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Open to All 2023: Accessibility Audit programme

Museum Development East Midlands (MDEM) and West Midlands Museum Development (WMMD) are providing a small cohort of museums with the opportunity to receive professional advice and support to improve access for visitors. MDEM and WMMD have appointed Direct Access to deliver this programme.

Accessibility Audits

Each venue will receive a site visit from Direct Access resulting in an accessibility audit and report identifying a comprehensive list of tailored, prioritised recommendations based on current standards and legislation, delivered alongside expert training and advice.

About the consultants

Since 2004 Direct Access and its team of NRAC certified Access Consultants have provided access consultancy for thousands of buildings and services across multiple sectors. Millions of people daily use a service or premises audited by Direct Access. Direct Access’ clients range from small community museums such as Nantwich Museum to large sites including Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Scotland, Bodelwyddan Castle in Wales or UNESCO World Heritage sites such as the City of Bath and its Roman Baths.

Expecting to submit your Accreditation Return soon?

Participation in the Open to All: Accessibility Audit programme directly supports Arts Council England’s Accreditation Standard, Users and their experiences, 7. Be accessible to the public.

Key dates:

Download the Application Form

Priority will be given to non-NPO and non-National museums who are Accredited or Working Towards Accreditation and based in the East Midlands or West Midlands.

Museums that have previously received an accessibility audit through WMMD will be considered.

Midlands Succession Planning Programme 2023

Succession planning is a crucial element of good governance and Museum Development’s Organisational Health Check 2022/23 highlights succession planning as a key developmental need for many museums.

Programme Overview

This short programme from Museum Development East Midlands and West Midlands Museum Development will support six museums to consider all elements of good practice in succession planning and enable you to develop a focused and realistic plan for the future. Facilitated by Heather Lomas, it will provide a blend of intensive support to a cohort of museums.

The programme consists of an introductory session and four online sessions including an Introduction to Diversity and Inclusion workshop led by Inclusive Boards.

There will be additional one to one support available, access to a peer support network, provision of resources, links to additional information plus a final peer support meeting in November 2023 to share learning from the programme.

Download the Programme Information and Dates

The programme aims to:

How to apply

This opportunity is open to six museums in the East Midlands and West Midlands regions who are Accredited or officially Working Towards Accreditation. NPOs and national museums are not eligible. The museums will be selected through a competitive Expression of Interest process.

Please complete the Expression of Interest form by 5pm, Friday 24 March and email to mdem@leics.gov.uk

Download the Expression of Interest form

Each organisation should nominate up to three people to be involved, this should include your Chair if possible and other trustees where applicable. If you have any questions about the opportunity, then please email Heather Lomas.

Please note we can only accept applications from those who can commit to attending all the proposed sessions.

Successful applicants will be notified by Friday 31 March.

Please note that MDEM will be managing the application process for both East Midlands and West Midlands. You can view the MDEM data processing policy here.

31 March 2023 deadline to lodge any appeals against 2017 business ratings

The Valuation Office Agency (VOA) has finally accepted the use of Receipts and Expenditure (R&E) method to calculate business rates for all types of museums in England and Wales, which will save hundreds of thousands of pounds across the sector.

This follows the announcement in September 2021, after a successful appeal by Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) against valuations for three of its sites, that the VOA would no longer be using Contractor’s method to calculate business rates for many museums. However the VOA had proposed to continue the use of Contractor’s method for museums set up by statute (so including most national museums) and those occupying ‘modern’ (post-2001) buildings.

The VOA has now confirmed a change in this policy, meaning that the vast majority of museums will now be valued using R&E method. This means that business rates will be based on a museum’s activity and financial position – rather than being penalised, as a sector, for occupying the large spaces needed to care for and display collections and to welcome communities, which are often expensive to operate and maintain. The change will result in huge long-term savings across the whole museum sector.

The news is a real victory for long-term collective lobbying by AIM, NMDC and others as well as the tenacity of business rates agents, notably Colin Hunter who represented TWAM, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and York Museums Trust in their successful appeals and has been advising sector bodies for many years.

However, the change in the VOA’s policy will not be retrospectively or automatically applied to the 2017 ratings list. This means that any museum wishing to challenge their current valuation, which could result in a significantly reduced and backdated rates bill, needs to lodge an appeal via the ‘Check, Challenge, Appeal’ process. 

