Taking Part, which has been run since 2005, collects data about participation in sport, the arts, heritage, libraries, museums and galleries from adults and children (aged 5-15) in England. The figures show that visiting to museums and galleries is on a steady upward trend, with the increase in visitation / decline in non-visitation being statistically significant:
Trends in the proportion of adults in England who have visited a museum or gallery in the previous 12 months (source: Taking Part survey - .xls file available on website)
So, somewhere in the region of 42-46% of adults in England visit a museum or gallery at least once in a given year (and this doesn’t include Heritage sites, which are visited at least once a year by a whopping 70% of English adults).
This fairly steady overall picture conceals considerable variation by geography, demographics and socioeconomic status:
Age and geographic breakdown of museum and gallery participation rates, for the earliest and latest years available (full data set is annual). Figures in bold represent a significant change from 2005-6. (Source: Taking Part statistical worksheet (Museums))
Age and gender breakdowns are pretty self-explanatory, and broadly reflect Australian trends (although ABS uses slightly different age categories). London residents are the most likely to visit museums while those in the East Midlands (which incorporates my English ‘hometown’ of Leicester) are the least likely in 2010-11. Interestingly, the East Midlands is the only region to see a fall in participation rates from 2005-6, albeit not a significant drop. It would be interesting to see how the different regional increases correspond to the opening / refurbishment of museums across England over the past few years.
Demographic and socioeconomic data show that museum and gallery visitors are still disproportionately white, wealthy and able-bodied:
Demographic and socioeconomic breakdown of museum and gallery participation rates, for the earliest and latest years available (full data set is annual). Figures in bold represent a significant change from 2005-6. (Source: Taking Part statistical worksheet (Museums))
Participation rates among lower socioeconomic groups, ethnic minorities, disabled people and people of non-Christian religions are all on the increase, which will be encouraging news for all those who have put so much effort into social inclusion projects in museums over the past decade or so. However, given the increases in participation across-the-board, it’s not clear whether there is any progress being made in closing long-standing cultural gaps.
NB: I tried to do a compare-and-contrast between the Taking Part report and the Attendance at Cultural Venues statistics published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, but I ended up tying myself in knots. First off, the ABS report cites participation rates for Art Galleries and Museums separately (with each being in the low-mid 20% range – see here for more details). Where a combined rate is given, it appears that the figure has been reached by simply adding Museum and Gallery figures together (See for instance Table 8.1 in the ABS report (PDF), despite saying in the explanatory notes that the true proportion will be less than the sum of Museums + Galleries due to overlap between the visitor populations of each – as you’d expect. I’m actually wondering whether the wrong numbers were published in the report!). Either way, I suspect the 46-52% annual participation rates cited by ABS are an overestimate.
Thanks to the ICOM group on Linked In, I recently found out about EGMUS: the European Group on Museum Statistics. The group exists to collect and publish comparable statistical data from 27 European countries. I’ve pulled out some of the statistics I thought of particular interest, but there are also statistics for funding, staffing and management (although these data sets look fairly incomplete at this stage).
The overall picture looks like this:
The countries in the EGMUS sample, the year the data for each country was collected, and number of museums in each country. (Those in red have some consistency issues which will become clear later)
Most European museums are open to the public for at least 200 days a year (a fair criterion for considering a museum to be a ‘public’ institution compared to a facility primarily for specialists or researchers). The major outlier is Switzerland at 14%, although Germany too has a fairly low proportion of ‘public’ museums by this measure.
Some (not all) countries have broken down their museums by type:
Breakdown of European museums by type. Figures in red are those with clear inconsistencies with the 'total museums' figure listed above. The reason for this discrepancy is unclear from the data.
Differences between the respective countries are clearer when the data are presented graphically:
European museums by country and type. Many countries have almost (or actually) exclusively Art, Archaeology and History museums. Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg are the only ones to have mostly Science, Technology and Ethnology museums.
