Kathryn Thomson, the new director and chief executive of National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI), hasn’t taken the usual path into the sector, having a business and accountancy background. But joining just seven months ago, she is already a convert to the world of museums.
Still new to the organisation, Thomson is naturally bursting with questions: “With so many cuts, how does the sector become more sustainable? Where are we going strategically? How do we engage with our audiences? What is the museum service of the future?”
She has extensive experience in the strategic development of organisations and aims to bring this expertise to NMNI’s three sites, the Ulster Museum in Belfast (pictured here), the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in nearby Cultra, and the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh.
“There are huge opportunities to develop all of our museum sites and, yes, that’s going to be challenging because there isn’t a lot of money around,” says Thomson. “But if we get the opportunity to invest we could have much more social and economic impact.”
Before joining NMNI, Thomson was the chief operating officer at Tourism Northern Ireland. The job gave her valuable insight into the cultural tourism sector, which is now proving very useful.
“Coming with that tourism background, I understand and have an appreciation for the visitor attractions side of what we do across our three sites here,” she says.
Ulster Museum has extensive collections of natural history, social history, geology, and an impressive art collection. It’s brimming with things to see, so it’s hard for visitors to know where to start. The museum has an interesting solution: a taster gallery.
“We call it Window on Our World,” Thomson says. “It’s like an eye into the collections further in.” The space also aims to draw in less regular museum-goers.
“Our agenda has very much been driven by social inclusion, tackling poverty and dis-advantage,” Thomson says. “We have a lot of outreach programmes, we take our collections out to communities, we work with libraries and other community venues. We also do a lot in terms of engaging community groups and bringing them into the museum.”
Recent histories
Ulster Museum reopened in 2009 after a £17.2m refurbishment, and won the £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year award the following year. The museum’s Troubles gallery was unveiled with the grand 2009 reopening, and now, to further develop that project, the museum has secured funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund to collect more objects linked to the conflict.
“We have a bit of a gap in our recent history collection,” Thomson says. “Our current Troubles gallery is very photojournalistic with no artefacts or objects. It’s a difficult history, which we need to represent fairly.”
This autumn NMNI is running lots of community workshops about the conflict, particularly in city areas most affected by it.
“We’re inviting people to come along with objects and photographs and tell us their stories,” says Thomson, who grew up in Belfast. “I was one of the first generations born into the Troubles, so it was my life. It was normal to walk into Marks & Spencer and open plastic bags for the security man to check.
“There are the facts, the politics and the violence, but what I find most interesting is the social history. Some people lived here and got on fine during that time – for example a whole music subculture developed.
“We need to provide a springboard for people to explore and build greater mutual understanding and respect,” Thomson continues. “Our museum can play a reconciliatory role, bringing communities together. It’s still a very real challenge for politicians in Northern Ireland at the moment. Everyone knows about our divided past, but how do we build a future together?”
Social impact is high on the agenda for Thomson, who emphasises that museums should be inclusive spaces and stimulate dialogue and debate. She points to the outreach work being done at the Ulster American Folk Museum with the Leonard Cheshire Foundation charity.
“We gave a piece of land we didn’t use to a group of people with acquired brain injuries,” she says. “They’re now growing seeds, planting out and gardening across our whole site. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
That site and the Folk and Transport Museum are both quite different to the Ulster Museum. One of the challenges for Thomson is how to get three such different sites working together cohesively.
Cultural cohesion
“At the moment there isn’t much cross-fertilisation between our three sites,” she says. At the Folk and Transport Museum, an open air site, visitors step back 100 years into a traditional Irish street. There’s a farm with Irish rare breeds too, and new piglets.
It has a full events programme ranging from such diverse activities as Capri car day, donkey day, to an evening featuring an Irish stew supper and a ceilidh.
Thomson aims to drive visitor figures up to a million a year across the three sites – last year’s footfall hit 800,000 – and sees a good opportunity to boost them at the Ulster American Folk Museum. “At that site, 36% of visitors travel from outside Northern Ireland. Tourism NI have identified a largely American, big unmet market demand for people who want to research their ancestry and discover their roots.”