There is a deadline of 31 March 2023 for appeals to be registered – and the process can take some time – so all museums are urged to begin the process immediately if they haven’t already by completing the VOA’s ‘Museums Information Request form’. More information on the appeal process is available in the AIM Success Guide. 

https://www.nationalmuseums.org.uk/news/update-business-rates/

Museum Sector Survey about Admissions Pricing Policy

The Association of Independent Museums (AIM) and partners Arts Council England, Museums Galleries Scotland, the Welsh Government, the National Museum Directors’ Council, and the Art Fund have commissioned DC Research Ltd and Durnin Research Ltd to deliver ‘Research into admissions pricing policy in museums and its impact’. The work will explore admissions policies and pricing strategies in the UK museums sector and produce guidance that organisations can use to help decide on ticketing policies in the current challenging environment for museums, and follows on from 2016’s ‘Taking Charge’ report and Success Guide.

As part of this research, museums of all types and sizes across the UK are encouraged to participate through completing a short survey on their recent and current approaches to admissions pricing. Take the survey https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/admissionsresearch2023

In addition to the survey, the study team at DC Research and Durnin Research are keen to hear from museums that have recent experiences of changing their admissions policy/ pricing to discuss the processes and experiences and to understand the impact of such changes.  This could take the form of a confidential discussion and/ or could involve your museum featuring as a case study in the final report.

If you are happy to have a discussion with the study team, please contact them via stephen@dcresearch.co.uk or call Stephen Connolly, Director at DC Research on 01228 402320.

Spring 2023 Rural Voices Seminar Series

Rural Museums Network is delighted to present its online Spring 2023 Rural Voices Seminar Series.

In Your Words – Breathing new life into the Survey of English Dialect

Thursday 2 March, 3pm-4.30pm

The Dialect and Heritage Project is a national project based on a partnership between the University of Leeds and five member museums of the Rural Museums Network. Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, we have been taking dialect and heritage resources out of the archive and putting them back into the local communities where they truly belong. At the same time, we have been encouraging members of the public to share their present-day dialect with us. The project has tapped into massive public appetite for sharing dialect leading to huge media coverage. In this talk, we will introduce you to the rich dialect archives held at the University of Leeds, explain what the project has been up to and how you can access the resources, hear from museum partners about what they have got out of it, and think about where we might be headed next.

Find out more and book In Your Words – Breathing new life into the Survey of English Dialect

Utilising Intangible Cultural Heritage to Actively Support Rural Crafts

Thursday 20 April, 3pm-4.30pm

Heritage Crafts is the national charity for traditional crafts skills and the only UNESCO-accredited ICH NGO in the UK focusing solely on the domain of traditional craftsmanship. Daniel Carpenter, Executive Director of Heritage Crafts, and Greta Bertram, Curator at the Crafts Study Centre, will talk about the work of the organisation and the way in which it has partnered with museums to raise awareness of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), as well as the challenges museums face in incorporating ICH into their offering in a way that actively supports the continuation of embodied craft knowledge, skills and practices.

Find out more and book Utilising Intangible Cultural Heritage to Actively Support Rural Crafts

Disability in Rural Museums – past and present narratives

Thursday 4 May, 2pm-3.30pm

Explore how rural museums can better represent D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people in our museums and use our collections. Karen Sayer, Professor at Leeds Trinity University, askes how might we discover the history of disability in rural museums, and Emily Goff, Project Manager at Curating for Change, looks at how rural museums can enable and retain a more diverse work force, essential for museums to remain relevant for themselves and their communities.

Find out more and book Disability in Rural Museums – past and present narratives

Concerned about Closure

WMMD has updated the Concerned About Closure programme to identify museums at risk of closure.

If you believe your museum is facing closure in the next 12 months, please complete our updated online form to notify us. It will take less than ten minutes to complete and is best completed by the museum’s Chair, Vice Chair, Treasurer or a Senior Member of Staff (either paid or voluntary depending on your organisation’s structure).

How will this help my museum?

The Concerned About Closure form will enable us to identify and support museums facing closure, will provide insight into the health of the region’s sector, and will help us report concerns to Arts Council England (with your permission*).

For Accredited museums and those Working Towards Accreditation, completion of the form offers you the opportunity for an optional, free confidential surgery** to help you review your museum’s position, talk through the options available to you and help identify the actions you need to take.

The surgeries are structured conversations to help you understand your museum’s financial standing and clarify its position on potential closure. Surgeries will be led by Ari Volanakis with support from Olivia Basterfield (WMMD). Notes will be formalised into a written report to help you and your colleagues with planning and next steps.

About Ari Volanakis

Ari is a heritage management professional with hands-on experience in museum environments, business planning, strategy and commercial operations, with an MA in heritage management from Ironbridge Institute.

If you have any queries about the programme or would like to discuss Concerned About Closure further, please email wmmd@ironbridge.org.uk and a member of the team will be in touch.

*The form will ask your permission for WMMD to share your information with Arts Council England (ACE) as part of the coordinated partnership work to protect museums and collections at risk. ACE is working with the Museum Development Network (MDUK) and fifteen other sector partners to provide a coordinated approach to supporting sector colleagues who have concerns about the future of their museums or collections. More information can be found in the July 2021 joint statement on protecting museums and collections at risk.

