Narrative, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience

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The award-holder will undertake empirical work on visitor engagement with interpretative narratives at the British Museum (BM), informed by a critical review of relevant literature in narratology, museology, and museum visitor research. This will be followed by a narratological analysis of the labels and gallery plans of twelve previous exhibitions at the BM between 2001 and 2010, with the aim of tracing the development of interpretation at the BM. As described in the case for support, the empirical work will involve unobtrusive observation of visitors during a visit to a paying exhibition and the free galleries, conducting short and in-depth interviews with individual visitor groups and unobtrusive observation of visitor behaviour in the BM. Visitor conversations around the exhibitions will also be recorded. For the duration of the project, they will work closely with the Interpretation Team at the BM, will meet regularly with the Head of Learning and Audiences (who will be the primary BM supervisor), the BM's Research Manager and the manager of the Interpretation Team, and for an 18-month period will be physically located with members of the Interpretation Team at the BM's offices.The BM has a strong interest in interpretation and the classification of its visitors. It first began an interpretation department in 2004 and has since developed its own unique style of object-based interpretation. It was also one of the first museums in the UK to reclassify its visitors from demographics to identity-based motivations. The award-holder would therefore benefit from the substantial degree of interest and commitment that BM staff already have to thinking about the issues and context of this proposed project. The BM also recognise that the opportunity to undertake more structured academic research on these questions, in collaboration with specialists in the study of visitor meaning-making and narrative-construction, will provide an important opportunity for the development of their own knowledge and interests. The award-holder will also benefit from the close, collaborative relationship between the PI and the BM staff involved in this project, which has developed through a number of meetings over an 18 month period prior to the submission of this proposal.In addition to this broader context of shared interest in this project between UCL Institute of Archaeology (IOA) and the BM, and the wider experience and expertise of BM staff in this area, there are also specific practical benefits arising from the collaborative nature of the project. Through working with the Interpretation Team it will be possible to negotiate access to conduct visitor research in the museum's galleries, including liaising with gallery staff about arrangements for audio-recording at specific times. More generally, this collaboration with the BM offers the potential for an innovative exchange of knowledge between BM staff with expertise in museum visitor research and the PI and award-holder's awareness of current theoretical developments in the field of narratology, which will generate new theoretical and empirical insights. The BM's Interpretation Team has an international profile in developing new approaches to museum evaluation, as well as substantial expertise in a range of evaluation methods. Collaboration with the Interpretation Team therefore offers significant potential for clarifying how concepts from the study of narrative, further refined through the empirical element of this project, might help to inform new ways of evaluating visitor experiences.