An expert panel discusses how cultural venues can best cater to families and what trends are emerging
How can cultural venues best serve the increasingly important families market? What are examples of current best practice? Where are the challenges and opportunities? What trends are emerging that organisations should be aware of and adapt to? Host Tom Dawson gathers an expert panel to address all these questions and more:
Amy Akino-Wittering, Head of Operations & Commercial, Young V&A
Alison Bowyer, CEO, Kids in Museums
Caroline Jones, CEO & Director, Story Museum
Tom Dawson: [00:00:00] Hello, I am Tom Dawson and welcome to the Arts and Culture Podcast from the Association for Cultural Enterprises, the go-to podcast for thought leadership in the cultural sector. In this episode, we are looking at how museums and cultural attractions are evolving to engage families. What's driving change, what great family experiences look like, and why this audience is so important to the sector's future.
I'm joined by Alison Bowyer, CEO of Kids in Museums, Caroline Jones, director and CEO of the Story Museum. And Amy Akino-Whittering, head of operations and commercial at Young V&A, the winner of the 2024 Family Friendly Museum Award from Kids and Museums. Together, we discuss what it means to be truly family friendly, the power of play, and the joy that comes from being fun, curious, and just a little bit odd.[00:01:00]
Why don't we start with talking about what makes a brilliant experience for families? And children. Two fantastic venues on the call, Allison, with a huge amount of experience across the country of what makes a brilliant experience. So I'm wondering, before we talk a bit about the Story Museum and the young v and a, where else do you think is a must visit?
Who do you think does it really well apart from Young V&A and Story Museum. Amy, can I come to you?
Amy Akino-Wittering: I mean, there's a couple. So I love going to the Docklands part of the London Museum. I always think that's really great. There's lots of like hands on stuff. Everyone's always really friendly. And then actually the weekend just gone.
I went to Wentworth Woodhouse. I absolutely loved it. One of the things I really enjoyed was that outdoor playground. Area and it was really amazing. It was like lots of different sensory elements. There was like a quiet hurt in the middle of the forest. There was like a mud kitchen and it was really amazing actually how they engaged all the different senses.
It was very kind of tactile and prompts and [00:02:00] it wasn't necessarily people led, which is what I would normally kind of talk about. There was, um, yeah, just so many amazing kind of things in there.
Tom Dawson: Good tips. Caroline, what about you?
Caroline Jones: So for me, I guess I think about what. Do the children and family involved life?
What inspires them? What do they love to do? So my kids, for example, are really old school. So the Natural History Museum in Tring, I dunno if you know it, but it's like as old school as it gets, it's taxidermied animals of all sizes and shapes in glass cases. So when you think about the way. We as museums may now design and curate for children.
It's like the antithesis of that, but something about it is so beautifully odd and curious. And if your children are curious and if as a parent you can engage and sustain their interest by. Creating your own trails around the space, for example, which is something we do a lot, or sitting with a sketch pad and pencils and just drawing.
Then something that at [00:03:00] first sight might seem slightly peculiar, becomes magical. So I think there's something really important about. The adult accompanying the children and how they're stepping into the experience with the child. And then the other thing, uh, I mean, as Amy was saying, is anywhere with outdoor space, if you've got children who love to run and get muddy and enjoy the outdoors, then I'm a particular fan of Compton Verney up in Warwickshire because the program they do just within the landscape, the beautiful setting of their Georgian gallery, the hands-on creativity that they create for children and young people is just brilliant.
Tom Dawson: Alison, what about you?
Alison Bowyer: So actually before I give some suggestions, I just wanted to pick up on what Caroline said about the old school thing. We find that in feedback from families increasingly, that they don't want experiences with screens. They want to get away from screens. So those old school experiences, analogue interactives that you can pick up, you can dress up, you can smell things.
They are. Really, really popular with families. So [00:04:00] I think there's something really interesting there in terms of venues, I've just picked some from our Family Friendly Museum award, sort of recent winners. So Craven Museum in North Yorkshire in Skipton. It's a really small museum. It's a sort of local social history museum, but they have just created this incredibly welcoming space where families.
