleries.
The museum made a conscious decision to encourage people to focus on looking at the actual objects rather than viewing them through screens.
With funding the way it is, the cultural sector has to be certain it is doing the right thing and is not tempted by technology for technology’s sake. It is just the enabler and you need to think about the future in terms of the user experience and how they will interact with culture; you should always start with the people.
3D printing has so much potential. A lot of artists are already using it and museums could allow visitors to design and produce their own pieces or re-create famous artworks from the collection to take home.”
Linda Spurdle, digital development manager, Birmingham Museums Trust
“We don’t have a huge budget for digital projects – there’s just me and a part-time colleague looking after eight sites, applying for funding, talking to interesting people with interesting ideas and forging important partnerships.
Through one of these partnerships, we were able to receive two touchtables we couldn’t otherwise have afforded – one in the Birmingham History Galleries and the other in the Staffordshire Hoard exhibition. They’re large and can be used by 10 or 12 people at once.
Most interactive devices tend to be used by one or two people at a time, but the tables are a much more social experience. I was a bit dubious in the beginning, but having seen people use them, I have become a total convert.
The Museums Computer Group (MCG) is a good way of keeping up with digital developments because there are so many people with so much experience willing to give up so much time online to answer questions.
And there’s a complete range of answers that depend on the size of your budget. People might recommend one solution that would cost a lot of money and then someone comes along to say, ‘you can do that more cheaply using an open source platform’.
A limited budget can be a very liberating thing. It stops you blundering down a very expensive technological cul-de-sac.
Five years ago, people were a little scared to post on [the MCG email list] there because they were frightened of looking stupid, but there’s been a real change, probably because a lot of people now involved in digital didn’t originally come from a geeky background and have inherited the mantle as part of their jobs.
Let’s not forget that it’s only a few years ago that museum people just did not see the point of the internet. I remember having to print out some Facebook pages to persuade our senior managers to let us use it.
Now they’re all on chirruping away on Twitter, which makes my life much easier.”