Fiona C. Hutchison

Department: Management
Research Centre/Unit: Centre for Sport, Leisure and Tourism Research

Project Summary

'The Socio-cultural Impacts of Museums in their local communities: The case of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM)' This looks at evidencing a wide range of socio-cultural impacts of RAMM by eliciting views from people in the museum's locality. It uses a mixed methods approach. Two large scale surveys have been conducted using a stratified/random sample design. The first of these took place in October 2011 while the museum was closed for a major re-development. The second could be conducted in April 2012 after the museum had re-opened. Follow-up interviews will take place over summer 2012. This project is especially important as it looks to test many potential impacts which have been identified in the literature; it looks at a whole museum service and asks for opinions from users and non-users; and it applies well-established social science techniques for the collection of primary data. The findings and the techniques employed will feed into the sector through the production of a best practice guide and toolkit and the dissemination of research through practitioner conference presentations.

Supervisory Team

Professor Tim Coles Dr Adrian Bailey