Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your hosts are Paul Marden and Oz Austwick.

Fill in the Rubber Cheese 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.

Competition ends on 19th June 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

Skipton Town Hall https://skiptontownhall.co.uk/accessibility/

Noor & Katu https://noorandkatu.com/

Survey mentioned by Paul:  https://www.euansguide.com/media/0uyju30y/final-23-euansguide-results-pdf.pdf

Kids in Museums Open Letter:  https://kidsinmuseums.org.uk/2024/05/dear-change-makers-an-open-letter-from-the-kids-in-museums-youth-panel/

Rubber Cheese 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey - https://rubbercheese.com/survey/

https://carbonsix.digital/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmarden/

Paul Marden is the Founder and Managing Director of Carbon Six Digital and the CEO of Rubber Cheese. He is an Umbraco Certified Master who likes to think outside the box, often coming up with creative technical solutions that clients didn’t know were possible. Paul oversees business development and technical delivery, specialising in Microsoft technologies including Umbraco CMS, ASP.NET, C#, WebApi, and SQL Server. He's worked in the industry since 1999 and has vast experience of managing and delivering the technical architecture for both agencies and client side projects of all shapes and sizes. Paul is an advocate for solid project delivery and has a BCS Foundation Certificate in Agile.

https://rubbercheese.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thatmarketingbloke/ 

Oz Austwick is the Head of Commercial at Rubber Cheese, he has a somewhat varied job history having worked as a Blacksmith, a Nurse, a Videographer, and Henry VIII’s personal man at arms. Outside of work he’s a YouTuber, a martial artist, and a musician, and is usually found wandering round a ruined castle with his kids.

Transcription: 

Oz Austwick: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Oz Austwick. It's been a busy few weeks in the visitor attraction industry and the world at large. So in today's episode we're going to take some time to talk about what's happening, including the recent M+H Show, the upcoming election, the Family Friendly Museum Awards, and of course, the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey. 

Oz Austwick: So, Paul, where have you been recently? 

Paul Marden: So as we are recording, it is currently half term week, a little bit of a damp half term week, which is a bit of a shame when you're in mid May, but went to Longleat at the weekend and went specifically to go and see their Steve Backshall live event, which is happening at the moment. So for those of you that don't have kids watching CBBC at the moment, Steve Backshall does the deadly 60 telly programme, which is kind of animals and nature on CBBC. And Steve brought out some of the best animals on his event at Longleat. So it was really cool. We got to see some. We saw an armadillo, we saw massive, great python and a wolf. He brought a wolf out on stage, which was pretty awesome. 

Oz Austwick: Oh, wow. 

Paul Marden: Yeah, that was cool. So there was lots of oohing and ahring and everybody enjoyed it. Lots of fun, even though it was absolutely gushing down with rain whilst we were there on Monday. So we didn't. Typical english style. We did not let the weather get in the way of a good day. What about you? Where have you been recently, Oz? 

Oz Austwick: We had our bank holiday day out on Sunday, not on Monday. So we had amazing weather. We threw all the kids in the car and drove down to Dorset to Swanage, where I used to spend my childhood holidays. And the place that went was Swanage Pier. I love it there. I spent my childhood, you know, fishing off the pier and swimming in the sea. Sadly, the hotel I used to go to doesn't exist anymore. They knocked it down and turned it into a sewage treatment plant. 

Paul Marden: Attractive. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah, absolutely. But it was absolutely amazing. The sea was very cold indeed. I did get in, had a bit of a swim, as did my eleven year old. The others all chickened out and just sat and watched. But it was lovely, you know, two p machines in the arcades. 

Paul Marden: Oh, I love it. Was it the pushers on the shelves? Coin drop ones? I love that. Yeah, gotta be the two p ones. Can't afford the ten p ones. That's too rich for me. 

Oz Austwick: Who can? I mean, that's vast amounts of money to win anything in those. 

Paul Marden: So Swanage for me just brings back memories of geography, field trips. I remember going there for about a week whilst I was at secondary school donkeys years ago, so. 

Oz Austwick: Right, well, we used to drive down from Yorkshire, where I grew up, and it would take all day to drive down to go to Swanage. I mean, it was, yeah, when we were there. Absolutely amazing. And the hotel was lovely before they knocked it down, obviously. So I have very fond memories and, yeah, nothing has happened to spoil those memories, thankfully. A very popular place for us to go. 

Paul Marden: Lovely day trip. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah, it really was. It really was. So the M+H show, let's talk about that, because that happened and it was quite a thing, wasn't it? 

Paul Marden: It really was. I had such a lovely time, so it was my first time at M+H show. It was. It was lovely event. They pitched it as the big meetup and it really was. I mean, it was absolutely jam packed with people. There were lots and lots of people there when I was there on Wednesday and so many people that I know that I was bumping into that were either running stands, presenting, or just being there and enjoying all the great content and meeting people. It was just such an awesome event. How was it for you as your first big attractions event? 

Oz Austwick: Absolutely, yeah. It wasn't just my first M+H. It was my 1st event. And, yeah, I was gobsmacked, to be honest. It was big. More than anything. I'm just genuinely surprised at how many companies sell museum display cases. 

