MDNW launches Covid-19 Recovery Grants

In a new partnership with Art Fund and Curious Minds, today Museum Development North West is launching its Covid-19 Recovery Grants programme to support North West museums with their recovery and reopening plans over the next 12 months.

Screenshot 2020-07-06 at 14.30.57We know that for a number of reasons, many of the museums we work with have been unable to access existing emergency funds. The furloughing of staff, ineligibility for funding and volunteer capacity have contributed to the difficulties in accessing these first response financial measures.

For some museums, planning to reopen marks the start of recovery; for others the recovery process will involve new ways of engaging and financial remodelling whilst remaining closed until next season.

The Recovery Grants programme is formed from three funding sources:

  • Art Fund strategic partnership funding
  • Curious Minds Partnership Investment
  • MDNW core funding

There is £70,000 available to allocate in grants. A single Accredited museum or museum working towards Accreditation can apply for up to £7,500. A partnership of museums or a museum service with multiple Accredited sites can apply for up to £10,000. National Portfolio Organisations, national museums, English Heritage and National Trust properties are ineligible to apply, although they can be part of partnership bids.

The deadline for applications is 5pm Thursday 20th August 2020.

We will support museums around three key areas:

  • Developing new sustainable offers
  • Re-engaging audiences
  • Effective reopening

Within these areas museums can bid for a range of activity that meet the strategic needs of organisations in recovering from the Covid-19 crisis and those that allow museums to build back better. These could include, but are not limited to:

  • Adapt or develop new ways to connect with and engage your communities
  • Support activity to assess the viability of and readiness for reopening
  • Purchase equipment and undertake activity to support readiness to reopen safely
  • Invest in the health and wellbeing of your paid and volunteer workforce
  • Develop your digital capability and delivery
  • Respond to environmental sustainability

Guidance and the application form for the Covid-19 Recovery Grants can be found below.

Recovery Grant fund guidance FINAL

Recovery Grant fund application form FINAL

Museum reopening guidance

Following the government’s announcement on Tuesday that museums and galleries will be allowed to reopen from 4th July, this morning the National Museum Directors’ Council (NMDC) has published Good Practice Guidelines on Opening Museums After July 4th.

These guidelines are intended to help employers, employees and the self-employed, and volunteers in the museum sector in England understand how to work safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

NMDC has also produced a timeline of possible stages of reopening, as there will be no single date on which all museums reopen, but rather a range of different approaches depending on the individual museum.

Alongside this, a checklist has been produced by AIM and the Museum Development Network to be used in conjunction with the NMDC Guidelines to help museums take a strategic, well informed approach to making decisions on reopening and implementing a safe and effective plan in conjunction with the national guidance for museums.

The checklist does not tell you exactly how your reopened museum should operate – individual circumstances will vary enormously – it is intended to help you develop your reopening plans and provides you with a methodology to follow.

The government has also published wider guidance to be used in conjunction with the sector specific guidance: The Working safely during coronavirus guidance in different settings now includes the visitor economy and heritage locations. The working safely list of guidance also includes guides relevant to museums e.g. shops and offices. Guidance for DCMS sectors in relation to coronavirus has also been collated in one section on the government website.

Other resources for reopening include:
Kids in Museums – How to use the Kids in Museums Manifesto to plan for reopening
A guide to how museums can provide a quality experience for children and families when they reopen with social distancing measures.

ICON – Waking Up Collections: A Post-Lockdown Guide
Icon and the Icon Care of Collections Group have published a new guide and checklist to outline how to address collection conservation issues that might have occurred during the Coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown period.

South East Museums Development – Reopening Museums Toolkit
The Reopening Museums Toolkit aims to support museums during the early stages of planning. The Toolkit provides practical advice and offers questions for museums to work through to help define their recovery plans.

Also available to help inform reopening plans is the latest Recovery Tracker research from the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA), offering key insights into how visitors are feeling about returning to attractions.

 

 

 

Celebrating success in lockdown – Gawthorpe Textiles Collection

Welcome to the second of our  Monday morning blog posts for our museum colleagues. The past few months have been such a challenging time for the museum sector as we try to navigate the current situation and plan for the future but there have certainly been some successes that are worth celebrating.

In this series of posts we plan to highlight examples showcasing what museums have achieved in difficult circumstances. Our second entry comes courtesy of Charlotte Steels, Director of the Gawthorpe Textiles Collection:

 

Screenshot 2020-07-09 at 14.39.52GTC Talking Textiles

As a heritage organisation, public talks have long been a staple of our annual public programme. With the commencement of lockdown however, we needed to find different ways to maintain our public profile and generate income to support the collection. Zoom provided us with the perfect opportunity.