Feel they can drop in on their way home after school. They have like regular make and take craft sessions that are sort of low cost and they've just created something that works really well for that town, which I think is at a really valuable resource. Couple of others, the Great North Museum in Newcastle, the National Civil War Centre in Newark, who have done this incredible experiment with play across all their galleries.
And created this thing called Play Him for under fives. That happens regularly. And finally, just to talk about Barnsley Museums, who across all their [00:05:00] sites are the most welcoming for families who have children with additional needs or neurodivergent children?
Tom Dawson: Wow. So brilliant shout outs there. And a few I haven't been to, which I'm definitely adding to my list.
I'm gonna mention for older children. Nottingham Castle fairly recently reopened and they have a Robin Hood experience, which I think does do an example of marrying sort of technology with play. You can go in and sort of fire bow arrows into a screen. You can fight little John with big sticks, and there's lots of interactive exhibits.
It's fun, and again, a great place to run around. For younger children, absolutely love Sorted at the Postal Museum. It's a brilliant, almost soft play type space. I would probably say in a sentence, what I particularly like is it's timed, its controls. You have a 30 minute slot and it's not too busy, therefore, which I think from a parent's point of view is absolutely lovely.
I think it's really great fun. And in Cornwall, PK Porthkurno, which again, I think for adults as well as children, fantastic place. You might not necessarily go, oh, I'm gonna take my child to a museum of global Communications, but. It's brilliant. And the [00:06:00] plus is you get to visit the Minack Theatre next door, so anyone in Cornwall, I highly recommend those.
Really interesting that you've talked about that kind of analogue experience, and that's the sort of some feedback you're getting in terms of sensory, tactile, kind of interacting with objects, not necessarily screens, which actually seems to be the trend in inverted commas. Is to move more towards that direction.
I mean, that strikes me when I sort of go to places like the Young V&A and the Story museum. It is that sort of place where adult and child can interact together, can engage with the objects. What's your approach to technology and your programming, your exhibits, the visit? Is that something you are actively trying to engage in or actually, is that from what Allison said, is that not what you think families are wanting?
Caroline, how do you feel about that?
Caroline Jones: So we've taken at the Story Museum, we have always taken a very careful line around the use of technology, which is that we use technology to enchant and enhance the Vista experience. So we [00:07:00] try never to put a screen. Or a device in between the family and the experience.
Having said, which we are about to open a new permanent gallery, which is a story arcade. It's an arcade like no other. So when someone says arcade to me, it sort of makes me feel a bit like, oh, I'm not sure. But actually we've created a sort of whimsical, magical arcade gaming space with 12 bespoke arcade units within which we're exploring narrative story.
Gaming. So the development of the story form through narrative games over the last about 30 years, because we always start with a story. That's where we start half of our job's done for us, because the story gives us not only a starting point, but a integrity and a narrative through whichever experience we're designing.
And so I would say when technology can enhance and enchant it. Fabulous. Let's put it in there. And like Allison, we get feedback from parents that are reluctant to put the screen in front of the child. Equally, the screen can offer points of access, points of [00:08:00] familiarity. It enables families to go home and access our 1001 stories collection online.
Maybe explore something they've encountered in the gallery just a little bit deeper. Maybe listen to a recording of a story that they heard a little bit of maybe access an extract from the book. So. We are mindful of it all the time, but we are not led by it. And I dunno how long that's going to be tenable for.
I dunno how long we'll be able to say, well we just don't do it. Uh, so the story arcade is our, is a sort of little exploration.
Tom Dawson: Yeah. You have to be led by what the visitors are wanting. So whether there's a generational shift to expect more technology or actually that is the space where people. Actively want to get away from screens and technology.
Amy knows very well. I'm a big fan of young V eight and live fairly close by so often there. And one of the things we do love about it is that it is very much focused on play. There are spaces for different ages and throughout the museum where you are just allowed to be free and engaged with the space.
The physicality of the, the rooms and the spaces. Is that [00:09:00] key to the success of the young V&A, do you think?
Amy Akino-Wittering: I think so, I think similar to Caroline, we took a very deliberate step away from having a completely, like a screen in every area. And it's more about exactly that. It's the physicality, it's the playing is the being free.