Paul Marden: There was a lot of glass cabinets on show. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah, there really were. And they were beautiful. But, yeah, I mean, how do you differentiate yourself in that market, I wonder? 

Paul Marden: I would differentiate myself by going around and putting my greasy fingers over all the competition's glass and show how beautiful my cabinets could be. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah, just take my children. They'd make a mess of the glass within seconds of arriving. So did you get to any of the talks, any of the presentations? 

Paul Marden: I did, actually, yeah, I saw a few presentations. I thought they were really good this year. It was quite clever being given your headset that you could wear so that you could hear the presenters. Few people that have been in previous years telling me how great that was this time, because that was a new introduction this year. 

Oz Austwick: Can I just throw a slightly different perspective on that? I turned up late to one presentation and I didn't have the little box and the person who was handing them out was on the other side and couldn't get. So I missed it completely. Yeah, I mean, it's a great way to make sure you can hear what's going on. 

Paul Marden: It's tough. Isn't it? I felt it was a little bit. So when I had a similar experience where at one point I didn't have one, and it feels a little bit. It's hard, but it answers the problem they've had in previous years, where it was the same layout, where it's a big, noisy hall. And this did make it quite possible for people to be able to hear what was going on. But I would imagine as a speaker on stage, that's quite tough talking to people when you know they can't hear your voice. I don't know. I don't know how I'd feel about that. But there was one presentation that really stuck in my mind, and that was Spencer Clark from ATS and Steve Dering from Direct Access Consultancy. And they were talking about breaking down barriers and basically just giving a collection of essential accessibility tips for attractions. 

Paul Marden: And it was just such a great presentation. I always think that if I'm presenting at an event, if one person walks away, having heard one thing from me, I feel like I've kind of done my job. And to be fair to Spencer and Steve, they absolutely nailed that. I walked out of the room at the end of that, fizzing with ideas and walked away. And straight away that evening, I was writing a pitch for a client and things that I'd learned from what they were talking about made it into my pitch presentation. It's directly changing the way I think about accessibility. So I thought that it was a great achievement.

Oz Austwick: And especially for that specific talk. It's not just a talk that says, “Oh, you can make some more money, do if you do this, or you can improve your response rate if you do this.” Actually saying, “This is a way you can help people.”

Paul Marden: Yeah. 

Oz Austwick: And that's now changed the way that Rubber Cheese works and that. What an amazing result for them. 

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. There's a few things, few numbers that stuck in my mind and I kind of. I went and read about them afterwards and we'll put some links in the show notes to the survey that these stats are based on. But there was. There's two things that they said which really stuck in my mind. 59% of disabled people say, if a venue has not shared its disabled access information, I avoid going because I assume it's inaccessible. And 77% of disabled people say I'm more likely to visit somewhere new if I can find relevant access information about the venue. So these numbers, they caught me straight away and they got me thinking and made me realise that making a venue accessible is more than just meeting the website accessibility guidelines, which is kind of a key focus for us in the industry.

Paul Marden: Lots of organisations will want to make sure that they follow the WCAG guidelines, the accessibility guidelines. Anyone that has a large amount of public sector funding will have a statutory obligation to meet those targets. So that's a big focus of people's attention. But just making it so that a screen reader can read your website, or making it so that you've addressed colour accessibility for people that are colour blind isn't enough to make the attraction itself accessible. So if you don't share the content about how your venue is accessible, people will assume you are not accessible. It was an eye opener for me. They gave a really great example. They talked about Skipton Town Hall up in Yorkshire, and they've got a webpage on their site all about the accessibility features of the building. And it was rich with photography. 

Paul Marden: So, you know, it's got pictures of all of the access points into the building, what the door looks like and which part of the building it gives level access into. They had pictures of all of the toilets that they've got and how they're accessible. They're fortunate. They've got a changing places toilet. So this is one of these accessible toilets with a large bed and usually with the equipment to be able to move somebody out of a chair and onto a bed to be able to change them. They've got photos of all of that on the website. So the accessibility information is right there. It's really clear and it gives loads of really good evidence that demonstrates this is somewhere that takes accessibility seriously. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah. 

Paul Marden: Interestingly, this didn't come out in the talk itself, but I found it interesting that the Craven Museum is based in Skipton Town Hall and they won the most accessible museum and the overall winner of the Family Friendly Museums award last year. And we interviewed them back a couple of weeks ago, back in March. So it kind of shows you that making places more accessible for disabled people makes them more accessible for all sorts of people as well. So, you know, it can make it more accessible for families with young children, it can make it more accessible for the elderly, it can make it more accessible for people with temporary access needs. 

Paul Marden: If you've breaking your leg or something like that, you know, you're not permanently disabled, but you need access into a building and making places more accessible to you for disabled people widens the access into the entire venue itself. I've since had a quick look at some of our clients and they're all writing about this. People are putting lots of information onto their website about this sort of thing. I saw Eureka had a special microsite all about it and Mary Rose have got information on their website about it. So this is really important content. And for me, sitting and listening to them talking, going back and thinking about it is really. It's really caught my attention and made me think and do things differently, which, you know, I feel like that's what these sorts of events are all about. Really? 