In the past, creating online webinars wouldn’t have been a priority in the day to day running of the charity. Purchasing the technology would have felt like a luxury expense for a small organisation and the focus has generally been on bringing visitors to site for face to face engagement with the real thing.

With the change in circumstances however, we realise that we have reached audiences spanning not only the whole of the UK, but also audiences from Canada, the USA, Europe and Australia.

We have been overwhelmed by the public response to the programme with the first event selling out its 95 tickets in the first few days of advertising. We have delivered three events at the point of writing, two of which sold out and feedback after the events has been wonderfully positive.

It has been a very steep learning curve in terms of getting to grips with the webinar technology and feels very odd to essentially be talking to a blank screen! But we’re getting better at predicting any issues and it becomes easier with each event that we do.

Luckily we have some amazing high resolution photographs that have been taken over the past couple of years which have enabled us to focus in on minute detail. This means that participants can see collection items in a higher definition than would be possible by the naked eye and feedback has shown this to have been incredibly popular.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

A number of participants have booked onto other talks or even booked a repeat of the same one! All in all we are very pleased that we made the decision to try this, and it will now form part of our ongoing programmes of public engagement.

Gawthorpe Textiles Collection
www.gawthorpetextiles.org.uk
Twitter: @RBKS_Textiles
Facebook: @Gawthorpe Textiles
Instagram: @gawthorpetextiles

 

MDNW coronavirus update

Here’s our round up of news about COVID-19 relevant to the sector from this week. These are up to date at the time of posting but as things are changing quickly please check the original source for any updates.

To look back at any of our previous blog posts and their links, find them on our website using the search term ‘coronavirus’.

Museum reopening guidance – amendment to NMDC Good Practice Guidelines (9th July)
The guidance has been amended with more details around the NHS Test and Trace requirements for museums, fire risk assessment, Covid-secure premises, PPE and lip reading and clear communication.

Read our blog post here for the full list of guidance and resources around reopening.

MDNW reopening webinars
MDNW has teamed up with Ben Melham of Mortice Consulting, Kids in Museums and Disability Collaborative Network (DCN) to run a series of webinars to look in more detail at reopening museums safely and inclusively. These webinars follow on from our initial briefing session in early July with Emma Chaplin, Director of AIM, looking at the sector reopening guidance. A recording of this initial session will be available on our YouTube channel soon. The first webinar is on Tuesday 14th July.

 

Latest government information
Latest information and advice (10th July)

VAT: reduced rate for hospitality, holiday accommodation and attractions (9th July)
Guidance on the temporary VAT cut for accommodation and attractions – from 15th July 2020 to 12th January 2021, to support businesses and jobs, the reduced (5%) rate of VAT will apply to supplies of accommodation and admission to attractions across the UK.

A Plan for Jobs 2020 (8th July)
Job Retention Bonus – The government will introduce a one-off payment of £1,000 to UK employers for every furloughed employee who remains continuously employed through to the end of January 2021. Employees must earn above the Lower Earnings Limit (£520 per month) on average between the end of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the end of January 2021. Payments will be made from February 2021. Further detail about the scheme will be announced by the end of July.

£1.57 billion investment to protect Britain’s world-class cultural, arts and heritage institutions (5th July)
Organisations across a range of sectors including the performing arts and theatres, heritage, historic palaces, museums, galleries, live music and independent cinema will be able to access emergency grants and loans.

Kick-starting Tourism Package (3rd July)
£10 million Kick-starting Tourism Package for communities that depend on tourism. Funding will be distributed to communities immediately to kick start tourism in time for the summer as part of the government’s drive to boost the recovery of the economy. It will give small businesses in tourist destinations grants of up to £5,000 to help them adapt their businesses following the coronavirus pandemic.

 

Museum Development North West
Covid-19 Recovery Grants (7th July)
In a new partnership with Art Fund and Curious Minds, MDNW has launched its Covid-19 Recovery Grants programme to support North West museums with their recovery and reopening plans over the next 12 months.

 There is £70,000 available to allocate in grants. A single Accredited museum or museum working towards Accreditation can apply for up to £7,500. A partnership of museums or a museum service with multiple Accredited sites can apply for up to £10,000. National Portfolio Organisations, national museums, English Heritage and National Trust properties are ineligible to apply, although they can be part of partnership bids.

