Museum Audience Insight

Adam Jackson, Slavery, Teenagers, and Reinterpreting Historic House Museums

In 1727, Joshua Hempstead purchased a slave. 

If you read history (or even historical fiction), this statement might easily be passed over.  Yes, it happened.  Yes, slavery was atrocious.  But the reality of it?  Rather abstract.

That slave was a young man named Adam Jackson.  His life as a slave is likely one of the best documented of any American slave.  And his story is real, palpable, and continues to resonate today.

You see, Joshua Hempstead kept a diary.  For 47 years.  His slave, Adam, worked alongside him, day after day, for over 30 of those years. 

Now Joshua Hempstead was not, shall we say, a verbose man.  But piecing together his life allows us to also piece together details about Adam’s life (as historian Allegra di Bonaventura has done), since they lived and worked together for so long.

 

Today, the life of Adam Jackson is increasingly a living thing to the people of New London, Connecticut, where he lived at what is now known as the Hempsted Houses, a property of Connecticut Landmarks.  And his life, as well as that of members of the Hempstead family, their abolitionist descendents, and other African Americans from New London history, is inspiring teenagers as well.

This summer, Connecticut Landmarks partnered with Writers Block Ink, an organization that works with teens through the arts to address personal and social issues, to create a youth employment program.  Seven young men delved into the life of Adam Jackson, the history of slavery in Connecticut, and African American history, and on Sunday, I visited Hempsted Houses and their first Freedom Fair to discover how these young men responded to this history.

It was fascinating.  I was so impressed and delighted in how history came alive for them, and for how passionately they felt the stories that they shared.  Through music and the spoken word, they conveyed depth of emotion and feelings of injustice to their audience. They gave Adam Jackson, among others, a voice.

 

But can an organization like Connecticut Landmarks take this emotion, this passion, and this energy, and bring it to their daily interpretation of this historic house?  Like most historic house museums, this property has relied on guided tours, a method of interpretation that we have found in our research to be polarizing (and perhaps a contributor to attendance challenges at many historic houses across the country).  What would happen if these young men had the opportunity to interpret Hempsted Houses for the general public?  What would they do?  What stories would they share?

 

Happily, we are going to find out.  Thanks to IMLS funding, Connecticut Landmarks is embarking on interpretive planning at Hempsted Houses, and a component of that plan will involve continuing the youth employment program with Writers Block Ink.  Next summer, Reach Advisors, staff of Connecticut Landmarks, and crack exhibit designer Robert Kiihne, will work with a new batch of young adults and we’ll hand them the keys to the kingdom (so to speak), asking them to develop a visitor experience that is historically accurate but also one they think will be compelling to their friends, families, and regular museum visitors.  And then we will allow them to test their ideas and find out what visitors think. 

We have no idea what they will come up with, but we cannot wait to find out.  We suspect it will be different, compelling, and inspiring to both visitors and to other historic properties.  Stay tuned!

 

Funding for the youth employment program was provided by the Frank Loomis Palmer Fund.

Giving: It's All About Age

Times are tough, and more than ever, we are thinking about how to motivate people to become members, or to renew their annual gifts.  Turns out, those motivations, even during tough times, tends to be related to life stage.  A lot happens, financially, to adults as they grow older. 

 

Young adults have tend to have high expenses, including high housing costs compared to income, and they typically have the high costs associated with child-rearing.  Family budgets are tight, with little to be spent on unnecessary things.  Sadly, philanthropy is not the highest priority to families with a constant eye on the budget.  There is a place for it, but for younger adults the focus is more on making ends meet and planning for the future.  And when it comes to museums, they are significantly more likely to give to pay for the services they, and their families, receive, or to save money, than to give for purely philanthropic reasons.

 

Things change as adults grow older, however.  In their forties, adults start to become a bit more philanthropic.  The budget-minded reasons to give are still front-and-center, but for more forty-somethings the philanthropic reasons become more prominent.

