Official Statistics

Museums and Galleries Performance Indicator Guidance

Updated 11 August 2022

Applies to England

The guidance was updated on 11 August 2022 to include section 6. Regional Engagement. This was initially omitted in error while converting the pdf document to html format.

1. Access

1.1 Number of visits to the museum/gallery (excluding virtual visits)

Actual physical count of the total number of all visits made to the museum/gallery. A visit refers to a single trip to a museum/gallery by an individual and a period of time in which he/she physically accesses the collections.

Performance Indicator includes:

• All “ordinary visits” (those not involving the education programme) to the museum/gallery and educational visits.

• Visits to evening events

• UK and overseas visits

Performance Indicator excludes:

• Visits by corporate hire customers

• Visits by staff and volunteers

• Visits by suppliers and contractors

• Virtual visits

• Visits to touring exhibitions held at other venues

• Instances of participation in off-site outreach programmes

If visits to shops, cafes and grounds/gardens etc. are counted separately from visits to the museum/gallery, they should not be added on to the museum/gallery visits to give a total number of visits. However, visits to the shop, café and grounds/gardens may be presented as a separate optional measure.

1.2 Number of unique website visits

This corresponds with MLA measure 6.3

The total number of website visits by unique users which are recorded for the museum/gallery website. The definitions used here in relation to website visits are those approved by ABC Electronics.

A ‘website visit’ (sometimes known as a user session) is a series of one or more page impressions, served to one user, which ends when there is a gap of 30 minutes or more between successive page impressions for that user. A visit is effectively a near continuous burst of activity by a valid user. A visit is determined when a unique user enters or re-enters a website during a specified period. A visit is determined by counting bursts of activity (page impressions) made by valid unique users that have not re-entered the site within the past 30 minutes. Visits from spiders and robots should be excluded from this measure. Visits are a better indicator of total site activity than unique users since they indicate frequency of use.

A ‘unique user’ is a unique and valid identifier. Sites may use:

• IP + User-Agent

• Cookie and/or

• Registration ID

Where a unique user is calculated by IP + UserAgent, this definition may overstate or understate the real number of individual users. A unique user is, at a minimum, a unique combination of an IP address + the Brower ID and Operating system entering a website by any valid page and is counted once for the given period (the minimum audit period is one calendar month), The number of unique users is an indicator of the site’s audience or reach.

A ‘robot’ is a program that automatically visits websites and reads their pages and other information in order to create entries for an index. The major search engines on the Web all have such a program, which is also known as a ‘crawler’, a ‘robot’ or a ‘bot’. ‘Robots’ and ‘spiders’ are typically programmed to automatically visit sites that have been submitted by their owners as new or updated. Entire sites or specific pages can be selectively visited and indexed. Spiders are called spiders because they usually visit many sites in parallel at the same time, their legs spanning a large area of the “web”. ABC Electronic stipulates that traffic in a site’s access logs visited by such programs should be excluded from this Performance Indicator.

2. Audience profile

2.1 Number of visits by children under 16

This corresponds with MLA measure 6.2.

A visit refers to a single trip to a museum/gallery by an individual and a period of time in which he/she physically accesses the collections. Children are defined as being aged under 16. However, in the context of a school visit by Year 11 groups, pupils who may be aged 16 when they visit should still be regarded as under 16, i.e of compulsory school age. A child in a school class that visits a museum in the morning and returns that afternoon for a second session should be counted as having made one visit.

Performance Indicator includes:

• General visits made by children under 16

• Visits made by children under 16 participating in educational activities at the museum/gallery (see educational visits indicators)

Performance Indicator excludes:

• Instances of children under 16 participating in off-site outreach programmes.

2.2 Number of overseas visits

Total number of visits made to the museum by visitors not usually based or resident in the UK. This indicator relates to tourist visitors and is based on residency and not nationality. A visit refers to a single trip to a museum/gallery by an individual, and a period of time in which he/she physically accesses the collections.

Performance Indicator includes:

• Visitors from the Isle of Man or Channel Islands

Performance Indicator excludes:

• Visitors participating in off-site outreach programmes

3. Learning and outreach

3.1 Number of facilitated and self-directed visits to the museum/gallery by visitors under 18 in formal education

A visit refers to a trip to a museum/gallery, and a period of time spent there. Children are defined as being aged under 18. Any one class that visits a museum/gallery in the morning and returns that afternoon for a second session should be counted as having made one visit.