‘Art, Archaeology and History’ is quite a broad definition; probably too broad to give any detailed comparison between countries. Putting ‘ethnology’ in with science and technology also seems a bit weird to me and I wonder what the reasoning is for this.
It’s hard to compare to the Australian statistics, which use quite different definitions – Art Galleries (14%), Social History (60%), Historic Properties (21%), Natural, Science and Other (5%). (From ABS figures summarised in a previous blog post). However, I’d imagine that by the European definition most of Australia’s museums would also fall into the ‘Art, History and Archaeology’ category too.
The EGMUS figures also look at the number of visits per country and (on average) per museum:
Total and average number of visits to European museums. NB: Some of these are combined from multiple tables. Figures in blue are not directly cited in the EGMUS tables but were derived from other data provided. Figures in red showed internal inconsistencies in the are published data (beyond a 5-10% margin of error).
The clear outlier here is Switzerland, and I’m not sure if this is a typographical error or is in some way related to the very low proportion of museums that are open for more than 200 days a year. Even ignoring Switzerland, however, there are still considerable differences in the number of museums per head of population between European countries (which don’t seem to relate to geographical or socioeconomic differences between countries in any obvious way).
A lower proportion of visits to European museums are free compared to Australia, where an average of 68% of visits are free entry. Per-capita number of visits is comparable, however, with my back-of-the-envelope calculation for an Australian figure (taking ABS visitor stats cited above and assuming an Australian population of 22 million) being just shy of 140,000 visits per 100,000 inhabitants, with an average of roughly 26,000 visits per museum.
A couple of weeks ago, I referred to Culture Segments, which was developed by UK-based firm Morris Hargreaves McIntyre as a way of describing different audiences for the cultural sector.
It identifies 8 different audience segments, based on people’s interests, attitudes, and extent to which they value culture as a part of their day to day lives:
“the segments are distinguished from one another by deeply-held beliefs about the role that art and culture play in their lives, enabling you to get to the heart of what motivates them and develop strategies to engage them more deeply.”
Briefly, the eight categories can be described as:
Enrichment: an older more mature demographic; most likely to visit heritage sites and gardens; relatively conservative and fixed in tastes and habits.
Entertainment: younger adults who are less interested in the arts; most likely to frequent ‘must-see’ events, theme parks and sporting events; tend to stick with what is seen as ‘popular’
Expression: people with a wide range of interests of which arts and culture are an important part; they enjoy intellectual stimulation and seek communal experiences in their leisure time
Perspective: home-oriented; mostly interested in outdoor-and nature based activites; they do not see arts and culture as important aspects of their lives but can be tempted if their relevance is made clear
Stimulation: active and adventurous, they like being at the cutting edge; innovators and early adopters; will seek out contemporary art forms like street art and music festivals in contrast to traditional arts and culture
Affirmation: view arts and culture asa way of spending quality time with friends and family; they actively seek educational experiences for their children; seek self development and peer affirmation
Release: younger adults with busy working and family lives; arts have moved down their list of priorities as they struggle to fit everything in; need convincing that arts can be enjoyable for children
Essense: active cultural consumers and creators; they avoid mainstream activities and like to be seen as discerning and sophisticated in their tastes; like to be the ‘first to discover’ the new and unknown
Each segment is described in further detail in the Culture Segments document (downloadable as PDF), including education levels, age profiles, cultural spending habits (split between tickets, food & drink and souvenirs) and ways to target each group more effectively. It’s based on the UK population but I imagine the general principles would be applicable elsewhere, if not the specific stats.
These audience segments are different from the visitor identities I have written about earlier – they are describing different things for different purposes.
The principal difference, as I see it, is that visitor identities are based on the circumstances of a particular visit to a particular site; these may change from visit to visit and from site to site. (For example, the same person can be a ‘Facilitator’ when taking their children to a Natural History museum, but an ‘Experience seeker’ when visiting The Louvre on holiday.)
