This month we’re thinking about money, sustainability and online content for museums. Chewing on the idea we came up with this provocation. 1/

In museums, free online content is seen as a tool for increasing access. However, it's not acknowledged the delivering successful online content requires time, focus and money. 2/

What we've seen is making is often an add on to people’s jobs, content isn’t marketed or given strategic priority beyond “marketing the visit experience”. Lots of online content is difficult to make and under-performing. 3/

Lockdown highlighted this more. Everyone switched to online only and there was lots of talk and press around the value of online content. And yet, simultaneously and particularly in the US, we started to see digital teams being furloughed and cut. 4/

And as venues began to re-open the rubber hit the road and online content went back to being largely marketing to get people through the door. 5/

Financial pressures and, perhaps, the lack of any other model for thinking about the value of content meant that the talk about the importance of digital began to fade. 6/

So we’d like to start thinking:

Does free online content really deliver wider access or could charging for it improve the quality and fund better promotion?

What might the alternatives might be? 7/

If we followed the UK on-site model, what would be free, what would you charge for?

What if we really thought about the online space as an extra branch of the museum - would we fund it differently? 8/

How to get involved:
We don't have the answers, but we believe the community does
We’ll collect what we hear and share at the end of the month
If you want to see some of the questions and where we’re starting from here - https://medium.com/frankly-green-webb/the-real-change-series-no-1-money-8d4bc8f6a543 9/

Remember is no right or wrong answers to these questions - they are questions to help us all thinking differently and reshape the problem space. If you want to share your thoughts privately, send us a DM. 10/10