Lindsey Green | Frankly Green + Webb

Join our “Grow Your Digital Community” Webinar Series

1 September 20231 September 2023 by Lindsey Green

Do you work with heritage? Are you looking for new ways to work with partners, volunteers and grassroots communities in Heritage? Interested in how digital tools and platforms might help?

Over the past two years, The National Lottery Heritage Fund has supported 25 digital projects as part of the Digital Skills for Heritage initiative. The funding has helped projects innovate how they work with volunteers and community partners.

Join our two FREE webinars to hear from these projects as they share practical insights, advice and takeaways. They will help unpack and demystify “digital” approaches and the tools they used for working with volunteers and partners.

The webinars are being run on behalf of the Heritage Fund by digital mentors John Coburn (Wild Museum) and Lindsey Green (Frankly, Green + Webb).

Webinar 1 – How to work with partners and volunteers to improve capacity and quality of heritage data collection and interpretation

Thursday 21 September, 10am–12pm

Ticket price: FREE

In this webinar you will hear about:

The benefits of working digitally with volunteers and partners to improve heritage data collection and interpretation
how to overcome challenges when collaborating with partners and volunteers digitally to improve data collection or use of heritage data
how to get started with the right digital tools and platforms when collaborating with volunteers and partners

Who is this webinar for? 

Anyone working in or with heritage organisations, particularly:

heritage leaders and managers with responsibility for digital
people establishing or leading volunteer initiatives or teams
learning, community and engagement leaders and teams
curatorial, archives and collections leaders and teams

Speakers and topics include:

Royal Horticultural Society on how to recruit and manage remote digital volunteers to transcribe, geotag and creatively interpret heritage collections
University of Exeter on developing volunteer-led heritage mapping of places using open-access software and remote sensing data
VocalEyes on accessible and inclusive approaches to digital volunteering to increase the diversity of your volunteers
Butterfly Conservation on collaborating with volunteers and expert users to improve the quality of a data collection tools
Wikimedia on working with organisations and volunteers from under-served backgrounds to close the content gaps on Wikipedia

Register for Webinar 1

Webinar 2 – How to engage grassroots communities and build local relevance using digital technologies

Thursday 28 September, 10am–12pm

Ticket price: FREE

In this webinar you will hear about:

the benefits of working digitally to connect more deeply with grassroots communities and ensure content and programming is relevant to their needs and interests
common challenges when collaborating with partners and volunteers digitally to improve interpretation and grow public engagement
how to get started with the right digital tools and platforms when collaborating with volunteers and partners

Who is this webinar for? 

Anyone working in or with heritage organisations who is responsible for or interested in:

working to engage grassroots communities or people living locally to their venue
delivering community-led digital programmes
developing heritage related content or public programming

Speakers and topics include:

Portland Museum on mobilising local communities to 3D digitise local historical collections
Nerve Centre on digital volunteering supporting under-served communities to creatively interpret archives material
Glasgow Women’s Library on building a network of digital volunteers to interpret collections through podcasting and writing
Museum of London Archaeology on developing a network to grow public engagement with archaeology
Lancashire Textile Treasures on collaborating with communities of volunteers through Whatsapp and other digital tools to interpret collections

Register for Webinar 2

How to join for FREE

Register here for webinar 1: How to work with partners and volunteers to improve capacity and quality of heritage data collection and interpretation

Thursday 21 September, 10am–12pm

Thursday 28 September, 10am–12pm.

Format

Each session will include an introduction to digital volunteering and collaborating using digital tools, plus five 15-minute case studies, followed by a Q&A.

Accessibility requirements

Let us know if you have any accessibility requirements so that we may make reasonable adjustments. You can contact us by clicking the “Contact the event organiser” button below and completing the online form.

This webinar will be recorded

Please note: this session will be recorded and may be shared by the Heritage Fund, Frankly, Green + Webb and Wild Museum.

For more information about how we will process your personal data, please read the privacy policy on the Heritage Fund website.

We aim to make a recording available after the event. Sign up to the Heritage Fund’s email updates and select the ‘digital’ box, or visit the Heritage Fund website to stay updated.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund is the largest funder for the UK’s heritage. Since 1994, it’s awarded £8.8billion to more than 51,000 projects across the UK.

