National Trust to tell more diverse stories via property websites

The National Trust has confirmed more details of its 10-year strategy, which officially launched in January, including plans to revamp 140 of the trust's 500 property websites.

The work centres around bringing out more diverse stories via forthcoming in-depth research, which will be added to websites to enable the trust to tell a full range of inclusive histories.

Tarnya Cooper, the curation and conservation director at the National Trust, said: “We know from research among our visitors and other audiences that they want to learn more about the history of a place. Online content is one way to increase accessibility, understanding and inspire curiosity.

“Some people want to see a greater breadth of history, for others the lack of full histories can make our places feel less relevant to them. They want this content to include more on the contexts of the houses and collections, where the wealth came from, how they engaged globally, and how the property and its estates have been shaped by the owners and families who lived there over the years.

“We are working on a project to provide fuller information and articles on our property history webpages, in the first instance for around 140 places. These are being completed over time as each place is reviewed.”

Also central to the new 10-year strategy is making trust sites more accessible and developing off-site partnerships.

New interpretation

The trust has also completed a piece of work looking into its hard copy interpretation at properties.

Interrogating the popularity of volunteer interpreters, the trust ran a survey among members to determine if visitors wanted written interpretation as well – or if they felt comfortable just asking the volunteers on site.

The result was that 94% of respondents wanted written interpretation on site to refer to before they spoke to a volunteer.

In response to this, the trust embarked on a project to produce 3,000 concise booklets. Each one contains 60-word object captions with images and short texts to give visitors a flavour of the room, property or site.

The new booklets are designed to provide a more accessible, inclusive entry point for visitors.