 

But by the time adults are in their fifties, philanthropy is the primary motivation.  Children are largely moving out of the house, housing costs are usually lower, and incomes are peaking over their lifespan.  There may be more room in their budgets to give, so the budgetary reasons recede.  Thoughts are also beginning to turn to giving back to the community, including supporting museums.  Additionally, there are a higher proportion of Museum Advocates among older visitors than younger visitors, and those Museum Advocates are making deeper connections to the museums that engage their interests.

 

We wanted to track philanthropic giving over the major studies we have completed, and since this question was virtually unchanged from survey to survey, combining responses and tallying them up were relatively simple.  Interestingly, education and income had little effect on how people responded to these questions.  Instead, age was the primary factor . . . and by a mile. 

 

Below, as seen in the graph, it is clear that motivations change between those in their forties and those in their fifties.  The lines for the budgetary reasons, saving money and paying for services received, cross those of the more philanthropic reasons, supporting the community, helping the museum improve, and supporting history/science/cultural organizations.  

 

 

Although the change happens between those in their forties and those in their fifties, the trend does not stop then.  Respondents in their sixties are even more philanthropic-minded, and those over seventy are the most philanthropic-minded. 

 

Interestingly, very few people joined or donated because they “were asked.”  It hardly shows up  - and we think this is a very good thing.  Joining or giving because they “were asked” implies that that the respondent had little self-motivation to support the museum.  Instead, it implies a purely financial transaction without a sense of the value of the museum.  We would love to see this percentage go down to nothing, with members being so engaged with the purpose of the museum that they do not even perceive an ask ever took place.  Instead, it is a highly-engaged, value-laden proposition, whether it is for the benefit of a family, a community, or both.

 

So what does this mean?  Clearly, museums need to create different membership materials to attract members of different ages.  Materials that play up the value of a membership will be much more appealing to younger respondents, particularly young moms making economic choices for their families (and even more so during these economic times).  In contrast, materials that instead focus on the good a museum does for its community and its visitors will be more appealing to older respondents who have a more philanthropic mindset.  For museums actively seeking members of all ages, creating two sets of membership materials is more expensive, and more time-consuming to manage, but the return on that investment will likely more than pay itself back in better response rates.  

What are your thoughts?  Click on “comments” below to share.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)  Please include the name of your museum as well!

 

The Tour Bus: Cash Cow, Soon-to-Be Relic?

At many historic sites, they really start showing up in spring and the fall.  Pull into the parking lot at a major historical site and you will see a whole line of them.  Tour buses.  Typically, they are filled with older adults out on a day trip or perhaps on a multi-day swing through New England or the plantations of Virginia.  

They show up at art museums too.  And botanical gardens.  Some museums teem with them during the shoulder seasons—just after or just before the peak travel seasons—when retirees tend to travel and school is in session. 

But who takes bus tours?  And what does the future hold for them?

In our research for outdoor history museums and in the Connecticut Cultural Consumer research project (funded by the Connecticut Humanities Council), we asked Core Visitors to museums if they took bus tours. Turns out, not many do. In fact, hardly any.  Only 3% of respondents to both surveys said that a bus tour was among their primary means for visiting museums.  Three percent.  The audience segment that was most likely to take bus tours were women over the age of 60. 

Yet even with Core Visitors who are women over 60, bus tours are still pretty darn unpopular. In both studies fewer than 10% said they participated in bus tours. 

So what does this mean?  There are two big things to keep in mind here.  First, while tour buses can certainly help with attendance and revenue, the behaviors of people who go on tour buses do not correlate closely with Core Visitors, much less Museum Advocates.  Their primary purpose for taking a tour may not be visiting your wonderful museum, but something else—it might be travel, social or that stop before playing the slots.  Their levels of engagement will likely be generally lower than the Core Visitors, who made a choice to visit your museum rather than take a tour that just happens to include your museum.  Absolutely, you still should serve them well, and some participants will be highly engaged, but generally these tours are cash cows on the decline.  It is OK to admit it.