Digital Skills for Heritage is the Heritage Fund’s initiative designed to drive up digital capabilities across the UK’s heritage sector. It offers guidance, resources and opportunities to develop digital skills.

Freelance Project Manager for Online Audience Research Programme

6 October 202121 September 2021 by Lindsey Green

Position closed

Project fee: £9k +

Length of contract: End October – End of Jan 2022. (Est 40 – 48 days) Opportunity to extend until March 2022 with additional fee.

Location: Remote. Based in the UK

Frankly, Green + Webb is a human-centred research and strategy agency that works with cultural organisations to help them understand their audiences and evaluate, design or improve their digital offers in response. We generate insights that help organisations make the right decisions at the right times and pass on knowledge that supports the skills and culture to grow. We focus on getting to the core of what’s important to our clients and making things that are useful and enjoyable for their audiences.

Last year, in response to Covid, Frankly, Green + Webb set up, Insight for Change, a research programme to help organisations understand their online and social audiences better, drive digital change and, with it, financial sustainability. We’re now looking for an effective and well organised freelance project manager to work with us to deliver the second phase of that programme.

About this position

This position is all about driving this important and valuable project forward efficiently and effectively to successful conclusion while building positive and collaborative relationships with research partners, managing their expectations and communications.

Day to day, you’ll be:

Managing and administering a programme of web and social media research for 8+ Museums, Galleries and Historic Sites, supporting them to get the best from their data
Co-ordinating and attending co-analysis workshops about online content with museum teams
Delivering brilliant and useful communications to both the research partners and the wider sector

Is this a position for you?

The experience we’re looking for includes:

Managing projects with multiple internal and external stakeholders including timelines, resources, and budget
Meeting a variety of deadlines for multiple project elements running concurrently
Taking part in the set-up and delivery of workshops and/or events

You’ll be able to:

Plan and implement a programme of activity
Collaborate – work as an effective member of the team, identifying when and where to involve different team members
Communicate – ability to communicate effectively and clearly with a range of external and internal partners
Prioritise – make good and effective decisions about activities and resources
Work confidently with Excel and Powerpoint

And you’ll have an active interest in:

Social media and/or web content design or strategy
User-centred content design and/or content strategy
Cultural experiences such as museums, historic sites and galleries

If you have experience in any of the following that’s a bonus: user research, data collection and management, analysis and/or workshop experience, sharing your work more widely

Excited? Then download the description for the role here for some more information about what you’ll be doing, and the experience, knowledge and skills you’ll need.

Still keen? Think you could fit the bill? Send your CV with a detailed cover letter that tells us why this role appeals to you and exactly how you think you can help us deliver this great project to hello@franklygreenwebb.com by no later than 8pm BST on 5th October 2021

Interviews will be carried out online 12th – 15th October 2021

Start date week commencing 25th October 2021

Have questions? Let’s talk

Six questions to ask yourself when designing an online survey.

24 February 202124 February 2021 by Lindsey Green

Guest post: Adam Pearson

It’s never been easier to create a web survey, with lots of different platforms specifically designed to help you get feedback from your audience.

It’s harder to get robust data and that’s what you need when you’re bringing about change and basing decisions on research, you need to have confidence in it.

Whether you’re looking to run a research project yourself or thinking about getting some help, here are some questions you should be asking as you go through to make sure the you collect the right data to get to the right actions.

1. Are you asking the right questions?

Take the time upfront to find the right questions and you’ll have a better chance of delivering on your research objectives.

Ask them in the right way by following best practice question design. Think about using simple language, keeping questions and options neutral, avoiding double-barrelled questions and using balanced response scales.

Look for proven questions from industry and national surveys, such as ONS studies or DCMS research. These will have already been tested and offer contextual or comparison data to your research. You might also have questions you can take from past projects – the more you do, the more you build up an understanding of what works.

Work with and involve the right people at the right time to co-design your research project – who will use the data to make decisions and what will they need to do next. Make sure your questions work by testing them with the end user, giving you an opportunity to make those final tweaks. Once it goes live, you’re stuck with it.

