UK Museums during the COVID-19 crisis: Assessing risk, closure, and resilience
Lead Research Organisation:
Birkbeck, University of London
Department Name: History of Art
Abstract
Museums are a vital part of the UK's cultural and economic landscape. In England alone, they attract 100 million annual visits and have a turnover of £2.64 billion per annum. Senior staff in governmental and non-governmental museum agencies are deeply concerned that many museums will not survive the impact of COVID-19 with a correlative loss to the cultural and economic landscape.
Although museum agencies are urgently seeking funding and developing policy to manage the impact of COVID-19, they do not have established mechanisms for gathering comprehensive data on the UK museum sector, for tracking which museums are at risk of closure, and which actually close. Thus, they proceed with inadequate information.
This project will provide museum agencies with rigorous, timely data on which museums are at risk of closure, which museums close, which remain resilient, and how the profile of the UK museum sector changes as a result of COVID-19. We will develop indicators for risk and resilience that are applicable within the current crisis and assess whether the closures that occur have a disproportionate impact on particular audiences and localities.
The research draws on the expertise of an existing research team and combines quantitative and qualitative techniques including web-scraping, natural language processing, interview-based research, and primary data collection.
Although museum agencies are urgently seeking funding and developing policy to manage the impact of COVID-19, they do not have established mechanisms for gathering comprehensive data on the UK museum sector, for tracking which museums are at risk of closure, and which actually close. Thus, they proceed with inadequate information.
This project will provide museum agencies with rigorous, timely data on which museums are at risk of closure, which museums close, which remain resilient, and how the profile of the UK museum sector changes as a result of COVID-19. We will develop indicators for risk and resilience that are applicable within the current crisis and assess whether the closures that occur have a disproportionate impact on particular audiences and localities.
The research draws on the expertise of an existing research team and combines quantitative and qualitative techniques including web-scraping, natural language processing, interview-based research, and primary data collection.
Publications
Candlin F
(2023)
The UK museum boom: continuity and change 1960-2019
in Cultural Trends
| Description | Despite anxieties about large-scale closures, only nine museums in the UK have permanently closed between 202-21, significantly less than in previous years (there were 26 permanent closures in 2017 and 16 in 2018), and only one of those closures can be linked to the COVID crisis. Unexpectedly, fourteen new museums have opened in the same period. Hence the sector has minimally expanded over the last year (2020-21). Small independent museums showed that they have survived or even thrived. Some simply closed their doors and local authority grants covered their running costs, which were minimal. In other cases, staff saw lockdown as an opportunity to undertake repairs or to take time for strategic planning, or to recruit trustees and volunteers. One museums was the recipient of major awards which allowed for a complete refurbishment of a Grade 2 listed historic building and the creation of new galleries and a café. The major problem they face is the health and willingness of volunteers to return. |
| Exploitation Route | Information on museum opening and closure is useful to museum associations, particularly the Association of Independent Museum which funds and actively supports that part fo the museum sector, and to the national bodies with responsibility for museums (including Arts Council England; Museums Galleries Scotland; Museums Archives Libraries Division Wales; Northern Ireland Museums Council) in that it informs their overall grasp of the sector and strategic planning. |
| Sectors | Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Description | The research has generated information on museum closure, opening, and funding in the UK during the pandemic. No other organisation has compiled this information. We have also conducted interview-based work and produced new knowledge about how museums have coped in 2020-2022. Our blogs on the subject have been consulted and reissued by the professional bodies with responsibility for museums. For instance, the National Museum Directors Council provided their membership with links to our blogs on new museums and the Association of Independent Museums re-published our discussion of closed museums in their newsletter. Our research requires us to update the dataset of museums in the UK. Thus, we are also providing an ongoing resource for museum professionals, staff in the arms-length bodies, museum associations, museum consultants, and other organisations. Among other impacts, our data enabled Arts Council England to model funding for unaccredited museums (they only have figures for accredited museums, that is about 50% of the total museum sector). We also provided data to Visit England for their annual survey of museums and attractions. Staff from various organisations in the museum sector regularly consult members of the research team on an informal basis, for instance, the PI met with Lisa Ollerhead the incoming director of the Association of Independent Museums to discuss how small on how small independent museums were coping during the pandemic, and the Department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport have contacted her with respect to prospects for regimental museums. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
| Sector | Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Policy & public services |