Oz Austwick: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what a fantastic result for the event. If it opens up the industry to people who were struggling to access it, then, yeah, job done, right? 

Paul Marden: Yeah, completely. What about you? 

Oz Austwick: There were a few highlights for me, but I think one of the things that stood out the most was getting to meet some of the kind of movers and shakers within the community meeting Gordon from ACE, what a lovely guy. Had a fantastic chat to him and it really struck me how there are so many people and organisations who exist within the sector purely to try and improve the whole sector for everybody. I like it anyway because I've got a real interest in the historical side of things, museums and stately homes and castles that really talks to me and I take the kids out to places, so it's nice to know, but to actually be part of an industry where everyone's trying to help each other, I think is really lovely. 

Paul Marden: It really isn't it? Yeah. There were so many people like Gordon that you met at the event and they just make you feel good, they make you buzzy. There's a huge kind of collective recharge of batteries and fizzing of ideas that comes from these sorts of events, it was just brilliant. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah. That's what networking should be, right? 

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. I was going to do a shout out for one person that had a stand. I've got a card that I picked up. This is a lady called Sonya Varoujian and she runs an organisation called Noor and Katu. They import these handmade crocheted little animals, finger puppets and toys and things. I went straight over to those because my daughter is crocheting like mad. She got taught by grandma a couple of months ago. It blows my mind. I have absolutely no idea what's going on as she's doing this and all of a sudden, out the other side comes a squid. But this little organisation Sonya was living and working in Armenia got the idea when she returned back to the UK and now imports these toys and they're for sale in a bunch of different attractions. 

Paul Marden: I just thought it was really lovely that these were fair trade, they were nice, creative things that I know my daughter would absolutely lap up at an organisation and it's completely sustainable and makes a big difference in communities that are not well served. 

Oz Austwick: Absolutely. And I know that you, like me, almost certainly get dragged into gift shops at visitor attraction sites on a regular basis and there comes a point where you've seen the staff and to have a company out there that's not only doing good things, but providing something a little bit different, a little bit unique that you can buy in a gift shop and actually feel like you've done something worthwhile and bought something that isn't just going to fall apart in a couple of weeks. 

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. 

Oz Austwick: I think that. Yeah, yeah, it would be really nice to see more things like that. So, yeah, go and check them out if you're listening or watching. 

Paul Marden: Did you see any talks yourself that  caught your attention? 

Oz Austwick: Yeah, yeah, there were a couple that sprung to them. But firstly, I wanted to just briefly mention the talk that I didn't get to watch. I'm a YouTuber, not a massively successful one, but I'm part of a YouTube community. So when I saw that the Tank Museum was doing a talk about how they've used the YouTube creator community to boost their own social media and their own income, I thought, “Fantastic, I'll go along and see that.” Because my brother in law, who's a far more successful YouTuber than I am, was actually part of that. He got invited down to make a video about his favourite tank. So I turned up and obviously I thought I was on time. I was too late. It was hugely crowded, there was no seats, there was no space. So I was stood in the kind of the corridor. 

Oz Austwick: It's not really. Is it a corridor? The path, the walkway, I don't know what you call it. And, yeah, got moved on by the venue staff because.

Paul Marden: Loitering in the corridors. 

Oz Austwick: We were effectively blocking the way through. And rightly so, you know, they need to make sure access is maintained. But, yeah, I didn't get to see that talk, which I was a little bit sad about, but a couple of talks that I did get to see, which stood out, was the Bloomberg panel discussion hosted by Kripa Gurung. They're doing some amazing work. And the fact that it's a completely philanthropic organisation, I think is quite amazing if you haven't come across what Bloomberg are doing with Bloomberg Connects the app. But, yeah, that was really interesting. Talking about what they're doing, how they're getting organisations online, having the museum at the home and English Heritage there, talking about what they're doing with Bloomberg Connects was great. 

Oz Austwick: But I think, if I'm being honest, my favourite talk was the Castle Howard Christmas events talk, partly because it was really interesting, talking about the marketing and how they've created this amazing Christmas event that has a real following and people come back year after year and they've done that on purpose and it's been hugely successful. But Abby from Castle Howard, she's just hilarious. She's been a guest a couple of times, talking about how she hospitalised an old man on his very last ever day at work and then how she sacked Santa. Just, yeah, if you get a chance to go and see their talks go along, because it's not only entertaining but informative, too. So, yeah, that's probably the highlight for me. 

Paul Marden: Cool. I saw a lovely presentation. Longtime listeners will know that I'm a Kids in Museums trustee. So I went over and watched the Kids in Museums Youth Panel and it was really interesting because they had a summit focused around young people and their needs in museums back last year. They had a webinar where they talked about it a couple of months ago and I was blown away by these people who are part of the Kids in Museums Youth Panel. You know, young people at early stages of their careers, some of them are at uni still. Some of them are in the early stages of their first jobs and just talking so articulately about their experience of museums, what they think museums should change, what's going well, what could be done better? 

Paul Marden: And so I wasn't disappointed when I saw them speaking in real life. They did a cracking job talking about the museum summit and what they think are the issues in the museum. So there was a couple of stats I pulled out of it. Over 90% of young people don't feel considered as an audience and represented in museums, which that blows my mind, because we talk a lot about audience with the people that we work with, and the needs of young people are central to many of the conversations that we have about audience. So there. That made me think, “Oh, is there a problem where the conversations that do get had are not being discussed in the right way? Is it a problem of perception? 