By contrast, the audience segments are intended to be a measure of how likely you are to be a visitor to a cultural venue in the first place. (This is in keeping with my definition of ‘audience’ as being a bigger population than ‘visitors’ – your audience comprises all your potential visitors.)
Having said that, there might be some patterns and relationships between the two: I could imagine ‘Stimulation’ and ‘Entertainment’ segments being more likely to be ‘Experience seekers’, ‘Affirmation’ more likely to be ‘Facilitators’, and so on. It would be interesting to study this in more detail.
US-based exhibition designer Mark Walhimer recently conducted a survey of exhibition costs – the results are here, based on 59 responses. For those of you interested in benchmarks of exhibition costs (i.e. quantifying the length of a piece of string!), this will be an interesting read.
Now while the responses may not be representative of the museum sector as a whole, there are some particularly noteworthy points:
There is more than an order of magnitude of difference between the lowest cost and most expensive exhibitions. Prices range from $25/sq.ft. to $600/sq.ft (roughly $270 – $6450 / sq.m). Having costed up exhibitions myself, I wonder whether these prices all include the same thing. (I can’t imagine the lower price range includes the full interior fit-out of a space and can only guess that the flooring, lighting, etc doesn’t change or isn’t included in these budgets, only the specific displays)
Science centres are the most expensive exhibitions – there were no science centres below $100/sq.ft. and this category included the most expensive exhibits at $600/sq.ft. Most fell somewhere around the $300-$400 mark. This is no great surprise as science centres tend to have more interactive exhibits and immersive elements which are expensive to design and build.
Children’s museums were the cheapest, with all of the exhibitions being at or below $250/sq.ft. Children’s museums have a lot of interactives too, but maybe these fall more into the ‘cheap and cheerful’ category? Also children’s museums tend to have exhibits more spaced out (based on my anecdotal experience anyway), so this might reduce the cost on a per sq.ft. basis.
History museums fell somewhere in the middle, ranging from $50-$400 per sq.ft..
There are also figures for breakdowns of in-house versus contracted design and construction, and design costs as a proportion of the overall budget.
The survey results overall are distilled into a pithy snapshot:
The average 6000 square foot History Museum, Science Center, Children’s Museum and Traveling exhibitions are $204 per square foot with 17% spent on research, design and exhibit development.
That translates to around $2195 / sq.m. (I feel more at home in metric territory), or a ballpark of around $2000/sq.m. This seems to be an incredibly sticky ballpark figure, surprisingly resistant to time or units of currency. I remember GBP2000/ sq.m. being the ‘rule of thumb’ costing that was regularly used in the UK – over a decade ago! Then when I came back to Australia 4 years ago the same ballpark of $2000-$2500 / sqm still seemed to most people to feel about right as a costing guesstimate. Now it seems that it still holds true.
So why are exhibition design costs seemingly resistant to currency changes and inflation? Or are they? (Let’s face it, it’s a somewhat arbitrary midpoint in a VERY broad spectrum). Perhaps the costs of certain types of exhibits have gone down (software and IT hardware in particular). Maybe 10 years ago was a bit of an aberration (millennium fever and all), and things have calmed down a bit since. Or have exhibition developers got more savvy about extracting the most out of every dollar of the budget?
When I wrote yesterday’s blog post about Museum Next’s survey about attitudes to social media, I didn’t realise that the study was just one of a series of that Museum Next had recently completed. (As a testament to the value of social media, I was very quickly made aware of these additional studies when I posted a link to my blog on Twitter.)
There are in fact four surveys:
What do people want from museums on Facebook? (results of an online survey)
What do museums think Twitter is for? (responses from 361 museum professionals)
Museums on Twitter (results of an online survey from non museum professionals)
Social Media Audiences and the museum (which was the subject of yesterday’s post)
There are interesting similarities and differences between the results of the different surveys.