Looking ahead, we strongly believe that the tour bus is a relic.  The generational differences between those older than Baby Boomers and the Baby Boomers themselves are striking.  Boomers are generally much more confident planning and going on trips on their own.  With that independent streak, we cannot imagine large numbers of them will support the tour bus industry during their retirements. 

There may, however, continue to be a place for small, intimate tours led by curators and museum directors for their donors.  These tours will be expensive, exclusive and include behind-the-scenes access to your museum.  They will likely not be profitable for you, but when your museum runs its own profitable curator-led tour, favors will be returned and collections storage will be opened. 

But long-term?  The bus tour is a relic.  Milk that cash cow while you can and be prepared for diminishing returns long-term.

What are your thoughts?  Click on “comments” below to share.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)  Please include the name of your museum as well!

Hands-On: We Mean Really Hands-On

We recently ran into one of the sacred cows of the curatorial world: touching and using artifacts.

In our recent survey of Connecticut Cultural Consumers (funded by the Connecticut Humanities Council), we asked, “If you could do whatever you wanted at a historic house museum, with no restrictions, what would you do?”  A significant number of respondents wrote in that they wished to step behind those velvet ropes, get up close and personal, and touch or use artifacts.  As one respondent wrote (in all caps), “TOUCH, PICK UP, LOOK AT THE MARKINGS, SIT ON THE CHAIRS, FEEL THE FABRIC, LOOK AT THE BOOKS - TOUCH HISTORY.”  Another observed, “Isn’t it everyone’s fantasy to try out the furniture?”  

Starting to feel queasy yet?  Our "inner curators" sure did as we were analyzing the results of this survey question.  Traditional prohibitions against handling and using collections items exist for a good reason:  to prevent or slow deterioration . . . or worse.  Thankfully, at least some of our survey participants recognize this.  One wrote, “Too much handling by too many people, some of whom may not be very careful, would be ruinous to many pieces.” 

Yet we also know all too well that those prohibitions can also be barriers, as physical access is important to a well-rounded learning experience.  As one survey participant noted, “By touching, I get a better sense of the history and craftsmanship.” 

Of course, many museums have been inviting visitors to “please touch” for years via interactives, teaching collections, hands-on activities, and reproductions.  But if the results of this survey question taught us anything, it’s that museums may not be doing enough to satisfy visitor demand in this area, especially in historic house museums. 

Can we do more of what we are already doing?  For instance, lots of museums have teaching collections or reproductions available for school groups and families to explore.  But fewer institutions have similar interpretation for adult visitors. 

Can we find some middle ground?  Can we offer special access opportunities, limited to a few people at a time, that allow visitors to get a little closer to some artifacts, so they can experience them at closer range?  How about rotating a few artifacts out of their settings and displaying them where visitors can get closer to them?  What if we carefully selected some artifacts that can be handled by the public?

Maybe it is time to rethink the "Rembrandt Rule," as Jim Vaughan of the National Trust so thoughtfully suggested last year in Museum.  Unless, of course, we are actually talking about a Rembrandt!

What are your thoughts?  Are there additional methods we could be using to safely satisfy tactile visitors?  Do you have any stories from your museum?  Or do you think we are crazy to even bring this up?  Click on “comments” below to share.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)  Please include the name of your museum as well!

Older Men are Awesome . . . But Yet Not Always Engaged?

In our recent e-newsletter, archived here, we shared that older men are “awesome.”  And, indeed, in our studies of outdoor history museum visitors and science museum visitors, they emerged as the most engaged, happiest audience segment at those types of museums.

 

But does that mean they are highly engaged at all types of museums?

The answer is. . . . . no. 

 

In our recent study of Connecticut Cultural Consumers, funded by the Connecticut Humanities Council for Connecticut Landmarks, men over the age of 60 simply did not “pop” like in the other studies.  Women over 60 responded at twice the rate of men over 60, and were clearly more engaged by visiting more often, and enjoying a wider variety of cultural activities. 