Paul Marden: Is it that young people don't perceive that they're being considered when in actual fact they are, or is it a lack of involvement and so they feel like it's being done to them rather than being done with them?” Yeah. Food for thought. If most young people feel that museums don't consider them as part of their audience, that's problematic. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah, absolutely. Isn't it? I mean, I'd be amazed if the people that were running the museums had the same opinion. I suspect they clearly think they are doing things for young people and children, but maybe they're just not asking those young people what they want. 

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So there's a few things that the youth panel suggested could be done. So loads of kids go on school trips to museums. But have a guess what you think the minimum age is to go unaccompanied into a museum in some museums? 

Oz Austwick: Well, I mean, I'd expect that it would probably be 16. That feels like a reasonable age. 

Paul Marden: There are museums where you have to be 18 to go unaccompanied into the museum. 

Oz Austwick: Why? 

Paul Marden: You can go and get a job, you can go and pay your taxes, but you can't go into the museums on your own because you're not a responsible adult. That's interesting. And I use that word with a great deal of misuse. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah. I just struggle to work out how you could justify that. 

Paul Marden: I know. 

Oz Austwick: Well, obviously there are one or two museums out there where you probably need to be 18 to go in and have a look. Yeah. I mean, in general, why 18? 

Paul Marden: Yeah, I think standards of behaviour, you can expect people to behave in a certain way, but that doesn't. That's not dependent on age, that's dependent on your behaviour. 

Oz Austwick: And the sort of teenager that genuinely wants to go into a museum is probably going to behave pretty well when they're in that museum. 

Paul Marden: Yeah, you'd think. So the next thing I might play into this, but one of the things the youth panel want is to see more youth groups being represented in the decision making process in museums, so that they better represent communities and highlight career pathways for young people. Including more working class histories in museums would help people feel more represented. I thought that was quite interesting. We've been to a few recently where we did not necessarily see stories of our background being well presented at the museum. 

Oz Austwick: Yes. 

Paul Marden: Enough for both of us to have noticed it and commented it as we were wandering around. 

Oz Austwick: It's interesting because some do it really well. 

Paul Marden: Yeah. 

Oz Austwick: And coming from a historical background with a focus on arms and armour, there's a real issue that the sort of arms and armour that have survived from the mediaeval period are the unusual ones and they're the ones in the museum. So that's what people see. And you kind of assume that this fancy, ornate, decorated, enamelled armour is pretty standard, but the bog standard stuff didn't survive and maybe that's the issue when you're looking at furniture in a room, in a house, the fancy furniture is the one that survived because people cared about it. It wasn't being used on a day to day basis. 

Paul Marden: Yeah. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah. I don't know, but you're absolutely right, it does give you a slightly skewed view of what’s actually out there. 

Paul Marden: Yeah. Look, if you're interested listeners, in finding out more about what the Kids in Museums Youth Panel are looking to achieve, they've just published an open letter to changemakers within the sector where they talk passionately about what they think the sector needs to do to change. There's a lovely video that goes alongside the open letter where these young people are using their voice to be able to advocate for change. It's great, it's really interesting and I highly recommend everybody goes and watches the video and reads the letter and then does something about it. 

Oz Austwick: So, anything else from M+H  that we need to talk about? 

Paul Marden: The lovely meal and drinks afterwards. The very lovely Bala McAlin and Stephen Spencer, both once of these parts, were hosting an event Wednesday evening, I think it was, which was absolutely lovely. Well attended. Drinks flowed, food came out. It was delightful. Very much appreciated. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah. And I have very mixed feelings about the fact that I decided to leave a little bit early. 

Paul Marden: But you got home at a reasonable time and I didn't manage to drag my backside in the front door until about half midnight. And it wasn't because I had a wonderful night, it was because I spent most of it in Waterloo station trying to get home. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah. A bit of an issue with the train. 

Paul Marden: Yes. I would much preferred if I'd actually stayed at the drinks event and then dragged myself into Waterloo later once they'd actually sorted themselves out. 

Oz Austwick: So I think at this point we probably need to talk about how the government have ruined our plans for the next few months of podcast content. 

Paul Marden: Yes.

Oz Austwick: Because we've been thinking for a little while that it would be a really nice thing to do to talk to the main political parties about their idea for the visitor attraction industry in the future. And obviously our hands been forced a little bit. 

Paul Marden: It hasn't it? We're not the only ones. I think quite a few people were caught on the hop a little bit when Rishi announced the general election on the 4th of  July. So, yeah, events, dear boy, have somewhat overtaken us, haven't they? 

Oz Austwick: Yeah, just a little. So, yeah, we're probably not going to do that if for no other reason that the Labour Party shadow minister isn't standing again, for all the right reasons. But it does mean that there's a bit of an imbalance there and if we can't talk to all the parties equally and get their ideas, we probably shouldn't talk to any of them. 

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. 

Oz Austwick: That being said, we can still talk about it, right? 

