While writing about how to use emotional branding to market your museum a couple weeks ago, we came across (and linked to) a wonderful toolkit on the subject. That got us thinking about what an excellent resource these toolkits are and how nice it would be to have a roundup of helpful ones, all in one convenient location. So, without further ado…
Accessibility
Evaluation Tools for Museums | Art Beyond Sight
A collection of accessibility-focused surveys for museums to use in relation to disability awareness, website UX, educational programs, and tour strategies.
Community & Experiences
Creative Museum Toolkit | The Creative Museum Project
A collection of innovative and creative museum practices broken into three areas: individual, team, and institutional for “Connecting to Communities,” “Spaces for Yes,” and “Strategies for Success.” The tools are achievable and scalable depending on where you are in your creative thinking process and how open your organization is to introducing creative practices.
Education Outside the Classroom | OTTER
Practical advice on providing children’s educational activities for a variety of age groups and STEAM subjects.
Family-Based Nature Programming | AZA (Association of Zoos & Aquariums)
The “Family Nature Clubs & You” toolkit provides examples of ways to organize and host events both on and off zoo and aquarium grounds, as well as ideas for collaborating with and supporting existing Family Nature Clubs.
Only Local Toolkit | Madison Children’s Museum
Information on what a local approach to children’s museums means; its economic, social, and environmental advantages; how it can help build institutional capacity; and how this approach is important for the museum field. Includes how to find resources to do this in your own local community.
Tools and Approaches for Transforming Museum Experience | Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s Interaction Lab
It contains thoughts and ideas on why transforming museum experience is necessary, questions to help leaders and practitioners move toward designing transformative museum experiences, and tactics to help drive this work forward for audiences and communities.
Marketing & Messaging
Accessible Marketing Guide | Unlimited
There’s a common misconception that accessible marketing means simply providing materials in alternative formats. Alternative formats are certainly important, and require budget. However, it’s worth remembering that there are lots of steps we can take to improve access at low or no cost.
First-Time Audience Engagement | Spektrix and Indigo Ltd.
First-time audiences are key to arts sector success. These recipes for success give you all the ingredients you need to bring first-time audience members back again and again.
Reconsidering Museums Toolkit | Reconsidering Museums Report
All types of museum workers, volunteers, and supporters will find this toolkit useful. The intention is for you to use the resources to articulate the value of museums more effectively and to respond to changing public expectations around the role of museums. There are three types of resources in the toolkit: informational, communications, and advocacy.
Segmentation Made Simple | The Audience Agency
A step-by-step guide to how getting started with segmentation can transform how you communicate with and market to your audiences. We often talk about “our audience” but, in reality, we have multiple audiences with different expectations, who come for different reasons and behave in different ways.
WOW Toolkit for Emotional Branding | Art Fund
Museums should make more use of emotion to grow support. For many members of the public, the barriers to making more use of museums are practical, rather than cultural — but museums do need to break down three big barriers and try to appeal to three specific levels of emotion.
Innovation
AI: A Museum Planning Toolkit | The Museums + AI Network
Senior museum professionals and leading academics across the UK and US discuss what AI might look like for museums in the near future. Use this toolkit when developing future AI projects in your own museum, and signpost colleagues and peers to it as a free resource to support the development of ethically robust project concepts. The toolkit is designed to start a conversation and serve as a foundation for critical engagement with these technologies and the possibilities and challenges that they offer.
Money Matters
Financial Sustainability Toolkit | BC Museums Association
This toolkit will investigate how your organization can take steps towards financial sustainability with earned income, facility use, food service, e-commerce, and travel programs. This is a Canadian association, but the toolkit contains useful info for museums outside Canada.
New Approaches to Growing Audiences | Tessitura
A playbook full of real-world museum sector examples that explore creative approaches to ticketing, fundraising, and more with an emphasis on small changes for big results.
Social Impact
Equity Toolkit | MASS Action (Museum As Site For Social Action)
A readiness assessment tool to help you identify areas of growth plus a guide to practices for creating greater equity within the museum field.
Social Impact Toolkit | MOMSI (Measurement of Museum Social Impact) Research Study
This toolkit was informed by the experiences of the study’s host museums from across the United States. Tips for success and perspectives represent the experiences of museums of various sizes, scopes, and regions.
Sustainability
Off the Shelf: Ethical Transfer, Reuse, and Disposal | Museums Association
Museums need to ensure their collections are well managed, actively used and sustainable and that deaccessioning is an everyday and necessary part of collections management. This ethical advice on transfer, reuse and disposal encourages museums to take a more active approach to appropriate disposal, while ensuring safeguards are in place to protect collections and public trust in museums.
Reduce the Environmental Impact of Exhibitions | The Design Museum
The institution has developed, in consultation with specialists and peer organizations, a concrete framework to support environmental impact work in the making of exhibitions. This has paved the way for the ongoing development of a design guide, touring guidelines, and an impact measurement tool.
Sustainability in the Museum Practice | CİMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art)
The Toolkit was launched in May 2021 and is updated on a monthly basis. It offers museums resources, tools, guidelines, and examples to promote sustainable change towards equity, inclusion, diversity, justice, environmental respect, and sustainable economic growth.
Toolkits for Purchase
Core Documents | American Alliance of Museums
Resources to successfully revise or draft your museum’s core documents. With it comes a combination of tools, guidelines, and action plans to help you understand the importance of — and required elements for — each of the five documents required for Core Documents Verification.
Designing a Museum Volunteer Program | American Alliance of Museums
Now in its second edition, you can get the guidance, policies, worksheets, and real-life examples you need to create successful and sustainable volunteer programs at your museum.
Small Museum Toolkit | AASLH (American Association for State and Local History)
Its chapters offer myriad voices and contexts. The thirty-plus authors in this series work — or have worked — in small museums. They address long- and short-term challenges, while acknowledging and incorporating the reality of shoestring budgets. Available for purchase in hardback or paperback.
This is a hearty start, no matter the size, scope, or type of museum you’re working with. We’ll revisit the topic in the future and find even more resources to help you ascend and thrive.
