EXCLUSIVE: £27m Perth Museum is smashing visitor targets
INTERVIEW: Director Helen Smout on hitting a major milestone
— In partnership with Smartify
Hello.
It’s Wednesday, which means it’s ‘views and interviews’ — and this one has an exclusive for you!
My Big Interview today reveals that the £27m new Perth Museum in Scotland is officially smashing its visitor targets. It’s hit a major milestone this week, and its director Helen Smout speaks exclusively to me with all the details.
The 250 Take is from the founder of a new club which is trying to bring some long-overdue support to working class people in the art world, and to open doors for more to join the industry.
And my Hot List features a new book on all the mad and bad buildings that could have been. Read to the end for that.
Let’s dive right in!
— maxwell
— In partnership with Smartify
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The 250 Take
This week my 250-word opinion column from guest writers is by Meg Molloy, the founder of a new organisation aiming to support working class people in the art world. Here she explains why it is so badly needed.
💬 Working class people need a bigger voice in the art world — so I’m making it happen.
“Art is for all. So where are the people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in our industry?
6 out of every 10 employees working in UK arts and culture are from middle class backgrounds. That’s not diverse.
The people choosing our exhibitions, displaying our artists and employing our workers have a duty to represent and reflect the UK. We need to see galleries and other arts settings proactively engaging with people who are passionate about the arts — regardless of their origins. This means finding people outside of the common routes into the art world.
The sector needs to be opened up from school level to the very top, to make it a place where everyone's voice really matters. People from working class backgrounds often don’t have the belief that they can go for what they want in their career, or an awareness of what’s out there in terms of opportunities. Fewer than eight state schools offer the art history A-level; access to arts jobs shouldn’t come down to the privilege of certain education, or being ‘in the know’.
At Working Arts Club, we feel a responsibility to help shape an art world that's accessible, and we want to be part of an industry that is fair. Our club will be a space for people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to network, attend events, and socialise. Connecting people from similar backgrounds will create a platform to facilitate conversation, growth and action, which — we hope — will create change.”
Meg Molloy is Head of Communications at Stephen Friedman Gallery. Register your interest for Working Arts Club here, and follow @workingartsclub.
The Big Interview
“Magical”, “beautiful”, and “absolutely stuffed with wondrous things” were the critics’ verdicts when the brand new £27 million Perth Museum in Scotland opened its doors at the end of March.
And it seems that visitors have been equally enchanted.
Because I can reveal today — for the first time — that the museum has now officially hit 50% of their ANNUAL visitor target, in just over TEN WEEKS.
How do I know? Well because my interview today is with Helen Smout, Perth Museum’s de facto director in her role as Chief Executive of Culture Perth and Kinross (the charitable trust that runs the museum).
She tells me here exclusively that 80,000 people have now walked through the doors of the new museum since 30 March. That represents HALF of their whole annual target, and shows how at current rates they could potentially be looking at achieving nearly triple — or even quadruple — their projections by the time 12 months has passed.
In our interview, we also look back at the decade-long project of making the museum a reality. Helen chats about the most difficult challenges she experienced, where these thousands of visitors are coming from, and the biggest surprise of all: how they massively underestimated the amount the loo roll needed (we’ve all been there!).
***
Hello Helen. So, Perth Museum was ten years in the making, and it’s ten weeks since you opened. Have you recovered?!
We are all still in that weird space of being on a high from the opening, and both overwhelmed by such a positive response but also completely exhausted!
You plan for something for so long — in this case more than 10 years — that when it finally happens there is a bit of a surreal quality to it all. But that might just be the lack of sleep.
I always knew Perth Museum would be a special place but to see the way people react and interact with it is beyond anything I and the team could have hoped for.
I know you have some exciting news on the visitor figures so far. Do tell!
Yes, we’ve just past the 80,000 visits mark!
It’s an incredible figure in ten weeks of operations, and it’s one we are so grateful for. Our target was 167,000 visits per annum and we’ve achieved essentially 50% of this in a little over 2 months.
Whilst there is always a period of additional interest in any new attraction opening, our initial target figures were for about 600 per day over the summer months and since opening we have averaged over 1,000 per day. And we have not yet got to the height of the season.
The response and support from local communities as well as from visitors from further afield has been really positive and has re-introduced many of them to what the City has to offer. We get lots of people saying they will be back for a longer visit soon.
Where are the visitors coming from?
There is a real mix of people coming through the doors, and although it is quite early to be seeing any patterns to the attendance, we are seeing lots of locals visiting, day visits from Inverness, Edinburgh and Glasgow, visits from elsewhere in the UK and tourists, particularly from North America, Spain, Germany and Scandinavian countries.