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. The lovely people at ALVA Bernard, who presented at M+H and talked about this very subject, amongst other things, they've done a lot of policy work and have prepared some thoughts around what they think is important to the sector, around strengthening the visitor economy, protecting arts and culture and heritage and supporting the natural environment, whilst at the same time looking after all of those people that either work or give up their time to support the sector. So, yeah, there's a few things in there that I thought it was worth us just touching on, because I think it's really important that we think about what the future of the sector could look like in just a very few weeks time as the country changes. They've got some interesting thoughts. 

Paul Marden: Unsurprisingly, the sector would probably benefit from some reduced taxation and there's quite a number of different areas within which ALVA think that the taxation burden on the sector could be lessened. And similarly, they've also got ideas around how funding for the various arts councils and support organisations around the different home nations would make a substantial difference, especially around capital funding would make a big difference to the sector. But there was a few very specific arts which jumped out as me, as being kind of. They really meant something to me. So there's one. ALVA says, “They ask all the political parties to ensure culture, life, performance, arts, heritage and nature are experienced by every child and young person and are within the national curriculum.” Yeah, I think this is so important. Yeah, I think I've talked on the podcast before. 

Paul Marden: This was one of the big COVID victims. So many schools during COVID had to stop taking kids out and experiencing the outside world and going to day trips and the like. And I just. I think it is so important. It's really hard for many schools. They've got such a burden around meeting the curriculum, budget cuts, all of the calls on the staff time is so hard for them to prioritise day trips. But I've seen him in my own daughter's school. Just the powerful impact it has on the kids. They're a school where the kids barely spend a whole week in class. They're usually out doing something outside of school, which I just think is brilliant. And I got to tag along with them. A few months ago. We went to London. 

Paul Marden: We did the trip to the Science Museum, took the kids up on the train and on the tube, which was, let me tell you, quite scary. 

Oz Austwick: Did you manage to bring them all back? 

Paul Marden: Counted them in and counted them out and it was all good. It was all good. But then went into parliament and that was just brilliant. Taking a bunch of ten and eleven year olds into parliament and bless them, it was the tail end of the day. So they were all shattered. But they were so completely engaged by it. They saw Priti Patel walking through the central lobby. They saw all of these different ministers, their advisors, and they got to sit in the chamber of the House of Commons and seeing debate going on. It was all about Horizon scandal. It was just. It was such a brilliant day trip for the kids and how much does it enrich them.

Paul Marden: Yeah, okay, me and Millie go to these places all the time, but, you know, there might be one or two kids in that school for whom this is the only time that they get to experience a day trip into London and see one of the big national museums and go in and enjoy parliament. I never got to go into parliament when I was Millie's age. 

Oz Austwick: No. And I think it's really important to say that. I mean, both you and I live in the southeast of the country in a relatively rural and affluent area and that even here with the schools that we've got, they're struggling to do this. And then when you look at what the inner city schools are having to deal with and some of the northern cities and northern towns where they're really struggling with population poverty up there, how are those kids getting similar opportunities? 

Paul Marden: Yeah. 

Oz Austwick: And the fact is they're not. 

Paul Marden: No, no. 

Oz Austwick: And that's something that I can't agree with ALVA more on this, that this needs to be prioritised because this is the future. 

Paul Marden: Yeah. Another area where we've had direct experience, from conversations we've been having recently is around supporting local authorities in their care of civic collections and culture. I mean, you've spoken to so many places recently, haven't you, where cultural budgets are just being eviscerated. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've always had a kind of a love of finding those little obscure rural town museums because you find some amazing things in them. My local museum, it's a tiny little market town and they've got like a special area of Egyptian relics. They've got a mummy in a sarcophagus in this little museum that's what, four rooms? But they've got no funding. And there's so many times we're talking to museums like this. They know what they need and they know what they want, but they just don't have the money to be able to do it. 

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. 

Oz Austwick: They come to us looking for a website and they're just struggling for budget to do anything. 

Paul Marden: Yeah, which is where things like that Bloomberg Connect app comes in, because when you look on the Bloomberg Connect site, you've got big national museums like National Portrait Gallery in there using the Connect app. But there were some little ones in there as well that I saw, you know, small local town museums just like the ones that you're describing in there using that app. 

Oz Austwick: I was looking through the app last night and my eye was caught by, I think it was Beverly Town Hall. I was born in Beverley, up in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and I sort of thought, “Oh, I'll have a look at that.” And I just got drawn in and it was just this amazing experience. I didn't even know Beverley had a town hall that was open to the public, nevermind that had a collection that you could view through the Bloomberg Connect app. So, yeah, I guess maybe a little bit more in the way of awareness, but it shouldn't be down to a philanthropic organisation like Bloomberg to keep these museums and collections going. 

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So look, the ALVA kios of the political parties is up there on their main website. Really worth going and looking at. As the manifestos are published, you'll be able to see what the political parties are doing. There's already some information on the various different party websites around what they want to do within the culture and tourism sectors. But I think we've got a few weeks yet to wait until we see the actual cast iron commitments come out in manifestos. So that'll be interesting to see the direction that takes. 

Oz Austwick: And I suspect we're going to talk about this a little bit more over the next few episodes, perhaps. 

