2016-17 HIGHLIGHTS UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE MUSEUMS
Front Cover: Cam Lates at the Fitzwilliam Museum, 2017. Photo by Alice the Camera. Inside Cover: Temper Theatre perform at the Fitzwilliam Museum for Twilight at the Museums, 2017. Photo by Alice the Camera.
In 2016-17, the University of Cambridge Museums:
Welcomed 696,809 975,329 98% visits. With the Botanic Garden, this figure is...
visits across all nine sites
of visitors rated their visit as ‘good’ or ‘very good’
Engaged 30,610 33,258 8,770 children through people through outreach activities, school visits up 27% on last year
higher education students and researchers
Enabled by 273
museum staff
472
volunteers, an increase of 5% on last year, who gave a total of...
24,384 volunteer hours supporting our work
OUR YEAR IN NUMBERS | 01
I’m very proud to present this year’s highlights from the work of the University of Cambridge Museums Our museums and collections lie at the interface between the University and the communities it serves, and since 2012 we have been working together to develop new, exciting and sustainable ways to reach and engage people with our exceptional collections. This report demonstrates how our museums stimulate learning, enhance and enable research, address barriers to participation and make a substantial contribution to the rich cultural life of the City and region. This work is recognised nationally and internationally. We work strategically with other cultural providers in the region, take a national lead in the museums sector, and provide support to museums across the region. We are grateful to the University of Cambridge, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, Arts Council England, Cambridge City Council, Cambridgeshire County Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund and many other trusts and foundations for their continued support for the work of the University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) and its individual collections.
Dr Liz Hide
University of Cambridge Museums Officer, August 2017
The University of Cambridge Museums comprises: - The Fitzwilliam Museum - Cambridge University Botanic Garden - Kettle’s Yard - Museum of Classical Archaeology - Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology - The Polar Museum - Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences - Whipple Museum of the History of Science - Museum of Zoology
02 | INTRODUCTION
The Botanic Garden Glasshouse Range, Cam Lates, 2017. Photo by Martin Bond.
Engaging People With more than 975,000 visits to our museums and the Botanic Garden this year, our visitor numbers continue to show an underlying upwards trend. This is despite closure for redevelopment of both the Museum of Zoology and Kettle’s Yard this year; we look forward to welcoming many more visitors once they have reopened. Comprehensive visitor research has informed our strategy to engage audiences, both new and returning. We focus our resources where there is most need, and aim to make our programmes fun, relevant and accessible, to inspire curiosity, showcase research and bring benefit to communities and our wider society. This year saw the launch of the UCM’s new Cam Lates programme, offering a curated series of evening events for a young adult audience. Nearly 900 people participated in the first five events, including 80 people for a celebration of the Mexican Day of the Dead at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and 600 for a film showing at the Fitzwilliam Museum. 40% were visiting a venue for the first time. Overall we have seen an increase in younger adults in our visitor profile. With the support of a Community Grant from Cambridge City Council our inclusion programmes proactively enable some of the city’s most isolated and disadvantaged residents to enjoy our museums; these include our new programme of outreach for older people in care settings. Our staff and volunteers take activities out to community sites and events across the City and region, this year reaching 54,000 people through events such as Arbury Carnival and Cambridge’s Big Weekend.
Our popular annual Twilight at the Museums event saw over 9,973 visits to museums in just one evening. 56% of those surveyed were visiting a venue for the first time, an increase of 10% on last year.
04 | ENGAGING PEOPLE
[Cam Lates] was a good way to encourage me to visit a museum I hadn’t really thought about. I’ll definitely visit again as a result Participant Cam Lates at the Museums of Archaeology and Anthropology. Photo by Josh Murfitt.
Joke teeth from The Polar Museum’s Antarctic Collection. Presented to Quintin Riley on the British Graham Land Expedition 1934-37 (Penola) by W.E. Hampton and I.F. Meiklejohn, presumably on or after an occasion on which Riley was treated for his teeth.
