This is a podcast episode, produced and recorded by The Sensational Museum Postdocs, Dr Sophie Vohra and Dr Charlotte Slark, providing a final round up of the progress of the project and how the principles of TSM can be embedded into museum practices
Sophie speaks in a clear and considered way, with a lyrical, soft and lower vocal tone… and occasionally some loud laughs! Putting on her more ‘formal voice’, here she speaks with a ‘non-typical’ north-western accent (aka suspend your disbelief that everyone there sounds like they are from Liverpool, Manchester or Bury), with dropped ‘a’s and stronger enunciation. She often wonders if her different code-switching voices that make up critical parts of her identity (day-to-day, Macclesfield, Yorkshire, academic/telephone, British Indian, Spanish) come through.
Charlotte speaks animatedly and talks faster when she’s excited. She has a southern English accent, which a local person would identify as a somewhat polished combination of Slough and Staines upon Thames (think quite hard consonants!). It’s the accent of someone from a working-class background who has spent a lot of time having to fit-in in middle class spaces.
Notes on transcript style
- Punctuation is used to indicate the way the content was delivered, rather than necessarily being grammatically correct. Please try and read it with these pauses (or not as the case may be) in mind.
- Words in square brackets and in italics, [like this], indicate delivery types (e.g. softly; animated), audible occurrences (e.g. laugh; sigh), and sound differences (e.g. quieter delivery) in the recording.
- Ellipses (like… this) indicate a short break between sentences.
- Italicised words (like this) indicate emphasis placed more heavily on the words as they are delivered, and bold italicised words (like this), a strong emphasis
- Quotation marks (“like this”) mean we are suggesting this is something someone might have said (e.g., she said, “oh, that was weird”, and I could see why)
- Whereas quotation marks (‘like this’) mean we are emphasising it as a useful term (e.g. ‘the fourth wall’).
[The podcast starts with The Sensational Museum audio logo: A conspiratorial female voice says ‘The Sensational Museum’. Lower in volume, almost distant, people are chattering excitedly in a large, echoey space. A warm, major chord chimes and fades out]
Charlotte 00:05
Hello and welcome to the third episode of the Sensational Museum Postdoc Podcast. I’m Charlotte Slark.
Sophie 00:10
And I’m Sophie Vohra.
Charlotte 00:12
We always start the episodes with a self-description. So Sophie, would you like to go first?
Sophie 00:16
Yes, [slightly muted as she pushed her chin into her chest to look at what she’s wearing] today I am wearing the beigest of stripey shirts, but I think, in of itself, makes it quite interesting. I have some big glasses on today, and my big headphones so that I can hear Charlotte as we’re talking. How about you, Charlotte?
Charlotte 00:30
So I am wearing my emotional support working-from-home sweatshirt, which is green, and I have my hair pulled into a [choppily] post-gym bun. I’ve also got my headphones on and my biggest metal frame glasses.
Sophie 00:45
[Laughing] They’re very Harry Potter-style today.
Charlotte 00:49
[Chuckling] They are. They’re the kind of thing my mum would have worn in the 80s.
Sophie 00:51
[Laughing] It’s a good choice.
Charlotte 00:52
[Laughing] Thank you.
So today we’re going to update everybody on what we’ve been doing with our pilots for the sensational museum for both strands, but we’re also going to talk about how we then get people interested in what it is we’re doing long term. [Asked like a game show host ‘get to know you’ question] So Sophie, what can you tell us about the Strand A pilot?
Sophie 01:09
So we’ve been testing a series of support tools and a couple of modules that we would envisage sitting alongside people’s existing collections management systems. And, everything that we created was built out of the co-productive sessions that we had earlier in 2024, which is really exciting because it meant that we could bring, some of the core concepts, into fruition, into something workable. [Slows down as she chooses her words more carefully] So we worked with The Museum Platform to create a browser-based, demo system for museums to test out how they could start building-in multisensory and trans-sensory information about their collections, as well as thinking about the different dimensions of access that they’d have to think about. So, we had, two testing groups, which meant that we could test slightly different things and make refinements after the first testing group for the second group, each of them tested for around three months, and, [chuckling] [speeds up] we asked them lots of questions about how they felt they were getting on. And quite honestly, when you’ve got a grand total of about eight days of testing, it can be difficult for people to feel like they’ve made big progress, but, [slows down again] it was really wonderful to see how their thinking changed, how they worked with a suite of materials on the website that I had created, to then start thinking about, what are the sensory questions that I can ask about my collections, and how do I record them? And, what we found across both of the groups, which was really exciting, is that, the system has its benefits, there are things that need to be refined, and actually its strength is within situating those questions, those thoughts, those sensory interactions, into pre-existing systems, and that what we’ve made, is hopefully a really good demonstrator of what people can do.