And actually some of our most popular sort of areas in the museum, all those real tactile like, so we have a rotating sandpit, which literally children will spend hours. We've had one child spend. Three hours playing with this rotating sandpit. It's really amazing to watch actually, how entranced, um, the, because there isn't a technology alternative in that space as well.
I think naturally, you know, kids are growing up with smartphones and tablets or whatever from a very early age, so it's very familiar to them. So we do have technology throughout the museums, which is like, okay, we've got a Minecraft screen hidden in a corner. But when they find it, they instinctively know how to use it, which is.
Like they're very kind of like tech literate, but actually what we find is they love spending time in those physical spaces as well, and I think that helps them just engage with things in a different way. It's giving options. It's not all screen led. I think. [00:10:00]
Tom Dawson: It strikes me that sometimes a bit like the best children's television programs, they're made for children, but actually there's always something in there for the parents.
There's a joke there or reference, which only the parents get. Or the adults are gonna get. Allison, do you find the places you are visiting and talking to, and particularly thinking about your awards, are the places that marry the experience of both adult and children the most successful, and how do they do that, I suppose in your view?
Alison Bowyer: I think there's a lot of, she said that. Families really want to spend time with sort of different generations altogether, whether that is grandparents with their grandchildren, grandparents, parents, and children. So the most successful museums are building in ways for all those different age groups to engage, I think layers of interpretation on objects.
And displays. So there's something for each age group, but also enabling children to explore [00:11:00] more independently while their parents or grandparents are looking at something that they're interested in and things that spark conversation, like prompts for conversation. I think that's a really fantastic tactic to.
Provoke that intergenerational sort of engagement. And something I love at the young V&A is the focus on play, but scattered all around it. There's these little panels about people who've developed different theories of play so the parrots can kind of learn something while the kids are playing and thinking about the, the intergenerational experience.
Tom Dawson: When people visit, are you seeing any changes in expectation for what people want out of a visit? I mean, we've talked a lot on this podcast about how people's expectations for a day out in a visit are changing. They're higher. There's a lot more competition from different types of venues, maybe in the cultural space, but also outside of that, are you seeing the demands on a visit?
Being higher than maybe they were sort of five, 10 years ago. And what's the impacts on, on that [00:12:00] as you who run venues and the visitor experience? Is it more challenging than it used to be or is that maybe hyped up a bit more than it actually is?
Caroline Jones: So I think running venues is inherently complicated.
There are three dimensional multi paradigm. Rubik's cubes of a challenge. It doesn't feel to me like running a venue is any more complicated now than it ever was. Certainly more expensive. I think when it comes to the visitor expectation, what we've learned at the museum and we have huge, really super high visitor satisfaction and really positive feedback.
That doesn't mean we don't get, I think on last. Quarter we had about N point N 4% of our because had written in with a complaint. And of course if they're motivated to do that, that's something you've got to really attend to though we remind ourselves as a very small number of people, we do around the management table, have a conversation about how best to respond to some of those things.
So we are always listening. So it means we're always learning and we're always adjusting. So I dunno, it's more complicated, [00:13:00] but it's certainly front and centre of our minds when we're planning from program to cafe menu to how the visitor is entering the site, moving around the site. I kind of just keep coming back to the quality of the.
Experience. If you are really, really clear on what a high quality experience means at your venue and you are constantly vigilant about delivering that, of course all aspects of the Vista service, then that that's going to get you some way. And the other thing we've learned over time is to not be overly complicated.
The more clear we are about what we are as a proposition and the more we can help visitors to understand what to expect, which in our case hasn't been easy because there isn't many places like us, we're called a museum, but we don't smell like a museum. We're a story centre, but we're not Harry Potter World, so we are tackling a fundamental.
Mystery about what we are. Of course, the longer we're opening, the more people that that come. The more amazing Google reviews get written, the more Trip advisor reviews. People are really clear on what to expect. But if you are really straightforward about what is the value proposition you are [00:14:00] making, and you are very attentive to that across the visitor experience and are listening to what they tell you at the end of it, that learning loop is constantly going.
I think that's one of the main priorities of those of us running those venues. Otherwise we are not being sufficiently audience led.