Whereas the social media audience survey appears to be of a random sample of UK residents, it looks like the other survey samples were more opportunistic. Thus the age spread does not reflect different age groups’ social media usage (as reported in the first survey), and women outnumber men by nearly 2 to 1! (I’m not sure if this means women are more interested in museums, more inclined to social media, or that they are more likely to complete online surveys, but I digress . . .)
Of the sample, 82% of respondents ‘like’ at least one museum on Facebook and nearly 90% follow at least one Museum on Twitter, with most following several (i.e. This survey population is clearly different from the social media audience survey, where only 10% of respondents were fans or followers. By contrast, this sample is highly aware and engaged, and findings should be considered in light of this).
The reasons respondents gave for liking or following were similar across both Facebook and Twitter, with the top three being: to learn about exhibitions and events (76% Facebook, 98.9% Twitter); to show support for the museum (64% Facebook, 51% Twitter); and to help promote the museum (47% Facebook 35% Twitter). Based on these percentages, people overwhelmingly use Twitter to get information and news about museums, whereas Facebook has a greater promotion / supporting role. This does make intuitive sense given the way that each platform works, in that Twitter is more immediate and open while Facebook is more about sharing between people you already know. Although interestingly, 93% of people said they would be more likely to visit an exhibition that a friend recommended on Twitter compared to 83% on Facebook, which would seem counter that interpretation.
Roughly half of respondents had visited the museums they liked or followed; a further 35-40% had visited ‘some of them’, indicating that the physical audience and the online audience do not completely overlap. This might mean that a proportion of people are happy to have a purely online relationship with a museum, even if they do not visit in person. (I would imagine the nonvisiting fans and followers live some distance from the museum, but this could be an incorrect assumption on my part.)
If this is the case, and there is a small but significant proportion of fans and followers who are unlikely to visit in person, this might have interesting implications for museums’ social media strategies – how can social media be used to add value for visitors and non-visitors alike?
I was recently sent a link to the results of a survey of 500 UK residents, investigating their social media habits and awareness of museums on social media.*
The survey, commissioned by Museum Next, explored respondents’ current social media use as well as their awareness and expectations of museums in this realm.
First, one for the social media sceptics: more than three quarters of respondents said they used social media websites (how ‘social media websites’ was defined for the purpose of this research was not made clear, but more on that later). And while usage declined with age, this drop in use was nowhere near as marked as some people might expect – just over half of the over 64s used social media (compared to 95% of the 18-24s).
However, the over 64s were far less likely to be a fan or follower of brands on social media – 21% compared to 83% of 16-24s (again, the percentages fell for each age bracket). Put another way, 16-24s are four times as likely as over 64s to interact with brands through social media. This potentially points to an interesting generational shift with respect to how people associate with brands and products (or alternatively says something about which brands have a social media presence, and the target markets of these brands).
In keeping with the “what’s in it for me?” principle, the most common reason for following brands was to access promotions or special offers (54%). Other popular responses related to getting advance information about new products or events (37%), or that the brand supplied interesting content for its followers (33%).
So far, so generic. What does all this mean for museums?
Well, for a start, nearly three quarters of the sample said they attended museums and galleries, and this was roughly evenly spread across ALL the age groups. However, only 18% were aware of museums using social media, and only 10% were a fan or a follower of a museum (i.e. roughly half of those who were aware of museums on social media were fans or followers).
Interestingly, the reasons people gave for following museums were different from those given for ‘brands’, with the most common response being a wish to support or promote the museum (47%), followed by a desire to tell friends about an impressive visit (38%).
However, while 83% of respondents said they would be more likely to visit a museum which had been recommended by a friend (the question doesn’t explicitly state ‘recommend by social media’, but this may have been inferred from the context), 66% thought that their friends would be ‘indifferent’ if they became a fan of a museum on Facebook.
A couple of broader observations about the survey:
Firstly, although most of the questions refer to ‘social media websites’ generically, it’s not clear how (or indeed if) this term was defined for respondents. I know from experience that there are often different understandings about what constitutes a ‘social media website’, so depending on what was said and how that was interpreted this may have affected the results.
Secondly, the only specific social media platform mentioned (at least in the data published on the website) is Facebook. This may have been the scope of the survey, but personally I would have liked to have seen a bit more unpicking of different social media, in particular Twitter. (I must admit I’m a more prolific Tweeter than Facebooker, and so might be a little biased here!) Moreover, museums are having a growing presence on social media beyond the Big Two of Facebook and Twitter, including YouTube channels Flickr groups.
But then again, given the low awareness of museums’ presence on social media at all, getting the word out there in general must be the first step.
[UPDATE: I have since found out that there are more MuseumNext surveys, which are the subject of a later post]
My April edition of Museums Journal arrived in the post late last week, which included a report on UK visitor statistics that have recently been released by the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA).
Topping the list was the British Museum, with over 5.8 million visits, up 4.9% on the previous year. Coming in second was Tate Modern, which saw a 7% increase to see them topping the 5 million visitor mark.
Below are the ALVA figures for (its member) sites attracting over 1,000,000 visitors in 2010 (the full list is here):
SITE
TOTAL VISITS
CHARGE/ FREE
% +/-
1
British Museum
5,842,138
F
+4.9%
2
Tate Modern
5,061,172
F
+7%
3
National Gallery
4,954,914
F
+3.7%
4
Natural History Museum
4,647,613
F
+13.2%
5
Science Museum (South Kensington)
2,751,902
F
-0.5%
6
V&A (South Kensington)
2,629,065
F
+16%
7
National Maritime Museum
2,419,802
F
+2.19%
8
Tower of London (HRP)
2,414,541
C
+1.04%
9
St Paul’s Cathedral
1,892,467
F/C
+4%
10
National Portrait Gallery
1,819,442
F
-7%
11
Tate Britain
1,665,291
F
+11%
12
British Library
1,454,612
F
+5%
13
Westminster Abbey
1,394,427
F/C
-3.8%
14
National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh sites)
1,281,465
F/C
+10.18%
15
Old Royal Naval College Greenwich
1,274,957
F
+28%
16
Edinburgh Castle (Historic Scotland)
1,210,248
F/C
+1%
17
Chester Zoo
1,154,285
C
-6.8%
18
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
1,141,973
C
-12.19%
19
Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum (Glasgow)
1,070,521
F
-21.75%
20
Imperial War Museum (London)
1,069,358
F
+21%
21
Roman Baths & Pump Room, Bath
1,054,621
C
+2%
22
Canterbury Cathedral
1,033,463
F/C
+2%
23
Merseyside Maritime Museum
1,027,475
F
+9%
24
ZSL London Zoo
1,011,257
C
-4.95%
25
Stonehenge (EH)
1,009,973
C
+2%
26
Eden Project
1,000,511
C
-2.7%
Overall there is an increase in visitor numbers, but there is considerable variation across sites. The Imperial War Museum, Natural History Museum and the V&A have all seen large increases (perhaps there were significant redevelopments which opened last year?); others were relatively stable (e.g. the Science Museum and the Tower of London), and others again saw significant decreases in attendance (e.g. National Portrait Gallery and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew). I was particularly surprised to see the drop in visitors to Kelvingrove Museum (down 21.75%) – perhaps there is a rebound effect if 2009 was an unsually high year for some reason? If anyone has some details which can help explain the numbers (I feel I’m a bit out of the loop with UK happenings these days), please add your comments below.
It’s probably also worth noting that eight of the top ten attractions have free entry, and apparently UK Culture Minister Ed Vaisey has released figures showing a trebling of visits to free museums since 1990 (MJ, p7).
ALVA do not report whether the increase in visitors is primarily due to local or international visitors (this is probably not recorded at many individual museums). It would be interesting to know whether the increase in museum visits is a manifestation of the ‘staycation’ phenomenon – more people holidaying closer to home in a tighter economy, or more international tourists taking advantage of the relatively weak GBP and visiting the UK.