The deadline for applications is 5pm Thursday 20th August 2020.

We will support museums around three key areas:

  • Developing new sustainable offers
  • Re-engaging audiences
  • Effective reopening

 Funding sources (7th July)
Updates our usual sources of grant funding list for museums, with details of responses from the funders to the COVID-19 situation, and indicates where standard funding streams are still running as usual and open for applications, or new funding streams have been introduced to respond to COVID-19.

 

Association of Independent Museums – Coronavirus resources
AIM have a page on their website dedicated to coronavirus resources, including the latest research from ALVA on how visitors feel about returning to visitor and heritage attractions.

They also have pages on reopening guidance resources and recordings from their virtual conference in June, ‘Roads to Recovery’ .

 

DCMS Museums & galleries sector coronavirus bulletin (6th July) Coronavirus bulletin 20200706

  

National Lottery Heritage Fund – Extension to Heritage Emergency Fund (18th June)
Deadline has been extended and criteria broadened to support museums to recover and reopen. £50million to support the UK heritage sector as a response to the coronavirus crisis. Short-term funding for organisations to stabilise operations, manage unforeseen risks and help projects/sites to reopen and recover

Deadline is now 31st July but organisations can apply at any time.

Grants of between £3,000 to £50,000, and £50,000 to £250,000.

FAQs about the fund are being updated continually.

Places are still available through MDNW’s bid writing support to receive advice from Laura Drane for museums wanting to apply to NLHF’s Heritage Emergency Fund. To book one of the advice slots contact Alex Bird, alexander.bird@manchester.ac.uk.

 

Art Fund – Respond and Reimagine Grants
The second round of applications is now open for grants to help museums, galleries and cultural organisations respond to immediate challenges connected to the Covid-19 crisis, and offer support to adapt and reimagine ways of working for the future. Grants from £10,000-£50,000, Art Fund will consider offering 100% funding. Next deadline 17th August 2020. There will be a further round of applications with a deadline of 12th October.

 

The Julia and Hans Rausing Trust – Charity Survival Fund (6th July)
A total of £10million is available to UK charities, to provide core funding to offset lost income and help support them through the impact of Covid-19. There is a particular interest in supporting small and medium sized charities, especially those not previously funded by the Trust. One of their three priorities is Arts and Culture, supporting charities working in the performing arts; independent (i.e. not local authority controlled) museums and galleries; heritage sites and historic buildings. Deadline 27th July.

 

Arts Council England Introduction to ticketing for museums and galleries (8th July)
Introduction to ticketing for museums and galleries – 08.07.20
ACE’s Digital Culture Network, in consultation with South West Museum Development and London Museum Development, has published this guide for museums and galleries in how to introduce a timed ticketing operation to comply with the latest government guidance to reopening. The guide covers topics such as:

  • Free to use ticketing platform recommendations
  • Website integration and accessibility
  • Managing visitor capacity numbers
  • NHS Test & Trace data capture and storage
  • Ticketing solution examples in the museum & gallery sectors

Visit England – ‘We’re Good To Go’ Industry Standard launched
A free UK-wide industry standard and consumer mark to reassure visitors that your museum adheres to Government and public health guidance.

To support organisations as they work towards re-opening and welcoming customers/visitors, the ‘We’re Good To Go’ COVID-19 industry standard and consumer mark is now available to provide a ‘ring of confidence’ for businesses, attractions and destinations as well as reassurance to local residents and visitors that clear processes are in place and that as a business you are good to go.

 

Charities call for boost to Gift Aid amid pandemic fundraising shortfall (24th June)
A coalition of leading voices in UK charities has called on the Government to temporarily increase the level of Gift Aid that can be claimed on donations.

 

Surveys and research
The Liminal Space – The Museum of the Future
The Liminal Space is conducting a survey for UKRI about how sector workers envisage the museum of the future.

A Different View – Are Online Experiences Here to Stay?
Focuses on online offers and looks at what visitors have been watching and participating in while venues and attractions have been closed, and what people might still be interested in as lockdown eases, but covid still remains.
Online Offers report – are they here to stay July 2020

Taking Part Web Panel Data: Engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic
Results of a survey run by Ipsos MORI on behalf of DCMS asking about participation in activities which could be done under social distancing restrictions, to measure how levels of cultural, digital and sporting engagement have been affected by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Visit Britain – COVID-19 Consumer Sentiment Tracker
A weekly tracking survey to understand domestic intent to take short breaks and holidays both within the U.K. and abroad, with particular focus around the current barriers and concerns around travel and how these will evolve over time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MDNW Post-lockdown webinars

Museum Development North West has teamed up with Ben Melham of Mortice Consulting, Kids in Museums and Disability Collaborative Network (DCN) to run a series of webinars to look in more detail at reopening museums safely and inclusively. These webinars follow on from our initial briefing session in early July with Emma Chaplin, Director of AIM, looking at the sector reopening guidance. A recording of this initial session will be available on our YouTube channel soon.