Charlotte 03:06
Amazing. And there’s some crossover between the museums, that are doing Strand A and Strand B, but, what can you tell us about some of the different types of museums that you have been working with?
Sophie 03:17
We’ve had a really brilliant range of organisations, [slows down as she thinks about the different types of organisations] from local authorities to bigger national groups. And I think what’s been really exciting is the different types of, collections that they’ve worked with, so from, modern social history to anthropological and archaeological collections. And, [suddenly speeds up] I think one of the most interesting ones, and perhaps one of the most challenging when we’re asking people to move away from an [slight chuckle] occularcentric way of thinking is, one of them had an extremely big film collection and, how do you start thinking about that when you’re asking someone to move beyond what is presented as a highly visual medium?
So we worked with eight museums in total, with four across each of the testing groups. I think what was also really exciting is, that, four of those eight museums were working on your Strand B Pilot as well, Charlotte and so I’d love to know what they ended up doing.
Charlotte 04:17
[Slow and considered as she chooses her words carefully] For Strand B, we were piloting the toolkit, that we also co-created back in 2024, which is an activity-based process, which sees museums working internally to change their mindsets and learn more about multisensory, disability equity, and co-creation, and then going on to work with a group of pan-disabled co-creators to produce some kind of intervention for their museums, that is multisensory. So we’ve been working with seven museums. We had eight originally, sadly, one had to drop out for reasons that weren’t necessarily connected to our process, but which really highlight,some of the issues with the sector. And that’s something that we can definitely reflect on when we’re doing the write up and the results. But for our seven museums, they’ve been working closely with their co-creators, but also our incredible, partners at Barker Langham, who have been dealing with the design and production of our interventions.
So the museums presented the co-creators with different narratives that they could choose from. The co-creators picked one together that they would like to work on. And, then they were able to explore different ways of, interpreting that narrative in a multisensory way. Barker Langham helped them develop that thinking and really, brought in that knowledge of how to produce something, so we’ve got a [extended ‘wh’] whole range of things that are going into the museums in the next couple of months. We have a sound shower, which is really cool, it’s a basically a massive dome that you step under, and then you can hear audio. We have a temperature panel so you can feel how warm, or in this case, how cold baths were in Roman baths. [Slow and elongated as she finds the right words] A really exciting interactive process of how you made a regional [suddenly short and punchy word] sweet. So you can pull on, I think we were talking about like scuba[?] fabric [Sophie interested ‘mmm’], because that is the closest to the actual texture of pulling sugar [Sophie can be heard saying wow in the background] or pulling this like sugared sweet. [Emphatically] It’s so cool. [Speeds up again – expressing her excitement] So those are going to be installed soon. I’m very excited, and then we’re going to evaluate those, but we’ve been getting feedback from the museums and the co-creators on the toolkit process. And, so far, it’s all been largely positive, but with some really useful feedback of how we can make changes going forward to, really make sure that we’re, covering all our bases.
So we’ve had all this great feedback across both strands, which we’ve been able to use to really improve what we’re putting out into the world at the end of the project. But we’re very aware that [slower and more articulated to impress upon the importance of the point] this is kind of meaningless if people don’t actually use it. [Sophie chuckles in the background] So our big question today, is, how do we encourage other people to engage with the outputs of The Sensational Museum?
Sophie 06:54
I think it’s important for us to recognise, and I know Charlotte and I have certainly, [slight pause as she finds the right words] come to terms with this, is that we don’t have all of the answers yet, but it’s helpful for us to start thinking about and, as Charlotte said, working from the invaluable feedback that we got from our pilot museums, to start unpicking some of the things that we can do that we know will help to support people, using this new way of [briefly lyrical delivery] thinking and engaging with both collections and people. [Slower as she considers the right words to use] So we’re going to spend a bit of time talking about, some of the… most notable things that we found as we’ve tested each of our outputs and what our partner museums have told us.