| Title | database / interactive search tool |
| Description | We began by setting up the MIP project's technical infrastructure, using Python as the main programming language in an Anaconda environment as well as a project database implemented in PostgreSQL. This infrastructure is organised for three purposes: scraping data from web and social media sources relating to the UK's museums, storing the scraped data efficiently, and performing text analytics on the data. We undertook at the outset of the project a requirements analysis and conceptual modelling activity in order to design the MIP database. The Python application uses a variety of open-source packages (pandas, scrapy, beautifulsoup4, fuzzywuzzy, sklearn, keras, seaborn) and Jupyter Notebooks. The application comprises a website identification module, a web scraper, a social media scraper (targeting Facebook and Twitter), a text analytics module and a data visualisation module, for a total of 7,600 lines of code. For all 3,300 museums in the Mapping Museums database that were open in March 2020, we identified their official websites and their Twitter and Facebook accounts. We did this by starting from Google search results for each museum, and then developing and deploying machine learning methods to select the most likely website, Twitter and Facebook URL. We undertook an evaluation study of the relevance of the identified resources, achieving a 92%+ accuracy. The text content of the websites is being scraped on a fortnightly basis since March 2020 and stored in the MIP database (more than 1 million web pages per scrape). The content of the museums' Facebook and Twitter posts since January 2019 has also been collected and stored in the database. We have developed text analytics methods to extract a set of key indicators for each museum, capturing different facets of their response to the pandemic, such as closure, fundraising and online initiatives. We identify these indicators through a set of representative phrases extracted from an initial sample of museum websites (e.g., "we are currently closed"). We have evaluated the indicator detection methods to ensure high accuracy (around 80%). We have also developed data visualisations to present the indicator data over time, both over all museums, and split according to one or more key characteristics such as Governance, Size, Subject matter, Accreditation and Location. The Python application is complemented by an Interactive Text Search tool, based on Google Colab, that allows users to search for a particular phrase within the web pages, Facebook posts and Twitter posts, and presents summary statistics about occurrences of the phrase. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | the research tools enable us to investigate activity within the UK museum sector as a whole, providing information on that topic to the professional sector. |
| Title | Museums in the Pandemic data |
| Description | This dataset contains all data produced by the project, including: official website URLs for all UK museums; social media accounts for all UK museums (Twitter and Facebook); museum activity indicators extracted from websites and social media (Twitter and Facebook); website statistics. The dataset does not include social media and website data that cannot be redistributed for copyright and data protection restrictions. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The data was used to produce news for the sector and academic publications. |
| URL | https://github.com/Birkbeck/museums-in-the-pandemic/tree/main/data |
| Title | Museums in the pandemic search tool |
| Description | The MIP search tool allows users to search for text patterns within the database of web pages, Facebook posts and tweets, and presents detailed statistics about occurrences of the phrase. It analyses the search results by grouping the museums by governance, size, region, and subject matter. It was implemented as a Jupyter Notebook and hosted on Google Colab. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | n/a |
| URL | https://github.com/Birkbeck/museums-in-the-pandemic/ |
| Title | Museums in the pandemic toolkit |
| Description | The MIP toolkit is a set of Python software resources that were developed to carry out and support the research. It comprises a website identification module, a web scraper, a social media scraper (aimed at Facebook and Twitter), a text analytics module, and a data visualisation module, for a total of 7,600 lines of code. It uses a variety of open-source packages (pandas, scrapy, beautifulsoup4, fuzzywuzzy, sklearn, keras, seaborn) and Jupyter Notebooks. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | n/a |
| URL | https://github.com/Birkbeck/museums-in-the-pandemic |
| Description | Meetings with senior museum sector staff |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A series of one-on-one and group meetings with staff in the national organisations with responsibility for museums. In all cases, we had detailed discussions about the data being gathered by the individual institutions and their needs with respect to possible data gathering and management. These engagement activities were specifically designed to improve the efficacy and eventual impact of our research. Claire Brown, lead on Museums Development Network (England and Wales) Emma Chaplin, Director of the Association for Independent Museums Isabel Churcher, Relationship Manager Museums Lauren Lucas, Adviser in the Department of Culture, Tourism and Sport, Local Government Association Lisa Ollerhead, Regional Museums lead, Department of Digital, Culture, and Sport Fiona Talbott Head of Museums Libraries Archives Policy at The National Lottery Heritage Fund Joe Traynor, Head of Museum Development at Museums, Galleries, Scotland Carol Whittaker, Museums, Development Advisor, Museums, Archives, Libraries Division, (Welsh Government). Isabel Wilson, Senior Manager, Museums (Development), at Arts Council England Arts Council England Research Unit: Civic Museums group. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| Description | Presentation to Department of Digital Culture Media and Sport |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Presented data and methods to the museums group at Department of Digital Media and Sport. Group included museums lead and senior policy advisors. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Series of blog posts |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | The Museums in the Pandemic blog built on the success and readership of the pre-established Mapping Museums blog. It has attracted consistent attention and has 218 subscribers including senior managers from all the major arts organisations including Department of Digital Culture Media and Sport; Arts Council England; National Heritage Lottery Fund; Museums, Galleries Scotland, and averages 1300 views per month. Blogs have been commented on and referenced at various professional events. Blogs include: May 2021: Museum closure during the pandemic: detailing the numbers of closure in UK museums since the beginning of the pandemic, explaining the reasons for closure, and looking at patterns of closure with respect to museum governance and size. July 2021: Funding for UK museums during the pandemic: providing details on the complex landscape of emergency funding during the pandemic. Outlining which grants were available to which museums during the pandemic and assessing areas of non-coverage. September 2021: Micromuseums in the pandemic: a long text on how small independent museums had coped with the impact of the pandemic. October 2021: New museums opening during the pandemic: providing numbers and information on the new museums that have opened since the beginning of the pandemic. Assessing reasons why they opened during this time period - in response to or despite the pandemic. January 2022: Museum websites: What can they tell us? Explaining what information on the health of the museum sector can be gleaned from examining museum websites. May 2022: Long closures after lockdown. Presenting some of our data collected from museum websites on the numbers of museums that had reopened after lockdown, and the use of a bespoke software tool to investigate the reasons why so many appeared to have remained closed. May 2022: Museum governance and reopening after lockdown. Looking at trends of reopening after lockdown for local authority, not-for-profit, and private museums. June 2022: Accreditation, size, and museum reopening after lockdown. Looking at the different trends of reopening after lockdown through the categories of museum size and accreditation status. June 2022: Museum reopening after lockdown in the UK nations. Comparing the trends of reopening after lockdown in the four UK nations. September 2022: More openings and closings in the pandemic. A follow-up to the previous blogs on museum closure (May 2021) and openings (October 2021), detailing closures and openings that took place since those blogs were published, and assessing the reasons for the closures. November 2022: Was there a 'swing to the digital'? Museums and social media in the pandemic. Questioning the idea of a 'digital turn' during the pandemic, through an analysis of three years of data collected from thousands of museum social media accounts. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/mapping-museums/category/museums-in-the-pandemic/ |
| Description | Stories from Small Museums |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | We held a book launch to mark the publication of the Mapping Museums monograph Stories From Museums, purposefully targeting people who worked in museums. Andrea Ballatore introduced the book, placing it in the context of the Mapping Museums project as a whole and lead author Prof Fiona Candlin gave a reading and took questions. Attendees included staff from museums where we had conducted interviews e.g. Ingrow Loco in Yorkshire, staff from sector support organisations, including Army Museums Ogibly Trust, from the Arts Council, and from major museums _ including the new director of the Imperial War Museum. The final data presented in Stories From Small Museums also drew on the Museums in the Pandemic Research, and invitations were extended to staff in the museums and associations that we had worked with for both awards |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | The UK Museums Boom (and what happened next) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A presentation of data and findings deriving from both the Mapping Museums and the Museums in the Pandemic Award. The event was chaired and introduced by Isabel Wilson, Regional Museums Manager for Arts Council England. Fiona Candlin gave a 45 minute lecture on how the constitution of the UK museum sector had changed since 1960, concluding with a commentary on museums during and after the pandemic. Lisa Ollerhead, Director, Association of Independent Museums gave a response and spoke on the value of the research for the sector. There was then a Q&A. The event was very well attended with around 90 participants. Attendees included the editor of the Museums Journal, the Head of Policy for National Heritage Lottery Fund, and staff from organisations including Visit England, Arts Trust, and Army Museums Ogibly Trust, from numerous different museums, several museums consultants, as well as academics working in the field. The event was the first full presentation of data and findings from both research projects and was extremely well received. It raised awareness of the research within our key public constituencies, prompted several offers of help with respect to keeping the database live, and invitations for further meetings and discussion (most notably with the National Heritage Lottery Fund), |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |