Museums+Tech 2022 Keynote
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What was that? Reflections on two and a half years of change within the cultural sector Kati Price; Head of Experience and Digital at the V&A
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Museums+Tech 2022 Keynote
- 1. What was that? Reflections on two and a half years of change within the cultural sector Kati Price | Head of Experience and Digital | V&A
- 2. Bobby Seagull’s quick-fire numeracy quiz 1. If a scarf costs £11.70 after a 10 per cent reduction, what was the original price? 2. Milly’s lunch contains 640 calories of energy. What percentage is this of her daily target intake of 2000 calories? 3. Rail tickets increased 2 per cent in 2018 and 5 per cent in 2019. What was the overall increase over the two years? 4. What is better value for the same ketchup: 275g for £1.05 or 650g for £2.20? 5. A laptop costs £899, including VAT at 20 per cent. How much of the purchase price is VAT? Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022
- 3. Bobby Seagull’s quick-fire numeracy quiz 1. If a scarf costs £11.70 after a 10 per cent reduction, what was the original price? 2. Milly’s lunch contains 640 calories of energy. What percentage is this of her daily target intake of 2000 calories? 3. Rail tickets increased 2 per cent in 2018 and 5 per cent in 2019. What was the overall increase over the two years? 4. What is better value for the same ketchup: 275g for £1.05 or 650g for £2.20? 5. A laptop costs £899, including VAT at 20 per cent. How much of the purchase price is VAT? Quiz answers: (Q1 £13; Q2 32 per cent; Q3 7.1 per cent; 650g for £2.20; £149.83) Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022
- 4. Homeschoolers Carers Pub quiz hosts Online party entertainers Sourdough starter nurturers Photo by Anshu A on Unsplash
- 5. Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash
- 8. Collaboration New and better ways of collaborating
- 9. The truism that all museums are siloed Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash
- 10. A hosepipe of requests Photo by Serenity Mitchell on Unsplash
- 11. Photo by Anthony DELANOIX on Unsplash One unifying goal - to engage our audiences online
- 12. Content Making content people want
- 13. Title Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash ^ CONTENT
- 14. Being a little opportunistic
- 15. Creating new formats (reasons to come back)
- 16. Pushing to the ends of the spectrum Long-form ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Short-form
- 17. Pushing to the ends of the spectrum Informative -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Light-hearted
- 18. Cash How to do good stuff with less cash?* *aka what the hell do with a sudden drop in income and funding
- 19. With no visitors, our income fell off a precipice Photo by EJ Strat on Unsplash
- 20. Photo by Konstantin Evdokimov on Unsplash Desperately seeking new funding sources
- 22. Churn Losing good people* *a.k.a. restructures and The Great Resignation
- 23. Title
- 24. Staff cuts
- 25. We’re all so burnt out Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash
- 26. So, what was that? As series of massive shifts. With some consequences… ● Changes in how we work for the better – more collaboration and fewer silos ● Changes in what we made – maybe for the better But… ● There’s been a detrimental impact on our people and further churn to come ● And there’s less money to fund all the things
- 27. So, what next? ➔ How do we continue to collaborate together – within and beyond the digital team? How can we make the good ways of working stick? ➔ How can we continue to make the most of the content we already have? At the same time, how do we develop new content formats that respond to difference audience needs and interests? ➔ We’ve had funding cuts and there will be more to come so how will we plan and prioritise what to do (and what not to do) – how much agency do we have in that decision? ➔ How do we deal with what feels like constant churn? How do we better support our people? Should we structure our digital teams differently? What roles should remain in-house? What can be outsourced? How do we upskill others internally to spread the digital load?
Editor's Notes
- So I’ve been invited to do a bit of a reflection of the last few years and the impact that the Covid pandemic - and other things - have had on museums and the wider cultural sector. But let’s face it. That might be the last thing you feel like, right? I should just summarise that it’s been more than a bit shit. Or I could probably just stop now and instead we have a group hug or a mass primal scream therapy session? Which would you prefer? Ok, assuming I do have the next 50 mins to fill, how about I do a bit of reflection and then pose a bunch of questions I don’t necessarily have the answers to, and then we can spend the last bit having a chat about it all? Mostly what I am going to tell you won’t be new to you, it’s more of a review of what we went through, it touches on what we’re still going through individually, collectively… what changed temporarily, what things changed permanently, and what things we might want to keep hold of.
- So to get our brains in gear, shall we start with some maths? Here are 5 simple questions for you set by maths guru Bobby Seagull. Have a read. Now I want you to answer the following questions honestly… Hands up if you reckon you can answer all five correctly? How about at least three correctly? What about two or fewer?
- Here are the answers for you. Apparently 56 per cent of UK adults will only be able to answer two or fewer questions correctly. This is the equivalent of what we would expect a primary school aged child to get right. Yet in March 2022 the parents among us suddenly became homeschoolers and were expected to be able to get full marks on tests like this… Google search trends in Spring 2020 revealed a massive spike in desperate parents searching for things like Pythagoras’s Theorem and long division. I was one of them.
- Suddenly we weren’t just folk working in museums and galleries and agencies. We were homeschoolers, we were carers, we were pub quiz hosts, we were online party entertainers, we were sourdough starter nurturers. Suddenly there were a lot of jobs. An awful lot of jobs to do alongside the day job.
- It’s hard to summarise the massive socio-political shifts we’ve experienced since spring 2020… George Floyd was murdered, we saw the Black Lives Matter movement increasing in prominence, we saw statues falling, we saw Government’s response to statues falling, we saw the rise of social activism in our institutions.
- We also saw cultural organisations struggle in their response to anti racism and broader debates around decolonisation.
- So, as we all know too well, we experienced a massive shift in the context in which we work and live. And that shift had a lot of consequences - some good, some bad, some temporary and some more permanent… I’m going to be taking about four sets of consequences, around Collaboration Content Cash and Churn (Obviously there were many more consequences and I’ve just chosen these four… mainly because they’re alliterative or at least they all start with the letter ‘C’…) There were consequences for how we collaborate with one another to do the work we do. There were consequences for the kinds of content and products we make, there were consequences for how much cash our organisations had - a lot less basically. And we experienced a lot of churn - not just emotional churn, but staff churn (it’s a terrible term, but it starts with a C so forgive me). And we’re still seeing the effect of the pandemic in us losing lots of brilliant and talented people from our institutions…
- So to start. One big consequence of the pandemic, was around collaboration. Particularly because we’d all had to turn our bedrooms and kitchen tables into office spaces for remote working which made collaboration, well, different…
- It’s a truism that all museums and cultural organisations operate in siloes. And I think that’s not always the case. But there are certainly physical impediments (things like a 15 minute walk across the building to meet with someone) and there are most definitely cultural impediments that can make it hard to collaborate. We had to adapt really quickly to home working and remote collaboration. Some of us already had the tools, some didn’t (I remember one curator friend of mine saying ‘What’s Microsoft Teams’ the week before lock down… how little did she know intimate she’d soon become with it…) So we saw a more widespread adoption of tools we were already using to other teams (things like shared Trello content planners) as well as adopting newer tools like Miro. Ultimately, it meant we had to find new ways of working - and quickly. Ultimately, I think we saw better, more effective communication within and between teams. But that wasn’t always easy…
- Because, as we all know, digital teams were faced with a hosepipe of demands and requests from right across the organisation. Often the ask was around making things that normally happen in lecture theatres and exhibitions happen online. All rise the ‘online exhibition’. Now, I’m not a fan of simply transposing physical paradigms - things like exhibitions and displays- to online. That’s not the way digital works. Instead we should be thinking about how best to tell those stories in compelling ways online, packaging them up as great content and experiences. That generally means not just whacking up an online gallery or exhibition. Managing that surge in incoming risked digital teams saying ‘no’ an awful lot - and learning to say no in new (very polite) ways. We polished our skills at refining the ask of all these inbound requests. One success for us was helping colleagues in the V&A Academy team, supporting them to take the paid-for learning offer online. This work involved a lot of collaboration and couldn’t have happened without these new ways of working. But it wasn’t always easy. Sometimes we just had to let things go, and help teams to pop stuff up online that we knew wouldn’t necessarily fly with our audiences.
- When it worked best, it was because we had a shared and more singular purpose - and that was to drive online engagement. When the doors of our institutions are open we have so many competing demands for digital teams - to create content, products and experience that drive visits, sell tickets, sell memberships, promote learning, promote events, provide information… Instead we had one thing to focus on - audience engagement online. In many ways it became a lot simpler. And to do that we pulled together collectively to work towards that end. We became a lot more joined up across lots of teams - across digital, marketing, comms, membership, learning… We began an approach to planning and aligning our channels towards much clearer goals and targets. And that stuck. And that’s been one of the most positive things to come out of the last couple of years.
- Onto our next consequence - that of content and making content that people want. And just to make it clear, I’m sure lots of us - if not all - were already making content that people want.
- That was the thing - we already had bags of great content. But we saw a lot of demand to make more content, to make new content. That demand wasn’t just from above - it was from across the organisation. The call for new stuff! So a lot of time was spent reminding people just how much great content we already had. And focussing our effort instead on shining a light on that content - making it more visible to our audiences. This meant putting more focus on channel activity and alignment to drive people to existing content, and not just making more.
