If anyone is an advert for Luton, it is Karen Perkins. She became the director of culture and engagement at Luton Culture in September last year and has bags of enthusiasm for the town. For the previous nine years, she had been the director of arts and museums for the same organisation.
“I’m a bit of a so-and-so for getting my hands on everything – I like to be involved in the detail,” says Perkins, who trained as an archaeologist and worked in early paleolithic collections for the British Museum for 16 years before moving to Luton. She started as a curator for Luton’s Stockwood Discovery Centre, and gradually worked her way up. Her current position was the result of a recent reorganisation at Luton Culture.
“We said, who are we, what do we do, what is Luton Culture trying to achieve,” Perkins says. “We wrote an outline business plan and a vision. Then we built the team to deliver it. We literally tore it up and started again, and one of the last steps was creating my new role.”
Perkins now oversees not just Luton’s museums – Stockwood Discovery Centre and Wardown House, Museum and Gallery – but also the Hat Factory Arts Centre, Luton Library Theatre, the town’s community centres and all of Luton’s libraries. On top of that, she is responsible for audience development, schools engagement and creative programming.
“My role is to look at how we engage with people across everything,” she says. “It allows me to cross-fertilise all that we’ve learned through our museums into our library programming, for example. How do we take what’s been rich and amazing and apply it to libraries? It has huge potential.”
She sees this process of change as being vital to the town’s future, and wants to model her new remit on what has worked well so far. Achievements include the £3.5m revamp of Wardown House, a Victorian house that tells the area’s local history, which reopened to great fanfare in April 2017.
Streets ahead
In her previous role as the director of arts and museums, she started a significant volunteering initiative called Museum Makers.
“It’s gone from being a pilot project getting people engaged with Wardown House to creating a capital redevelopment that has been hugely successful,” Perkins says.
She has introduced the same concept for the libraries, called Library Makers. The scheme was started at Wardown House under an initiative called The People’s Museum, which received funding from Arts Council England.
“Between 2011 and 2013, we had some Resilience money from the arts council to help engage the community in this museum,” Perkins says. “This is the local history museum for the town we’re talking about, but we would struggle to get 40,000 visitors a year. Of those, I’d say over 80% of them were white British locals.”
A 2010 survey called the Active People Survey put Luton in the lower 20% of areas in the country where people are engaging with the arts. Perkins has never believed this to be true though, citing Luton’s six major outdoor arts festivals a year as an example of its comprehensive arts programming. But Perkins was aware that the town’s museum visitors did not represent Luton’s demographics.
“It’s a super-diverse community, with more than 50% of Luton residents identifying as black and minority ethnic, and our visitors were in no way reflecting that,” she says. “We were also hearing that people would visit and ask if we still had ‘that lace lady’, which was this awful mannequin we had 35 years ago. That’s what really made us realise something was fundamentally wrong. Schoolkids came, they would grow up and return when they had grandkids – no one was coming in the middle.”
Perkins’ strategy to address this included two initiatives to attract a larger and broader audience. “One evening in 2011 we did Museums at Night at Wardown House, but we decided not to tell anyone. Instead, we piled brown-paper packages and boxes with ‘museum’ stamped on them all around the outside of the building and all around the park. People asked if we were closing, and we’d say ‘who knows what our future is, but if you want to find out, sign up.”
That campaign captured valuable data and attracted the interest of lots of people, many of whom have become Museum Makers. “It was really successful,” Perkins says. “Those Museum Makers still tweet about what we do and share events on social media, and over 150 of them have become volunteers.”
Another important initiative was a Guinness World Record attempt. “We still hold the record for the most people wearing Luton straw boaters at any one time – achieved in 2013, and we had 797 people in total,” Perkins says. “It was hilarious.”
Onwards and upwards
The redeveloped Wardown House has successfully attracted a more diverse range of visitors, but Perkins says there’s still more to do to encourage all sections of the community to engage with the town’s cultural offer.
With Wardown House under her belt, Perkins is now concentrating on hats – Luton is the millinery capital of Britain, after all. In the mid-19th century, there were more than 500 manufacturers of hats in the town, but only eight survive. A grand plan for the old Hat District is designed to build on this heritage.
“There’s huge investment happening in Luton – billions of pounds over the next 20 years, which will see an expansion of the airport, a new retail park, new developments around the M1, and investment in skills and sustainability,” she says. “There are 10 projects and Luton Culture is delivering one, the Hat District.”
