“Our job here is around identity of place,” says Laura Pye, the head of culture for Bristol City Council, which runs the museum service. “It’s our job to be representative of that place, not just through our exhibitions, but in our staff too,” she says.
Pye takes this seriously across the service she runs, which incorporates five venues across the city – Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, M Shed, Blaise Castle House Museum, Georgian House and Red Lodge – that attract a million visitors a year.
“We’re a big part of what brings people to the city,” says Pye, who became the head of culture in January 2015 and is responsible for archives, arts and events, in addition to museums. “Bristol as a city understands the importance of culture.”
The city’s culture portfolio sits with the deputy mayor, so it’s high up on the agenda. But, like many local authority-funded services, Bristol Museums has to deal with ongoing budget cuts in recent years.
Interestingly, Pye doesn’t feel this is the biggest problem that museums face.
“I think our biggest issue is around relevance,” she says. “If we can’t demonstrate our relevance, we won’t get the funding we need. If we can ensure that we are articulating a vision where museums are relevant to today’s society, then the funding should sort itself.”
She uses the EU referendum to demonstrate her point: “I haven’t spoken to many people in the museum sector that voted for Brexit, and that in itself is an issue for me, because 52% of those who voted did. My concern lies in how we are representing the identity of a population that it suddenly doesn’t look like we understand.”
The museums that Pye heads up have quite different remits. Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is a more traditional museum that covers a range of subjects, including natural history and ancient Egypt. M Shed, now five years old, focuses more on social history and the locality; Red Lodge looks at 400 years of history; Blaise House focuses on the 18th century; and the Georgian House covers slavery, having once been a slave-owner’s home.
Key stages
Pye found herself working in museums as a supplement to her history and sociology degree in Huddersfield, which then led on to working with local authorities in Lancashire, then Warwickshire as the head of education, before becoming head of service.
“I loved the teaching element to all my museum education work. You can really see the difference you make with children, that moment you change their lives. You can see it on their faces,” she says.
“The reality is the higher up you get the further away from that public engagement you get. But I’m a great one for a spreadsheet. I like to know what our visitor figures are. We’re very data driven at Bristol Museums.”
Bristol has lots of residents who are really engaged with the cultural scene, but there are others who might never have set foot in a museum. Pye has been asking herself how the service can ensure its collections are relevant to all sections of the community, whether they are recent migrants or more established city-dwellers.
An exhibition that recently opened at M Shed – Somalis in Bristol: Where Are We From and Who Are We Now? – is an example of its strategy to engage specific communities. Pye says that Bristol Museums has worked hard to find out the best way to work effectively with the Somalian population.
“There’s been a Somali community in Bristol for a long time. M Shed has been open five years. Should we have done that exhibition before now really?”
Pye is determined to get Bristol Museums to reflect the society that it serves. The organisation ran some research recently and was surprised by the findings.
“We would have said M Shed had the more diverse audience, but our data shows the opposite; Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is more diverse than M Shed in terms of BAME communities and age profile,” she explains.
Black History Month at Georgian House proved very popular, but it was a short season, and Pye really sees broadening museum audiences as a long-term challenge.
“You can go from one ward in the city with the highest number of people with PhDs in the country, to a ward a couple of miles away that has one of the lowest GCSE attainment rates in the country. Life expectancy can vary by 10 years between wards,” she explains. “It’s a community of differences.”
Pye wants to engage all of these people. “We have world-class collections and want to be recognised as world-class museums, but I also want our museums to be places that Bristol residents feel are theirs.”
Community service
With such a diverse range of people to attract, the museum service has to think carefully about how best to reach everyone. An example is M Shed’s recent exhibition The Story of Children’s Television, which was a big hit with visitors.
“We did a deal with the local bus company, to put an offer on bus tickets for journeys through postcodes with communities that don’t visit us,” says Pye. “We had a lot of success bringing those people in as a result.”
Targeted marketing is one way to break down barriers, but Pye has also been looking into other solutions. “Simple things like moving the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery map into the entrance space so that visitors can understand the building before they go in, and changing the colour of our uniforms from black to bright blue to look less intimidating all helps,” she says.