2. Are you confident in how your data has been collected?

Once you have some questions, it’s then about building a tool to collect quality data. It goes without saying how important it is to base decisions on accurate data. What the tool looks like will depend on the aims of your research. In this article we’re focusing on online surveys.

There is a wide range of online survey platforms to choose from, but what they can do for your research varies. Whatever you use, get to know the technical features and how they can improve both the quality of your research and, importantly, the quality of experience for your audience. This might involve building routing and logic rules, setting limits on multiple choice questions, considering when to make questions ‘must answer’ or piping fields based on answers to previous questions.

Be careful of poor-quality data sneaking into your sample. For example, ‘speedsters’ who race through a survey or unreliable response patterns such as always selecting the first option in a question. You can use algorithms to quarantine these so you can be confident that you’re working with clean data.

Thinking about the experience of your audience, don’t forget about data privacy. If you’re asking for any kind of personal data in a survey, you need consent from the respondent. You should also make it clear why you’re collecting data and how it will be used. Developing a Privacy Notice for your survey can be a good way to explain all of this.

3. Is your data fit-for-purpose?

“How many responses do we need?” is probably the question we get most at the start of a survey project. But it’s not all about sample size.

Make sure you collect the right data to understand if your sample is representative of the audience you are trying to reach. This might include questions in your survey such as key demographics or how often they visit or use something. But it might also involve using some hidden or url variables in your survey – data that the respondent doesn’t see but that you can use for analysis. An example of this might be tagging the social platform you share the survey on.

When considering a reliable sample size, think about the ability to look at different groups and audiences within it. Have you got enough responses within these groups to run some effective analysis? For example, 1000 responses might sound great until you look at it by age and find it is dominated by one group.

Often when running surveys, you will find certain groups are over- or under-represented. If this is the case, you could look at weighting your data. This is a statistical technique where you apply a weight to your data based on one or more questions. For example, you might weight your data by demographics like age or gender, or key behaviours linked to your research such as visit frequency or website usage. Ultimately, the purpose of weighting is to ensure overrepresented groups in your sample aren’t skewing your findings.

4. Are you making the most of your data?

Your data is in and the temptation is to jump straight into pulling out the key findings and analysis. But the chances are you won’t be getting the full picture. There’s work to do first to get your data into shape so it reveals extra insights and depth to your analysis.

Look at how your data is structured. Just because you asked questions in a certain way, doesn’t mean that’s how they need to be set up for your analysis. Explore how you could group response options or combine responses from different questions to create segments.

The chances are you will have included an open question or two in your survey. At first glance, there’s a lot of information in these and it can be difficult to understand what the patterns and common themes are. You can code comments into key topics or analyse them by another question to break them down.

Most online survey platforms will offer some basic analysis tools. But if you want to get more from your data, consider running it through specialist analysis tools such as SPSS. This will allow you to recode variables, run statistical tests, apply complex filters, cut your data by key questions and more. If that doesn’t feel like something within your reach, get to know pivot tables, filters and lookups in spreadsheets like Excel and Google Sheets.

5. How do you make your analysis meaningful?

You’ve done as much as you can with the data, how do you present it in a way that tells the story of your research and reveals key insights?

Think about different ‘views’ of the data. If you ask the right questions and gather a reliable sample, you should have the luxury of cutting up your data in different ways. For example, you might want to build some motivation groups or home in on what a particular demographic group are saying.

You will probably want to visualise your data in some way. This isn’t just about making it look good, but how you start to bring out the patterns in your data. Make sure you pick the right charts for the right data points. This Chartmaker Directory gives you an idea of just how many different options there are.

You’ll likely want to report on your data in one way or another too. This might be a written report, summary slides, infographics, online reports or maybe even some kind of interactive dashboard. The way you report should have your intended audience in mind. Not just finding a format that works for them but guiding them through your work and how the analysis you’ve undertaken relates to the research aims.

6. How will you get to action?

You’ve done the thinking, gathered your data, got it into shape and turned it into something that is meaningful. Now it’s about returning to the reason for doing the research in the first place: to make a difference.

