Reaching your audience
The University has entered into an innovative partnership with six leading museums, giving our researchers a fantastic opportunity to engage with a huge and diverse museum-going public.
People are more likely to visit a museum than come onto a university campus. Our new Museums and University Public Engagement Partnership (MUPEP) gives researchers the chance to go where the audience is.
The University has teamed up with leading museums – including the Royal Armouries, the Science Media Museum, Eureka!, the Natural History Museum, Leeds Museums & Galleries, and the Thackray Medical Museum – which all attract a wide audience on a daily basis. If you want to engage people with your research, this new Partnership could give you access to that audience.
Researchers will be able to:
- volunteer to take part in an ‘off the shelf’ activity already prepared by the museum: this could be an ideal way to get started in public engagement, and gain experience and training from the museum’s experts
- develop a new activity linked to your research which complements something the museum is already working on
- develop a new, independent activity and run it at the museum
Charlotte Haigh, Academic Lead for Public Engagement with Research, says: “Working with museums can have real benefits for researchers. Museum staff are used to engaging the public every day with their work and their collections, and they have developed a range of creative ways of doing it. Researchers can learn a lot from their expertise. Museums also have strong links with their community and know their audience, so they can help researchers identify and reach a particular demographic if they need to.
“We’re thrilled to have entered into partnership with such outstanding museums, and I’m looking forward to helping Leeds researchers make the most of the opportunity it presents.”
If you are interested in finding out more about working with our museum partners, see the Public Engagement with Research webpages or speak to one of our PE team.
Posted in: Research and innovation