 

But why is this?  We believe the primary reason is subject matter.  Older museum-going men, as seen in our research, are very self-motivated to explore topics that are of great interest to them.  Outdoor history museums and science museums are natural places to immerse oneself in the topics that older men tend to gravitate towards, such as blacksmithing, construction, and engineering. 

 

In contrast, the organizations participating in the Connecticut project included art museums, historic house museums, historical societies, history museums, and a performing arts group.  These organizations tend not to as naturally provide those types of opportunities that men seek out.

 

Yet there may be opportunities for these types of museums to reach out to older men and engage them.  In those previous studies, older men did indicate that what they enjoyed about outdoor history museums and science museums was the time and ability to work with their hands, and with others, doing the kinds of labor that they did not do in their professional lives.  As retirees, they are seeking out those opportunities.  Creating those kinds of opportunities may help museums better attract, and engage, older men.

 

Has your museum had particular success with older men?  To share your stories or questions, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)  Please include the name of your museum as well!

The Love-Hate Relationships with Guided Tours

As we shared in a recent post, museum visitors are split right down the middle about the value of guided tours, and they have very strong opinions either way.  And while we think this issue has ramifications for museums across the board, it has the most impact on historic house museums, which tend to rely heavily on guided tours as a primary form of interpretation.

 

To delve deeper into this issue, we turned back to the results of our recent survey of Connecticut Cultural Consumers (funded by the Connecticut Humanities Council).  First, we found that Museum Advocates were more likely to prefer guided tours than Core Visitors to museums.  

 

Additionally, the type of museum on whose behalf respondents were participating made some difference; those who took the survey for historic house, art, or history museums were somewhat more likely to prefer guided tours than those who responded for science and children’s museums.  These results may have to do with visitor expectations for the kind of interpretation they often encounter at different types of museums.  However, we suspect the age of the respondent has even more to do with it.  Respondents to historic house, art, or history museums were overwhelmingly over the age of 50 – an audience that is much more likely to enjoy guided tours than younger respondents (though even here only barely more than half enjoy tours).  

 

In fact, visitors’ love-hate relationships with guided tours are most apparent among respondents of different ages and parental status.  Older audiences were far more likely to enjoy guided tours than younger ones and moms with young children were the least likely to enjoy guided tours, feeling they were not age-appropriate for their children (see graph, below). 

 

 

What does all this mean?  If your museum relies on guided tours as a (or the) primary interpretation method, chances are that only a little less than half of your visitors are satisfied.  And widening your audience base to include families, for instance, may be more challenging.

 

What about the majority of museum visitors who dislike—even hate—guided tours?  What kinds of experiences might appeal to them instead of guided tours? When we asked our Connecticut respondents “If you could do whatever you wanted at a historic house museum, with no restrictions, what would you do?” among their top wishes were:

 

• Experiencing the museum at their own pace
• More hands-on, participatory experiences
• Touching, or otherwise getting closer to, original artifacts
• Consuming food and drink—historically appropriate or not
• Participating in special or social events, either as a guest or a host
• Extending visits to include full days, overnights, or even longer periods of time

 

A lot of these wishes are time-honored alternatives that are accepted in the field.  Some of them, on the other hand, may make the hair on the back of your neck stand up (we will be delving a little deeper into this when we talk more in depth about touching original artifacts in a later post). 

 

We would love to hear your thoughts and questions.  To share or ask questions, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)  Please include the name of your museum as well!

Technology and Museums

It defied expectations.  Younger adults are supposed to be in love with technology, right?  It is practically the air they breathe. 

 

Yet our data showed something completely different. 

 

At outdoor history museums (OHM), people under thirty were the least likely to want the sites interpreted utilizing technology.  People over seventy were the most likely to seek out technology.  In fact, people over seventy were 4.5 times more likely to prefer audio tours over young adults under thirty.

 

We were surprised, and we thought it might be a fluke, simply because we were talking about technology in historic settings.  Perhaps the dissonance was putting people off.

 

But then we asked the same question in our study of Connecticut Cultural Consumers, which included Core Visitors to a variety of museums, and we found the same thing. 