Central to Thomson’s outlook is the Museums Association’s Museums Change Lives vision for the impact that museums can have on individuals and communities.
“We have to actually embed that thinking into our whole philosophy, in what we do and how we do it,” she says. “But how do you make anything like Museums Change Lives a core part of your business and not just something you do whenever you attract funding to do it?”
Thomson is keen to learn from others and says the National Museums Scotland (NMS) is a good benchmark to measure up to – she will be in conversation with other museum leaders, including Gordon Rintoul, the director of NMS, at the Museums Association Conference in November.
Thomson aims to future-proof NMNI, but to do that with the organisation’s existing funding will require significant change. Yet her analytical foundations stand her in good stead to optimise, improve, and economise NMNI’s vast remit of object-driven and experiential social impact.
“My challenge is to unlock our potential while giving staff fulfilment and maximising public engagement.”
Kathryn Thomson became the director and chief executive of National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI)in March this year. She replaced Tim Cooke, who left in 2014.
Thomson has a degree in business studies from Edinburgh University.
After university, she went on to work at professional services firm PwC as a manager, and qualified as a Chartered Public Finance Accountant while she was there. She became a corporate analyst for the NHS in Glasgow from 2000 to 2004, before moving back to her home town of Belfast.
She took up the post of director of finance and business planning at Tourism Northern Ireland, and was promoted to chief operating officer during her 11 years there, before moving to NMNI
National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI) comprises three sites: Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra, and the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh.
Ulster Museum is free, the other two sites are ticketed.
NMNI has an annual budget of around £14m with an annual grant of about £10.5m coming from the government.
The Ulster Museum reopened in 2009 following a £17.2m redevelopment. The museum won the £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year prize in 2010.
There are 270 full-time equivalents who work across the museums service. Annual visitor figures are about 800,000.
In conversation: David Mann (Scottish Maritime Museum), Tonya Nelson (UCL Museums & Collections), Kathryn Thomson (NMNI), Gordon Rintoul (NMS), takes place on 7 November at the Museums Association Conference, Glasgow.
Still new to the organisation, Thomson is naturally bursting with questions: “With so many cuts, how does the sector become more sustainable? Where are we going strategically? How do we engage with our audiences? What is the museum service of the future?”
She has extensive experience in the strategic development of organisations and aims to bring this expertise to NMNI’s three sites, the Ulster Museum in Belfast (pictured here), the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in nearby Cultra, and the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh.
“There are huge opportunities to develop all of our museum sites and, yes, that’s going to be challenging because there isn’t a lot of money around,” says Thomson. “But if we get the opportunity to invest we could have much more social and economic impact.”
Before joining NMNI, Thomson was the chief operating officer at Tourism Northern Ireland. The job gave her valuable insight into the cultural tourism sector, which is now proving very useful.
“Coming with that tourism background, I understand and have an appreciation for the visitor attractions side of what we do across our three sites here,” she says.
Ulster Museum has extensive collections of natural history, social history, geology, and an impressive art collection. It’s brimming with things to see, so it’s hard for visitors to know where to start. The museum has an interesting solution: a taster gallery.
“We call it Window on Our World,” Thomson says. “It’s like an eye into the collections further in.” The space also aims to draw in less regular museum-goers.
“Our agenda has very much been driven by social inclusion, tackling poverty and dis-advantage,” Thomson says. “We have a lot of outreach programmes, we take our collections out to communities, we work with libraries and other community venues. We also do a lot in terms of engaging community groups and bringing them into the museum.”
Recent histories
Ulster Museum reopened in 2009 after a £17.2m refurbishment, and won the £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year award the following year. The museum’s Troubles gallery was unveiled with the grand 2009 reopening, and now, to further develop that project, the museum has secured funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund to collect more objects linked to the conflict.
“We have a bit of a gap in our recent history collection,” Thomson says. “Our current Troubles gallery is very photojournalistic with no artefacts or objects. It’s a difficult history, which we need to represent fairly.”
This autumn NMNI is running lots of community workshops about the conflict, particularly in city areas most affected by it.