Booking for this webinar closes 9.30am Monday 13th July
Reopening Support: Planning to Reopen webinar
Tuesday 14th July & Thursday 16th July 2020
10am – 12pm on both days

This webinar, run across two days, will support your skills and knowledge to apply COVID-secure guidelines to your plans for re-opening your museum to visitors.

Delivered by Ben Melham of Mortice Consulting, during 2 x 2-hour online sessions this course will draw on UK government guidance and museum guidelines produced by NMDC and AIM, to support you in developing plans to re-open your museum safely. A programme for re-opening will be discussed and developed, informed by UK and international case studies.

Aimed at staff leading on museum visitor services, operations and facilities management, the two sessions will focus on practical measures and potential solutions to post-lockdown restrictions, such as social distancing, cleaning, visitor experience, and staff welfare. Consideration will also be given to outdoor spaces.

Both sessions will be interactive with Q&A throughout, as well as polling, networking, group work and other interactive content.

The sessions are aimed at museum staff or volunteers with responsibility for visitor services, operations and facilities management.

By the end of the two sessions you will:

  • Understand the key requirements for visitors and staff to re-occupy your site
  • Understand how these issues have been addressed at other venues
  • Have a better understanding of the challenges and possible solutions for key density areas such as toilets, lifts, cafes and shops
  • Have a strategy for communicating these changes with your staff and visitors

To view a draft timetable of the two sessions please see here – Reopening Support timetable.

Places are limited to 40. To enable the maximum number of organisations to benefit, places are restricted to one person per organisation – please liaise with your colleagues before booking a place. Your booking is for both sessions. By booking a place you are confirming your attendance at both sessions.

Priority will be given to people working in Accredited, or officially working towards Accreditation, museums in the North West that are not nationals or National Portfolio Organisations. Equivalent sessions will be delivered for Museum Development Yorkshire and Museum Development North East. Cross-over attendance between regions is permissible where there are tickets available.

Book a place for both days here

 

Post-Lockdown Webinar: Family Friendly Reopening
Monday 20th July
2pm – 3:30pm

Join Museum Development North West and Kids in Museums for a short workshop focusing on how to ensure when your museum reopens after lock down that it is as family friendly as possible.

Learn about available guidance and resources as well as share experiences with other museums in the region. There will be a presentation of current trends from the UK heritage sector and beyond in this area. And finally there will be a focus on what are the key challenges around reopening and families in your museums and how might they be tackled?

As part of booking we ask delegates to outline their key challenges in this area.

Places are limited to 20. To enable the maximum number of organisations to benefit, places are restricted to one person per organisation – please liaise with your colleagues before booking a place.

Priority will be given to people working in Accredited, or officially working towards Accreditation, museums in the North West that are not nationals or National Portfolio Organisations.

Book a place here

 

Post-Lockdown Webinar: Reopening with Inclusive Practice
Thursday 30th July
10am – 11:30am

Join Museum Development North West and the Disability Collaborative Network (DCN) for this practical action based webinar. Customer Service within any organisation is typically the first point of contact for your existing and future customers and/or visitors.

In light of the pandemic and post lockdown recovery, having inclusive and accessible customer service that considers the needs of your diverse visitors will be vital in attracting your visitors back to the organisation. Having the right support in place that accommodates the intersectional nature of your visitors is also critical to the reputation of your organisation as an inclusive employer and destination.

This 90 minute webinar will focus on new reopening recommendations and actions produced by DCN, EMBED and University of East Anglia for all sectors, including museums and heritage organisations. These recommendations are aimed at supporting the changing needs of your diverse visitors, those visitors that are still shielding and require digital support as well as common factors which will affect the visitor experience in museums such as signage, navigation, interpretation and customer service.

This will be a practical action based webinar for any Accredited museum in the North of England, or those officially working towards Accreditation, where we aim to support you in effective and safe planning of your reopening.

There are 70 places available to museums across the North of England. To enable the maximum number of organisations to benefit, places are restricted to one person per organisation – please liaise with your colleagues before booking a place.