Get it in front of the right people. Show them what you are seeing. Use the data to back this up. Did you know that 95% of CEOs feel more confident about a decision if they have the data to back it up? (This is made up, but you get the idea)

Use those key facts and figures to raise awareness of your research and then work with your team to co-analyse the data and understand how it effects what they have to do. Data literacy is one of the biggest skills gaps in the Museum sector but taking time to review, understand and action the data will build those muscles.

It’s not unusual to find your research leads to more questions. Quantitative data doesn’t always give you all the answers, but it will help generate facts that help you to ask better questions.

About Adam

We’re partnering with Adam Pearson from Pearson Insight on Insight For Change our package of research and support to deliver robust insights to the cultural sector.

“In a nutshell, we have a lot of museums who have website analytics and social media stats but don’t know who their audience are. Insight For Change helps us go beyond knowing that 10 percent of web traffic is from over 50s. It tells us about those over 50s. What is their motivation to support the cause? Why are they visiting the website? What do they pay for? What are they looking for? It's the missing pieces of information that teams need in order to design their digital content well.”

Adam Pearson, Pearson Insight

You can find out more about the Insight For Change package of research and support here and find out how we can help you to understand online audiences and inform your online content strategy.

Museums making money from online content: Might our beliefs be holding us back?

3 December 20203 December 2020 by Lindsey Green

Producing effective online content is neither easy nor cheap despite what is sometimes suggested.

It takes time and it takes skill. To work, it has to reach its intended audience, meet their needs and interests and support the organisation’s goal. That’s a lot to deliver and as such, it needs to be supported by long term, consistent planning and investment.

Working in museums, what we often see is small teams with limited funds trying to do too much – too many projects, too much content – for ‘all audiences’. Very few organisations have the mechanism to evaluate the value of online content and say – actually no, we can’t do that. Or, if we do x – we won’t be doing y.

At the root of this problem is money: How do we spend the small budget we have in ways that reflect our goals and values? How do we limit what we try to do so we can do it properly and not exhaust ourselves and our teams? How can we increase our funding and what we can achieve? In other words, how do we thrive?

How has Covid changed things?

As the pandemic hit, online teams across the world tried to keep pace as web and social platforms became “the museum experience”. We can’t have been the only ones hoping that the true value of online would be demonstrated in these months and proper funding might follow. Many museums have missions that include engagement, participation and inspiration, all things the web is consistently used for, surely this was online’s time to shine?

Then the scale of the financial crisis became clear and the difficult position of online content – generally offered free – became all too apparent. And so we’ve seen a slew of short-term experiments in online revenue generation and discussions about technologies while staff are furloughed and jobs cut. Organisations need to generate income to survive and, beyond marketing the on-site experience, online content and experiences don’t make a substantial contribution. Tough decisions have to be made.

This raises questions for us about the future of online content and museums. How can we move beyond these small-scale experiments and contradictory actions? What would a more considered future look like that was positive for both audiences and organisations? What would it take to make online content and experiences genuinely sustainable?

What is and isn’t being discussed about charging for online content?

When we started thinking of this series to re-imagine the future for museums and online, we wanted to look at real change – to move away from the endless discussions about technological novelties and tactical solutions and tackle some of the systemic challenges faced by the Museum sector. Dan Hill describes these challenges as dark matter – cultures, processes and assumptions that guide systems that no-one really sees or owns.

Without addressing dark matter, and without attempting to reshape it, we are simply producing interventions or installations or popups that attempt to skirt around the system. This is a valid tactic, but not much of a strategy.

Dan Hill

We felt it was just this dark matter that was standing in the way of positive change around the funding of online content. We thought there were some assumptions and beliefs that limited which opportunities were explored and an over reliance on problematic funding models. So we went out to the community to test that hypothesis and understand the situation better. We posed questions and in response we saw lots of likes and shares, with people keen to see the discussion open up, but little specific feedback. In fact, one anonymous comment suggested that perhaps there is a question about the sectors’ readiness to engage with the dark matter:

“I’ll be interested in what you get back, I don’t think the sector is ready to have this conversation”

Anonymous

Of the handful of people offering something more concrete, Jon suggested:

We wondered if sharing answers in the open felt risky to people – they bring with them compromises that feel difficult or challenging to our core values. Or perhaps as a sector, we have ‘problem blindness’ – we accept the current situation as a given fact of life. But our view is that opening the can of worms and exploring the dark matter is the route to a more positive future.