Charlotte 07:41
[Charlotte suddenly feels much quicker compared to Sophie’s slow delivery]
So for the pilot, we were working with people who were already excited and willing to engage with what we were doing. They were already thinking about access, they were already really eager, [elongated ooo] to think in a more multisensory way in their museum. But that’s not always the case and, wasn’t always the case within their museums. So Sophie, from our pilots, what did we learn about the different people in museums who might not be on board with what we’re doing?
Sophie 08:08
[Chuckling] I think central to that is, you can’t anticipate that anybody’s necessarily going to be on board, and, what was, really valuable certainly from the feedback from, the Strand A pilot museums, is, that usually there is somebody who appears to be the advocate, but how do they then, [more enunciated and considered phrasing] start refining how they start to push out and to disseminate and to onboard people, at different levels. So for example, one of the pilot museums, the colleague who was testing for us, was assumed to be that access person, “oh, it’s just an access thing that they’re doing right now”, and so it was quite easily dismissed[?], or not pushed forwards[?], and I think, what they were really keen to get out of this is [extended ooo] to, in particular, have something like a one-page [with dropped ‘t’] document that they could go to, very easily and look at that and go, “Okay, am I talking [extended ooo] to… senior management? Am I talking [extended ooo] to volunteers? [Extended word] Or is it someone in conservation, in curatorial? Is, it, an external stakeholder, like, how do I start to ask… the right questions of them and be able to feed things to them that they’re going to understand and see the value in?” So I think that’s where it becomes quite difficult, is you almost have, everybody, as an option that you have to, convince. But also, I think that there’s, a great amount of strength in being able to pull on people across the organisations that both Charlotte and I’ve worked with in a number of different roles, to ask them how they speak, to the people that they speak to. How do they get them on board and have those conversations?
Charlotte 09:52
Yeah, I think it’s about trying [extended ooo] to… convince everybody, across an institution, that it is actually part of their role[?]. And I think part of the problem, and we know this [extended word] from, research that we did early in the project, is that typically access sits within, one particular department. It’s often education, it’s often seen as ‘education and community’, and actually, what we’re talking about, [starts to slow a little to impress upon the importance of her words] particularly when we’re talking about something like disability gain, is the way that the things that we are doing benefits everybody. So it’s not just about a school group or a community group, but actually this is really important, and I think something really crucial, particularly from Strand A, is showing, [extended h] how important this is back of house. So it’s how much we need to embed-in multisensory information into a collections management system. in order to be able to adequately… interpret that for a visitor or for display? However, I think a really crucial, part of, what you’ve been doing Sophie is thinking about the impact on staff[?] [Sophie mmmhmms in the background] and the way that we can think about things in a multisensory way, can benefit the staff experience. How can we use that [extended and said like the ‘t’ in tut] to [suddenly rapidly speeds up] encourage people to engage with what we’re doing?
Sophie 11:05
One of [extended word] the sections of the system that we developed with The Museum Platform ended up being more specifically about access, rather than multisensory and this came in in two forms. [Suddenly speeds up her delivery] One of which was to get museum professionals to consider their own sensory requirements. And I don’t think at any point it was phrased [extended word] as ‘disability’ [extended word] or [implied air quotes] ‘reasonable adjustments’. It was just, “what do you need, what is good for you?”, and we took that across the sensory spectrum as well, and I think that’s where, particularly this project has really opened out people’s perceptions of [choppy delivery] what is a viable space to work in, what is comfortable. And, alongside that, we started looking at spaces, back of house spaces which were connected more directly to collections, which in many collections management systems already exist, there are lots of locations, but what this was asking was, “what shelf is that on? How high is it? Is it cold in that room? Is there a smell of, something in particular, to do with chemicals or treatment or, just general day-to-day smells[?], is it close to the cafe? Do you not like the smell of burgers or something, and you don’t want to be there?” But in doing that, in saying, “Where are the collection items?” it was also mapping and mirroring what we were then asking of people working in those spaces, and for them to notice how that correlated. And with that as well, the third thing that we had in there was, to ask about the different access media for different collections as well. And I think out of all of the things that were done during this pilot, this layer of access was something that people could get on board with, it felt… comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. It was something that they knew they could give answers to, but maybe had never really seen as something they could ask of themselves, they could ask of the spaces, and by doing this, we’ve noticed that many of the museums that piloted for us, are wanting to implement the types of questions, the types of information that are there. And interestingly, [with a slight note of laughter in her voice] it seems to be more about, “how can we help researchers coming in, the public coming in?”, and, I’m hoping that what we end up doing with that, and by making sure that there is something that asks them about themselves, is that they start to recognise that this is [emphatically] just as much about them doing that work in those spaces, thousandfold more often than you’re going to have a researcher coming in and needing that space. [Extended word] And, it was heartening to see that, [speeds up a little] but it was, it was an uncomfortable moment for some of them to even think that they needed to consider themselves when they’re thinking about the collections. And, I’m hoping that this is something again, as you said, Charlotte, [speeds up more] this is all great, but if we’re not able to push this out and to encourage people to think of, why it’s important, it could quite easily get put on the back burner, and I think this comes back to, how do you advocate for those things? And sometimes [conspiratorially] you’ve gotta take a little side sweep. You’ve gotta say, “well, it’s for fire safety, it’s for researchers, it’s for salvage, it’s for something like that.” But I still hope that this is something that eeks its way through, into how people start to consider themselves in those working environments.