Take a look at the results from both studies, below:

How can this be? 

We believe a few things are going on here.  It is important to keep in mind, however, that not a single age group is that enthused with technology in the museum.  But we should also note that we have not asked this question in science museums exclusively, and if we did we suspect that technology would be more accepted in that setting than in history, art, and children’s museums. 

 

So why do older respondents embrace technology more enthusiastically than younger respondents?  We believe there are two reasons.  First, older respondents are more likely to report difficulty hearing speakers and guides, while audio tours typically have clear-spoken narrators, the audio is directed in the ear, and the volume can be controlled.  Similarly, narrators in video productions are also clear speakers, and closed captioning assists those with hearing difficulties as well. 

 

Second, we are picking up signs that sometimes young adults, who are plugged in for so much of their lives, need a break from technology, and museums can provide that break.  Young parents are seeking to get their children away from screens and in more active play at children’s museums or in an educational (and fun) environment at other types of museums.    

 

Does this mean doing away with technology in a museum?  Not necessarily.  Sometimes technology is a fantastic tool for learning and engagement (such as the fantastic dining table in the European Decorative Arts galleries at the Detroit Institute of Arts – I am in absolute raptures over it).  Yet our audiences are telling us that, overall, they want museums to be doing what they do best: sharing real and authentic experiences through objects, art, science, and nature.  And most museums do not have to rely heavily on the latest technology to do that. 

We would love to hear your thoughts.  Simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Guided Tours: A Polarizing Interpretation Method

We at Reach Advisors have mixed feelings about guided tours.  We have had awful tour experiences--and amazing ones. 

 

Turns out, respondents to two of our recent surveys feel similarly.  When we asked visitors to outdoor history museums and Connecticut organizations to tell us how they preferred to experience museums and historic sites, they were split on the value of guided tours.  Forty-five percent of respondents to both surveys selected guided tours as an experience preference . . . the rest did not. 

 

A closer look at the results of our Connecticut Cultural Consumers survey (conducted on behalf of Connecticut Landmarks, funded by the Connecticut Humanities Council) sheds light on why people do, or do not, enjoy guided tours.  When asked their thoughts, respondents used strong, emotive language, and that language underscored how polarizing guided tours are as an interpretation method. 

 

• Participants felt “trapped,” “controlled,” “pressured,” … or “stimulated.” 
• Other visitors on tours were “annoying,” “distracting,” … or “insightful.” 
• Guides were “monotonous,” “condescending,” “insipid,” “intimidating,” … or “passionate,” “smart,” and “articulate.” 
• Tours are “dumbed down,” “too structured,” “boring,” … or “fun” and “enriching.”

 

Respondents who do enjoy guided tours liked them for a number of reasons.  Primarily, they enjoyed the in-depth information that they received on tours.  Other reasons that appeared repeatedly include:  the personal connection that a tour guide offered; the stories, anecdotes, and little-known facts that they learned; and the efficiency of tours, which they felt packed in information in a short time.

 

On the flip side, respondents who do not enjoy guided tours primarily cited a desire to go at their own pace.  As one respondent asked forthrightly, “If I don't need a guide to watch TV or go to a football game or to an art museum, why do I need a guide to see a historic house museum?” 

 

Additional reasons included:  the uneven quality of the guides; crowds; their children, whose needs didn’t mesh well with the structured format of tours; annoyances of other visitors; and valuing solitary and quiet communal experiences above group interactions. 

 

Who among our respondents demonstrated a preference for guided tours, and who did not?  Stay tuned . . .

 

In the meantime, we would love to hear your thoughts and questions about this post.  To share or ask questions, click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Superlative Service: It’s Often The Small Stuff That Matters Most

At first thought, the challenge of moving the meter on visitor perceptions of a caring staff seems like a tough one.  As we have discussed in a recent post, only 8 to 16% of respondents to our surveys of visitors to science museums, children's museums, outdoor history museums, and Connecticut cultural organizations indicated that they felt that "the staff really cares about me and my family." 