How do our beliefs shape our actions?

Museums have traditionally favoured three funding models all of which are based on giving online content free to end users. This is the ‘norm’ and it might bring with it some assumptions and ‘problem blindness’. It assumes:

Offering free online content will by default guarantee the widest possible access
Charging for content won’t deliver significant revenue (so why try…)
Existing funding models are doing ok

And maybe, when our confidence is low..

If we charge for it, no one will use it (and then what will we do…)
Charging will alienate audiences and funders

Are any of these assumptions true?

Does free online content widen access?

Aren’t museums and online content places where we give people access to knowledge as easily and economically as possible? Isn’t this time of contested facts and culture wars the very moment when museums should be stepping in to share trustworthy information and support people to reflect on their experiences?

We firmly believe that ensuring access to culture, particularly for those who lack social and financial capital, is a vital service but our research suggests that free online content isn’t guaranteeing this right now.

Our recent research suggests that audiences for free online editorial/collections content don’t just look similar to the people who currently visit museums, they are a more concentrated version of museum goers. They are more likely to be white, more highly educated and more frequent museum-goers.

Currently, we use the online space to provide more content to people who are already over-represented and well served onsite.

It could be that it helps these existing audiences connect more deeply with the topic or the organisation, it could be that it improves their well-being or inspires them. That isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t support the argument that free content means wider access.

Will charging for content ever deliver significant revenue?

We are not aware of any evidence to prove or, in fact, disprove this assumption. And that’s the thing – it’s just an assumption. It needs challenging and testing. Clearly people do pay for online content and experiences – for entertainment and education.

The YouGov research below shows the increase in spending on hobbies, books and digital services. Other research shows a 240% increase in the use of the search term “online learning course” during the pandemic.

So why wouldn’t they pay for Museum content? What would content look like that was so valuable to our audiences that they were happy to pay for it? What investment would it take to deliver? What would the extra income allow us to do?

Are the current funding models are as good as it gets?

Museums have traditionally favoured three models all of which are based on giving content free to end users but they require compromises that affect audiences, our employees and our organisations.

Cross-subsidy – using core funding and income generated by the in-gallery experiences to deliver online means that quite often online content is dominated by the need to promote or mimic the onsite experience. It reinforces the idea that online is ‘less than’ rather than different. While other sectors see online as a tool to deliver new products and services designed specifically for online, museums have maintained a view that online works in the service of the onsite experience. At the best of times funding is limited and, critically, when the museum is in a financial pinch – like now – online will take a hit. Online teams have little ability to control their destiny.
Funding (Foundations, Trusts, Innovation Funds) – this funding often comes with an agenda guided by policy rather than the needs of the organisation and audience. The focus for digital is therefore often on building new and innovative one-off products through short term projects. As a result, the products tend to end up poorly managed or maintained once the funding has finished and the less funder friendly backroom work that would really deliver stays under-funded.
Sponsorship – Support from a commercial – often tech – company to raise or shape their profile. These are often shiny projects that put the need to look new and impressive before providing experiences that are needed by the audience or sustainable by the organisation. They are often led by companies looking to make a splash in the sector and also have a tendency to disappear if they don’t reach the numbers.

Each of these models brings with it some compromises, but Museums have actively avoided some other forms of business models. And they just so happen to be the ones where content is paid for by the end user:

Donation or crowdfunding – generating income by asking people to buy into and support your mission. For an organisation, it maintains the idea of not creating a barrier between the content and those that can’t afford to pay. However, to succeed you need to demonstrate your mission and focus on the needs of the end users. The Guardian recently announced that it broke even using this model – and it shows how hard it is to get right.
Paid by end user – If we are asking people to pay, we have to understand them – what motivates them, what they value, how they behave. We have to evaluate the cost and the likely return over time. This could lead to a more robust and sustainable service. The compromise is that it limits access to those who can’t afford it unless it can generate a surplus that supports those vulnerable audiences who really can’t pay.