- Early in March 2020 it dawned on us that it was likely the Museum was going to close soon, just as our exhibition Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk opened. So the content team worked rapidly with curator Anna Jackson to storyboard and capture a series of 5 films that told some of the stories behind this incredible show. It was quite a feat to pull off creating such quality content just as the doors were about to close. We then released these films first to our members and then to the general public and they’ve now garnered over 545k views. It was an added bonus to receive the Time Out Time in award for best digital art experience for these films. They’re not an online exhibition, they’re not a 3D rendered walk through, they’re not using new technology. They’re just really well crafted films that do a brilliant job of storytelling and continue to drive lots of online engagement today… I should add here that this example and the others to follow are all down to the V&A’s amazing content team, headed up by Tom Windross.
- So our understanding of audience behaviours deepened as we took an even more data informed approach to content development. We developed new formats - like our successful ASMR series. ASMR for those who don’t know it is autosensory meridian response… (explain). This series delves into the V&A’s collections exploring the sounds involved in the care and conservation of objects like Charlie Chaplin’s hat, a dress worn by PJ Harvey and this sequined clown costume. It’s a format that’s loved not just by the ASMR community online who are lapping up the content we release regularly, but also millions of others on YouTube and across social. We’ve continued to invest a lot of time in developing and refining this format - led by the brilliant Hannah Kingwell working with sound artist Julie Rose Bower. It’s really shown us the benefit of format thinking as a way to give audiences reasons to subscribe and keep coming back. And if you’re interested in hearing more about the importance of formats do check out Matt Locke from Storythings talking to Ash Mann on the Digital Works podcast.
- What we found by delving into audience behaviour online during the pandemic was that people were moving to the ends of a number of spectrums. We hear a lot about the dwindling attention spans of online audiences. That they’re only interested in the 10 second TikTok. It’s true, they love a good TikTok (and this is a particularly good one made by our talented social team) but online audiences are also very happy to watch a 40 min video about how to paint a pomegranate in watercolour. This video, launched in December 2020 has been watched over 260k times. But, what’s more interesting is that it ranks as one of our highest performing videos in terms of proportion of people watching till the end - 20% (incredible stat for a 40 min video). And what’s also interesting is that most people watching this video are under 34. It says a lot about there still being an appetite for well executed long form content. If you’re interested in learning more about this, do check out my colleague Jo Jones’s piece on the Cultural Content Substack https://culturalcontent.substack.com/p/cultural-content-with-guest-jo-jones
- During the pandemic we also saw our audience’s tastes moving towards either end of another spectrum. They were loving the online interactives our team created to support the refurbishment of the Raphael Courts. These were based on some incredible new imaging and photography (done by Factum Arte) of the Raphael Cartoons - the preparatory sketches for the tapestries that hang in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. Again, we saw a huge uptick in engagement and in dwell times for this in depth, informative content. At the same time people were craving a bit of fun and time-killing entertainment. Cue Design a Wig, an online interactive that gives people the chance to make their own late 18th century Marie-Antoinette style crazy wig complete with feathers, galleons and flags. Silly fun. But just what people wanted as a relief from all the home schooling and banana bread making. So was this just a lock down audience behaviour? No, we’ve found these are behaviours that look like they’re here to stay, and have informed the way we make and commission content. It’s good to think of pushing content commissioning decisions around the ends of these various spectrums.
- But how do we keep making good content, good products and good experiences when there is less cash around to do that with. What do we do faced with a sudden drop in income and funding that happened during the pandemic? So, what happened?
- As visitor attractions we are utterly reliant on visitors. And then suddenly, there were none. No tourists, no domestic visitors. And - even when things opened up - numbers were down and continue to be down… Tourists haven’t returned in their former numbers. But we’ve also seen that UK visitors have changed their visiting behaviours. The challenge is that museum business models are still utterly reliant on people coming to our buildings and spending money when they’re there. Across the board, we’ve failed to develop business models that move us away from this reliance on visitation.
- So organisations have had to think differently around funding opportunities. Some organisations were able to benefit from emergency funding from government via the Culture Recovery Fund. A much needed bandaid, but that only got us so far. We’ve had to think about new business models and to think about how to build up - for example - membership propositions that are less reliant on nice spaces and free access to exhibitions. And this has put a big pressure on digital teams - among others - to think about new ways for digital things - digital products, channels and content to make money. Over the pandemic there were some interesting experiments around how to monetise content but I’m not sure any of us landed solid new digital revenue streams. At the end of today’s conference Chris Unitt and friends will be exploring in more detail what the data tells us about how organisations are funding digital activity.