Priority will be given to people working in Accredited, or officially working towards Accreditation, museums in the North that are not nationals or National Portfolio Organisations.

Book a place here

 

 

 

Messing About in Museums – Online Event

Screenshot 2020-07-09 at 13.10.55Messing About in Museums and Happy Museum have set up an online workshop to explore ideas for how to promote playful engagement in museums, whilst also promoting social distancing measures.

The workshop will be a mixture of presentation and discussion, with 2 short presentations, two breakout room discussions and an opportunity to pose questions to the speakers.

The workshop will be on Friday 17 July (13:30 – 15:00 BST). Click here for more details and visit http://messingaboutinmuseums.eventbrite.com for booking.

Audience Agency – Upcoming Webinars

audience_agency_strapline_logo

The Audience Agency are hosting a number of online workshops, covering issues related to re-opening in the current climate. Upcoming sessions include:

 

15 July 2020, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM: Introduction to Data-driven Reopening for Museums, Galleries and Heritage – click here to book

23 July 2020, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM: Introduction to Test and Trace for the Cultural Sector – click here to book

24 August 2020, 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM: Masterclass | Data and Insight to Make Your Case – click here to book (use BOUNCEFORWARDS20 to get 20% off)

 

 

 

Call for new Board Members – NWFed

NWFed

From the NWFed:

The NWFED is an independent membership organisation for the museum and heritage sector. Our focus during 2020/21 is to build on existing partnerships, diversify the reach of the Federation, and deliver a range of inclusive activities to support NW museum sector professionals and volunteers. This is against a backdrop of recovering from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on our sector. We also need to reflect on our response to Black Lives Matter and the importance of marking heritage differently.

We are seeking Board members with interest in events programming, fundraising and business planning, but expressions of interest in other areas are also welcomed. We are looking to diversify our Board, so it is more inclusive and representative of our membership. We particularly want to hear from interested applicants who have diverse experiences, heritage, and personal attributes to bring to the role.

If you are enthusiastic, well organised and keen to take responsibility we would like to hear from you.  In return we offer you the opportunity to work closely with experienced and supportive colleagues, to further develop your skills and career and to participate in key events and networks.

If you think this might be for you and you would like to find out more please contact the Chair of NWFED, Alex Walker a.m.walker@hotmail.co.uk 07507 888271. Deadline for return of expressions of interest 30 July 2020.

Black Lives Matter

Museum Development Network, Supporting diverse, inclusive and innovative museums that welcome people from all backgrounds

Museum Development Network (MDN) stands in solidarity with Black Communities which include museum employees, volunteers and visitors.

As Museum Development providers we recognise our role, alongside that of museums, to develop an inclusive sector that challenges and opposes racism.

Arts Council England, and Museums Galleries Scotland have issued statements in support of the Movement. As a network, MDN is currently taking time to reflect and initiate new dialogues to explore meaningful and sustainable actions.

We WILL actively listen, educate ourselves and take action.

Further information about MDN’s commitment to diversity and inclusion can be found within our aims.

Museum Development North West is working with MDN to develop new ways of working going forward and we have also been taking some time to reflect on, and look at how to develop our own practice.  As a team, we will be looking more rigorously at how we can incorporate equality, diversity and inclusion into the work we do.

Museum Development North West would like to hear from you if you have resources or examples of inclusive practice which we could share throughout our network. Please email them to abdullah.ahmad@manchester.ac.uk along with any images and copyright you would like to share.

Some resources we have found helpful to develop our knowledge and reflect on our practice are:

UK

Museum Detox champion fair representation and inclusion of BAME cultural, intellectual and creative contributions. Museum Detox challenges and works to deconstruct systems of inequality that exist to enable a sector where the workforce and audience is reflective of the UK’s 21st century population.

A list of resources from Museum Detox can be found here.

Manchester Museum, the things they didn’t teach us. Raising awareness of rarely told and overlooked histories. Explore some of the projects and exhibitions that help shed light on the things they didn’t teach us in school here.

U.S

The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington DC is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. Their guide to talking about race can be found here.

Race: The Power of an Illusion, an online companion to an award winning documentary series by California Newsreel discussing the origins, beliefs and consequences of what we call race.

The Minneapolis Institute of Art, in collaboration with stakeholders across the field, is creating a platform for public dialogues on a variety of topics and issues affecting our communities locally and globally, leading to actionable practices for greater equity and inclusion in our institutions: https://www.museumaction.org/. You can finds their Readiness Assessment form here.