Will anyone pay? Will we lose our audience?

Charging for access to content isn’t new if you look at the physical visit experience – asking people to spend money on-site isn’t seen as a no-go area. It enables our organisations to invest in and deliver some amazing and valuable visitor experiences. We might sometimes hear grumbles around price point or value for money but there is little alienation.

The business model for paid in-gallery experiences has been developed and refined over many decades. And while it too has its flaws, it gives access to audiences to learn and experience new things.

Yet, we talk about them differently for online and in-gallery, Michael highlights here:

What does all this suggest?

It definitely doesn’t suggest that all online content should be charged for but it does highlight the need to investigate the dark matter that sits behind some of the decision making. It suggests a need for more open, positive and productive conversations that challenge and test assumptions and allow us to genuinely thrive.

We believe those discussions need to centre around these three options, for delivering sustainable and valuable effective online content:

Shrink what we do: Understand what we deliver that is truly valuable to the audience and the organisation and focus on it to ensure it delivers. Cut everything else
Invest in what we do: Understand the value it’s possible to deliver, identify the best business model and invest to generate income.
Keeping doing what we do: Carry on as we are, trying to be everything to everyone, exhausting the staff and potentially missing the big prize

This is the moment to challenge the accepted assumptions, and to use these discussions as a catalyst to be able to demonstrate the value of online content. To stop a move to exploit staff by asking them to increase their workload – and to identify realistic and sustainable models that enable museums to thrive online.

Making online content that delivers so much value to users that they are willing to pay for it, could demonstrate that online delivers value to the organisation. And perhaps this moves online from being the icing on the cake of the physical experience, to being part of the cake itself.

What do we do about it?

Throughout this process, we’ve been clear that we don’t have all the answers and more than likely there is no one right answer. What we do want is to support our community to understand the challenge – what has held people back in the past and what evidence will we need to give us a better vision of how to move forward?

When organisations are feeling the need to act quickly and people are in fear of losing their jobs – it is hard to take a moment to question our own assumptions. But seeing things with new eyes, can inspire us and allow us to imagine new ways of doing things.

When we work with organisations, we are often in a position where they are looking to change but the old ways of seeing are getting in the way. A key part of our practice is to begin to ask questions and find evidence that challenge some of those assumptions and move people to new more open conversations.

Here are some questions to help you begin to have conversations with cross-departmental teams in your organisation:

What effects are your current funding models having on your capacity to deliver online content? Aim for an open and honest conversation about how projects and online content is currently designed to meet the needs of whoever/whatever is paying and what the compromises might be.
What would online content look like for our audiences, if it was true to our mission?
What would it take to break even? How many users and at what price point? What are the start up costs to test the idea?
What will happen to the income generated? Can this new income enable you to experiment? Can it help you to invest in content or experiences for audiences who aren’t currently represented?
What do and don’t you know about your potential target audiences? What are their attitudes to paying for online for learning or entertainment? What are they interested in learning or enjoying? What decisions do they make when they purchase? What do they value? How do they find online content they are interested in?
What kinds of service will this online content provide? Will it help people engage with their hobbies? Will it help them to connect with people they care about? Will it help with their well being or to develop new skills?

This is article is part of our The Real Change Series. In this time of crisis we need to re-imagine our future.

At FG+W, we know the Museum community is having to make difficult choices and decisions. Having lost most of their income, organisations will need to decide what is essential and what isn’t. These decisions and choices will inevitably reflect the values and beliefs of the organisations and have long lasting impact.

Over the next 6 months, we’re going to be – with your help – exploring, re-imagining and re-shaping what comes next for cultural heritage online. We’re hoping to work with you, our community, to explore the question, “How might we use this moment of disruption we all experiencing to bring about positive change in the sector?”

We look forward to these discussions with you and the community to help us all get to some real change for the future.

The Real Change Series No.1 / Money

2 December 20203 November 2020 by Lindsey Green

In our previous article, we introduced The Real Change Series, new monthly series as to how Museums can start to make difficult decisions and re-imagine the future.

