The 2011 South Australian Tourism Awards were announced on Friday night during a black tie dinner held at the Adelaide Convention Centre. The awards span some 28 categories, covering everything from major attractions and international events to small boutique tourism operators.
The self-guided “Heritage Highlights” interpretive trail of West Terrace Cemetery (which opened in March this year, and for which I wrote the text – see here for details) was entered in the New Tourism Development category (Category 25)
In each category, awards are given out based on the judges’ score each entry receives: a Bronze award for a score above 75%; Silver for 80% or higher; and Gold for 90% or higher. There is also an overall winner for the best entry in each category.
I was at the awards dinner as a guest of the Adelaide Cemeteries Authority, who had entered the trail into the Awards. While we were hoping to pick up a prize, we had no idea what to expect because the category had a strong and very diverse field of entries (including boutique restaurants and shark tours). So we were all a little bit shocked (and delighted) when it was announced that we’d won the category!
It was great for all of us involved to receive peer recognition for the project. It’s been a few years in the planning: I first got involved in 2008, when the Cemetery first commissioned its interpretation plan. But it’s not over yet! The next phase of interpretive signage now in its early stage of development and is due to be installed in mid-2012.
Exhibit Files is a website designed for exhibition designers and developers to share their experiences, mostly though posting case studies of exhibition projects they’ve worked on, or reviews of exhibitions they’ve seen.
It’s been running for about 4 or 5 years now, and while originally there was a strong science centre focus (it was developed under the auspices of the Association of Science-Technology Centers or ASTC), there are now case studies and reviews of a range of different exhibit types. For instance, I recently added a version of my Saatchi Gallery review on the site.
There are nearly 400 case studies and exhibition reviews on Exhibit Files to date. Anyone can register and add their own case studies and reviews to the collection. The case studies are particularly helpful as it’s a rare forum for exhibition developers to share the lessons they’ve learned from past projects (with the hope that others won’t make the same mistakes!). The reviews are also a great armchair ride of exhibitions from around the world, that we’re unlikely to all get a chance to see.
To the exhibition developers among you, I encourage you to sign up and share your expertise and experiences.
A couple of weeks ago I finally made the time to check out the Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide: British Art Now exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The Art Gallery has turned over some 70% of its total exhibition space to the display of items from the famous (infamous?) Saatchi Gallery in London.
I’m not going to pretend to know or understand anything about contemporary art – I’m not sure if ‘understanding’ is even the point of the particularly iconoclastic and challenging brand of art that Saatchi seemingly favours – so I’m not going to contribute to the ongoing ‘is this really art?’ debate that surrounds these kinds of works. Rather, I’ll share some general impressions and pieces I found interesting.
Firstly, particularly given my recent post on the issue, I should observe that there were no obvious restrictions on photography without flash, making experiences like this possible:
Photography seemingly *is* allowed when it's contemporary art on display. This makes me seriously question the logic of "copyright" claimed by other museums. If it's not an issue for works where the artist is still living, why is it an issue for the old masters?
I don’t go to contemporary art exhibitions expecting an overall theme or ‘interpretive message’ to emerge as I might expect at a science or history exhibition. But one thing I did notice about a lot of the art on display was that it seemed to be as much about the process of making art as it was about the finished piece itself. This is exemplified by Juliana Cerqueira Leite’s three works Up, Down and Oh.
Leite’s work “Oh”
The label for “Oh” describes the painstaking process of creating the clay mould for the balloon structure:
A similar process was used to create the works “Up” and “Down” by hand-digging into a large block of clay, either from the bottom up or top down, and then casting the form created in plaster. “Up” is black to represent the increasing darkness of boring up into the clay block. “Down” in particular shows numerous indentations from the artists hands and knees as she excavates the clay.
"Up" (left) and "Down" (right)
Probably one of the most well known and controversial works on display was “My Bed” by Tracy Emin. I was living in the UK the year this work was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and I remember the media and political outcry it caused at the time.
“My bed” by Tracy Emin
While I’d seen many pictures, descriptions and criticisms of the work before (so its contents were no surprise), the label accompanying the work gave me a new insight: apparently, the idea of the piece came about after Emin (legendary for her hard living) woke up after a two-day drinking bender, feeling lucky to be alive after all she had drunk. Looking at the squalor of her room, it occurred to her that, had she died, this would have been the setting her body would have been found in. This piece of back story made me look at the work with fresh eyes as a statement on mortality and the legacy we leave.
On reflection though, I think my favourite work in the exhibition is one I almost missed – Tessa Farmer’s “Swarm”. At first glance, it just looks like a display case suspended with dead insects, and I almost walked straight past thinking that was all there was to it:
"Swarm" by Tessa Farmer (photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/appelogen/5179704948/sizes/z/in/photostream/)
However, while in one sense it is indeed a case of dead insects, Farmer has used insect parts to create amazingly intricate sculptures of fairy-like creatures waging battle:
Close-up of 'swarm' showing the army of creatures made from dessicated insect parts.
I could have spent ages looking at all the different pieces and their amazing attention to detail. Although this was getting towards the end of my visit and by this stage my feet were killing me.
This brings me to some final comments about the design and overall experience of the space – the works were well-spaced out, allowing each its own space to ‘breathe’ and allowing viewing from multiple vantage points. There are apparently something like 120 pieces on display, spread over what I’d guess to be at least 2000-3000 square metres of gallery space. However there was precious little seating provided over this large area (I only remember seeing one seating unit), hence my aching feet towards the end.
My other issue is that I could have very easily have missed half of the exhibition: it is spread over two levels, one that is accessed via the main entrance on North Terrace, and another level two floors below (the middle floor is the rear access to the Gallery and includes the cafe and shop). I only realised there was more to see when I joined a guided tour of the exhibition after I thought I’d already ‘seen everything’ and was just curious about what the tour guide would have to say. The two parts of the exhibition were linked by a staircase where there were temporary signs that indicated you needed a ticket to enter. However there was nothing on these signs to suggest that the exhibition continued on another level. Had I decided to bypass the shop or cafe and go back the way I came in, I could have missed the lower level completely.
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.
Photography is a spectator sport only in most galleries
The “No Photography” sign. It’s so ubiquitous that even when I don’t see a sign, I’m still wary that if I whip my camera out a stern-looking security guard will materialise to have words. ‘No photographs’ is still the default setting in many museums and most galleries, to the extent that when the ban is mostly absent, as it is in GoMA, it brings a markedly different complexion to the exhibition environment.
Not all exhibitions are so censorious of photographic activity – indeed, in one of the first exhibitions I worked on, at the National Space Centre in Leicester, some exhibits were deliberately planned to work as photo opportunities. Generally speaking, hands-on exhibitions and venues that target families seem to welcome photography as an important way for their visitors to record, share and recollect experiences.
A quick tot-up of my ‘Exhibit Photos’ file folder revealed some 3000 images of exhibits and exhibitions, in approximately 20 cities around the world, all taken since I first bought a digital camera back in 2003. For me, this is a valuable repository of all the places I’ve visited; the good, bad and ugly of exhibit ideas; and a way to remember far more than if I’d travelled with just my eyes, ears and unaided memory. Just looking at the pictures brings back the experiences, and I remember far more about what I did, how I felt and what I learned at all the exhibitions I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited. Without these images, most of these experiences would have been lost in the blurry mists of time.
Admittedly, the purpose of my photographic jaunts was primarily professional (and the emphasis of each batch of photos is an inadvertent record of whatever particular kind of exhibition I happened to be researching at the time – it inevitably influenced what was ‘photo-worthy’). Even so, compact digital cameras (and more recently smartphones) have transformed photography from a way of documenting holidays and special occasions to the way we increasingly document and share our day-to-day lives. We see, therefore we photograph. We photograph, therefore we share. These actions help to reinforce our memories and add value to our experiences. But have museums recognised this cultural shift? And are they doing anything to accommodate it?
The photography ban is based on some sound reasoning. However, I want to deconstruct some of this reasoning to see if it still holds in the 21st century, or whether museums and galleries are simply sticking to historical habit to the detriment of the visitor experience:
Conservation reasons: Light damages delicate objects like paper and textiles. Their ideal environment from a conservation perspective is complete darkness, so having sensitive objects on public display at all is always a matter of compromise at some level. So banning flash photography makes sense. Non-flash photography may be impractical (although not damaging) as the objects are often displayed in low-light environments. However, while it depends on the objects of course, I wonder if the ‘no flash’ rule is applied more liberally than it needs to be, given that modern camera flashes are nowhere near as UV-intensive as the old-fashioned ones that the rules were presumably designed for?