Amy Akino-Wittering: I completely agree. I do think it's the experience that people have when they're in here and it's exactly that. It's not just one particular area of it, it's all of it. How do you find information before you start to the welcome that you receive when you come into, what kind of food can you get in the cafe?
Where's the baby changing? Like is there enough baby changing? What can you see in the galleries and, and things like that. You know, what's the exhibition or shop items that are in there? It's not just any one single thing. I just think it's. Making sure that you look at it through every single aspect of your visitor journey and your visitor experience, and just making sure that you are really thinking about your audiences, like who are you for, and are you meeting the needs of that audience?
Or giving options in that space. Taking the time to review that and yeah, taking on the feedback and looking for where the changes are needed or or things like that. So [00:15:00] yeah. But I think it also, a large part of that is through people and engagement training the teams to be, for us, we are children's museum.
So child first, the child is centre stage. They get greeted first, the grownup with them. Is with them, but actually the focus for today and for who's coming in is the child and actually really putting that importance of that visitor in there. 'cause there's a surprisingly large amount where kids are not engaged with directly.
It's the grown at which engages with the visit rather than being direct to them. So actually creating those spaces where children feel heard and seen is really, really important. Ann Morrow Johnson said some stats previously where it was, if first time visitors have an impactful experience prior to three years old, intent to return multiple times over a lifetime increase over 2000%, and then if prior to 14 years old, likelihood of multiple repeat visits is still 300% greater than those who visit older.
So it's so important to actually engage with our audiences from such a young age. 'cause actually that will. Spark a lifelong interest and love of going to these [00:16:00] places. So it's a really actually vital part actually making sure that children feel welcome in spaces, building everything around that.
Tom Dawson: That's a great point, Alison.
I wonder on, on that point, I mean I moaned when I was a kid being dragged around museums and national trust properties and I was like, oh God, not again, so boy, obviously it seeps in because here I am working in the cultural sector, absolutely loving it. I'm very conscious that not every child has that opportunity.
What can venues do to make themselves welcoming and appealing to families who maybe aren't a traditional museum going audience? And I appreciate, that's a very tough question.
Alison Bowyer: There is one answer to that, which is. Get rid of the word museum because the word museum comes with so many complicated, negative connotations.
But obviously that's probably not a practical way forward. It's quite difficult to find out what non visitors think, but there have been a couple of good studies about it, and the things that put people off are, there's a lot of [00:17:00] fear about being judged if your children misbehave or. You as an adult don't know the quote unquote rules of the museum.
We still get feedback from families, which makes me really sad that they have had some PCM experience where they felt judged by staff and they don't go back. There's also a worry that. Children will be bored in a museum, and if a parent's thinking about spending money on leisure, which is limited, they're probably not gonna choose something that they think is gonna bore their child.
I think a lot of the things that help are things that Amy and Caroline were talking about, the idea of clear expectations, setting out clearly what do you expect on a visit. The Museum of London Docklands have a brilliant thing on their website where they kind of explain a visit, but they also give some sort of ideas of things you could do while you are there.
So if you are an adult and you're worried about not knowing what to do [00:18:00] in a museum, you've got those things before you go. And I think there's a big thing about communicating that museums are like fun, social, relaxed places. There's a real strong perception that museums are just for learning, and I don't mean just in a demeaning, diminishing way.
Learning's really important, but not everyone wants to go out on a Saturday and learn. And getting across in sort of marketing social media, the idea that of like, you can have a really fun, relaxed experience in a museum. And actually it sort of doesn't really matter if you only look at one object, but you have fun.
That's great. And that's like a valid way to experience a museum. I think it's getting away from this. Idea that there is like one way to experience a museum and you have to do that.
Tom Dawson: What a brilliant point, Alison. Yeah.
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Thinking about. That element of fun. Talking about the examples mentioned at the beginning, talking about things that were sensory, tactile, loved your point, Caroline, about things being odd and curious, bringing out that magic in a space, that sort of intangible element to a visit. Is that something that you can do that maybe other leisure venues can't bring to a day out?