Charlotte 14:22
That’s an excellent point, Sophie. I mean, not least because I used to work somewhere in a room that always smelled like pesto, [Sophie cracking up in the background] from the [Charlotte also succumbing to laughter now] from the cafe next door. But I think something that’s really interesting is it’s about convincing people why they should personally care[?] [Sophie mmhmms in agreement]. And sometimes… that comes from… them just not thinking, but also them thinking that they don’t personally have access requirements.
Sophie 14:47
[Choppy and excitedly] That is an excellent point. I think it’s very easy [extended ooo] to assume that you’re not part of the equation that’s there, but [does a quiet exasperated hfft] there’s got to be other reasons that people are… not onboarding. Perhaps not because they are actively not wanting to do it, but there are things that are – perhaps past experience has potentially suggested that any intervention isn’t going to work?
Charlotte 15:11
[At her usual speedy pace of delivery] Yeah, and this is something that we definitely encountered with the pilot, in some of the museums, but [extended word] also really from the research we did early on, and I think you’ll have found this in some of the conversations we had at your co-creation workshops as well, is that there are members of staff at museums who are so jaded, and it’s because for years they’ve worked in institutions where, they’ve been undervalued, they’ve been underfunded. They’ve tried to put things in place which have been shot down or haven’t worked or have been funded short-term and then nothing has come of it. And, those are all really valid concerns, and those are things that we are very aware of as two people who have worked in museums. And this was something that we encountered with some of the volunteers that were involved in the pilot. [Slows down a little] They are so aware of some of the issues around things being short-term funded, [extended word] or, being a project that is the current favourite of the week that is then ignored or not implemented further. And, that’s something that we’re really actively trying to change with our processes, but it is really hard [extended word] to convince people that that’s the case. [Emphatic and quicker] If we can change people’s mindsets, [slows down again] that’s a really big thing, but, one of the things we, kind of can’t change is, that [extended ‘ly’] ultimately anyone who works at a museum is likely time-poor[?] [Sophie mmms in agreement]. So how can we go about convincing people that this is, A. worthy of their time and B. something that they can fit into their day-to-day job without it causing too much disruption or extra work?
Sophie 16:42
[Pensively and slowly] That’s a… a big challenge, and I think what you and I have been very careful to do, as we’ve gone through the many stages and phases of this work, is to make sure that [extended word] we’re noticing, those concerns… [momentarily speeds up] and not only noticing them, but building into how we start to [slows down again] design, and redesign, and refine everything that we’re doing. [Extended word] And, I think that we’re always going to as, museum and heritage professionals, come up against not only the barriers that other people are putting in front of us, but the ones that [extended word] we… internally create. “We’ve been burned once, will be burned again, we can’t try that again. I cannot go through that”. We’re asking for pretty fundamental change here, but even then, it’s about tweaking processes, rather [extended word] than coming in, bulldozing everything and building it right back up again. So I think it’s [extended word] about starting, small, but in that way I mean integrating it into practices that already exist, so I know that from the collections management side of things, is it that you start to repurpose a specific field in your existing collections management system, is it that during the acquisition process, you make sure that you have a series of questions, for example, Charlotte’s brilliant questions around different sensory reactions, interactions, memories, etc., with collection items from the person that’s donating it or the person that’s made it? So you then start to feed that in. You almost need to consider this as not something that is going to [in a jaunty but sarcastic tone] fix all your backlog problems, but it’s something that you start to build in as you try and fix that backlog, or as you start acquiring new things. So it’s not that they have to be massive changes, but it has to start somewhere, and I think, what we’re offering, and what we’ve been showing, certainly from a Strand [slight chuckle] A perspective, is, something [jauntily] very bespoke and unique and different. [Extended word] And, what we can potentially start to do on that side of the project is to [extended word] show easier pathways through, adding things in, [conspiratorially] sneaking them in maybe, which is not necessarily a bad thing because you know, this is good content, it’s interesting, it’s useful, it’s equitable, it’s accessible, and to start to build people into it there. And I don’t know what you’re doing on your strand Charlotte, to start to do that type of work, or if you have any other advice beyond that.
