Museum Development Yorkshire Officer, Dieter Hopkin, talks about the role the Museum Development Yorkshire plays in the cultural community across Yorkshire.

Museum Development work often involves working quite closely with a client museum and using a variety of skills and resources to support them in their organizational growth.

Museum Development Yorkshire provides a mixture of MDO team support and external specialists. From time to time we also call on the specialist experience and advice of other members of the YMT team.

Supporting Whitby Museum in Audience Development and advocacy work is currently involving Dieter Hopkin, the local area MDO, the Malton based museum contractors PLB and Caroline Sinclair, YMT’s Membership Manager.

Whitby Museum, established by the Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society in 1823, which has been on its current site since 1931 has recognised the need to plan for its future in a changing world and to find out more about its audiences and users.

We are working with the new Hon. Keeper, David Pybus and are providing key information and expertise for the museum to understand its audiences, visitors and non-visitors so that it can plan to be more appealing to wider audiences.

As part of the work Caroline has provided a critique of the visitor journey, and advice on promotion effectively working with its supporters. The development support has also ensured the allocation of additional local resources to undertake a detailed visitor survey for the first time.

By the end of the financial year Whitby Museum will have developed a high quality Audience Development Plan which it will use to aid sustainable development which attracts a broad range of visitors thanks to the work of Museum Development  Yorkshire and the wider YMT team.