Museums – Elaine Grant Creative Consulting

Why museum audience work is so rewarding

Museums have a particular kind of magic. They hold history, science, culture and art under one roof. The audiences who feel comfortable in museums are the audiences who pass that comfort on to the next generation.

What I want for the audiences I bring into museums is for them to come back without my encouragement. To feel that the museum is for them. To keep coming back and to keep enjoying everything the institution has to offer.

That is the long game of museum audience work. It is not about a single exhibition. It is about a relationship.

Thank you, Elaine, for your dedication to everything related to the performance arts and education. You have made many many children and their teachers and families very happy with the Mousetrap links. It’s an extraordinary organisation and I and my students benefited for many years when I was a full-time teacher of Drama and Theatre Arts and English. Thank you for your hard work and dedication.

Duncan Melvin, Teacher

What museum audience work usually looks like

A museum audience project tends to cover some or all of the following.

A briefing on the exhibition, the audience you want and the dates
Targeted outreach to community groups, schools, family workers and individuals from my list
Honest, warm communication about what the audience will see
Practical support for first-time visitors, particularly families and community groups
Surveys and feedback from audiences and group leaders
Where consultation is part of the work, focus group facilitation to capture real voices

Who I work with on museum projects

Museum audience work tends to come from:

Museums mounting an exhibition that deserves a more diverse audience than their usual visitors
Learning and engagement teams wanting community-specific outreach for a programme or event
Project teams working on a digital or physical redesign and wanting community consultation
Curators and producers wanting community engagement around a specific show or installation

Questions museum clients often ask

Can you target a specific community for an exhibition? Yes. My list is genuinely diverse and I can target particular cultural communities, age groups, family makeups or audience types depending on the brief.

Do you cover museums outside London? Yes. My contacts span the UK, including in cities where I have worked on heritage and arts projects.

Can you support consultation as well as audience outreach? Yes. Focus group facilitation pairs well with audience work, particularly when the museum is making changes to programming or design.

Will the audience come back? That is the aim. Sustainable museum audiences are the goal of every project I take on.

Always and forever grateful that Black and Brown young people here in Cumbria are able to access the arts and enjoy all kinds of theatre, especially Black theatre because of your work and the subsidies, Anti Racist Cumbria is able to access to support trips that you’ve created to enable this.

Janet Walker, CEO & Co founder of Anti Racist Cumbria

Audience development for museums

What clients say

What clients say