This £9m development, which Perkins is part of the project board for, will refurbish and refit three former hat factories in the town centre, as well as creating a new building. These will not be museums, but will feature rental spaces for those working in the creative industries. “The idea is, because these buildings are right in the town centre, they will create an energy and buzz, a proper creative environment,” Perkins says. She is working with the Heritage Lottery Fund on the project, which she hopes will provide affordable spaces for young people to develop their skills and talents.
Cultural ecosystem
“There’s a real gap between coming out of college with all the skills and going into your own business,” Perkins says. “How do you prototype things to take to a bank to get a business loan? Luton Culture wants to help enable that with what we’re calling the Hat Works. Then, people will be able move into the Hat Factory, which will offer affordable office space for those setting up in business.”
The Hat Factory refurbishment begins this April, with the aim to reopen two years later. The plan is to complete the whole Hat District project by the end of 2021.
So, can we look forward to radical social, cultural and economic change in Luton under Perkins’ guidance then? “Apart from being distracted occasionally by shiny objects, I am very ambitious and we want to take risks at Luton Culture,” she says. “It’s all about building a buzz.”
For nine years she worked at the British Museum in the early palaeolithic section, progressing to the role of collections manager in the mediaeval department, where she worked for seven years.
In 2004 she moved to Luton to be a curator and site manager for Stockwood Craft Museum (now Stockwood Discovery Centre). Perkins was given the role of collections manager there two years later, and became the director of arts and museums in 2008.
In September 2017 she was appointed to the new position of director of culture and engagement for Luton Culture. Perkins reports to the chief executive, Marie Kirbyshaw, and is part of the Women Leaders in Museums network.
The museums service has about 103 full-time equivalent staff.
Stockwood Discovery Centre was redeveloped in 2008 and tells the story of the Chilterns, their geology and the wider area, as well as holding one of the nation’s best drawn-carriage collections.
The centre receives 200,000 visitors a year and is free to visit.
Wardown House, Museum and Gallery reopened in 2017 and tells the local history of Luton and the millinery trade.
Luton Culture is funded by London Luton Airport, Luton Borough Council and Arts Council England.
The charity’s town-centre redevelopment of the Hat District begins in April 2018 with an aim to complete the project by the end of 2020.
“I’m a bit of a so-and-so for getting my hands on everything – I like to be involved in the detail,” says Perkins, who trained as an archaeologist and worked in early paleolithic collections for the British Museum for 16 years before moving to Luton. She started as a curator for Luton’s Stockwood Discovery Centre, and gradually worked her way up. Her current position was the result of a recent reorganisation at Luton Culture.
“We said, who are we, what do we do, what is Luton Culture trying to achieve,” Perkins says. “We wrote an outline business plan and a vision. Then we built the team to deliver it. We literally tore it up and started again, and one of the last steps was creating my new role.”
Perkins now oversees not just Luton’s museums – Stockwood Discovery Centre and Wardown House, Museum and Gallery – but also the Hat Factory Arts Centre, Luton Library Theatre, the town’s community centres and all of Luton’s libraries. On top of that, she is responsible for audience development, schools engagement and creative programming.
“My role is to look at how we engage with people across everything,” she says. “It allows me to cross-fertilise all that we’ve learned through our museums into our library programming, for example. How do we take what’s been rich and amazing and apply it to libraries? It has huge potential.”
She sees this process of change as being vital to the town’s future, and wants to model her new remit on what has worked well so far. Achievements include the £3.5m revamp of Wardown House, a Victorian house that tells the area’s local history, which reopened to great fanfare in April 2017.
Streets ahead
In her previous role as the director of arts and museums, she started a significant volunteering initiative called Museum Makers.
“It’s gone from being a pilot project getting people engaged with Wardown House to creating a capital redevelopment that has been hugely successful,” Perkins says.
She has introduced the same concept for the libraries, called Library Makers. The scheme was started at Wardown House under an initiative called The People’s Museum, which received funding from Arts Council England.
“Between 2011 and 2013, we had some Resilience money from the arts council to help engage the community in this museum,” Perkins says. “This is the local history museum for the town we’re talking about, but we would struggle to get 40,000 visitors a year. Of those, I’d say over 80% of them were white British locals.”
A 2010 survey called the Active People Survey put Luton in the lower 20% of areas in the country where people are engaging with the arts. Perkins has never believed this to be true though, citing Luton’s six major outdoor arts festivals a year as an example of its comprehensive arts programming. But Perkins was aware that the town’s museum visitors did not represent Luton’s demographics.