“We’re inviting people to come along with objects and photographs and tell us their stories,” says Thomson, who grew up in Belfast. “I was one of the first generations born into the Troubles, so it was my life. It was normal to walk into Marks & Spencer and open plastic bags for the security man to check.
“There are the facts, the politics and the violence, but what I find most interesting is the social history. Some people lived here and got on fine during that time – for example a whole music subculture developed.
“We need to provide a springboard for people to explore and build greater mutual understanding and respect,” Thomson continues. “Our museum can play a reconciliatory role, bringing communities together. It’s still a very real challenge for politicians in Northern Ireland at the moment. Everyone knows about our divided past, but how do we build a future together?”
Social impact is high on the agenda for Thomson, who emphasises that museums should be inclusive spaces and stimulate dialogue and debate. She points to the outreach work being done at the Ulster American Folk Museum with the Leonard Cheshire Foundation charity.
“We gave a piece of land we didn’t use to a group of people with acquired brain injuries,” she says. “They’re now growing seeds, planting out and gardening across our whole site. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
That site and the Folk and Transport Museum are both quite different to the Ulster Museum. One of the challenges for Thomson is how to get three such different sites working together cohesively.
Cultural cohesion
“At the moment there isn’t much cross-fertilisation between our three sites,” she says. At the Folk and Transport Museum, an open air site, visitors step back 100 years into a traditional Irish street. There’s a farm with Irish rare breeds too, and new piglets.
It has a full events programme ranging from such diverse activities as Capri car day, donkey day, to an evening featuring an Irish stew supper and a ceilidh.
Thomson aims to drive visitor figures up to a million a year across the three sites – last year’s footfall hit 800,000 – and sees a good opportunity to boost them at the Ulster American Folk Museum. “At that site, 36% of visitors travel from outside Northern Ireland. Tourism NI have identified a largely American, big unmet market demand for people who want to research their ancestry and discover their roots.”
Central to Thomson’s outlook is the Museums Association’s Museums Change Lives vision for the impact that museums can have on individuals and communities.
“We have to actually embed that thinking into our whole philosophy, in what we do and how we do it,” she says. “But how do you make anything like Museums Change Lives a core part of your business and not just something you do whenever you attract funding to do it?”
Thomson is keen to learn from others and says the National Museums Scotland (NMS) is a good benchmark to measure up to – she will be in conversation with other museum leaders, including Gordon Rintoul, the director of NMS, at the Museums Association Conference in November.
Thomson aims to future-proof NMNI, but to do that with the organisation’s existing funding will require significant change. Yet her analytical foundations stand her in good stead to optimise, improve, and economise NMNI’s vast remit of object-driven and experiential social impact.
“My challenge is to unlock our potential while giving staff fulfilment and maximising public engagement.”
Kathryn Thomson at a glance
Kathryn Thomson became the director and chief executive of National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI)in March this year. She replaced Tim Cooke, who left in 2014.
Thomson has a degree in business studies from Edinburgh University.
After university, she went on to work at professional services firm PwC as a manager, and qualified as a Chartered Public Finance Accountant while she was there. She became a corporate analyst for the NHS in Glasgow from 2000 to 2004, before moving back to her home town of Belfast.
She took up the post of director of finance and business planning at Tourism Northern Ireland, and was promoted to chief operating officer during her 11 years there, before moving to NMNI
National Museums Northern Ireland at a glance
National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI) comprises three sites: Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra, and the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh.
Ulster Museum is free, the other two sites are ticketed.
NMNI has an annual budget of around £14m with an annual grant of about £10.5m coming from the government.
The Ulster Museum reopened in 2009 following a £17.2m redevelopment. The museum won the £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year prize in 2010.
There are 270 full-time equivalents who work across the museums service. Annual visitor figures are about 800,000.
In conversation: David Mann (Scottish Maritime Museum), Tonya Nelson (UCL Museums & Collections), Kathryn Thomson (NMNI), Gordon Rintoul (NMS), takes place on 7 November at the Museums Association Conference, Glasgow.