Paul Marden: Yeah, maybe. The other thing I will mention, this is a shameless plug because I work as a trustee at Kids in Museums. We're working on this flagship awards ceremony and it is absolutely delightful event lots of people enjoying themselves doing amazing work and there is a sponsorship opportunity. So if you're like us, one of those kind of sector supporting organisations that serve the attraction sector, and you'd like to support the good work of Kids in Museums and be associated with that amazing event, give me a shout, because I can point you in the direction of the right people to talk to get that sponsorship in place and I know it will make a massive difference to them. Have you been busy recently? What have you been up to? 

Oz Austwick: Do you know what? Weirdly, it's been a little bit busy. Yeah. I mean it feels like it's always a little bit busy, but it's been specifically a little bit busy because as of yesterday we've launched the third annual Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey. 

Paul Marden: Excellent. 

Oz Austwick: That's quite a mouthful, isn't it? It'd be really nice to find a catchier name for it than that. 

Paul Marden: I always talk about naming is the hardest problem in computing, but naming is the hardest problem in marketing, I think. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah, let's be honest, what it's actually known is pretty much new survey brackets two. So it's the third one. The first one was a bit of an eye opener, the fact that there wasn't anything already out there and we did this and it was amazing. The second one, we tried to refine it and we got some really nice, interesting data. This is probably the first time we've been able to sit and look at it and go, “Right, okay, now we've got a couple of years worth of results. We can look at what we actually need to be asking and what's just out there because we want to ask, because it's interesting and what information we're not actually getting.”

Oz Austwick: So we've really cut back on the number of questions and I think it's probably safe to say that isn't going to have a massive impact on the quality of the information that we get, but it's also allowed us to add in a few extra little bits as well. So yeah, we're talking about sustainability and the use of AI and yeah, I'm really excited. 

Paul Marden: Yeah. 

Oz Austwick: I haven't actually looked to see if people have started filling it. 

Paul Marden: I can't look, I can't look. I just kind of want to look through my fingers. 

Oz Austwick: I'm not sure I want to know, but yeah. So if you are listening to this, if you've got this far into the podcast and you work at a visitor attraction, please go and fill this in. There's a link in the show notes. There's links on LinkedIn, on X. Everywhere we go. There will be a link for this. And if you can't find it, go to rubbercheese.com. And it's right there at the top of the homepage. There's a link. 

Paul Marden: Yeah. rubbercheese.com/survey, slip that right in there. 

Oz Austwick: Yeah. I think one of the things we've done differently is the advisory board. We talked about this a little bit in the last episode. We did what an amazing thing to have these guys on board. I think they've saved us months of work by just being clever. 

Paul Marden: They've improved the quality of what we've done. Asking us, what on earth are you asking that question for? Those answers are exactly the same answer. Can't you make it easier for me to know what I need to gather before I type my data in? 

Oz Austwick: Exactly, saying, “Oh, well, I wouldn't fill it in because you don't tell me what I need to do.” Okay, well, we'll do that. It's not a problem. Yeah. How amazing. So thank you to them and to Expian for sponsoring the advisory board. 

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. And we're working through now focusing on the kind of engagement plan to increase more people. And then, you know, whilst we have a lull as people are going to be filling in their survey, we'll start planning, looking at the data, seeing where the stories lie. We'll talk about that in some future episodes, but starting to gather together what the final report looks like and the stories that will be told. And, you know, we're really grateful to Convious for sponsoring us on the digital survey and the digital report that will follow and then a bunch of webinars that will run afterwards. So, you know, the call to action for us is get in there, find your data, read the guidance notes, go and fill in the survey. 

Paul Marden: But then once you've done that, come and talk to us because, you know, we'd love to know what you would like us to dig in to. It is amazing how this rich resource of data that we've got and people ask us questions that we've never even thought of, and we look at the data differently and we find a different story in there. So without your input, without you telling us what's interesting you, with what's bothering you, what's challenging you, we don't look at the data properly and we don't find those stories for you. So come and talk to us. 

Oz Austwick: Is this how it feels to kind of run a museum, to be the custodian of this amazing thing and just want people to come and engage with it. Yes, because that's kind of it. You know, we've got this amazing data and it's got all of these wonderful stories within it that are relevant to anyone in the industry and we just want to talk about it. So, yeah, please fill in the survey, talk to us about it and, yeah, with any luck, this one will be bigger and better than the last two. 

Paul Marden: There we go. Couldn't ask for more than that, could we? 

Oz Austwick: No. Before we go, because we're going to wrap up relatively soon, there's one thing that I noticed that we failed to do last time and we talk a lot about giving away a book and I think we even said we were giving away a book in the last episode and then never mentioned a book. So, Paul, do you have a book that you'd like to recommend? 

Paul Marden: Do you know what, Oz? It's funny you should say that. I absolutely do. I have this book Delivering the Visitor Experience by also previously of these parts, Rachel Mackay, who is, I believe, at Hampton Court Palace, and she's written an amazing book about what it is to create, manage and develop unforgettable vista experiences at museums. I don't want a museum, but it was really interesting for me to be able to read this book all about the process that people that do run museums go through to develop, craft and tell that story and give that amazing experience. It's a brilliant book. Heartily recommend it. And if you retweet the show note saying, “I want Paul's book”, then you too could get an amazing copy of Delivering the Visitor Experience by our friend Rachel Mackay. 