Connecting People with our Collections This year, we showcased our exceptional collections through 47 temporary exhibitions; together they attracted nearly 700,000 visits. Research lies at the heart of these exhibitions, often involving collaborations across disciplines, institutions and countries. We loaned more than 670 objects to organisations ranging from the Museum of Modern Art, New York to the new National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art, Newmarket, enabling many thousands more people to experience objects from our collections. As part of our strategy to open up our collections and research, our Why is This Here? project experimented with livestreamed interviews with curators direct from the museums’ stores. The Fitzwilliam Museum marked its bicentenary year with an exciting exhibition programme, including Death on the Nile: Uncovering the afterlife of Ancient Egypt. This exhibition showcased the Museum’s research and technical analysis into ancient Egyptian coffins, and for the first time visitors were able to meet and interact with a working conservator as part of the exhibition. Other exhibition highlights include Hide and Seek: looking for children in the past at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, also at the Fitzwilliam Museum.
More than 7,500 people viewed our Why is This Here? livestreams on Facebook Live and Periscope.
CONNECTING PEOPLE WITH OUR COLLECTIONS | 07
International Scholarship Research continues to lie at the heart of the UCM’s work: we support and provide expertise for a wide range of collections-based research. Our museums are also important research centres themselves, with curators and academic staff collaborating on research projects across all disciplines. Our conservators and collections care staff continue to work together to ensure the highest standards of collections care, and through our programme of specialist masterclasses and training courses their expertise has been shared across the region, country and internationally. This year saw a substantial uplift in the support the museums receive from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)’s Museums, Galleries and Collections Fund, with £2.1m being shared between seven museums and collections. This is an increase of 8% on the last five years, and is in recognition of the role our museums play in supporting the research community beyond Cambridge.
This year the UCM responded to more than 11,600 research enquiries and hosted more than 1,800 research visitors. The Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Prof. Nicholas Thomas, published The Return of Curiosity: what museums are good for in the 21st century, recognised as an important contribution to the museums sector.
‘The real world of our social and economic lives demands much sensitivity to culture and difference’ – the conclusion to Nicholas Thomas’s short but inspiring book might be a rallying call for the troubled political times we are living through Katy Barrett Museums Journal
08 | INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP
Greta Bertram speaking at The Polar Museum. Photo by Josh Murfitt.
Outstanding, inspirational and extremely reasonably priced... Thank you all It’s a great programme and we feel very fortunate to be able to access it Parents of young people participating in Summer at the Museums
Young people participate in Once Upon a Time, a storytelling session at the Botanic Garden, Summer at the Museums 2016. Image courtesy of the Botanic Garden.
Welcoming Children and Young People Working collaboratively has enabled us to transform our offer to Children and Young People, with rich and diverse cross-disciplinary schools and family programming. By integrating these with our inclusion programmes and our Opening Doors work experience offer, we enable many more young people to progress and to build their sense of ownership and belonging. We partnered with Cambridge City Council’s Children and Young People’s Participation Service (ChYpPs) to deliver the Summerdaze programme of activities in parks and recreation grounds across the City during the school summer holidays. We prioritised areas of low engagement in the City, delivering sessions in 10 different locations and engaging over 870 children and adults. We continue to use Arts Award to imaginatively structure young people’s engagement across both humanities and science museums, with 349 young people completing awards across all levels, including one Gold Arts Award. Twelve young people from our Just Arts programme for looked after children completed their awards, as did five from our Young Carers project in collaboration with local charity Centre 33. Our work with Children and Young People in museum settings has been recognised internationally through invitations to speak in Peru, Lahore and Abu Dhabi.
Summer at the Museums family learning programme engaged 9,100 participants through 148 events and 22 partner organisations.