Visitors tend to be families, older couples and small groups. We’ve also had large coach tours and are receiving lots of bookings and requests for larger group tours. It will be interesting to map this over the summer and rest of the year to see how this might change.
What do you put your success down to?
I think there is a real desire for people to do something ‘new’ and visit places they haven’t either been to before, or been to in a long time.
We are well positioned for day visitors with excellent transport links to the city which also helps. I think the fact we received such excellent UK-wide media coverage of the opening has raised awareness not just of the museum but also Perth.
I’ve spoken to people from Swindon, Dorset and Bristol who have all come because they saw coverage of the opening in their own local press and on TV and it really made them want to visit. Having such an iconic object as the Stone of Destiny and its story at the centre of the museum also helps as it gives people an easy way into the wider history of the region which they may be unfamiliar with previously.
🔗 REVIEW | Perth Museum review – a magical display of rampant unicorns and naked Picts | Jonathan Jones in the Guardian
How are you going to maintain these visitor numbers?
We are really grateful for the levels of interest in the museum to date but we don’t take it for granted.
We will have a programme of changing exhibition content, rotating spotlight loans and hopefully further acquisitions to showcase to visitors. We will also have a programme of events including talks, tours, activities and workshops so that there is always something new for the returning visitor to see and do.
We’ve put a lot of content on display and it will be really good to offer a programme that enables us to explore that in more depth — from varied perspectives — to keep audiences engaged with the museum as it continues to develop.
Now you can look back on the project with hindsight, what do you think were the biggest challenges and would you do anything different?
Big projects such as this start small and the work creeps up on you without you realising.
We have an astonishingly brilliant team here in Perth but their capacity was incredibly stretched by this project. It was at times a challenge to keep all the plates of something so complex spinning, particularly during the height and aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic when everything felt uncertain and so much time and energy had to be spent closing and reopening buildings for lockdowns.
In hindsight I wish we’d had a few more people working on the project from the outset and that we’d been more proactive in managing our relationships with the local businesses who are now our closest neighbours. These are small things but they would have made a significant difference.
A general election is coming. What is one policy you think the major political parties should promise that would give the biggest boost to the museum sector in Scotland and the UK?
More than anything the sector needs a period of funding stability which allows for longer term planning. That’s not the same as more money (which of course is always welcome), but lurching year to year without knowing what, if any, funding you are likely to receive makes planning for growth really challenging.
If our powerful role in supporting economic development and social mobility was better understood at a political level it would make a huge difference to the sector.
Finally, in every museum project there'll be something unforeseen or unplanned that only comes up after visitors start to use the space. What was the biggest — or most surprising — 'snagging' you had to do?
There have been a few bits of snagging, mostly related to the sheer number of visitors in a very short space of time. We were unprepared for just how much loo roll would be used or how frequently our recycling would need emptying, but we learned quickly!
We also had some really beautiful wayfaring signage around the building which we all loved, but which visitors struggled with, so we’ve made some rapid improvements to that which has really helped.
I think it’s important to remember that we’re building something which is not just about the opening day or weeks and months after that, but about the decades which follow. This has to be a space which evolves and develops over time in response to visitor behaviours, needs, and interests, which means we will always be learning, adapting and improving things.
Perth Museum is open now. Find out more here.
The Hot List
My curated round-up of what’s new to see, do, watch, read and more. From the UK — and around the world.
*Purchasing through links in this section may earn me a valuable affiliate commission
EXHIBITION
1️⃣ Summer Exhibition 2024 | Royal Academy, London
The sprawling — and often divisive — annual art jamboree at the RA returns for its 256th edition. An eye-watering 1,700 artworks are on show, from Royal Academicians Michael Craig-Martin and Anselm Kiefer, to ordinary members of the public.
opens 18 June | book your tickets
FESTIVAL
2️⃣ The Great Exhibition Road Festival 2024 | South Kensington, London
London’s own ‘museum quarter’ sees its annual free festival of arts and science return. Highlights include Paint Lab, which partners artists with scientists to make huge artworks in real time, and an open studios with the V&A's Artists in Residence.
15 — 16 June | find out more
BOOK
3️⃣ Atlas of Never Built Architecture | published by Phaidon
A comprehensive global survey of more than 300 extraordinary unbuilt architecture projects from the 20th century to the present day. It features a vast array of unrealised projects, from museums and arts centres, to artificial islands.
available in hardback now \ buy your copy
EXHIBITION
4️⃣ Rembrandt & the World | at Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam
Although he never travelled abroad, Rembrandt’s etchings capture scenes from far-off lands. Through 40 of these masterpieces, his house museum explores how he achieved it, and how worldly-wise (or unworldly?) he really was.
opens Saturday | find out more
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