But how does a museum fundamentally change the audience it appeals to? One of the ways is by changing the make-up of the workforce, including its volunteers.
“We’ve got lots of volunteers, and we’ve been trying to diversify them,” Pye says. “Recently we’ve allowed them to be classed as internal applicants for any jobs that come up at the museum service.”
“It allows a bit of opportunity,” she says, even though in the midst of local authority cuts and recruitment freezes, the service is not recruiting massively.
The latest task, though, is finishing off the bid to get a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) application to Arts Council England. Bristol Museums had been receiving funding as one of the arts council’s Major Partner Museums, although this system has ended and been replaced by an arrangement where museums can apply to be NPOs, alongside other arts organisations.
Pye says that it is crucial for Bristol Museums to secure NPO status, and the funding that comes with it. Next is an overhaul of M Shed, which needs a bit of attention after its first five years, then 10 years down the line there’s a plan to redevelop Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.
As Pye says, Bristol Museums is about identity of place, and she is working damn hard to ensure the five museums she oversees do just that: serve every single part of the local community.
Pye studied history with sociology in Huddersfield, and also has an MA in art gallery and museum studies.
After university she worked at Prescot Museum, near Liverpool, for two years before becoming the lifelong learning and outreach officer for Lancashire County Council Museums.
She took the post of the head of heritage education at Warwickshire County Council for six years until 2013, before being appointed the interim heritage and culture manager until 2014.
Now, as the head of culture in Bristol, she oversees five museums: Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, M Shed, Red Lodge, Georgian House, and Blaise Castle House Museum. She is also responsible for archives, arts and events in the city.
Pye is the chair of Museums Taskforce, which has been brought together by the Museums Association to review the opportunities and challenges facing museums across the UK.
Across the service there are about 200 staff and 700 volunteers. About one million people visit annually across the five sites.
All the venues are free to enter, but temporary exhibitions have an admission fee.
Bristol Museums was a Major Partner Museum under the Arts Council’s old scheme and is applying to be a National Portfolio Organisation under the new scheme.
Pye takes this seriously across the service she runs, which incorporates five venues across the city – Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, M Shed, Blaise Castle House Museum, Georgian House and Red Lodge – that attract a million visitors a year.
“We’re a big part of what brings people to the city,” says Pye, who became the head of culture in January 2015 and is responsible for archives, arts and events, in addition to museums. “Bristol as a city understands the importance of culture.”
The city’s culture portfolio sits with the deputy mayor, so it’s high up on the agenda. But, like many local authority-funded services, Bristol Museums has to deal with ongoing budget cuts in recent years.
Interestingly, Pye doesn’t feel this is the biggest problem that museums face.
“I think our biggest issue is around relevance,” she says. “If we can’t demonstrate our relevance, we won’t get the funding we need. If we can ensure that we are articulating a vision where museums are relevant to today’s society, then the funding should sort itself.”
She uses the EU referendum to demonstrate her point: “I haven’t spoken to many people in the museum sector that voted for Brexit, and that in itself is an issue for me, because 52% of those who voted did. My concern lies in how we are representing the identity of a population that it suddenly doesn’t look like we understand.”
The museums that Pye heads up have quite different remits. Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is a more traditional museum that covers a range of subjects, including natural history and ancient Egypt. M Shed, now five years old, focuses more on social history and the locality; Red Lodge looks at 400 years of history; Blaise House focuses on the 18th century; and the Georgian House covers slavery, having once been a slave-owner’s home.
Key stages
Pye found herself working in museums as a supplement to her history and sociology degree in Huddersfield, which then led on to working with local authorities in Lancashire, then Warwickshire as the head of education, before becoming head of service.
“I loved the teaching element to all my museum education work. You can really see the difference you make with children, that moment you change their lives. You can see it on their faces,” she says.
“The reality is the higher up you get the further away from that public engagement you get. But I’m a great one for a spreadsheet. I like to know what our visitor figures are. We’re very data driven at Bristol Museums.”
Bristol has lots of residents who are really engaged with the cultural scene, but there are others who might never have set foot in a museum. Pye has been asking herself how the service can ensure its collections are relevant to all sections of the community, whether they are recent migrants or more established city-dwellers.