Great activities for kids with lovely support from volunteers Parent of ChYpPs participant
WELCOMING CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE | 11
Staff, Volunteers & the Future Workforce We continue to contribute to developing skills across the museums and cultural sector through our integrated Opening Doors project, which provides a varied range of structured and meaningful volunteering, work experience, internship and apprenticeship opportunities for people at all stages in their careers. This year 472 volunteers contributed more than 24,000 volunteer hours across our museums, while 77 young people took part in our work experience opportunities. We have focused on recruiting young people who may have limited cultural opportunities and/or are not well represented in the museums workforce, and we have developed an important programme of volunteering for wellbeing. We hosted two paid internships and one paid apprenticeship, and saw previous participants progress into employment and further opportunities within the sector. We are working with the University of Cambridge Equality and Diversity team to ensure that our workforce better represents the wider population that we serve.
I really loved having the chance to see parts of the museum you don’t often witness... Seeing this made me appreciate exhibitions more, especially as I was given the opportunity to co-curate a case at the Whipple Work Experience student
12 | STAFF, VOLUNTEERS & THE FUTURE WORKFORCE
University of Cambridge Museums at Cambridge’s Big Weekend. Photo by Josh Murfitt.
Dancing in the Museum: sheltered housing residents take part in a unique pilot project at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Image courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum.
Working with Partners We are committed to addressing local and regional development priorities, in particular addressing social inequality and lack of opportunity, and access to cultural and learning opportunities. We work closely with Cambridge City Council to contribute to their ‘One City Fair for All’ strategy and with Cambridgeshire County Council, especially around delivery of targeted programmes for Children and Young People. We continue to play a key role in the Cambridge Arts and Cultural Leaders group, which brings together key policy makers and strategists in the region, working towards a greater integration of cultural provision across the City, and play an active role in our Local Cultural Education Partnerships across the region. We lead the Museums in Cambridgeshire network, and support museums across the region through our contribution to the regional SHARE Museum development programme, as well as regional and national Subject Specialist Networks. We place enormous value on partnering with a wide range of organisations, including local charities, community groups and networks, so that more people, and more diverse audiences, can experience and enjoy our collections.
Working in partnership with Cambridge City Council’s Independent Living service, we worked together with older City residents and a dance practitioner to plan a new programme, including a music and movement activity in response to the museum collections. 70% of participants had never visited the museum before.
WORKING WITH PARTNERS | 15
Museums Fit for the Future This year has seen substantial progress in ambitious capital developments which will continue to transform access to, and the care of, our collections, opening up new research and learning opportunities for our audiences. The newly completed Museum of Zoology’s Whale Hall is a spectacular showcase for the museum’s iconic finback whale, newly conserved and mounted by specialist conservators supported by a large team of enthusiastic volunteers. Visitors will be welcomed into the new exhibition galleries through the hall once the Museum reopens later in 2017. Kettle’s Yard is also currently closed for a major redevelopment. In 2016, Kettle’s Yard celebrated 50 years as part of the University of Cambridge with exhibitions of the work of 25 artists from the Kettle’s Yard collection in nine spaces across Cambridge. Turner Prize nominee Anthea Hamilton reimagined the Kettle’s Yard collection at the Hepworth Wakefield, and selected Alfred Wallis works have been on display at the Fermoy Gallery in King’s Lynn and the Fitzwilliam Museum. Kettle’s Yard’s successful Chamber Music Concert Series has continued at St John’s College, Open House has been working with communities across North Cambridge, and they have recruited a group of young people for the Circuit Conductors programme. We look forward to both these developments opening to the public during this coming year. Looking further ahead, the Botanic Garden’s three-year Understanding Plant Diversity project will see a comprehensive renewal of the Garden’s important Systematic Beds, while the Fitzwilliam Museum Masterplanning project will transform the Museum for visitors and staff.
We can now get a real sense of what the new Kettle’s Yard will feel like and all the opportunities it will bring to welcome new audiences Andrew Nairne Director of Kettle’s Yard
16 | MUSEUMS FIT FOR THE FUTURE
The Museum of Zoology’s Whale Hall. Image courtesy of the Museum of Zoology.
University of Cambridge Museums Office The Fitzwilliam Museum Trumpington Street Cambridge CB2 1RB W www.museums.cam.ac.uk E info@museums.cam.ac.uk @Camunivmuseums Cambridge University Museums
Image courtesy of The Museum of Classical Archaeology.