Case Study Two

Planning museum education services in Hampshire

Schools4Museums is a database developed by MLA South East and the South East Museum Hub to record schools’ participation in museum activity across the region. By analysing data, museums can identify the scope and reach of their services and target their marketing accordingly.

Hampshire County Council Museums and Archives Service covers 19 museums and sites, organised into an area structure for the purposes of museum education. Recent and ongoing development stimulated by Renaissance funding needs to be strategically directed and decisions based on accurate and accessible data. By moving from paper format to the Schools4Museums database, it is becoming possible to build up a more consistent picture of the use of museums by schools, identifying patterns of visits across the county.

Target Audience

Internal

Aim

The aim was to use information from the database to answer questions such as:

• which schools are participating most, when and why?
• where is there more engagement needed?
• how can we plan for different types of engagement with different year groups?
• is the market expanding or being re-directed? i.e. what is the impact of growth in numbers at one site on numbers at another?
• how can repeat visits within an academic year be encouraged, especially supported by the use of the Museums Service temporary exhibition programme?
• how can we plan to make our services accessible across the County?
• which schools are serial users of museums?
• how can we follow up by measuring the impact and value of museum learning experiences on these schools?
• how can we make more schools serial users of museums?

Process

This database was originally set up MLA South East and the South East Museum Hub with funding from Renaissance and the Department of Children, Schools and Families through the Strategic Commissioning Education Programme. Museums across the South East were encouraged to input data relating to their work with schools so that local rates of participation could be measured consistently. This data can then be used by the individual museums to measure their own progress and by strategic agencies to inform regional planning processes.

Staff at Hampshire County Council Museums and Archives Service began by analysing figures from one site in order to become familiar with the database and understand its full capacity. To begin work on the larger picture, some extra work was done to tailor the format of the data to the reports needed.

Impact and outcome

It is currently still at an early stage of development, but already some trends are emerging. Participation rates can be seen to be expanding and non-user schools identified. Recent figures show that of 430 Primary schools, 85% have used Hampshire’s museums and there is a growing number of schools visiting more than twice in a year.

The co-operation and collaboration between museums is part of the wider strategic plan, offering schools the opportunity of choice in terms of the cultural offer across the county.

Hampshire County Council Museums and Archives Service is acting as a pathfinder for the use of the database and will report back through the Renaissance structures.

Future development

It is necessary to collect data over a longer period of time in order to produce a fuller picture; this may take another 2 academic years. At this point it should be possible to identify wider trends and this information will be fed into future planning for marketing and education.

A national database is under development. This will be a tool that can be used in many ways in future in order to measure the impact of museum activity.

For more information contact  Sue Wright, Hampshire County Council Museums and Archives Service.  01962 826700