Caroline Jones: So at the Story Museum, we've got a really good starting point because our starting [00:20:00] point is always the story, which if they're selected. Well, and then unpacked and explored and revealed in a really beautiful way. Half the job's done for us. So starting with a story helps, but fun is one of the words our visitors most feedback in terms of their experience here at the museum.
It's fun, enjoyable, occasionally magical. We've done that because we bake it into our very founding creative principles that we take to all our design, so, so I think the design aspect is really critical here and it's practical things like. Making sure any text labels you might want to put up. And bear in mind we're dealing with children.
There are other ways that you can relay information and and inspiration to them. But if you're going to put labels up, put them up at the right height, make sure everything is designed in a space. Now I'm always on my knees in the gallery looking around saying, well, what's the average 4-year-old going to notice?
And as a result, we've layered much more points of curiosity around the floor of our galleries. So it's always worth looking at knee height at the [00:21:00] Story museum because that's where a lot of the fun is really woven in. And also we use a phrase, uh, strawberries not spinach, which is that both are really good for you, but one of them just tastes nicer.
So to Allison's point about the learning, actually, I think parents quite often want to believe there is a even a soft learning outcome to a visit to a museum. Our generation kind of carries that into the experience 'cause that was our experience. The children have no idea that they're leaving this museum.
Crammed with new language, new, you know, that their imagination has been stretched, that they're, that they know themselves a little bit better, having spent a bit of time in a museum space. They're not aware of that, but that that's within, they're within them and they're taking that through the door with them.
So I think fun is absolutely fundamental. Pun intended.
Tom Dawson: Amy, you kind of mentioned something earlier, which we could have. Really got my attention. We're talking about is their baby changing and things like that. When we talk about visit experience, people often come back to, are their toilets, can I park my car?
How do I get there? Really practical things. You are both at very sort of family focused [00:22:00] venues. Allison, you are talking to lots of different venues across the country. If people are listening and they're not at a. A very dedicated, family focused site. You've talked about signposting in pre-visit emails, maybe some ideas of what people can do with children.
Allison, what would your advice be to venues who are trying to be better at welcoming families and providing some guidance as to how to, you know, in the way that you talked about. Just greeting a child first sounds so simple, but actually, you know, it's not always the, the natural way, particularly if there hasn't been that specific training.
I mean, again, they're, they're brilliant ideas. What other things would you recommend to venues who aren't family focused, like they could then focus on?
Amy Akino-Wittering: We spent quite a lot of time like think, like what will people need in their visit. I mean, just sort of like spend a lot of just talking about it. So things like seating, people are tired.
Right. They've got a lot going on. They've been up for hours. Making sure that there's like resting spots throughout the museum, not just for the kids, but for the grownups too. Probably more for the grownups than the kids, to be honest. Is there enough seating [00:23:00] around, but also kind of thinking about the wider facility?
Obviously the baby changing lockers. But also thinking about, for example, our cafe, we spent a lot of time thinking what is the food offer? Um, is it affordable? Is there kind of kid friendly options? Is can they warm up food or milk? Really kind of going through each of those different sections, but also just like the the visitor experiences, you're going to the cafe.
So we've now introduced like a grab and go station, which we didn't have when we opened. It's a quicker checkout experience so that you're not having to wrangle. For as long, um, and people can go and sit on a table and things like that. So it's, it's just looking at like, where are the pinch points, where are the pain points when you're having to juggle multiple different things at any one time, I suppose as well, with our pricing model for our ticketed exhibition, we also looked at, again, through that audience lens, so we have a.
Exhibition pass model. So it means that you purchase a ticket and you can go as many times as you like throughout the run of that show. So it just means that, you know, someone has a rubbish day, they wake up a bit naf, or they have a tantrum. Three minutes in after [00:24:00] purchasing your ticket, that's okay. You can just come back again.
It just kind of takes some of that pressure off. So yeah, I suppose it's just kind of looking at all the different elements and like where are the potential pinch points? Is there something that we can do to just relieve some of that pressure and just remove as many barriers as as possible through there?
Alison Bowyer: Yeah, I mean that a hundred percent reflects the feedback we get from families. The thing that you say most is. Be transparent and honest about what facilities you do and don't have so they can be prepared. One really simple thing that all sites could do is just put a family page on their website that just lists all the facilities what you can and can't do.
