The future of museum communication: strategies for engaging audiences on archaeology

Abstract

The heritage industry within the last few years has been undergoing a number of alterations. A number of factors have forced professionals to reassess and adapt the ways they work. As such museums have been assessing their practices in order to survive on increasingly reduced budgets, staff numbers and in some cases time. With all these changes what has been happening?

Outreach programmes have been the focus of change within museums over the last few years. This practice has been singled out as an area that can be altered or lost due to its lack of direct return. However, is this lack of return due to the practice or its shortage of appropriate evaluation?

This research focuses on the county of Hampshire; its museums and their outreach programmes. It explores the impact of funding, funding organisations and evaluation on outreach within this area. At its heart it looks to introduce a move away from monetary based evaluations towards well-being or social impact. The four case studies illustrate how facets of impact are not evaluated and subsequently lost through the current techniques. Ultimately, the major impacts of this practice are not the ones evaluated presently but those skirted over. Therefore, more appropriate evaluation should be created that captures all the impacts of outreach practices, in order to effectively determine if these programmes are viable within museums.

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