 

 

Post-lockdown webinars – now open for bookings

Museum Development North West has teamed up with Ben Melham of Mortice Consulting, Kids in Museums and Disability Collaborative Network (DCN) to run a series of webinars to look in more detail at reopening museums safely and inclusively. These webinars follow on from our initial briefing session in early July with Emma Chaplin, Director of AIM, looking at the sector reopening guidance. A recording of this initial session will be available on our YouTube channel soon.

Reopening Support: Planning to Reopen webinar
Tuesday 14th July & Thursday 16th July 2020
10am – 12pm on both days

This webinar, run across two days, will support your skills and knowledge to apply COVID-secure guidelines to your plans for re-opening your museum to visitors.

Delivered by Ben Melham of Mortice Consulting, during 2 x 2-hour online sessions this course will draw on UK government guidance and museum guidelines produced by NMDC and AIM, to support you in developing plans to re-open your museum safely. A programme for re-opening will be discussed and developed, informed by UK and international case studies.

Aimed at staff leading on museum visitor services, operations and facilities management, the two sessions will focus on practical measures and potential solutions to post-lockdown restrictions, such as social distancing, cleaning, visitor experience, and staff welfare. Consideration will also be given to outdoor spaces.

Both sessions will be interactive with Q&A throughout, as well as polling, networking, group work and other interactive content.

The sessions are aimed at museum staff or volunteers with responsibility for visitor services, operations and facilities management.

By the end of the two sessions you will:

  • Understand the key requirements for visitors and staff to re-occupy your site
  • Understand how these issues have been addressed at other venues
  • Have a better understanding of the challenges and possible solutions for key density areas such as toilets, lifts, cafes and shops
  • Have a strategy for communicating these changes with your staff and visitors

To view a draft timetable of the two sessions please see here – Reopening Support timetable.

Places are limited to 40. To enable the maximum number of organisations to benefit, places are restricted to one person per organisation – please liaise with your colleagues before booking a place. Your booking is for both sessions. By booking a place you are confirming your attendance at both sessions.

Priority will be given to people working in Accredited, or officially working towards Accreditation, museums in the North West that are not nationals or National Portfolio Organisations. Equivalent sessions will be delivered for Museum Development Yorkshire and Museum Development North East. Cross-over attendance between regions is permissible where there are tickets available.

Book a place for both days here

 

Post-Lockdown Webinar: Family Friendly Reopening
Monday 20th July
2pm – 3:30pm

Join Museum Development North West and Kids in Museums for a short workshop focusing on how to ensure when your museum reopens after lock down that it is as family friendly as possible.

Learn about available guidance and resources as well as share experiences with other museums in the region. There will be a presentation of current trends from the UK heritage sector and beyond in this area. And finally there will be a focus on what are the key challenges around reopening and families in your museums and how might they be tackled?

As part of booking we ask delegates to outline their key challenges in this area.

Places are limited to 20. To enable the maximum number of organisations to benefit, places are restricted to one person per organisation – please liaise with your colleagues before booking a place.

Priority will be given to people working in Accredited, or officially working towards Accreditation, museums in the North West that are not nationals or National Portfolio Organisations.

Book a place here

 

Post-Lockdown Webinar: Reopening with Inclusive Practice
Thursday 30th July
10am – 11:30am

Join Museum Development North West and the Disability Collaborative Network (DCN) for this practical action based webinar. Customer Service within any organisation is typically the first point of contact for your existing and future customers and/or visitors.

In light of the pandemic and post lockdown recovery, having inclusive and accessible customer service that considers the needs of your diverse visitors will be vital in attracting your visitors back to the organisation. Having the right support in place that accommodates the intersectional nature of your visitors is also critical to the reputation of your organisation as an inclusive employer and destination.

This 90 minute webinar will focus on new reopening recommendations and actions produced by DCN, EMBED and University of East Anglia for all sectors, including museums and heritage organisations. These recommendations are aimed at supporting the changing needs of your diverse visitors, those visitors that are still shielding and require digital support as well as common factors which will affect the visitor experience in museums such as signage, navigation, interpretation and customer service.

This will be a practical action based webinar for any Accredited museum in the North of England, or those officially working towards Accreditation, where we aim to support you in effective and safe planning of your reopening.

There are 70 places available to museums across the North of England. To enable the maximum number of organisations to benefit, places are restricted to one person per organisation – please liaise with your colleagues before booking a place.

Priority will be given to people working in Accredited, or officially working towards Accreditation, museums in the North that are not nationals or National Portfolio Organisations.

Book a place here