Preparing for Public Engagement

The University of Reading owns and manages the following museums:

• The Museum of English Rural Life
• The Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology
• The Cole Museum of Zoology

The University also manages the following collections:

• Lettering, Printing & Graphic Design Collection
• University Art Collection
• Herbarium
• Geology Collection

We welcome contact and cooperation with academics and researchers from the University of Reading and other higher education institutions. 

Use our websites to research our mission statements, strategies, or recent project descriptions to ensure your idea complements your chosen organisation’s aims and values. Museums are unlikely to work on projects that don’t contribute to their wider idea of what success looks like.

If you have questions about your idea’s fit, contact us to see if you can speak to a member of our team. Alternatively, reach out to another researcher who has worked with us before.. Learn how to contact the right team by visiting the ‘contact’ pages on our websites.

Clearly define what you aim to achieve with your project. Do any of your aims look like Impact as described in the terms used by the Research Excellence Framework? “For the purposes of the REF, impact is defined as an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia.” If you’re not clear what change the project will create, it will be hard for the museum or collection to know whether that’s a change it can help create. 

It’s important to think about the role you envision the museum or collection having in your research project. Do you want to work with museums and collections throughout the project? Do you want to produce public engagement outputs that create impact with different audiences?  And what do you want that impact to be?

Identify the specific public groups you want to reach and try to define them in terms of age, location, activities, community, or shared attributes. Consider their interests and how they might be attracted to attend, take part, or contribute. How will they benefit from your project? And are they a group that the museum or collection already engages, or wants to?

It’s difficult to get people to come along to anything new, especially if they’re not used to coming into the University. The popular saying “if you build it, they will come” is not generally true. If you are not sure about your target audience, talk to staff  who have more direct experience of working with audience engagement.

You also need to think about marketing and promotion. How might you work with the museum and collections teams to generate interest in your outputs? Typically, museums plan promotional materials – including leaflets, entries on websites, and social media campaigns – six months in advance.

Museums tend to decide on their exhibitions more than a year in advance. For large museums planning major exhibitions, the lead time could be over three years. Event programmes tend to be seasonal, and the museum might need at least six months’ notice to organise an event with you. Museums will also tell you that some dates and times don’t work for specific audiences.

On the whole, University of Reading museums do not have changing exhibition spaces, and you are likely to be offered space within main displays rather than a brand-new blank space.

Determine broadly what kind of support you will need, such as access to collections, space, staff assistance, or funding. You don’t need to have a perfect list, but it is problematic to ask for much more when already deep into a project. If you require significant amounts of staff time and museum space, we would expect this to be costed within the research project.

Museums have very limited spare resources. Examples of items that you might need to secure funding for include: PA equipment, catering, cleaning, printing, and exhibition and display equipment. Additional staff time costs may include: project meetings, administration, planning layouts, marketing, managing attendees, hosting events, and University catering.

Museums and collections collect specific metrics to measure success,  and they will expect you to help collect any necessary data. How will you evaluate the project to see if it’s having the impact you hoped for? Museum staff can advise you on this.

Safety and compliance are hugely important to all institutions that serve audiences.

Museums and collections might have specific safeguarding and health and safety requirements to which your project must adhere. It is important to understand about any Acceptable Speaker policies that the University may have in place.

There are also administrative details that require thought, especially around event planning. Events can’t sell alcohol without a licence, and events that charge for tickets can’t give ticketholders free alcohol without a licence. Our teams will require lead-time to deliver events like these, for the completion of necessary processes to obtain event permissions.