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5AAIC007 Museums, Audiences and Communities
Assignment: individual project (100%)
Deadline – 13th January 2022
The purpose of this assignment is to allow you to demonstrate your understanding and critical
approach towards debates and practices around audiences and communities in museum theory and
practice. The task requires you to write an audience development plan for a museum or a gallery of
your choice which mirrors professional practice.
An audience development plan is a document used by a museum or gallery to define its approach
and practical strategies to develop new audiences. It normally begins by identifying the institution’s
current audiences. It then outlines the new audience groups that the institution wishes to engage
and retain and explains how this will be achieved in detail. In other words, this document defines an
organisation-wide approach to extending its current range of publics by fostering engagement and
establishing new relationships with new, previously underserved audiences. An audience
development plan should support an organisation in achieving its mission, allowing it to realize its
social purpose and attain sustainability.
You are required to develop an individual 3,000 word audience development plan to be submitted
in January 2022. Please indicate on the cover sheet the word count for your submission. The 3,000
word limit excludes frontmatter (cover sheet, assignment title etc.) and bibliography but includes
everything else. See the Faculty Policy on Word Counts for more information.
In developing your audience development plan, you will need to build on issues and debates
addressed across the entire module, drawing – as much as possible, depending on the particular
focus and ethos of your plan – on debates and practices around both audiences and “communities”.
This assignment encourages you to link theoretical ideas and practical implementation around
museums’ audience/community work together as a strong audience development plan will do
exactly this. Every week of the module addresses several key issues and asks a number of questions
on which you can draw when developing your plan.
Your plan should focus on one museum and gallery of your choice, which you will use as the setting
for your audience development plan. This can be a museum and gallery of any size, governance and
funding structure and can be located anywhere in the world. In writing your plan, make sure that
you draw on a body of academic literature (journal articles, books or book chapters) and
professional publications (e.g., publications by the UK Museums Association’s Museums Journal or
equivalent international bodies), as well as on other relevant sources including blogs and grey
literature, to support your plan. In your plan, you can include diagrams, charts or images, but only if
those help you convey your ideas more effectively (avoid using images for only decorative purposes).
If you use images, please make sure you acknowledge source.
Your plan should include the following sections:
1) An introduction to the plan, outlining its aims and structure and the institution on which it
focuses (approx. 200 words)
2) A presentation of the selected museum/gallery. Where is this institution located Which
kind of institution is it (e.g., national museum or registered charity ) How is it funded
What is its mission and vision What is distinctive/unique about this institution (approx.
300 words)
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3) A discussion of the institution’s existing audience profile. Which audiences does this
institution seek to attract and serve This section could be based, for instance, on data
shared by the institution in public reports or on its website, as well as publicly accessible
interviews or publications by key staff members such as the museum director. If no
information on existing audiences is publicly available, you should base this section on your
critical analysis of the public programmes they offer and the ways in which they are
marketed. In other words, who do you ‘think’ the museum or gallery’s programmes and
marketing strategies are aimed at (approximately 300 words)
4) A critical discussion of the target audience that you wish to attract with your audience
development plan. This section should discuss why the selected target audience was
selected and justify why the institution should make additional efforts to attract it. (What is
the rationale behind your decision )
You need to clarify the criteria that you are using to define your target audience
(e.g., are you using sociodemographic traits such as age For instance, you may
want to attract young people to the institution. Or are you working with a
marginalised “community” defined by ethnicity )).
This section may also include relevant data that supports your claim that the target
audience you wish to attract does exist. (For instance, if you wish to attract a
migrant group, you may want to include relevant migration statistics data, if
accessible).
In this section you should also draw on relevant academic debates, particularly on
materials that address the specific target audiences that you are interested in
reaching out (e.g., if your target audience is a particular migrant group or ethnic
community, your discussion could be enriched by briefly discussing the relevant
museum studies lit
erature that addresses museum work with those groups).