First up this month, it’s money. And in particular exploring “What is the hidden price of free online content and are we prepared to pay it?”

We thought long and hard about stepping into this space. Money is a subject that is often skirted around when it comes to Museums and definitely when it comes to digital. We don’t like talking about money but the truth is that money – where it comes from, how we generate it, how we spend it – shapes almost every aspect of what we do.

In the current crisis, when budgets are being tightened, if we don’t talk openly about money we can’t make good decisions. In fact, the decisions we do make with limited funds, at times like these, are often the most revealing about what our organisations value.

What is this to do with online?

Online content is, in the most part, offered free to use because it’s believed to increase access in line with a museum’s mission and maybe also because no one feels confident about a paid model.

But a free service generates no revenue and this limits the funding available – funding that might improve it and promote it so that it reaches the audience and meets their needs. And an online service is all too often seen as the icing on the cake rather than the cake itself so when funds are limited digital often loses out.

In this world, online content/experiences continue to be seen as a cost centre, as a marketing tool for driving people to visit in real life or as a second-best simulacrum of a physical visit.

What do we want to explore?

At a time when budgets have been decimated and physical visits are limited what do we think the fall out might be? As other sectors move their services online and focus on generating income online, can Museums do the same? What are the opportunities and costs of such an approach?

Over the next few weeks we’ll be asking:

What concerns or fears do you have when it comes to asking audiences to pay for online content?
What digital content or experience would be so valuable to our audiences they would happily pay for it?
What could a business model look like?
Will moving to a paid service affect access?
What products and services should be free? What should be paid? And what does that say about what is core to what a museum’s mission and what isn’t?
What would it take for digital to be part of the cake and not simply the icing?
If extra income affords ‘better’ content, what value should we – could we – bring to our audiences and our organisations?

We look forward to these discussions with you and the community to help us all get to some real change for the future.

Lindsey Green, Alyson Webb + Laura Mann
FG + W, Founding partners

Introducing the Real Change Series

In this time of crisis we need to re-imagine our future.

You can find more here – https://www.franklygreenwebb.com/the-real-change-series/

The Real Change Series

27 October 2020 by Lindsey Green

Introducing Frankly, Green + Webb’s new monthly series as to how Museums can start to make difficult decisions and re-imagine the future.

Why does this matter?

In the early months of the Covid-19 crisis online and social was celebrated as a way to support and stay connected with audiences. Some in the sector felt that, after years of online being treated as very much an add-on, it’s time had come. Museum teams were asked to do more — often much more — and in spite of the challenges they took the chance to experiment with content and experiences. But as the crisis continues and organisations plan for an uncertain future, we will be faced with some tough decisions around funding — which digital activities we continue to support and to what extent. No matter how hard these decisions will be, for us this is a chance to imagine a different future and make positive, productive choices for our audiences, our teams and our organisations.

We will need to be clear about the value of digital technologies to our audiences (current and potential) and to our organisations. We will need to move beyond the old assumptions, check in with our values and beliefs and have better conversations.

At FG+W we’re used to talking to both museums and the people who visit them, use their services and consume their content. We are accustomed to working with these differing communities to shape decisions in ways that work for them. We know change is hard but we’ve seen from this work that provocations can help. Provocations initiate curiosity and discovery, challenge assumptions and long held beliefs, open up conversations and support better decisions. Even difficult ones. That is what we will be doing with this new series of articles and online conversations, asking:

How might we use this moment of change we are all experiencing to bring about positive change in the sector?

What

We will be sharing a series of provocations with the goal of opening up a space for curiosity, exploration, the sharing of diverse perspectives and good questions that will help us seek new evidence and ideas.

How

Each month we will announce a theme and in the first half of each month, we will set a couple of provocations. From this exploration of the questions and community discussions we will synthesise the results using our experience and write an article at the end of the month.

This process is what we’re known for but the program itself — reaching out to the community to prompt debate and conversation — is an experiment for us. We’re taking a bit of a risk because we think there’s an opportunity to use the current moment of crisis to drive real positive change in the sector.