A facilitated visit is a group visit to a museum/gallery that is led or heavily supported by a member of staff (including volunteers) or a person hired by the museum e.g. an artist, for at least part of the visit.

A facilitated visit is one that has been planned and structured by teachers and museum/gallery staff to support the curriculum, with specific learning outcomes. Welcoming a school on arrival or providing an introductory talk or ‘spontaneous’ activity with a museum demonstrator whilst on the visit does not make it a facilitated visit.

A self-directed visit is a group visit facilitated by a person who is not a member of the museum/gallery staff. For example, it may be led by teachers using resource packs provided by the museum/gallery or downloaded from its website based on the collections. In this instance, volunteers should be regarded as museum/gallery staff.

Performance Indicator includes:

• Visits by children in identifiable SEN units or SEN schools

• Visits by Summer School students that are in support of the curriculum

Performance Indicator excludes:

• Visits by children being educated at home

• Children under 18 participating in off-site outreach programmes

3.2 Number of instances of visitors under 18 participating in on-site organised activities

Children are defined as being aged under 18.

‘Organised activities’ refer to pre-planned, mediated activities, such as talks, lectures, courses, demonstrations, guided tours etc led by museum staff, volunteers or freelancers employed by the museum. It does not include activities such as quizzes, trails, dressing-up etc if the museum’s staff’s only involvement is in handing out packs, badges, costumes etc.

Instance is used to acknowledge the difference between a child and his/her participation in museum/gallery organised activities. The measure is asking for the number of participations by children, as distinct from the number of children participating. An individual may clock up several instances of participation in museum activities over the course of a year.

Participation is the act of taking part in something. An individual (or participant) may participate in event programmes more than once a year. There is no requirement to monitor ‘active’ participation – participation at a workshop for example is essentially attending.

Performance Indicator includes:

• Organised holiday activities, homework and out of school clubs on the premises

Performance Indicator excludes:

• Supervised or unsupervised play with interactive displays and unsupervised completion of activities

• Demonstrations by museum interpreters, even if there is interaction between the visitor and the demonstrator about the collections or displays

• Children under 18 participating in off-site outreach programmes

If 18-year olds participate in organised activities designed primarily for school-age children they should be regarded as ‘children’ in this instance and their participation recorded.

4. Visitor Satisfaction

4.1 Percentage of visitors who would recommend a visit

Submit combined top 2 responses to the following survey question.

How likely are you to recommend a visit to [the museum/gallery] to your friends or family?

• Definitely will

• Probably

• Possibly

• Probably not

• Definitely not

• Don’t know

5. Income Generation: Self generated income

5.1 Admissions

Admissions income (gross income) – i.e. charges made to view the permanent collection or temporary exhibitions.

5.2 Trading income

Trading income (net profit) – i.e. activities which involve selling a product or service to a customer (e.g. retail sales, publications, reproductions, royalties, corporate hire, catering, location hire (TV and films), licensing, image licensing, consultancy, services, learning and access income.

5.3 Charitable Giving (Fundraising/contributed income)

Charitable giving (a.k.a. fundraising/contributed income) is defined as any money or gift received from an individual, charity or private company, which is from one of the following: bequests, legacies, donations and capital grants from individuals, charities, foundations, trusts and private companies, as well as income raised through sponsorship and income from membership schemes.

This should not include any money received from a publicly funded organisation, central government grants, investment income or lottery grant funding.

We have summarised this in the table below:

Indicator	Included in Charitable Giving?
Donations, legacies, bequests and similar income	Yes
Donated objects	Yes
Sponsorship	Yes
Donations from connected charities + Other donations	Yes
Capital grants and donations (not from public bodies)	Yes
Membership schemes	Yes
Trading income	No
Investment income	No
Admissions & exhibition fees	No
Other income	No
Development funds	No
Activities for generating funds	No

6. Regional Engagement

6.1 Number of UK loan venues

A loan venue is defined as any approved borrowing institution, organisation or exhibition facility (or individual researcher). In the event that a loan has been made to an individual (e.g. a researcher) that individual will be counted as a venue. This figure should include the number of UK venues to which loans are in place at the beginning of the year as well as the number of venues to which new loans have been made during the year. Venues in the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands should be regarded as overseas loan venues as these islands are not part of the UK.