Melanie Murphy, ADA Fellow, is coming into the Audience Diversity Academy from all angles and in manageable steps.

Audience Diversity Academy Fellow, Anais Vanais-Cooper reflects in her final contribution on some very interesting and rewarding experiences. 

As you may know we at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust are holding immersive days as part of The Arts Council England’s Museums and Schools initiative. 

 I started out to see how the children felt when they were told they have the opportunity to guide in a historic house and what the outcome of that would be.  Would they be encouraged to come to museums and be confident in the surroundings after their visit or did it put them off?  I am pleased to say that the majority were happy and confident to come back and go to another museum with their parents and peers.  

I cannot deny that there were and are some difficult times when things do not go to plan and you need to re-evaluate the situation and turn it into a positive.   But what has to be at the forefront of your mind is that this whole project is giving an opportunity to children that they may not have had otherwise  and the benefits that they are receiving and feeling  are  beyond measure.   

I have been involved with this project for nearly a year and it is not yet finished as it will continue and I will find out the outcome of my initial experiment in just over a year from now. 

However, the education team have been involved with the Schools project for over 3 years. 

The project has evolved over those three years, each year with a newly devised activity plan to fit the funding brief. This year we have included outreach sessions – as well as the schools coming to us we go to them. 

As part of the offer we provide Arts Award Discover activity booklets (which are covered by the funding) so that the children can record what they do when they come to the houses to have their immersive day.  

We have exceeded the target number of children achieving Arts Award at Discover Level with over one thousand awarded over 3 years; our original target was 300. 

We also have a web page which the children contribute to by picking out their favourite item from the Trust’s Collection, including items on display in the houses. They draw their favourite in their booklet and we put it up on our website. Here is the link for you to see. 

http://collections.shakespeare.org.uk/exhibition/exhibition/sharing-shakespeares-story 

It’s all very well telling you what we have done with the numbers and such, but what has it done for the children, for me and the team that I manage in Hall’s Croft?  

Well, for a start, from the comments we have had from the children (see Blog 2) we see that this has opened up a whole new world for them and they have learnt so much from it. The children gained confidence and were empowered to be able to speak to their peers without being embarrassed or intimidated, as this was special knowledge which they had gained and were telling their peers about. 

Our visitors to Hall’s Croft, of which we have had over 3000 since the beginning of the AMA study, have been very positive and in awe of the children’s enthusiasm and keenness to learn and to impart the information which they had gained about the history of the house.  

As for the Hall’s Croft team, we are always happy to see them and it makes us very proud to know we are sharing a special experience with the children. 

As for me, I have learnt so much from them including the tenacity they have exhibited in wanting to work so that can deliver a good talk, the willingness to share information with their peers and their confidence in talking to the general public. It has made me very proud to be part of this experience and this is the best thing I think I have ever done for a project. The project continues next year.  

Anais Vanian-Cooper is curious to try and find ways to inspire young people to see the heritage sector as part of their everyday future.  Working at Hall’s Croft Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and now an Audience Diversity Academy Fellow, Anais ponders what this journey is about.

Having been a manager of Hall’s Croft William Shakespeare’s elder daughter’s house for the last 3 years, I was told that we would be holding immersive days.  Immersive into what I thought not having come across one of those before.  Then the penny dropped, it was schools immersive day as part of The Arts Council England’s Museums and Schools initiative.  Working with our education department we at Hall’s Croft and across two other sites were going to hold twice weekly sessions where children from across the Midlands would come and be a guide for the day.  

When the children arrived there were some nervous faces.  But after familiarising themselves with the space and their talk which they had practiced at school they soon got into the swing of things and started to talk to the visitors freely.  The visitors were surprised and impressed. 

It set me thinking as to how many of these children would have the confidence in the future to go to other museums without feeling intimidated and were they actually enjoying what they were doing.  

So I decided for my experiment to see what impact an experience like an immersive day held for these children.   How would it shape their future, did it make them more confident or did it inspire them to want to work in the heritage sector. 

And with this my journey of discovery begins.

Audience Diversity Academy Fellow, Emma Oaks shares with us how she is converting perceptions of her organisation, Buxton Opera House, one ambassador at a time.

As well as our beautiful but inaccessible Edwardian theatre, we also have a cinema that offers accessible screenings. Customer diversity is important to us as a company, but we have to demonstrate that we can provide an accessible experience before customers even step through the door. So, the experiment was to create a team of Access Ambassadors made up of staff, volunteers and community contacts who could spread the word about what we’re trying to achieve and share our passion for inclusivity with the wider community.