Your information will only be shared with your consent.

Sharing your information will help the partnership provide timely and appropriate advice, identify trends, and lobby for support on behalf of the UK museum sector.

**Confidential surgeries are available on a first come first served basis to museums who are Accredited or officially Working Towards Accreditation. If you are a non-Accredited museum, when you complete the survey a member of the WMMD team will contact you to discuss your situation and signpost to other support where possible.

WMMD is grateful to South East Museum Development for developing and piloting the Concerned About Closure programme in their region during 2020 and producing the conversation template for the surgeries.

Museums & Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief: ‘How To’ Webinars

Join the Arts Council and RSM for a guide to the Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief (MGETR) on Friday 24 February, 12noon-1.30pm and Wednesday 1 March 2pm-3.30pm

MGETR is the eighth in a series of creative reliefs introduced by government. It is designed to support organisations to create, and tour public facing exhibitions by helping them to recover some of their production costs.

You will find out:

The session will also cover the Arts Council’s step-by-step guide to developing a claim for the Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief and FAQs that address many common questions and misconceptions associated with the tax relief.

There is a two-year deadline to make a claim from the end of your financial year, therefore many organisations will need to submit claims before 31 March 2023, so join a webinar to find out how you can start to claim money back on your exhibition production costs.

Book a MGETR webinar

Midlands Accreditation Advisor

Museum Development East Midlands (MDEM) and West Midlands Museum Development (WMMD) are seeking a freelance Museum Accreditation Advisor to deliver Accreditation support and advice for the whole Midlands region for 2023/24.

A key strand in the delivery of Museum Accreditation in England is the provision of effective technical advice to enable museums to achieve and maintain Accreditation. This includes support for all museums in England, apart from national museums.

The appointed Accreditation Advisor will jointly manage the East and West Midlands Accreditation programme on behalf of MDEM and WMMD to meet the programmes aims within the timescale and agreed budget.

Accreditation technical advice is to be delivered in line with the requirements and exceptions of the Arts Council’s “Museum Development and delivery of Accreditation advice function briefing note 2018-23”.

Bidders should demonstrate a thorough knowledge and understanding of the eligibility stage and Accreditation Standard, the processes that underpin and support it and its applicability to museums of different sizes and scales.

Budget

The Accreditation Advisor fee is a maximum of £16,000 over at least 40 days throughout the year, including VAT and any expenses.

For further details of duties, specification and how to apply, please visit the Leceistershire County Council procurement portal.

Deadline: 12pm, Monday 20 February

The tender is administered through Leicestershire County Council on behalf of MDEM and WMMD. 

Family Friendly Audit – apply now

West Midlands Museum Development is offering eight museums the opportunity to receive a Kids in Museums Family Friendly Audit. The audit is a simple and practical tool to make your museum more welcoming to children and families.

The audit is based on the Manifesto, one of Kids in Museums’ most powerful and longstanding initiatives. The Kids in Museums Manifesto is entirely based on feedback from families, children and young people about their experiences of visiting museums.

The Family Friendly Museum Audit will evaluate a visit to your museum against the six points of the Manifesto to understand the effectiveness of your welcome for children and families. An experienced Kids in Museums consultant will review everything from the café and ticket desk to your interpretation alongside any spaces or displays aimed at children and families.

Following their visit, the consultant will produce an illustrated report highlighting existing areas of good practice and including a simple cost-effective action plan for areas for improvement. As well as offering a practical guide to making your museum more family friendly, the report will serve as a powerful advocacy tool for including children and families across your organisation.

Closing date for applications: 9am, Monday 3 April

Download the application form

Priority will be given to non-NPO and non-National museums in the West Midlands which are Accredited or officially Working Towards Accreditation.

Grant Support for Significant Challenges – WMMD Strategic Intervention Fund

West Midlands Museum Development (WMMD) has launched a new grant scheme, the Strategic Intervention Fund (SIF), to support you to find strategic solutions and a sustainable way forward in difficult times.

This may mean:

You can apply for up to £2,500* to help you deal with significant challenges.

For further information please download and read the guidance

Download and complete the application form 

The grant fund will be considered on a rolling basis, with monthly panels scheduled, to enable museums to make requests when need arises

Museums will receive a decision within a maximum of six weeks from the point of application

The SIF will support Accredited museums or those formally Working Towards Accreditation in the West Midlands.

National Portfolio Organisations and National museums are not eligible to apply.

*Grants of up to £5,000 may be considered in exceptional circumstances. You’re encouraged to contact the WMMD team at wmmd@ironbridge.org.uk to discuss this prior to application.