Pointless or disruptive photography: in these circumstances, banning photography makes perfect sense. Other people snapping and flashing away (in the photographic sense) can inhibit the experience of other visitors, particularly during shows or theatrical presentations. One person’s right to document their day shouldn’t trump the rights of other visitors to enjoy the experience in peace if they so wish. Live animals displays are also an inappropriate subject for flash photography. A final note in this regard, I always have to have a bit of a giggle to myself when I see people attempt to take a flash-photograph of a projection. Do they really not realise that all they are capturing is a blank screen?
Copyright reasons: this is the big one. And by far the knottiest. It sounds serious, but at the same time is sufficiently vague that it can seemingly be used as a convenient excuse to point to in order to stick to the comfort zone of the status quo. This is a cynical interpretation, to be sure, but visitors are seldom given any evidence to counter such cynicism. Sometimes it seems as if copyright is too complicated to figure out; that it’s easier for museum and gallery management to just lump everything together into the intellectual property equivalent of the maximum security wing. Looking at society more broadly, the copyright genie is well and truly out of the bottle – attempts to bring it back under old business models seem doomed to failure (the recording industry and rights management is a salutary tale here). In any case, I find it hard to understand how a few iPhone snaps in a gallery pose a serious copyright threat to anyone: people will still want to buy properly produced prints and postcards of the items they really like, and how can the extra publicity generated by the sharing of photos be a bad thing for artists’ careers?
I’m not saying that photography should be a free-for-all by any means. But I think the default should be for museums and galleries to allow photography unless there is a good reason not to (rather than the ban being the norm). Rules with clear reasons (i.e. signs which explain why photography or flash are not permitted in certain areas) are more likely to be respected than blanket bans which appear to treat the public with suspicion.
Some people, because they do not value photography themselves, may not consider it an issue. Going further, some may even consider taking snaps too vulgar or somehow not reverent enough for the gallery environment. But then again, the ‘establishment’ has been complaining about the poor behaviour of ‘the uneducated masses’ in museums for as long as public museums have been in existence. And if photography is done respectfully of objects, their creators and other visitors, where is the harm?
The other day, as I was trawling the net for images of the good, bad and ugly of museum lobbies and signage (for an upcoming presentation), I found this excellent blog – Please Be Seated: visitor comfort in museums and other public places. It is hosted by Beth Katz and Steve Tokar, who set out to:
. . . promote and discuss the idea that comfortable museum visitors are happy visitors who are more likely to enjoy their visits and more likely to return. Thus, museums and other public spaces are better and more successful in all ways when they provide basic comforts including (but not limited to) good seating, readable signs and labels, lounges and other areas of visual and psychic relief, and navigable restrooms. Our intent is to analyze museums and other public spaces in terms of comfort, a word we use inclusively to mean visual, aural, intellectual, and emotional comfort as well as physical comfort for a wide range of humans of all ages and types.
The blog is well illustrated with a wide range of examples (it looks like they are all US examples, but the general idea is universal) and covers topics such as lobby layouts, orientation signage, disabled access and public spaces. As I touched upon recently, I believe attention to these details can make or break a museum visit.
The Please Be Seated blog is one for the bookmarks list of anyone interested in the visitor experience.
On my recent trip to the UK, I managed a quick visit to the newly refurbished National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Our visit was on a Sunday morning at the height of the Fringe season, on our way to meet some friends for lunch. Having somewhere we had to be, combined with the fact that one of our group was only five months old, meant that realistically this was only ever going to be a lightning trip. Consequently, this review will be of first impressions and a critique of what I did get time to see.
According to this blog post by museum commentator Tiffany Jenkins, the refit took three years and £47 million. It’s proved popular, with visitor numbers passing the 100,000 mark less than a week after opening. Exhibition spaces were certainly beginning to fill up by the time we left.
Arrival and Entrance
One of the changes they have made is to the way visitors enter the building – rather than scaling the prominent steps, you now enter via an adjacent street-level door (although once inside the building it feels more like a basement than an entrance statement).
The steps to the original entrance, with signage pointing to the new entrance. (Photo from Tiffany Jenkins' blog, see link above)
In her review Jenkins criticised this move, observing that many visitors gravitated toward the more prominent original entrance and missed the new entrance completely. To be honest I’m still in two minds about what I think about this myself – on the one hand, the street-level entrance was much easier to negotiate with a baby stroller, and I can see the rationale for having an entrance which meets universal access requirements. On the other hand, changes to navigation that go against the grain of usual expectations can be disorienting and counterproductive. It will be interesting to see how this settles in – the photo above shows how the steps have already been adopted as an informal outdoor gathering and relaxation space now that they don’t have to deal with volumes of visitor traffic. If this new purpose settles in and gains currency over time, then the street-level entrance could easily become ‘the new normal’*.