I must admit, with the faint whiff of disinterest coming from some quarters, combined with an un-successful first attempt at recruitment, that I wasn’t expecting anyone to be beating down the door to help with Access in either of our venues. However, there is a genuine interest in the Opera House itself as a beautiful iconic building, and in its long term survival following a closure 40+ years ago.

Having made contact with a few external groups to establish what access provision was available locally, I then contacted our own volunteer database to gauge interest in an Access Ambassadors group. I was pleasantly surprised by the almost immediate response from some volunteers and the recognition from them that improving access was essential to growth.

An initial group of 11 volunteers expressed an interest and we arranged to meet to discuss the potential of the group, what the aims would be, potential training that might be useful and how everyone’s personal experience could contribute to the project. Most of the volunteers had a backstory that reflected their interest in access as a subject, from grandchildren with autism; working with isolated adults; and personal hearing loss.  Our usual pool of volunteers is typically retirement age, so it was refreshing to have a wide age range represented in the access group – from mid-20s to mid-80s – although the majority were still 60+.

This led to very different contributions around promoting our accessible productions, with a high proportion being against social media, but several offers of support in attending community events.

As a group we developed a vision board that showed where our imagination might take us in the future. Interestingly the group focussed very much on our famous welcome and how fabulous our venues are along with an emphasis on the importance of the team working together. We finished the meeting knowing that we’re not perfect as an accessible venue, but as a team we’ll do what we can to make sure everyone has a good time – what a great starting point!

In all we recruited 15 volunteers, one of which is a full-time member of staff, two are from external community support groups and I’ve just turned customer services complaint about access into a new volunteer. Facilitating the group raised its own communication challenges – not everyone is on email; not everyone can use a phone due to hearing loss; and we don’t have an accessible meeting space in the Opera House, but we’re working round these as best we can. Since the meeting we’ve put a basic training plan for the group in place that includes autism awareness and a talk by Age UK. Our first event is planned for Disabled Access Day in March.

I’m faintly terrified by the size of the access project overall, but creating this Access Ambassadors potential group will certainly go a long way to helping spread the work load and reach more customers.

With money seems to come more flexibility or the green light to take plans and experiments forward.  Does a red light stop the intention dead?  English Touring Opera Fellow of the ADA 3.0 shares this blog about the next steps for their strategic journey.

I was so close to getting my experiment up and running.  I had written a proposal, did market research, spoken to our partner venues and other arts organisations and everyone was excited about my audience development scheme.  I was set to press ‘go’ but with one short email, my dreams of getting this revolutionary ticket scheme dissolves into nothing. Senior Management loved the idea but there was no funding so I had to pump the breaks, do a U turn and return the shiny sports car to the show room…

As much as we, in the arts, try to not to talk about the ‘M’ word, we can’t avoid it.  It is, unfortunately, at the heart of everything we do.  As I sat at my desk, very deflated with the knowledge that my experiment had been halted because there wasn’t enough money, I wondered how many great ideas had never seen the light of day because of funding.  Even the little one man show in the basement of a pub in the middle of nowhere at least needs petrol money for his sins.  It makes me really sad to think about how much art and creativity we have missed out on because people don’t have the funds to bring their ideas to fruition.

In this current climate, it is harder than ever to justify why we need money to the arts.  How do you convince someone who has never been to the opera why they should spend millions of pounds on it, when they are worried about the implications of Brexit?  You may argue that commercial shows in the West End don’t need public funding but I would remind you that they have a lot of private investment and the ticket prices are sky high.

How do we create beauty when we are restricted by our means?  We tried using unpaid interns but that doesn’t fix the problem and is highly unethical and elitist (as only those that receive support from their wealthy parents can afford to do these roles).  We all work extra hours without pay but again that doesn’t fix the problem.  Even if there is a pot of money, if the powers that be aren’t convinced by your idea or the money has been spent elsewhere, how do you get your idea off of the ground?

I ruminated (sulked) on this for a while.  After lots of cups of tea and a couple of bourbon biscuits I noticed that I was the guest of honour at my own pity party so I rammed a couple more biscuits in my mouth and started to think about ways I can make this experiment work.  With the kindness, patience and wisdom of my mentor I decided to scale back my idea and will ask the Development team to apply for funding.

I may graduate from the Audience Diversity Academy having not finished (or even properly started) my experiment but I will end this experience knowing that my idea will happen, no matter the cost.