Charlotte 19:16
You’re so right, it’s about progress rather than perfection. And I think, that’s already [chuckling slightly] something that museum professionals do all the time, [Sophie mmms] like that’s – even if you don’t necessarily say it in that way – that’s the nature of the job is that often you’re doing bits here and there. And if you can do that as you go along and just embed, these ways of working these ways of thinking, into [extended word] your everyday role, then, that’s kind of what we’re asking for[?], particularly on the Stand A side, Strand B is a little bit different as we’re asking you [extended and said like the ‘t’ in tut] to, change some of your processes a bit more, particularly where we’re asking you to co-create [Sophie short mmm in the background] more of your exhibitions, displays, galleries. But still, you can embed some of the things that we’re doing into that. So whether it’s just about thinking in a more multisensory way, about how you’re doing your interpretation, thinking about the alternatives, thinking is that an equitable way the people who don’t have access to the particular sense that you’re using, which is, in most cases vision, but not always, are you providing a different way for somebody to engage? Are you thinking about something in a [extended word] more multisensory-rich way that’s going to just heighten the experience? [Emphatically] And then, are you making sure that you’re putting that, in the CMS when [extended word] you’re, changing the object record to say that you’ve moved it to the exhibition? Just take an extra minute just to, add in that extra information. You’re adding to the history that it was in this exhibition, can you add in, some notes about [extended word] how it was displayed or the fact that you had a, facsimile made that people could move that you could hear the sound of whatever was inside it moving around? It’s about thinking how you can embed this into your everyday practice, as well as following, hopefully, the toolkit and using it to make more multisensory exhibitions [chuckling].
Sophie 21:06
I mean, you also just made a really, good point there, Charlotte, which I’m going to ask you to riff on a bit more, around the fact that this actually [extended word] is, a matter of communication and collaboration and cooperation, back of house. So if we’re going to be able to do the work, properly and feed in around this kind of life cycle of what museum collections can do, surely that actually requires people to have a, maybe a different or an enhanced working relationship?
Charlotte 21:37
Yeah, excellent point. I think if you’re in a bigger museum, often the teams are so delineated. You’ve got these different teams, you’ve got these different departments that are working on very specific things, And, often those departments, don’t have an open dialogue with one another that moves beyond very specific things that they need to do. It’s why sometimes education gets brought in last minute [Sophie mmms in agreement] It’s why access gets thought of, much later, because you’re not bringing in those teams from the beginning. And, I think, we’ve shown, with our two strands [Suddenly speeds up] how crucial it is that curators, but also object managers, work together. I think something really important is how you embed front of house and volunteers into that process. [Slows down again] As somebody who worked front of house, this was something I was very, aware of going into this. But, the pilot gave us an excellent opportunity to really see how that could be improved upon. Some of our museums had front of house staff involved in [extended word] their museum internal workshops. And, some of these went really, really well. Some of these had some issues because we were using language that wasn’t necessarily [reaching for the right word]… accessible for, people who didn’t work a curatorial role and so weren’t aware of very museum-specific [Sophie mmms in agreement] lingo. And, there’s also people who feel that they’re not empowered to make changes, on different levels of museum life. [Sophie agreeing ‘Yeah’]. So with the, updated version of the toolkit we’ve really been thinking about how we can [reaching for the right word]… empower [suddenly speeds up] front of house staff and or volunteers, because often front of house are volunteers, but often you have separate volunteers who are maybe curatorial or who are maybe doing all kinds of different things. So how you can empower them to feel like their voice matters, and much like how we want to empower our co-creators, to feel like their expertise is taken seriously, and I do feel like we’ve done a really good job of that with the pilot, the feedback has shown that the co-creators really felt like they were valued, and that their expertise was seen as important and in many cases, comparable to the expertise, or complementary, to the expertise of the curatorial team. And I think that it’s trying to work out ways to [extended word] include front of house and volunteers in that journey as well[?], and that’s something that we can do across the board for both Strand A and Strand B.