“It’s a super-diverse community, with more than 50% of Luton residents identifying as black and minority ethnic, and our visitors were in no way reflecting that,” she says. “We were also hearing that people would visit and ask if we still had ‘that lace lady’, which was this awful mannequin we had 35 years ago. That’s what really made us realise something was fundamentally wrong. Schoolkids came, they would grow up and return when they had grandkids – no one was coming in the middle.”
Perkins’ strategy to address this included two initiatives to attract a larger and broader audience. “One evening in 2011 we did Museums at Night at Wardown House, but we decided not to tell anyone. Instead, we piled brown-paper packages and boxes with ‘museum’ stamped on them all around the outside of the building and all around the park. People asked if we were closing, and we’d say ‘who knows what our future is, but if you want to find out, sign up.”
That campaign captured valuable data and attracted the interest of lots of people, many of whom have become Museum Makers. “It was really successful,” Perkins says. “Those Museum Makers still tweet about what we do and share events on social media, and over 150 of them have become volunteers.”
Another important initiative was a Guinness World Record attempt. “We still hold the record for the most people wearing Luton straw boaters at any one time – achieved in 2013, and we had 797 people in total,” Perkins says. “It was hilarious.”
Onwards and upwards
The redeveloped Wardown House has successfully attracted a more diverse range of visitors, but Perkins says there’s still more to do to encourage all sections of the community to engage with the town’s cultural offer.
With Wardown House under her belt, Perkins is now concentrating on hats – Luton is the millinery capital of Britain, after all. In the mid-19th century, there were more than 500 manufacturers of hats in the town, but only eight survive. A grand plan for the old Hat District is designed to build on this heritage.
“There’s huge investment happening in Luton – billions of pounds over the next 20 years, which will see an expansion of the airport, a new retail park, new developments around the M1, and investment in skills and sustainability,” she says. “There are 10 projects and Luton Culture is delivering one, the Hat District.”
This £9m development, which Perkins is part of the project board for, will refurbish and refit three former hat factories in the town centre, as well as creating a new building. These will not be museums, but will feature rental spaces for those working in the creative industries. “The idea is, because these buildings are right in the town centre, they will create an energy and buzz, a proper creative environment,” Perkins says. She is working with the Heritage Lottery Fund on the project, which she hopes will provide affordable spaces for young people to develop their skills and talents.
Cultural ecosystem
“There’s a real gap between coming out of college with all the skills and going into your own business,” Perkins says. “How do you prototype things to take to a bank to get a business loan? Luton Culture wants to help enable that with what we’re calling the Hat Works. Then, people will be able move into the Hat Factory, which will offer affordable office space for those setting up in business.”
The Hat Factory refurbishment begins this April, with the aim to reopen two years later. The plan is to complete the whole Hat District project by the end of 2021.
So, can we look forward to radical social, cultural and economic change in Luton under Perkins’ guidance then? “Apart from being distracted occasionally by shiny objects, I am very ambitious and we want to take risks at Luton Culture,” she says. “It’s all about building a buzz.”
Karen Perkins at a glance
Karen Perkins studied prehistoric archaeology and geography as a BA at the University in Liverpool, and went on to do an MSc in quaternary environmental change at London Metropolitan University.For nine years she worked at the British Museum in the early palaeolithic section, progressing to the role of collections manager in the mediaeval department, where she worked for seven years.
In 2004 she moved to Luton to be a curator and site manager for Stockwood Craft Museum (now Stockwood Discovery Centre). Perkins was given the role of collections manager there two years later, and became the director of arts and museums in 2008.
In September 2017 she was appointed to the new position of director of culture and engagement for Luton Culture. Perkins reports to the chief executive, Marie Kirbyshaw, and is part of the Women Leaders in Museums network.
Luton culture at a glance
Luton Culture is an arts and cultural charity that runs a number of sites across the town – Stockwood Discovery Centre, Wardown House, the Hat Factory Arts Centre, Luton Library Theatre, community centres and libraries.The museums service has about 103 full-time equivalent staff.
Stockwood Discovery Centre was redeveloped in 2008 and tells the story of the Chilterns, their geology and the wider area, as well as holding one of the nation’s best drawn-carriage collections.
The centre receives 200,000 visitors a year and is free to visit.
Wardown House, Museum and Gallery reopened in 2017 and tells the local history of Luton and the millinery trade.
Luton Culture is funded by London Luton Airport, Luton Borough Council and Arts Council England.
The charity’s town-centre redevelopment of the Hat District begins in April 2018 with an aim to complete the project by the end of 2020.