West Yorkshire Museum audience development research review commission

Commissioned by Council Museums Service on behalf of Local Authority Museums Partnership () [LAMP (WY)]

We are looking for an experienced audience development specialist to carry out a review of museum visitor information collected over the past five years by , Wakefield, , and Council’s Museum services.

Context:

Wakefield Council’s Museum service has recently been successful in securing funding from the Arts Council England’s Renaissance Strategic Support Fund to commission a programme of audience development initiatives to increase the profile and audiences to our museums and to increase visitors and users of our services.

We are working in partnership with the other four local Councils through a recently established group the Local Authority Museums Partnership (West Yorkshire) to strengthen partnership working and sharing of resources and skills between the museum services. As part of this partnership it was agreed to share our audience research information and other related studies to see how best we could make improvements to our marketing through the better targeting of potential new audiences, building visitor numbers and raising the profile of the local Council’s museums within a highly competitive museum market in West Yorkshire and beyond.

Purpose of the Work

The review of the partner’s audience development research and to search and obtain other useful and appropriate marketing research with the aim of answering the following:

- What information do the partner museum services hold which would be essential to consider as part of the audience development review?

- What audiences currently visit our partners museums and why?

- What audiences don’t visit our partner museums and what approaches are required to reach these audiences?

- Do audiences travel across the West Yorkshire area to visit museums?

- What audiences would be easy to target?

- What audiences should we be targeting?

- What kind of marketing and promotion is used by museum visitors to find out about our services?

- How can the partner museums best work together to target and build audiences?

- How do the partner museums contribute towards West Yorkshire’s tourism offer?

Though this is not a definitive list of questions to be explored we do expect the consultant to purpose additional areas for consideration from undertaking the review Deliverables

- Review of audience development research carried out by Calderdale, Wakefield, Kirklees, Bradford, Leeds in the last 5 Years

- Review of demographic information and surveys carried out by other organisations (eg ACE, regional development agencies, Welcome to Yorkshire, Visit Britain etc)

- Report of findings, summary and recommendations to be prepared

- Presentation of findings to LAMP-WY

Fee

A fee of no more than £2,500 (plus VAT if applicable) payable on receipt of an invoice and paid in instalments as agreed.

Timeline

September 2013 October 2013 November 2013 December 2013 Selection process Review Report

Supporting documentation

The following are examples of the documents to be considered as part of the research:

Bradford Museums and Galleries Cross-Site visitor exit surveys 2008, 2010, 2013

Bradford Museums, Galleries and Heritage Quantitative Visitor Research November 2007

Bradford Community Engagement Evaluation Interim Report October 2012

Calderdale visitor surveys from the past 5 years.

Calderdale residents survey 2009.

Leeds Museums & Galleries annual visitor surveys carried out across sites in spring 2012 and 2013.

Leeds Museums & Galleries non-visitor research survey commissioned 2013. (Data from 500 telephone surveys)

Wakefield Museums- Audiences Yorkshire National Indicator 11: Engagement in the Arts Audience Analysis and Cultural Infrastructure Oct 2009

Castle Market assessment and commercial analysis report.

Yorkshire Regional Visitor Survey 2008/2009

Red House Museum & Oakwell Visitor Survey 2008

Kirklees Museums mosaic data Case – Local Culture & Heritage profiles

Place Surveys up to 2012

Taking Part surveys up to 2012

Tourism research (Welcome to Yorkshire, regional agencies, ACE, etc.)

How to apply?

To apply for this commission please send the following information to [email protected] by 12 noon on Monday 26 August 2013:

- Outline of how you propose to carry out the review including timeline for producing a final report and presentation.

- Budget outline for delivering the work

- Details of your experience in audience development work

- Details of two referees for work you have completed recently

Following a shortlisting successful candidates will be invited to attend an interview In September (TBC) at Wakefield One, Burton Street, Wakefield, WF1 2DD.

Additional information

Please note that Wakefield Council’s Museum service will be commissioning an audience development plan for the next 2 years from April 2014 based on the outcome of this research.