Continuing from my last post on the ABS Report: Attendance at Selected Cultural Venues and Events, I’ve now had a look at the historical trends data comparing surveys from 1999, 2005-6 and 2009-10.
First, some caveats: the ABS acknowledge some methodological differences between the three surveys from which these data have been drawn, which may affect the validity of internal comparisons. Also, the report notes that only a minority of the differences between years are statistically significant (more on that later).
Historical attendance trends across selected cultural venues by persons over 15 years of age. (Source: ABS) Figures in red are statistically significant increases.
From 2005-6 to 2009-10, there were statistically significant increases in attendance to Art Galleries, Museums, Botanic Gardens, Performing Arts and Cinemas. I’ve also represented these historical trends graphically:
Historical attendance trends across selected cultural venues by persons over 15 years of age. (Source: ABS)
This shows that attendance to Art Galleries and Museums is similar, as is that to Zoos, Botanic Gardens and Libraries. Most changes over time are relatively modest, even if some are statistically significant.
However, the state-by-state breakdowns reveal a more complex picture, particularly for museums:
Historical attendance trends to museums by State (Source: ABS)
So while there is a statistically significant increase in attendance overall, the only individual states to show a statistically significant increase from 2005-6 to 2009-10 are Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania. The differences between states are quite stark when shown graphically:
Historical attendance trends to museums by State (Source: ABS)
This graph would seem to suggest that there are long-term, stable differences between states and territories with respect to museum attendance. ACT is the only one to show dramatic changes between time points. (I wonder if the opening of the National Museum of Australia is a contributing factor to the jump from 1999 to 2005-6?) While there does seem to be an upturn in NT attendance, apparently this is not statistically significant.
There were also noticeable state-by-state differences in Art Gallery attendance:
Historical attendance trends to art galleries by State (Source: ABS)
Again, ACT residents appear to buck the national trend. However, it is the increases in the NSW and Qld figures which are statistically significant:
Historical attendance trends to art galleries by State (Source: ABS)
There were no dramatic differences between states with respect to attendance rates to either Zoo & Aquaria or Botanic Gardens. While there was not a statistically significant increase in visits to zoos at the national level, the NT had a statistically significant increase:
(This would appear to go against the theory I had in my last post, that there had been a “Panda effect” increasing zoo visitation in South Australia since 2009.)
For Botanic Gardens, NSW and Victoria had a significant increase; the nationwide total was also statistically significant:
Age breakdowns also give a bit more of an insight as to who the additional visitors are – for Art Galleries, there are statistically significant increases for all the older age brackets (age 45+) . Interestingly, the increase of visitation by the 18-24 age bracket is also statistically significant.
Meanwhile, for museums and zoos, it is only the 35-44 demographic that shows a statistically significant increase. Botanic Gardens, meanwhile, show statistically significant increases among 15-17 year olds, as well as 45-54 year olds.
Last year, I wrote a series of blog posts about the ABS report: Arts and Culture in Australia – a statistical overview. This report did have museum attendance figures, but focused primarily on the funding mix of museums and other cultural venues.
A recent article on the Perth Now website, lamenting the relatively low levels of cultural participation and funding in Western Australia, alerted me to the release of a more recent report, which looks at museum attendance in more detail and gives a state-by-state breakdown.
The full report is available on the ABS website as always, but I thought I’d again take a look at the numbers and give my thoughts on what they might mean (and, as always, I appreciate your comments and additional perspectives!).
First, the headline figures – attendance numbers at cultural venues state-by-state:
Attendance at cultural venues and events 2009-2010 (source: ABS report cited above). *NT figures pertain only to urban areas. **Performing arts includes classical concerts, popular concerts, theatre, dance, musicals and operas. These are broken down in the full report but only the aggregates are used here.