Oz Austwick: Amazing. Thanks very much. 

Paul Marden: Slightly out of breath because it will be edited out, I'm sure, but I had to run up the corridor and go find the book and take it off the shelf and bring it down because although I was completely organised with all my stuff from M+H show, did not have my book recommendation. Well, there you go. I think that just about wraps us up, doesn't it? It's been a busy few weeks for us with M+H show and all that's going on and that doesn't look to abate over the next few months as we get the survey into shape and find out what's happening in the sector. 

Oz Austwick: So I think it's only going to get busier. 

Paul Marden: It is. How is this your first time actually hosting? 

Oz Austwick: I think I prefer this one. Maybe that's because it's not my first one. Or maybe it's just because I. 

Paul Marden: Because you're power hungry and you took the captain's chair. 

Oz Austwick: Make it so. Yeah, definitely Picard rather than Kirk. But that's because he's a West Yorkshire man. 

Paul Marden: Is he really? You've got too much hair to be Picard. I'm sorry.

Oz Austwick:  I'm not wearing my Star Trek uniform.

Paul Marden: On that bombshell. Thank you very much, mate. 

Oz Austwick: Thank you. 

Oz Austwick: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on X for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. 

Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, SkiptheQueue.fm.

The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! 

• Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industry
• Gain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion rates
• Explore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performance
• Learn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion rates
• Uncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversions

Take the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report
 

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your hosts are Paul Marden and Oz Austwick.

Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.

Show references:

https://rubbercheese.com/survey/

https://carbonsix.digital/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmarden/

Paul Marden is the Founder and Managing Director of Carbon Six Digital and the CEO of Rubber Cheese. He is an Umbraco Certified Master who likes to think outside the box, often coming up with creative technical solutions that clients didn’t know were possible. Paul oversees business development and technical delivery, specialising in Microsoft technologies including Umbraco CMS, ASP.NET, C#, WebApi, and SQL Server. He's worked in the industry since 1999 and has vast experience of managing and delivering the technical architecture for both agencies and client side projects of all shapes and sizes. Paul is an advocate for solid project delivery and has a BCS Foundation Certificate in Agile.

https://rubbercheese.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thatmarketingbloke/ 

Oz Austwick is the Head of Commercial at Rubber Cheese, he has a somewhat varied job history having worked as a Blacksmith, a Nurse, a Videographer, and Henry VIII’s personal man at arms. Outside of work he’s a YouTuber, a martial artist, and a musician, and is usually found wandering round a ruined castle with his kids.

Transcription: 

Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in and working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Paul Martin. In today's episode, I'm joined by my new co host, Oz Austwick, the Head of Commercial at Rubber Cheese. Following the success of the Rubber Cheese Visitor attraction website survey in 2022 and ‘23, we're going to look back at how the previous data has stories still to be told and look forward to what the 2024 survey has to offer. 

Paul Marden: Welcome, Oz. Welcome to Skip the Queue. This is one of our regular Skip the Queue episodes where the Rubber Cheese team take a little bit of time to talk about some of the work that we do.

Paul Marden: And I think this episode we want to talk about the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction survey of websites that we've done for the last couple of years and what we're planning to do in 2024. So that's going to be a nice conversation for us to have. But we always start these episodes with a little conversation about places that we've been recently. So we spare each other the indignity of the icebreaker questions and talk about an attraction that we've been to recently. So why don't you tell me, Oz, where have you been recently?

Oz Austwick: The most recent one was that my wife and I took the kids to Farleigh Hungerford Castle in Somerset. It's English Heritage castle. Absolutely lovely. Nice and rural. I mean, it's just beautiful, lovely ruined castle. There's a fantastic chapel with mediaeval wall paintings. But, you know, I mean, if you like historic sites, if you like castles, it's just a great one.

Paul Marden: Wow, that sounds good.

Oz Austwick: How about you, Paul? Where have you been recently?

Paul Marden: I have been to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard with my daughter. We've been a few times to Mary Rose and really enjoyed that. But this time went. We had an explorer pass, which meant we could go all over the dockyard. So went and saw lots of things. We saw the victory being refurbished and went on board. They've got a lovely old submarine on the other side of the harbour, which is a great place to see. But the bit that really captivated my attention whilst were there that made me think, “Oh, I've got to remember this one to talk about on the podcast” was they had some students there doing exhibition from the university and they were marine biologists and it was just such a lovely opportunity.

Paul Marden: They had microscopes, they were talking all about plankton and different types of microorganisms that you find in the water. But my daughter's ten years old and she loves going to museums because I drag them to them all the time. She loves learning about this sort of thing. What I liked about it was you had some 18, 19, 20 year olds who were exposing themselves to kind of a work experience type model, but talking to the kids and showing them. And the kids were learning as they were going. They got lots of opportunities to look through microscopes. They were doing some lovely drawing and art of the microscopic organisms that exist in the water.

Paul Marden: And I just thought, I can talk about amazing jobs and what you can go and do in science and what you could do in different of roles in real life, but there's something about somebody that's only maybe ten years older than you telling you what they're learning at the moment and what learning in a university context looks like and the cool stuff that you get to do. And as amazing as I am, I'm not quite as impressive as a 20 year old.