But there is some good news, too.  Judging by the responses we received to a different question we asked participants in our Connecticut Cultural Consumers survey (funded by the Connecticut Humanities Council), simple gestures can go a long way towards creating positive perceptions of caring staff. 

 

When we asked, “Please tell us about a time that a museum, cultural institution, store, restaurant, or any other business, surprised and delighted you in some way,” we received numerous descriptions of superlative service experiences.  These written-in responses provide us with some great ideas from both inside and outside the field about how to convey to our visitors how much they matter to us, and to do so simply and inexpensively. 

 

Personalized Thank-Yous

Often, all it takes is a small gesture.  Take these comments:

 

• “Hartford Stage left me a voicemail to thank me for my contribution. That was it, a simple thank you!”
• “I love it that Nordstrom's always sends me a thank you note when I buy something - actually the person waiting on me does.”

 

Making up for Inconvenient Situations

We can’t always be perfect, but we can sometimes alleviate inconvenient situations when they happen.

 

• “The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center gave us free passes for later because they could not take us when we first arrived.”
• “The restaurateur who served beverages to patrons waiting in a long line to enter the restaurant for dinner.”
• “Free books and postcards from a museum closing for a 2 yr renovation.”

 

Bending the Rules

Sometimes bending the rules a little, in fairly innocuous ways, makes all the difference.

 

• “Museum in Denmark ... closed for the day ... director saw me peeking in the windows ... opened it up for me.”
• “Botanical garden:  when a tour guide extended a tour from an hour to two because the tour group had the interest to justify an in-depth extension.”

 

Going Above and Beyond

Taking that extra step to assist a patron can definitely pay off.

 

• “It was a restaurant.  They allowed us to use their computer to print our boarding passes.  This after they seated us past hours for dinner!!”
• “Arriving in Phoenix for a convention with my daughter, we grabbed a cab.  The cab driver upon discovering this was our 1st visit to his city, welcomed us and asked if we'd be heading to Fashion Week.  I was going to be in long meetings, and  . . . he became her (our) personal driver.  He gave her a brochure on Fashion Week, told her to decide on what she would like to do, he'd bring her to the shows, pick her up when she was done, etc. Literally it was like having a limo at our beck & call, all for the basic price of a taxi cab . . . It was a wonderful experience.”

 

Personal Connections 

When visitors feel as if staff members look on them as individuals, not just anonymous members of a crowd, and take the time to recognize or anticipate their specific needs, they feel welcomed and cared for. 

 

• We have a local restaurant here in East Quogue, NY:  New Moon Cafe.  . . . they pay particular attention to the children in the restaurant and let them display their "art" that they've drawn during dinner- there's a wall where all the kids' art goes.”
• “Academy of Natural Sciences [in Philadelphia].  A museum staff member took us back into the research stacks to look up the dinosaur's "last name" (species) for my then-3 year old son.”
• “ . . . I often visit the Art Institute of Chicago for 30-45 minutes in the early evening. One such evening, a staff member (who turned out to be a member of the curator's staff) said hello, inquired about my interest in the work I was studying, and politely asked my name and whether I was a member (yes - just a standard membership). I explained how I occasionally visit the museum during my visits - but usually for no more than 45 minutes. Later that week, I received a handwritten thank you note and a list of suggested ‘30 minute tours’ to maximize my future visits. Remarkable.”

 

These comments suggest that a lot of the time, it’s the small stuff that makes all the difference:  the personal thank-you, taking the time to get to know your visitors, or going slightly out of your way to make someone’s visit more pleasant.   In superlative service experiences, a little bit goes a long way.

 

Have you ever been surprised or delighted by a business, organization, or museum?  Or are there ways you try to surprise and delight at your museum?  We would love to hear about it!  To share your stories, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Building Community Relationships: The Challenge

Over the past few years, museum professionals have been placing increasing weight on building relationships with local communities.  Results from recent visitor surveys conducted by Reach Advisors, however, point to a major disconnect between field-wide goals for museum-community relationships and the reality of visitor perceptions of those relationships.  As we shared in a recent post, only 11 to 21% of Core Visitors to science museums, outdoor history museums, children’s museums, and Connecticut cultural organizations feel that the museum whose survey they responded to “brings the community together.”