Overall, over 85% of people aged over 15 in Australia attended at least one cultural venue or event for the year 2009-10. For people aged 15-17, participation rates were the highest at 97%. Participation decreased with age, and the lowest participation rate (64%) was that of the over 75s.
Total participation rates (Source: ABS)
Participation rates are also broken down by state and territory:
Cultural participation and attendance rates (percentages), by venue type and by state (Source: ABS)
Based on these figures, ACT residents are among the most active participants in culture, being the most likely to have visited an Art Gallery, Museum, Archive, Library, Performing Arts event or Cinema in the past year. With the high density of National Museums and Galleries in the Capital, the high attendance at these venues is not all that surprising – it’s a matter of availability. However cinemas, hardly unique to Canberra, are well attended as well. (Note that the data records people’s place of residence, not the venue they attended. So these numbers just ACT residents, not people from other states visiting Museums in the Capital. The report gives a breakdown of where people attended venues in relation to where they live on pp 19-20).
As the Perth Now article said, WA residents are the least likely in the country to attend an Art Gallery; Museum attendance is also below average in that state. Having said that, WA is not alone: participation rates are below average in NSW (albeit slightly) across the board.
NT residents were the most likely to attend zoological parks and aquaria, by a significant margin. SA is above the national average for this year too and I wonder if this is a consistent figure or indicative of the ‘Panda effect’ (the Adelaide Zoo’s Panda Enclosure opened in late 2009 and there has reportedly been a jump in visitor numbers since then.)
Overall what these differences between states mean, it’s hard to tell: it’s possible that they are simply due other geographic and demographic differences between states. However, as the Perth Now article suggests, there could be genuine differences between states and their attitudes to culture. I’d be interested in hearing what you think.
One pointer towards a geographic explanation (at least in part) is the difference in participation rates between capital cities and elsewhere. This is possibly skewing the figures for those states which have a higher proportion of their population residing outside the capital:
Attendance to cultural venues by region (Source: ABS)
The report also gives breakdowns of visitation by age and sex, household composition, country of origin, labour force status, educational attainment and household income, but I won’t delve into those here – if you’re interested in these figures, go to the original report (see link to ABS website above).
Later in the report, they have some figures showing attendance trends over the past 10 years, which I’ll look into for a future post.
This is another post in my series looking at the ABS’s Arts and Culture statistics, again trying to get to grips with what the published statistics are saying about the sector. Here I focus on the statistics about museum income, expenditure and staffing as detailed in Chapter 8 of the report (the ‘museum’ chapter).
As noted previously, around two-thirds of museum income comes from Government sources: either Federal, State or Local. The report breaks down income and expenditure by museum type; I’ve also shown income and expenditure streams as a percentage of the total:
Summary of Income and Expenditure by Museum Type (Source: ABS)
(Note that the income categories are a little different from that in the chart shown previously – the Government figure is the same and I’m assuming the discrepancy is down to other categorisation differences.)
This shows considerable variation in the funding mix for different museum types, with the differences between Historic Properties and Natural /Science /Other showing the biggest contrast. Whereas less than half of Historic Properties’ income comes from Government sources, Government provides three-quarters of Natural /Science /Other museums’ income. The fact that Historic Properties are far more likely to be paid admission (see here) is consistent with this and explains the higher proportion of income coming from admissions.
There is also a marked contrast in the proportion of income from fundraising, with Art Museums taking in more than triple that of Natural /Science /Other when taken as a proportion of total income. Given the fact that both of these categories are likely to represent some of the larger and national museums (the reasons for this are given in the previous post), it seems that either Art Galleries are punching well above their weight in the fundraising stakes, or Natural /Science /Other museums are lagging behind somewhat (or maybe a bit of both). Another possibility that cannot be ruled out is that one-off capital grants (which are included in the Government funding total) have skewed the figures in this particular financial year.