Sophie 23:55
I think that’s probably particularly important, I think when it comes to the type of work [extended word] and outputs of your strand, Charlotte, is that front of house staff and the volunteers are very much that front line between what comes out of back of house and what ends up on the floor. And they are [extended f sound] far better placed to have thoughts, opinions and feedback, surely, on what is then, put out on the museum floor, how people are reacting to it, and how willing they are to engage with this type of stuff?
Charlotte 24:32
So absolutely, one of the things that came out of the research really early on as well, was how important it is to have a facilitator of some kind in many multisensory spaces. So sometimes it’s about being able to ask somebody for more information. Sometimes it’s just about knowing that you have permission to engage in that way. And [Sophie mmms in agreement] if you’ve got somebody who is friendly, helpful, who’s like, “yeah, smell that, oh my God, have you smelled this? It reminds me of the smell before rain” or, “oh my God, have you smelled this…“ I’m trying to think of the other things we have that aren’t disgusting [Sophie laughs]. Actually, we’ve managed to keep the smells reasonably pleasant, which is nice. “Have you smelled these pear drops?” Which I say that personally, I hate the smell of pear drops.
Sophie 25:09
Oh no! [both laugh]
Charlotte 25:13
But, [both still laughing] [speaking really fast] that’s because it’s linked to a personal memory, which is really interesting, and I had that really great conversation with some of the co-creators when I was doing the feedback for it, but[!], like “Have you spent these pear drops? What does it make you think of?”, and you can suddenly have those conversations and it opens you up, and it suddenly creates a much better experience. [Slows down a little] But also, you’ve got the front of house are interacting with the visitors on a day-to-day basis. They can tell you what works. They can tell you what doesn’t work. They can tell you that actually the scent canisters aren’t strong enough because people are complaining about it. But also they’re having those conversations where maybe they’re saying, “you’ve got somebody who’s got a different sensory experience of an object that can be fed back into the CMS system”. And I think that’s really crucial, it’s about, linking up all of those different elements of museums, so that you’re getting that really complete picture and working together to make everything better for everybody. So generally speaking [Sophie clears her throat in the background (thanks to hayfever)], visitors are really exciting [she means excited, this is a ‘dyspraccident’!] to encounter multisensory interventions in museums, and hopefully we’re going to have lots of extra wonderful data to back that up once we’ve had everything installed and done our evaluation. But, how do we convince… people higher up, the people making those decisions, the funders, that this is beneficial beyond just getting people through the doors?
Sophie 26:27
That is always, going to be a tricky one. Again, coming back to what we’d said quite early on, you almost have to be able to play the right tune[?]. [Repeats herself to use a less metaphorical way of conveying her point] You have to find the right language, the right purpose[?] [extended word] for, why they should [croakily] care, which is always a little soul destroying when you know that it matters, because it does, and it should just be there. But it’s finding the different layers that are going to speak [extended word] to organisational remit, priorities, principles, all of those things, and they are going to be somewhere that you can find, something that you can draw upon. And, it’s not always going to be easy, to justify some of this to certain upper management or funders outside, but I think there’s a lot of benefit from two things, one of which is working with colleagues [extended word] who are across the museum, to know how they communicate what they need from upper management. And working with them, there is [extended ‘ing’] something, very important, particularly with the larger organisations, of thinking about how this, has tendrils outside of, your specific role or your specific purpose, which, hopefully Charlotte and I [slight chuckle] are working hard to demonstrate how this comes back and forth across the front and the back of house and reaches out so far. And the second thing is to connect yourself with people outside of your organisation. There are lots of people that will have done, this type of schmoozing and writing particular bids, [extended word] or pitches for certain things. And, it’s from there that you can start to build up a bank of, ways that you can communicate with your upper management or outside of the organisation, [animatedly] and it’s about finding those little niche things or the specific things that they’re looking for, so okay, they wanna [slowing down while she thinks of a specific example to use] be able to bring in more visitors of a certain age. Okay, you can say, “well, actually, if we start to rethink how multisensory is working in this respect, that might allow us to start to consider how x, y, z could be presented, how we might think that they would be interested in that”. And there’s a lot of tricks at people’s sleeves already, it’s about reframing the types of things that you have in a way that can consider greater access and equity [croaky next two words] in here. So it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to completely reform everything that you do, but to notice where you could make changes to that and to go to them and say, “Hah, actually, if we did this, we would be able to cater far better to blind and partially blind visitors. That could be a huge market for us. That’s incredible if we could get them in too”. And some of it can be less direct. But I think ultimately it’s about noticing [extended next seven words as she thinks carefully] where the knowledge and the dissemination and, [laughing] unfortunately, where the money is going to come in from stuff like this, and noticing where you might be able to bring in more visitors, to be able [extended word] to continue to [choppy next three words] bring in income from the museum in that way.