Once you pass through the basement you reach the central atrium of the original grand hall – this is where the original entrance would have taken you. This has been left quite open and minimal with only a few key objects – this works well as a space where you can make the psychological transition from ‘street’ mode to ‘museum’ mode. Most of the exhibition spaces run off this central space; this aids visit planning and site orientation. It could do with a bit more seating though:
The central atrium, National Museum Scotland
Exhibitions
We started our visit in the Natural History area, and having a limited time budget this was one of the few galleries I managed to look at properly. (Later I broke away from the group so I could have a whistle-stop tour around more spaces and get more of an overall sense of the place.)
In the animals exhibition, displays were organised by characteristics of animals, eg. flight, adaptation to climate extremes, locomotion, size. This allowed interesting comparison of different animals’ adaptation to their respective environments and ecological niche. These displays were generally well grouped and signposted, so it was clear why certain animals had been placed together.
Overview of the animals exhibition, National Museum Scotland
The introductory signage in each exhibition space gave a good, simple overview of the intended interpretive goal:
Introductory text to "Animal World"
However, while I generally liked the succinct and well-layered interpretive text, I think it erred too much on the side of brevity. For instance, in many cases I was left wondering where certain animals were from, and whether they were extinct or abundant in the wild. Such information was all but absent, which struck me as a real gap (particularly as we are used to thinking about animals in terms of where they are from; the displays were not organised by habitat so there wasn’t any conceptual ‘anchor’ in this respect).
There were a few tactile displays, such as this one which allowed you to feel and compare the difference between horns which were made of bone, tooth or keratin:
Tactile display, National Museum Scotland
Next to the Natural History galleries were the spaces dedicated to World Cultures. These were arranged by theme, allowing you to compare and contrast how different peoples around the world approach common aspects of human experience. I watched an interesting video about different wedding traditions, and found a Ghanaian coffin shaped like a Mercedes Benz both fascinating and disconcerting.
Regrouping in the museum cafe afterwards, my partner expressed disappointment that he had not seen anything particularly Scottish during his visit, given that we were meant to be in the country’s National Museum and all. It’s there, but unfortunately the Scottish history and culture displays are tucked away in an adjacent wing. This extension was probably built in the 80s or 90s, but in the layout of the refurbished museum it is a fair way off the beaten track and it was almost by accident that I found it at all. I’m not sure what the original intent was, but in its current configuration it is a confusing rabbit-warren of dead-end spaces.
The old 'new' part of the National Museum of Scotland - I wonder if this building was conceived and designed from the facade inwards, leaving a legacy of spaces which are less than ideal as exhibition areas.
Few visitors seemed to make it this far, and there was a noticeable thinning of visitor traffic compared to the galleries surrounding the main atrium.
The interior of the museum extension. From this vantage point I could see more exhibition space than I could figure out how to find.
As I said before, I probably only had an hour or so to look around and I’m sure there’s plenty I missed. Plus I never bothered to pick up a visitor map which may have made the extension easier to navigate.
Has anyone else visited NMS either recently or before the refurbishment? What were your experiences?
*Incidentally, I noticed that the National Gallery in London faces a similar dilemma. They have taken the option of maintaining both the original grand entrance as well as a newer alternative at street level. However, the signage was ambiguous and it wasn’t immediately obvious that the street level entrance actually *was* a proper entrance (as opposed to an entrance just for schools or tour groups), so we ended up needlessly lugging our suitcases up the main staircase.
I’m a firm believer that first impressions are really important for creating excellent visitor experiences. Of course, the flip-side of this is that I’m acutely sensitive to experiences that get off on the wrong foot.
An example of this happened to me recently. To explain, it’s probably best to walk you through the entire scenario. Bear with me as I give some background:
Earlier this month my partner and I were in the UK visiting family and friends spread across the country. On our way to visit friends in Edinburgh (via car), we decided to take a detour via Hadrian’s Wall. A friend had recommended we visit Vindolanda, an old Roman fort near the wall. It is the site of significant archaeological finds, offering an intriguing insight into daily life in a Roman military outpost.
Like many remote historical sites, it’s not the easiest place in the world to find, tucked away as it is past a small village and along some winding, narrow Northumberland roads. This sort of thing is obviously part of the deal – historic sites are where they are of course. But it does make orientation and signage even more important than usual.