- No doubt the future funding landscape will be even more reliant on partnerships. At the V&A we were lucky to be approached by HTC VIVE ARTS to partner on our Alice in Wonderland exhibition. Together with Preloaded we developed a VR experience for the exhibition that invited visitors to step into Alice’s shoes and go down the rabbit hole to play an impossible game of hedgehog croquet in Wonderland. We began development the month before lockdown. It soon dawned us it would be a long time to before any exhibition visitors would ever encounter the VR experience. Who knew when we’d finally be able to open the exhibition? So we created an extended - and paid for - version of the VR experience called Curious Alice for the ‘at home’ audience. It was a brilliant opportunity and one we simply wouldn’t have been able to do without HTC’s generous investment. Increasingly it’s likely that commercial partnerships will be the preferred model to support any innovative digital developments within the sector…
- And onto the last section - churn. A terrible term as I said before, but one that speaks to the fact we’ve lost some good people from our sector, from our institutions and from our teams. So in a recent podcast episode I recorded with Ash Mann’s for his Digital Works podcast (second plug Ash) - I might have inadvertently suggested that a bunch of folk (looking at you Daf James and Rob Cawston) might have been prompted to leave their roles in the cultural sector…
- … because of the power of Beyonce’s summer ‘22 hit ‘Break My Soul’. Bey captured a moment, a moment where we were feeling overworked, underappreciated, and not in control of our destinies. She encouraged us to divest from all that was no longer serving us and instead invest our energies into something more nourishing. That moment has been dubbed the Great Resignation, a moment that saw people across the globe quitting their jobs as they reevaluate what they want from work in the wake of the pandemic. The Great Resignation started in 2020 and it continues into 2022. And it’s affecting our sector. It’s affecting my team. One of the most worrying consequences of these recent shifts is the brain drain on the cultural sector. And, I fear, the brain drain is set to continue. Particularly as it’s hard to attract new talent into the sector, given the struggles we have in remunerating people at a level that is in any way competitive to other sectors.
- Alongside people choosing to leave the sector and pursue new roles elsewhere, many organisations have had to make big staff cuts. The financially precarious situation our institutions found themselves in led to restructures large-scale and small. This has had a massive impact on the work that we do. Digital teams usually have a core storytelling function, and that storytelling is a collective exercise, one that involves experts and ideas from across the organisation. Suddenly we found many of our internal experts no longer there. And digital teams themselves were hit too, with, if we were lucky, vacancy freezes, and worse still, some of us were faced with making roles redundant - at a time when digital roles felt more relevant and necessary than ever. This raises a bunch of difficult questions which we’ll come onto shortly… like who’s left to do all this work? What are we NOT going to do if there are fewer people to do the work? Who decides? Do we end up outsourcing if there aren’t internal digital specialists? And do we even have budget to do that? And now the UK is facing its longest recession since records began, and is expected to be in recession until at least 2024. We can but assume there are more cuts to come. How can we anticipate what the size and shape of the new digital team should look like in this new era?
- It’s really important to acknowledge that it’s been hard. Really hard. For all of us. And it’s hard when you lose good colleagues and team members through restructures as well as people who choose to move on. It’s hard for those who lose their roles. And it’s hard for those left to continue bearing the emotional and mental labour involved in digital work in this sector… Emotional labour as a term gained more traction over the course of the pandemic. It’s a term that covers range of issues around employment rights and employee experience - from balancing career and caring responsibilities, through to stress and burnout. And digital work inevitably involves emotional labour, particularly when there was such a focus and reliance on the work of the digital team. I’d encourage you to listen to Dr Sophie Frost’s People Change Museums podcast - one of the outputs of the One by One research programme which I’ve been involved in - which has an episode on the topic of emotional labour. Ultimately, we’re all a bit burnt out, our emotional reserves are at an all time low. And those who’ve continued to work throughout the pandemic making brilliant content and digital products are running on empty. It’s so important those of us in leadership positions find whatever support we can to make sure people can replenish those reserves.
- So the massive shifts we’ve endured over the last two and a half years have had a lot of consequences. They changed how we worked for the better. It feels like we’ve definitely done some more silo breaking over the last few years. They changed what we made (across digital content, digital products and digital experiences), and, maybe we made better stuff as a result. But these shifts have had a detrimental impact on our people - we’re all running on empty and there are fewer of us to do all this work. And there’s less money to fund all the things we’re supposed to be doing. So, to end, here are a few questions I’m still mulling and would love to discuss with you now and over the course of the day…
- Go through questions… And to end… let’s all try keep hold of the good stuff, let’s try not to drift back into any bad habits, and let’s collectively brace ourselves for the inevitable change that’s still to come. Thanks all for listening.