Charlotte 29:29
And I think, [makes an exacerbated huh sound] being incredibly cynical, and this is something that has definitely come out in the feedback from both strands, but particularly yours Sophie, is that, actually, being able to prove that it has an impact on visitor numbers in a good way, kind of is the big motivating factor[?]. We’ve [short mmm from Sophie] talked a lot about the fact that it can have a really positive impact on the staff experience, [Sophie croaky ‘Yes’] and you will have certain people in management who really do care about that. But sadly, that’s very seldom a priority, [Sophie another croaky ‘Yes’] and that’s very seldom a financial priority. However, if you can prove that this has a impact on visitors or researchers or people coming in using your museum, then you can get it funded and, hopefully the disability gain there that follows through, that means that it also has a positive impact[?].
Sophie 30:18
Sometimes you’ve gotta sneak in the good stuff behind [hearty laugh] the organisational priorities, [elongating the ‘a’ sound] and that’s okay. It doesn’t necessarily matter how you are getting it to the point that you need it to be, so long as everybody is benefiting from this and actually it is pushing into greater equity and access for, [briefly speeds up] anybody that’s going to show up. Sneak it in! Trojan horse! [Chuckles]
Charlotte 30:45
Like – It’s like giving your pet their worming tablet in a bit of cheese!
Sophie 30:49
Correct!
[Both crack up laughing]
Sophie 30:53
But its true right? You’ve, sometimes you’ve just gotta – it’s hard, people are scared of it, they, they don’t quite know how to work with it. But if you give them a way that it is integrated in things that they understand and they can get on board with, that’s good for you and for them and for anybody else that’s going to turn up at your museum and deserves to be able to engage with the content, as much as anybody else.
Charlotte 31:17
And something that we are looking to do is making sure that we have demonstrable statistics about how [Sophie mmhmms] powerful this is and how it can improve the visitor experience. How it can ultimately make your [shifting into a cynical tone] institution more money, qe’re trying to provide that, also, we want to convince funders to have this as something that they reward. We want to find a way to make this something that funders incentivise, [Sophie hmms in agreement] because ultimately [slows down to deliver the rest of the sentence in a cynical, conspiratorial way] we know that’s how things get done [Sophie chuckles]. So sometimes it’s about being strategic like you said, and it’s about knowing the way to frame it, the way to phrase it, the way to spin it, so that ultimately you are getting it in there[?], and it’s then being able to have these knock-on impacts where it also benefits everybody, because when we say at The Sensational Museum, we want to make museums better for everyone. We mean everyone. We don’t just mean the visitors. We mean back of house. We mean front of house. We mean anybody who engages with a museum, [Sophie mmhmms in agreement] we want them to have a better experience.
Hopefully, this has given you a good idea of the kind of thing that we’ve been working on recently and some of the things we’re thinking of going forward.
Sophie 32:27
I’ve been Sophie Vohra.
Charlotte 32:28
And I’ve been Charlotte Slark.
Sophie 32:31
And this has been The Sensational Museum Postdoc Podcast.
[The podcast ends with The Sensational Museum audio logo. A conspiratorial female voice says ‘The Sensational Museum’. Lower in volume, almost distant, people are chattering excitedly in a large, echoey space. A warm, major chord chimes and fades out]