We had been driving along a very narrow road (too narrow for two vehicles to pass each other), not entirely sure we were heading in the right direction when we saw a sign saying “Vindolanda”. So far so good, and we took the turning.
A few hundred metres down the road, and some distance from anything resembling a Visitor Centre, we saw this Car Park:
Signage for Vindolanda East Car Park. The "East" implies that it is not the only car park (and probably not the main one - at least that's how I interpreted it). Information on the adjacent sign is too small to be read from a (moving) car.
Not convinced this was the right place, we pressed on. A few hundred metres further and we found the entrance to the Visitor Centre. Or was it?
The Entrance to the Visitor Centre complex. Where to from here?We were faced with: disabled parking; barrier-controlled entry to another car park; a building with nothing to indicate its purpose (but which did not look like a Visitor Centre); and another building beyond, which potentially showed more promise as our intended destination (even though it’s hard to see in the picture above).
In the absence of any indication of where we were supposed to go, we decided to park in a courtyard in front of the furthest building (which did turn out to be the Visitor Centre), with a view to wandering in and working out what the story was.
We had barely got out of the car when a staff member came out of the Visitor Centre, enquiring about our business. After explaining we were just trying to visit, she told us that we should have parked back up the road (in the Car Park we drove past); the area we were in was for disabled access and deliveries only. Duly chastened, we returned back up the road.
It was only at this stage that I saw the crucial sign:
The 'no parking beyond this point sign', relatively high and to the left of the sign which has just attracted all your attention. Blink and you'll miss it!This sign had been completely out of our field of view when we entered, and this important information was not repeated anywhere else once this threshold had been crossed.
I concede that technically we were in the wrong and that the sign does say that this is where we should have parked. But in our defence, it is in a completely different line-of-sight from the sign that attracts your attention first.* And given the location of the main car park is less than intuitive (being some distance from any obvious destination), why weren’t the parking arrangements made clear on the main sign?
We finally made our way back to the Visitor Centre. By this time, having already driven an hour or so from Newcastle to get here, I wanted to use the rest room. But even this simple requirement was made less-than-straightforward by the toilets being located past the pay-barrier and halfway through the exhibition space. Thus we had to first purchase tickets and pass through the back half of the exhibition to use the facilities (good thing I wasn’t desperate, or with a three-year-old who was). Once we were done in the loo, we found ourselves deposited halfway through the exhibition space, losing some of the logic and storyline as a consequence.
Which is a shame really. The newly completed exhibition (opened April 2011, developed with Heritage Lottery Fund money) looked well researched and designed, with plenty of interesting objects and displays. Then there were the fort ruins themselves. Pity I was too cheesed off to really take it in and enjoy it properly.
I’m aware that this post might come across as a bit churlish and nit-picky, especially since the chain of events was triggered by my own failure to see a sign. But as I have said before, I believe that everything an attraction does sends visitors a message, not just exhibitions and site interpretation. And in this case, I think a quality visitor experience (and an exhibition that clearly took a lot of planning, time and money to create) was let down by a failure to look at the visitor experience as an integrated whole. In short, no-one had thought through the whole experience, from finding the site right through to departure, in a visitor’s shoes.
Supporting this contention are a couple of additional observations:
The on-site cafe was open to “paying visitors only”. Why? The vast majority of visitors who make the effort to come to such an out-of-the-way site would surely have every intention of partaking the full experience – eventually. But visitors may have made a long journey and need to recharge before they’re ready to make the most of the site. To demand that visitors pay their entry ticket before they can purchase any refreshments (or use the toilets, as in my case) betrays a suspicious attitude towards the visitor, not a welcoming one.
What was the rationale for having the main car park several hundred metres away? Admittedly, most visitors to such a site are hikers for whom a bit of a walk is not a problem at all. But to my mind, this is beside the point. There was a car park closer to the Visitor Centre, but this was controlled by barriers (see picture above) and presumably was reserved for staff. Doesn’t this send the message that staff convenience outweighs visitor convenience? Again, a less than welcoming message.
To end on a happier note, I’ll add an epilogue to this tale: further up the road, past the Scottish border, we stopped at Jedburgh Abbey. A good audio tour was included in the entry price and they had nice biscuits in their gift shop.
That cheered me up…
*Reading the Environmental Psychology literature as part of my PhD has made me less inclined to see such failures as my ‘fault’ – there is enough theory out there to explain why our mistake was a perfectly understandable one in the circumstances.
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.
