Family Friendly Museum Cohort: North West

We are pleased to be launching a free partnership support programme with Museum Development North West for museums located within the Art Council’s Levelling Up for Culture Places in the North West of England, focusing on creating a family friendly museum environment.

The intensive programme will allow four organisations to benefit from free mentoring, training and hands-on support. This programme aims to:

• support museums who do not have a dedicated learning member of staff to become more family friendly organisations
• understand the motivations and barriers for family audiences visiting museums to help you to attract more non-visiting families to your venue
• learn how to develop family friendly interpretation which can help staff to create labels, trails and other resources for families
• promote your family provision to a wider family audience
• enable museums to embed family friendliness as an organisation
• provide museums with online training sessions, one-to-one support, resources and signposting.

Museums will also benefit from working together as a cohort to provide shared learning and peer support.

Read case studies from museums that took part in similar Family Friendly Museum Cohorts in other parts of the UK.

Programme timeline

The free programme will run from July 2023 to March 2024, with an expected time-commitment of one day per month. Additional work may be required to apply learning in between sessions, especially supporting the site visit.

Four virtual training sessions

• Cohort Training Session 1 – 4 July 2023, 10am-12.30pm
  Introduction to the project and more in-depth exploration into how families experience museums and how to engage them.
• Cohort Training Session 2 – 26 September 2023, 10am-12.30pm
  Top tips for developing family friendly content and consulting with families.
• Cohort Training Session 3 – 16 January 2024, 10am-12.30pm
  Promoting your family offer internally and externally.
• Cohort Training Session 4 – 19 March 2024, 10am-12.30pm
  Interacting with families training for front of house staff and volunteers.

Site visit

A Kids in Museums Consultant will visit your site to support a full review of each museum’s activities. This will be scheduled with participants during September and October 2023.

Virtual mentoring

Each museum will have a half day of dedicated consultancy time split between October 2023 and March 2024.

Conditions of Participation

To join this programme your museum must:

• be located in the North West of England and within one of the Art Council’s Levelling Up for Culture Places
• be an Accredited museum or working towards Accreditation. This programme is aimed at organisations without a dedicated learning team.

Museums must commit to:

• sign up two individuals from your organisation to take part in the programme. We recommend these individuals have the ability to make decisions, so you can effectively make changes to your visitor offer
• actively participate in the project, including prompt and timely correspondence with project partners
• completing the MDNW Organisational Health Check during the programme
• have the permission and support of your senior management team
• participate in project evaluation
• provide a case study about the project using a template created by Kids in Museums.

How to apply

Applications are now closed.

To apply for the Family Friendly Museum Cohort: North West, please download and fill in the Application Form (Word Document Download), confirming that you understand the eligibility requirements for participation.

Please email completed forms to us: [email protected]

The closing date for applications is Thursday 1 June 2023 at 5pm.