All of those things. Just put them in one place so people can find it.
Tom Dawson: Amy, I'm glad you sort of mentioned the food and drink there. 'cause obviously coming at this from a cultural enterprise's perspective. We are thinking about how venues are financially sustainable, how crucial are school holidays and your visitor numbers in those [00:25:00] periods, how crucial are those to your business model?
If the weather's not quite right, the school holidays fall slightly differently. Does that have a very big impact? Is that something you are very mindful of all the time? I'm presuming Caroline, how does that work out for you and your plans?
Caroline Jones: Yeah, this week has been a good week. It's may half term here in Oxfordshire, and the weather has been sufficiently unpredictable and.
There have been sufficient clouds in the sky. That means we've had really good numbers. This week, may half term is usually our least well performing school holiday because in fact, uh, the weather is normally slightly better. We live in this sort of six weekly rhythm. The pulse to our museum runs on a six week, half term basis.
During the term time, we are. Fortunately full of school groups. Our mixed model is that our audience group are quite distinct from the term time to the holiday time. And each holiday itself is different from the previous or the next one in four years of opening. We've just learned such a huge amount about what our visitors are doing, how are they behaving, when are they visiting, and you can start to think about when you are opening a new [00:26:00] exhibition in such a way that might pull a returning visitor back to the museum.
Equally, you know, as we have done with Hereby Dragons, our current exhibition, it's proven so popular, it's got real legs. We have no need to recreate a whole new temporary exhibition because lots and lots of people haven't seen it yet and we know they're planning to come. So yeah, school holiday's critical.
And in terms of our operating model, what that means is we need twice as many bodies on site on a busy school holiday than we do during a quieter. Term time week. So that has inherent challenges about how you design and run your resource base in such a way that is sufficiently flexible to us as a business, as an enterprise, but is sufficiently human such that people want to come and work here, that they are engaged, doing really as interesting work and as useful productive work during a quieter visitor day as they are on a very busy, a wet half turn Tuesday.
Is catnip for children's museums, I would say. [00:27:00]
Tom Dawson: Have you tried anything new or different in term times to attract a different audience or raise visitor numbers? Have you tried anything that's worked outside of those holidays?
Caroline Jones: One of our permanent gallery spaces is absolute purpose designed for very little children, so it's our early years space, which means during the week.
From 10 till two, we have a pretty regular pulse of increasingly returning family visitors with very young children. And we also do a lot of outreach work with local nurseries and family centres and as well as schools. We're trying new things all the time. We've just learned to simplify. I think we're all creators.
We all make things. We, we want to make things happen and we made rather a lot happen in our first few years. So if we over programmed all of our spaces, we sort of over. Imagined how much a visitor could A cope with and B, sort of take away with them. So our events program, I think we ran something like 400 separate incidences of an event.
We have a theatre of a beautiful hundred seat theatre here on site, and we have workshop spaces and play spaces. So we sort of programmed within an inch of our [00:28:00] own lives and then just. Spent a long time looking at, well, what type of event, what price point, what time, how are all those things feeding into visitor booking patterns and realized that actually we could achieve the same kind of visitor numbers, possibly improve the quality of the experience by doing less than half the number of events.
I think it takes confidence, doesn't it, to really trust the experience you are offering and. Just simplify it right to the basics. We have the advantage of having stories at our core, which actually are fundamentally enjoyable, appealing, magical things. So we've learned to be a little bit more trusting of the basic experience here in our galleries and not need so many bells and whistles.
And that's not to say we don't. Still produce an original Christmas story led show every year in our theatre, and it works beautifully well, but we just have learned a lot about what we need to do and what we can afford to not do.
Tom Dawson: Great points, before we sort of start to wrap up, going back to that point about being entrepreneurial and the income generation, what do you find sells well or [00:29:00] upsells well to families and children?
I mean, Amy, you've got a fantastic shop and cafe. You've already mentioned on site. What's proving popular?
Amy Akino-Wittering: I mean Plushies are, continue to be best sellers across the board. I think cuteness, to be honest, I think that's cute. I think that's kind of playful. All of our products are linked to obviously the stories and themes that you'll see in the galleries.
