A Twist on Digital Offerings: An Interview with Sarah Hutton, Charles Dickens Museum
Literary genius Charles Dickens has given us new writing styles, novels that have expanded the test of time, and a lasting legacy at the private Dickens residence-turned museum.
As a small, independent museum, the Charles Dickens Museum in London showcases the lives and works of this profound author and engages the public in various educational and enrichment opportunities.
We spoke with Sarah Hutton to learn more about the digital and educational offerings at this captivating cultural landmark.
For those who may not know, can you share a bit more about the Charles Dickens Museum?
Founded by the Dickens Fellowship in 1925, the Charles Dickens Museum holds the world’s most comprehensive collection of material relating to the life and work of Charles Dickens. With over 100,000 items including furniture, personal effects, paintings, prints, photographs, letters, manuscripts, and rare editions, the collection is significant for its breadth and depth.
Situated in Bloomsbury, London, the museum provides a time-capsule of Dickens’ first family home which he moved to in 1837, aged 25, and where he wrote Pickwick Papers, Nicolas Nickleby and Oliver Twist.
What is the museum’s mission?
The Charles Dickens Museum is governed by an independent charitable trust which aims to protect and preserve 48 Doughty Street and its museum collections, and to promote the appreciation of Dickens’s works through an on-going programme of exhibitions, events and educational activities.
It is incredible how you can bring this author’s life and works to come to life. How has the museum been affected over the past year with the various lockdowns and closures?
As a small museum with no government or independent funding, we rely solely on income generated by external funding bids, visitor ticket sales and donations to survive. Three lockdowns have thus had a significant effect on the museum. With a large number of our visitors coming from abroad, particularly the USA, we anticipate seeing these effects well into the rest of 2021.
It has been a difficult year for many smaller museums. Within your institution, what is your role?
I work within the museum as the Education Manager in a freelance capacity, as well as in several other London museums and archives. I develop and deliver learning programmes from KS1 right through to adult learning. At the Charles Dickens Museum, my role remains unchanged, but of course I have worked significantly less hours than I might normally have done during the last year. My Education Officer has been partially furloughed throughout the lockdown periods and my twelve freelance teachers have seen a significant drop in work, with only two them receiving teaching or support hours since March 2020.
How has your museum implemented digital solutions during this time? And has this changed from the opportunities pre-Covid19?
During this period, the museum has implemented a variety of digital solutions, including running online talks and events, significantly increasing the range and capacity for online sales through the museum shop and, thanks to funding from ArtFund and Arts Council England, the creation of a new ‘Explore’ element of the website, which includes room-by-room virtual information, a companion ‘Young Explorers’ element and a downloadable activity sheet for each room.
Speaking of the ‘Young Explorers,’ it seems as though you have been offering various online events for families, children, and even adults and schools.
Yes, that’s right, we are now offering online events through the Education department for the first time. Although challenging, in lots of ways this has felt like a really exciting time for education, both at the Charles Dickens Museum and across other the other museums and archives where I work. After an initial feeling of panic, it’s pushed us towards thinking really hard about how we deliver and also, I am hoping, changing delivery in a long-lasting way. Schools, families and adult groups have become open to virtual events in a way that they weren’t before, and it’s allowed a lot of experimentation to take place as to how to deliver that.
Let us dive into the support for families first. How did you design these events to engage children and families?
In terms of our events during term-time, we’ve really tried to focus on the gaps which children, parents and teachers might have been experiencing during remote school learning. We’ve focused on potential ‘crisis’ support such as exam strategy, like the Exploring A Christmas Carol session you mention, but we’ve also worked hard to create new widening experiences for children in lockdown, such as our virtual tours. These live tours allow young people to come inside the house with us, see the different rooms and investigate ‘mystery objects’ from our collection, all from the comfort of their own homes.
We have also offered virtual school holiday sessions in which we have tried to maximise what we can do outside the museum. Sessions have focused on explorations of the portraits in the museum, giving young people a chance not only to see the exhibition of Dickens’ photographs which have been inaccessible during lockdown, but also giving them a chance to create something of their own by sending out art packs to each young person’s home and inviting them to share with us the portraits they create.
And, what were the responses?
We have received some really excellent feedback for our sessions, particularly those aimed at families, and there has been a real sense of making genuine, lasting connections with parents and their children, which feel different to those we have made with onsite sessions.
For the adults, how did you design something that was engaging and exciting, without causing the dreaded ‘Zoom fatigue’?
The overarching principle of the adult Zoom sessions we have designed and run through the Education department is keeping things dynamic and interactive throughout. We have tried to develop as much variation as we can within each session so that participants are seeing different types of things on the screen, are participating in different ways in response to different kinds of questions, and hearing a variety of different voices by varying the presenters and audio/video clips.
Just as with our younger audiences, what we didn’t want was passive screen watching, where cameras are turned off. We wanted to make sure that audiences were given every opportunity to take part and participate, as we believe that learning isn’t really happening when you are only passively receiving information.
Has this sparked any new audience engagement?
One thing that has really changed for us since we started delivering virtually in this way, is the number of groups made up of adults with learning disabilities who have contacted us and wanted to book sessions, which has been really exciting for us.
Looking to the future, how do you see digital aligning with your audience engagement?
At the Charles Dickens Museum, perhaps more than anywhere else I work, I would really like to see the Education department engaging more and more with their audiences in this way.
There is nothing that can beat a trip to a museum in person, of course, but with a very small museum, within which dealing with large numbers of children can prove difficult in terms of facilities and space, a digital experience allows for a freedom of exploration and an availability of time which is not always possible at the physical site.
The way that we have developed an integrated virtual tour using a 3D model of the house, combined with visual and audio presentation materials and a ‘live’ reactive tour guide has created an environment in which we can enthuse and engage children without physical limits. For our visitors who are non- London based, whether that is the UK or abroad, it provides an experience that just would not be possible otherwise.
Do you have any tips for smaller museums interested in online engagement?
My top three tips would be:
1. The age-old heritage education motto — ‘deliver something that can’t happen in the classroom’!
2. Make it novel! In a world of growing online weariness, what can you do that other people aren’t doing?
3. Own your virtual space! The online space is an extension of your museum. It is only when you have created an online environment where you feel comfortable and are in control, that you can help your participants feel safe, relaxed and keen to engage.
And what are you looking forward to at the Culture Reimagined: Digital Champions Summit?
I’m really looking forward to finding out how other delegates have risen to the challenges of successful online engagement. Looking ahead to the world post-Covid, I am also particularly interested in exploring how chargeable virtual education offers will be able to compete against those which are free.
If you would like to learn more from Sarah Hutton and our Digital Engagement panelists or workshop your museum’s digital strategy, please register for Musemio’s free digital conference, Culture Reimagined: Digital Champions Summit on 25 March.