An exhibition that recently opened at M Shed – Somalis in Bristol: Where Are We From and Who Are We Now? – is an example of its strategy to engage specific communities. Pye says that Bristol Museums has worked hard to find out the best way to work effectively with the Somalian population.
“There’s been a Somali community in Bristol for a long time. M Shed has been open five years. Should we have done that exhibition before now really?”
Pye is determined to get Bristol Museums to reflect the society that it serves. The organisation ran some research recently and was surprised by the findings.
“We would have said M Shed had the more diverse audience, but our data shows the opposite; Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is more diverse than M Shed in terms of BAME communities and age profile,” she explains.
Black History Month at Georgian House proved very popular, but it was a short season, and Pye really sees broadening museum audiences as a long-term challenge.
“You can go from one ward in the city with the highest number of people with PhDs in the country, to a ward a couple of miles away that has one of the lowest GCSE attainment rates in the country. Life expectancy can vary by 10 years between wards,” she explains. “It’s a community of differences.”
Pye wants to engage all of these people. “We have world-class collections and want to be recognised as world-class museums, but I also want our museums to be places that Bristol residents feel are theirs.”
We want to be recognised as world-class museums, but I also want our museums to be places that Bristol residents feel are theirs"
Community service
With such a diverse range of people to attract, the museum service has to think carefully about how best to reach everyone. An example is M Shed’s recent exhibition The Story of Children’s Television, which was a big hit with visitors.
“We did a deal with the local bus company, to put an offer on bus tickets for journeys through postcodes with communities that don’t visit us,” says Pye. “We had a lot of success bringing those people in as a result.”
Targeted marketing is one way to break down barriers, but Pye has also been looking into other solutions. “Simple things like moving the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery map into the entrance space so that visitors can understand the building before they go in, and changing the colour of our uniforms from black to bright blue to look less intimidating all helps,” she says.
But how does a museum fundamentally change the audience it appeals to? One of the ways is by changing the make-up of the workforce, including its volunteers.
“We’ve got lots of volunteers, and we’ve been trying to diversify them,” Pye says. “Recently we’ve allowed them to be classed as internal applicants for any jobs that come up at the museum service.”
“It allows a bit of opportunity,” she says, even though in the midst of local authority cuts and recruitment freezes, the service is not recruiting massively.
The latest task, though, is finishing off the bid to get a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) application to Arts Council England. Bristol Museums had been receiving funding as one of the arts council’s Major Partner Museums, although this system has ended and been replaced by an arrangement where museums can apply to be NPOs, alongside other arts organisations.
Pye says that it is crucial for Bristol Museums to secure NPO status, and the funding that comes with it. Next is an overhaul of M Shed, which needs a bit of attention after its first five years, then 10 years down the line there’s a plan to redevelop Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.
As Pye says, Bristol Museums is about identity of place, and she is working damn hard to ensure the five museums she oversees do just that: serve every single part of the local community.
Laura Pye at a glance
Laura Pye started as the head of culture for Bristol Museums on 1 January 2015. Pye studied history with sociology in Huddersfield, and also has an MA in art gallery and museum studies.
After university she worked at Prescot Museum, near Liverpool, for two years before becoming the lifelong learning and outreach officer for Lancashire County Council Museums.
She took the post of the head of heritage education at Warwickshire County Council for six years until 2013, before being appointed the interim heritage and culture manager until 2014.
Now, as the head of culture in Bristol, she oversees five museums: Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, M Shed, Red Lodge, Georgian House, and Blaise Castle House Museum. She is also responsible for archives, arts and events in the city.
Pye is the chair of Museums Taskforce, which has been brought together by the Museums Association to review the opportunities and challenges facing museums across the UK.
Bristol Museums at a glance
Bristol Museums is the local authority museum service for Bristol City Council, and runs five sites across the city: Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, M Shed, Red Lodge, Georgian House and Blaise Castle House Museum, as well as Bristol Archives.Across the service there are about 200 staff and 700 volunteers. About one million people visit annually across the five sites.
All the venues are free to enter, but temporary exhibitions have an admission fee.
Bristol Museums was a Major Partner Museum under the Arts Council’s old scheme and is applying to be a National Portfolio Organisation under the new scheme.