The plushies and Pokemon cards. I didn't realize how popular they still are until we started selling them and I was like, whoa. And I think for those repeat visitors, we're a very hyper-local museum as we get a lot of repeat visitors live very locally and come in most. Like several times a week. So I suppose what else we kinda have on during those times in terms of like our programming and things like that.
But it's really interesting hearing what Caroline was saying 'cause we are, I think we're at the moments where we've been open two years now and we're kind of looking and analysing like, you know, what's working, what is really popular? How can we work differently? So one of the things that we're looking at the moment is how can sort of our learning and engagement and our operations and commercial [00:30:00] teams kind of work really closely together, um, when we're kind of planning things and how can we join up.
To kind of really maximize on planning and resources and amplifying the effect of that.
Caroline Jones: There's a lot of Venn diagrams at our place, so, so being two years ahead of the young V&A, that's exactly the process we've just gone through, the sort of puzzling together. We all have the same collective purpose, which is to enrich young lives, do stories, and what that does is give us all a real focus about what we're here to do, why and who for, and actually that looks different for our hires manager or our f & b manager.
That it does for our learning team, but ultimately they're all serving the same vision and mission and the same audience. So it doesn't take a lot to bring everybody onto the same page, even though. On first sight, it might look like sometimes there's a little bit of tension about quite who's doing what in what room.
We have limited space compared to the young v and a, but are we going to make more revenue by hiring it than we are by bringing in a school visit and who's keeping an eye on which objective we are pursuing at any one time? And I think that becomes possible when you've got a team who are absolutely focused on your, [00:31:00] your vision, your values, and your audience.
And then it all just sort of lines up beautifully. But it took us a little, took us a while to get there. Might have to reach out separately.
Tom Dawson: Well, before we give the last word to you, Alison, I mean I, I think Amy, I think it's very interesting. It says a lot to me that you are selling Pokemon cards. 'cause I think some people might not instinctively go, oh, I as a museum retail shop, would I be selling them?
But actually I would say that's what your visitors are wanting. Why not spend their money with you?
Amy Akino-Wittering: Yeah, so we first had them for our Myth to Manga exhibition 'cause there was kind of Pokemon in there, which is our previous one. But then we also still have like Pikachu in the permanent galleries. So there is a link,
Tom Dawson: Alison, in terms of looking forward, what are you seeing and hearing?
From venues across the UK, what do you think's coming next in terms of the visitor experience for families and children?
Alison Bowyer: Gosh, that's such, that's such a hard question. I was thinking about this a lot and I say once ran on a negative note, but this year, for the [00:32:00] first time in years, we've been asked by museums for help making the case for family audiences that their budgets are now so stretched that they are.
Uncertain about whether it's worth investing in things that are specifically for families. So we at the moment are trying to look at how we make the economic case for families. More museums are developing offers for babies. And under fives, which I think is really interesting. 'cause as Caroline was explaining, that's using your space for a kind of weekday audience.
I think more experiential sort of multi-sensory things, families increasingly enjoying those. Also fee museums, experimenting with escape rooms, things like that. I mean, my final thing is I'm not actually sure that what families want is changing that much, and there's still. A real value in just doing all the [00:33:00] things that Amy and Caroline were talking about really, really well, and creating that really high quality experience.
It's interesting, like the families we talk to, there's perception that museums are quite expensive, but. They are still willing to pay if they think they're getting a good value, high quality experience. So it is not really a trend, but I feel like if you were going to do one thing that would be, it would be develop your core offer and invest in your staff who are delivering that offer.
Tom Dawson: There's never any harm in, in injecting some realism into the conversation, Allison. So thank you for that. I think there's so much here I think we will return to. So Amy, Allison. Caroline, thank you very much. It's been an absolutely invigorating and fascinating conversation. I'm off to book a train ticket to Oxford and then play in the V&A sand pit for three hours.
Thank you very much for speaking to me.
Caroline Jones: Thank you so much. Thank you. An absolute pleasure.
Tom Dawson: Thank you for listening to the [00:34:00] Arts and Culture Podcast from the Association for Cultural Enterprises. Thank you to my guests and to our sponsors, King & McGaw. We'll see you next time.