 

This is obviously troubling information, and it deserves greater exploration.  The results of the Connecticut Cultural Consumers survey (funded by the Connecticut Humanities Council), corroborated with findings from our other studies, can tell us a lot about who feels that their museums bring their community together, who doesn’t, and why their perceptions matter. 

 

For starters, here are the bottom-line numbers.  When asked, “Is there anything that you think this organization does particularly well?” 21% of Connecticut survey respondents selected “They bring the community together.” 

 

The first question we asked ourselves in response to this data was:  do more loyal visitors feel more positively about their museum’s relationship with their local community?  Here we see mixed results.  Museum Advocates, those devotees who enjoy visiting museums in their leisure time, were slightly more likely to say that the museum whose survey they responded to brings the community together, but still only 25% felt this way.  

 

Yet contrary to what we might hope, the response rates do not really improve for members or frequent visitors.  Those who praised their museum for bringing the community together were just slightly more likely to be members of that museum than the topline average for the survey.  And people who visit their museum at least several times each year were no more likely than the topline to think so.  So, the challenge lies with both Core Visitors and Museum Advocates.

 

Things get even more interesting when we look at the percentage of respondents who wanted to see improvement in their museum’s relationship with the local community.  When we posed a different question, “Is there anything where this organization falls short in meeting your needs (and your family’s)?,” only 5% selected “I wish they did more to bring the community together.”  Although this figure seems insignificant at first glance, it points to another challenge we see for museum-community relationships:  the fact that most Core Visitors do not expect museums to play a major role in their community. 

 

We can draw additional conclusions when we compare the responses according to demographic indicators.  First, proximity is a unifier:  the people who are most concerned about the museum-community relationship--those who praised their museum as well as those who wished it would do more--are the hyper-locals.  They live in very close geographic proximity to the museum.  This makes sense.  They are the ones that have the greatest stake in a positive relationship. 

 

However, the two groups are set apart by other demographic characteristics.  Those who praise their museum’s relationship to their local community are generally older, white, and more affluent.  They are half as likely as the topline average to be in their 30s, 93% of them live in Caucasian households, and 52% have annual household incomes over $75,000.  In contrast, those who want museums to improve their community relationship are younger, much more likely to be a minority, and less affluent.  They are less than half as likely to be in their 60s than the topline average, 4x more likely to live in African-American households, and 2x more likely to have annual household incomes under $50,000.

 

Basically the demographic differences boil down to this:  those who think museums are doing a great job at bringing the community together represent the field’s traditional audience types.  Those who think museums need to improve represent audience groups that have traditionally been underserved by museums. 

 

Across the board, these differences have both short-term and long-term repercussions.  In the short term, visitor perceptions about museum-community relationships are directly linked to their general views about their museum’s performance.  Those who think their museum brings the community together are significantly more positive about the organization than the topline.  They are, for example:

 

• Almost 3x more likely to say the organization is important to their community
• Almost 3x more likely to say the organization is a great place to meet community members
• More likely to say the organization meets their needs extremely well
• More likely to be motivated to join or give for philanthropic reasons (83% selected “it is important to support organizations that serve my community” vs. 63% of topline)

 

On the other hand, those who wish their museum did more to bring the community together are significantly less positive about the museum than the topline.  They are, for example:

 

• More than 3x more likely to say “I’m not sure if there’s anything they do particularly well”
• Almost half as likely to praise the convenience of programs and events
• Less likely to praise programs and events or facility/amenities
• Also less likely to praise the museum for engaging all ages

 

The long-term ramifications are also very significant.  The face of the American population is changing rapidly; as the proportion of Americans who comprise the traditional museum audience will shrink considerably over the next thirty years.  Building a strong relationship with the local community is an important method of creating and maintaining relevance to an evolving audience.

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