How does a weekend-long national festival attract over 120,000 visitors and achieve £3.4 million worth of publicity for the arts and heritage sector - and what could this mean for your town? Museums at Night Campaigns Officer Rosie Clarke discusses the ways a centrally coordinated campaign supports hundreds of venues to run successful after-hours events, and looks at how clusters of local organisations collaborating on programming and marketing events can attract crowds of visitors to spend time and money in museums and galleries and the surrounding area. Learn from a case study about Victorian Nights, one cluster of local Museums at Night activity in three North Norfolk towns. Presentation given by Rosie Clarke at the Culture Matters conference, Norwich, UK, November 14-16 2012.

1. The power of partnerships:
marketing lessons from
Museums at Night
Rosie Clarke
Campaigns Officer
Culture24

2. What is Museums at Night?

3. Festival growth

4. PR campaign

5. Audience development
• 121,000 visitors in 2012
• 34,000 new to that venue
• 5,000 had never been to any arts / heritage
venue before
• 94% would visit more arts / heritage venues

7. Partnership examples
• Arts Council England
• National Trust
• Reading Agency
• Future Shorts
• Sky Arts
• BBC History Magazine

8. Clusters

9. North Norfolk cluster

10. Objectives
• Partnerships
• Audience
• Coordination
• Legacy
- education
- volunteers

11. Organisations taking part
• Sheringhamand District Society (formerly Sheringham
Preservation Society)
• North Norfolk Railway
• SheringhamLittle Theatre
• Cromer Preservation Society
• Cromer Museum
• Wells Maltings
• RNLI Henry Blogg Museum
• The Mo: SheringhamMuseum
• Norfolk Libraries& Information Service (volunteer
blogging programme)

12. Local co-ordination
• Overview
• Main point of contact
• Networks
• Inspiration
• Budget monitoring

13. Local investment
• Skills training – marketing, blogging
• £8,500 with local suppliers
• Sheringham Community Wardrobe
• Archive research

15. Volunteer strengths

16. Attracting visitors

17. Audience feedback
• 3252 visitors
• Engaged audience, yet 60% new to the venue
• 84% learnt about Victorians
• Tourists: 24% from Norwich
• Marketing: success of leaflets
• £50,000 secondary spend
• 90% would come back

18. The future
• Funding bid
• Ambassadors
• Heritage trails
• Involve all of North Norfolk

20. Acknowledgements
• Funders: Heritage Lottery Fund, Norfolk
Museums & Archaeology Service, North Norfolk
District Council
• Culture24: Nick Stockman, Beth Hogben
• Local coordinator: Laura Crossley
http://www.linkedin.com/in/laurafcrossley
• Images: John Rylands Library, University of Manchester; The Culture
Show; Leeds Museums & Galleries; Sunderland Art Gallery &
Museum; The Late Shows; Google Maps; David Indge; Catherine
Laura Ward; Nina Brown; Victorian Nights

21. Thanks very much!
www.museumsatnight.org.uk
http://museumsatnight.wordpress.com
@museumsatnight
rosie@culture24.org.uk
01273 623336
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rosieclarke
@rosieclarke