On the expenditure front, I was surprised at how little (as a proportion of total expenditure) is spent on exhibition and display development. Given exhibitions are the main public face of the museum, and that exhibitions are typically quite expensive to produce, I would have thought it would have come in much higher than a tiny 4% (on average) of total expenditure.
The other thing that surprised me was the relatively high proportion spent on exhibitions by Art Museums (7%) as opposed to the much lower figures spent by other museum types. I can’t think of anything inherently more expensive about mounting art exhibitions and wonder whether the increased cost is down to an increased frequency of exhibition changeover in Art Galleries, rather than anything inherent in the cost of mounting a given exhibition. (Assuming Art Galleries do indeed change over exhibitions more frequently, that is!)
It should also go without saying that having a category called ‘other’ that accounts for half of museums’ operating expenses makes interpretation or generalisation from these data somewhat difficult.
Just to see what would happen, I took these income figures from above and divided them by the number of museums and number of visitors (paid and free admission) to each museum type (as provided earlier in the ABS report and summarised here). Among other things, this shows the amount of Government subsidy per visitor to each museum type:
Income per museum and per visitor by museum type (as derived from ABS report, Ch8)
(I should add a disclaimer here: these figures have been derived by combining numbers from two completely separate tables in the ABS report. This may or may not be a valid way to treat these data. You have been warned . . . )
This bears out what the other table indicated – Historic Properties gain a higher income from their visitors ($6.95/visitor) ; Natural /Science /Other museums attract a greater Government subsidy for each visitor they attract ($34.65 per visitor).
Presenting Government subsidy in this way is pretty sobering in general really: with Government (Federal, State, Local) support coming in at an average of $21 per visitor, I can see the need for us to demonstrate real value and benefit. Conversely, it would be interesting to see how this figure relates to per-visit / per-use subsidies for the rest of the arts and cultural sector – that $21 may well represent excellent value when the full cost-benefit and comparison analysis is done.
So to look at expenses more closely, manipulating expenses in a similar way to what I did with income, it seems that the main reason Natural /Science /Other Museums are more expensive to run is due to staffing costs:
Museum expenses expressed per museum and per visitor (as derived from ABS figures)
As indicated previously, I think the Natural /Science /Other category is more likely to include large institutions (I’m thinking the Australian Museum, SA Museum, Melbourne Museum, etc. would all fit into this category); all of which have relatively large public programs teams, design departments, and so forth. The Art Gallery category would also include its fair share of large insitutions, but this is probably balanced by many other smaller and regional galleries.
So how do these staff costs break down? According to the ABS report, 7,856 people were employed in museums (June 2008). At the same time, there were 23,426 people working as volunteers in museums:
Overview of employees and volunteers by museum type (Source ABS)
As with all the figures which are averaged out ‘per museum’, interpret with caution as it’s a pretty blunt instrument. That said, there is a marked difference between categories with respect to the ‘average’ number of employees and the numbers of volunteers (and their ratios to paid staff). These differences would definitely appear to explain the differences in staff costs.
I also wonder whether the cause of the difference in volunteer ratios is supply-side (i.e. social history museums are more willing to take on volunteers), or demand-side (i.e. people who wish to volunteer are more likely to choose social history). It could also be a bit of both: social history and historic sites tend to be smaller, local organisations with relatively low staff numbers and more dependent on volunteers; conversely because they are ‘local’, they may be more attractive to volunteers either through geographic convenience or because their impact is more visible than it would be if they part of larger institution’s ‘machine’.
Museum employees are broken down by category; I’ve shown the supplied numbers and have also presented them as a percentage of the total number of employees by museum type:
Breakdown of museum employees by job category (Source: ABS)
So for instance, the bottom row of this table shows that 31% of Art Gallery employees fall within in the ‘Security’ category, whereas this category only accounts for 20% of Natural /Science /Other Museum employees; 26% of museum employees across the board are ‘security’ personnel. I’m not sure if any of these proportions leap out at me for being noteworthy or unusual, however.
As always, your insights and comments are very welcome . . .