(Approximately 500-600 words)
5) Your strategic action plan outlining the concrete actions and steps that you wish to take to
attract – and potentially retain – this audience. This is the largest and most important
section of the plan (approximately 1200-1600 words).
Here you should discuss your plan in detail, explaining the initiatives that you aim
to introduce to reach out this audience. (For instance, do you plan to develop a
marketing initiative What will this consist of And why do you think it will be
effective Or do you wish to develop exhibitions that will be of interest to your
target audience What are those exhibitions Do you wish to develop a series of
other programmes that will be more effective in attracting your target audience )
Your strategic action plan should cover a period of at least one year but not more
than 2 years.
We expect you to propose in your action plan not more than 3 approaches (not just
one event or initiative) and discuss how those will be delivered overtime (you could
include a chart or similar to visually convey how those will be delivered in the
timeframe considered). Whist it is a requirement that you propose a combination of
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approaches, it is critical that you do not propose too many initiatives as this would
allow you to discuss them only superficially.
You will need to clarify if you intend to foster a collaborative relationship with your
target audience and discuss which kind of collaboration you have chosen and why
(draw particularly on weeks 7 to 9 here) (You may equally propose less collaborative
and more museum-led approaches such as a marketing campaign but you may want
to propose more participatory or co-creative approaches, if appropriate. Whichever
strategies you propose, you need to justify why these are the most suitable for your
target audience).
You will also need to discuss which power relationship your strategy seeks to
foster, showing that you have critically considered issues of collaboration, power
and authority. (For example, you will need to discuss if your target audience will be
invited to develop exhibitions in partnership with the institution or they will be more
simply consulted and the institution will retain control of the exhibition
development process. Here you could draw, for instance, on the four approaches to
participation/collaboration discussed by Kayte McSweeney and Jen Kavanagh in the
introduction of the book Museum Participation. New Directions for Audience
Collaboration (core reading). You may also draw on the work of Bernadette Lynch to
critically reflect on whether power and authority will remain or not in the
institution’s hands and justify why the selected approach is the most pertinent).
6) A conclusive section that brings your plan to a close. This is the section where you have an
opportunity to emphasise the significance of your plan and why it is important for the
museum or gallery and to convince your audience that this is a worthwhile and timely
initiative. Please think of the audience of this document as the institution’s senior
management (i.e., director and other members of the senior management team). Why
should your plan be implemented now What are the strategic advantages of your
proposition How will this plan enable the institution to further achieve its institutional
mission (approximately 200 words)
You are strongly advised to divide your plan into distinctive sections, using headings and
subheadings. You may wish to use as your headings the six main descriptors (in the six sections
outlined above). However, you are free to come up with alternative headings, even introducing
additional headings if you think these will more effectively structure your plan. Whichever headings
you use, you should make sure that you address in your plan all the six sections outlined above.
A key aim of the assignment is to help you develop critical and creative approach to museum theory
and practice. You will need to use your research and study skills to identify relevant sources, both
academic and non-academic, to develop a convincing and coherent audience development plan. For
this assignment you will need to think of yourself not simply as a student who is completing an
academic assignment. Rather you should think of yourself as a (future) museum professional tasked
with not only replicating but also innovating existing practices.
Your individual project should be submitted before 4pm on Thursday 13th January 2022 (UK time).
You are reminded to read the CMCI handbook pages on submitting your assignment. This gives
important information about presentation and referencing which we expect you to follow. Please
remember to attach an assignment coversheet.
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Finally, please make sure you have also read the Student Guidance on Academic Honesty and
Integrity and understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.
By submitting your assignment with an assignment cover sheet you are making a declaration that
your assignment does not contain any plagiarism.
Marking Criteria can be found on Keats. Please take care to write your assignment using the CMCI
referencing and style guide – which is also available on Keats. Please include a cover sheet when
uploading your assignment to the Assignment Submission Area on Keats.