Oz Austwick: And modest too. 

Paul Marden: Amazing, dad. I say it all the time, but it's not as compelling when I do it. So going to the museum and meeting these young people that are only a little bit older than Millie is and seeing what they do was just. It was such a lovely opportunity. And I know that work experience at museums is quite a controversial subject because I know a lot of people, it can be exclusionary for some people. The only way that you can get into a role is to work unpaid as a volunteer in a museum to get into a role later on. But I just loved the idea that we had these students that were local telling the story of what the University of Portsmouth does in marine biology and how these two major institutions came together.

Paul Marden: And you could just see Millie's eyes light up as she learned about this amazing stuff. It was brilliant. I loved it.

Oz Austwick: Awesome. Do you know what? I've not been down since. God, it can't have been that long after the Mary Rose landed there. It's a long time ago. Yeah. I was a much younger Oz at that point.

Paul Marden: I think you might notice that the Mary Rose looks substantially different maybe than the last time you went.

Oz Austwick: Do you know what? It was effectively an aircraft hanger full of water when I was there. So, yeah, definitely go down. And while we're here, I just want to say. And I might check out their lovely new website, too.

Paul Marden: Why? Do you know somebody that might have worked on that?

Oz Austwick: Yeah. Funnily enough, I do. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic agency, but let's leave it there.

Paul Marden: Yes. So you've just turned up on the podcast and I'm talking to you and.

Oz Austwick: Yeah, nobody knows who I am, do they?

Paul Marden: Yeah, exactly. So why don't you, Oz, just take a few minutes to tell the audience who you are, what you do and why you're here.

Oz Austwick: Yeah. Okay, so obviously I'm Oz. I am Head of Commercial at Rubber Cheese, also at Carbon Six, the sister agency. I originally came on board as kind of Head of Marketing and then when Kelly decided to move on, I've taken on some of her role. Obviously you've taken on some of her role as well. So my background is in social media, video first as a content writer in SEO. I've worked in technology, I've worked in healthcare. I've done all sorts of things over the years and I've always kind of found myself back in the world of digital wherever I try and go. So for me, as somebody with a real passion for history and historical sites, there's a story there, maybe for another episode.

Oz Austwick: But I love the idea that I can work in an agency doing what I do well for venues and organisations that I really love. And I think that's quite a special thing, to be honest.

Paul Marden: It's a bit of a privilege, isn't it, to be telling the stories of some of the places that we're working with.

Oz Austwick: To be able to go for a meeting and sit and have coffee with somebody in the middle of one of the most glorious, historically significant buildings in the country. It's just. Yeah.

Paul Marden: For a history buff like you, that. That's pretty good.

Oz Austwick: It is, yeah. I'm all about the history.

Paul Marden: So we are today going to talk a little bit about the Rubber Cheese visitor attraction websites survey and we run that now for a couple of years and we just want to talk a little bit about some of the plans that we've got for the year ahead. But maybe let's recap, what have we done in the last two years and a little bit about the survey in the last year?

Oz Austwick: Well, I mean, I guess there'll be people listening who may not have come across the survey before. So I think from a broad context point of view, a few years ago, Kelly, who was the original founder of Rubber Cheese, was looking for industry standard data and it turned out that there wasn't any. And at that point she was faced with two options to either just go, “Never mind, and walk away” or go, “Oh, well, I better do something about it”. And she thankfully took the latter route. So for the last two years, this is year three, Rubber Cheese has put together a survey and sent it out to as many visitor attractions as possible and asked them for their views and their objective figures as well, related to their digital presence.

Oz Austwick: So whether that's the marketing side of the website, whether it's e commerce, whether it's ticketing, we want to know it all and then we combine it all together, do our best to analyse the data and publish a report. Obviously, the world of digital changes very rapidly, and obviously when you do something like this for the first time, you're not going to get it quite right. So it's evolved year on year and. Yeah, here we are. And it's evolving again. Right?

Paul Marden: Yeah, exactly. So we had, you know, more than double the number of respondents last year compared to the first year. We had some amazing people that came together in London for a launch event in the first year, and then we had a great webinar last year launch.

Oz Austwick: I just want to interrupt briefly at this point. If you were at that launch event, then we have already met. I'll leave it there.

Paul Marden: Yes, part of the Rubber Cheese family before you were even part of the family. Yeah. So we've had success in the first two years and we've used that report ourselves and we know lots of other people have used it as well. So we've had some lovely conversations with attractions who have used it as part of their pitch process to try to identify what good looks like and how to select other people to work with across their different digital presence. So be at the marketing site, the ticketing engine or whatever. But I think one of the things that you and I both said is that it's a challenge, isn't it? Because we can go looking for stories and then we can tell stories that exist in the data that we find.

Paul Marden: But it's not quite the same as when people ask us questions, because they tend to ask us questions we haven't really thought of. And then we go looking at the data in a different light, don't we, and find just amazing things that exist in the data.

Oz Austwick: It's a constant surprise to me, both how different every attraction is and yet how they all have certain similarities. You can group them together and you can see these similarities in the data, but most sites, this is something we came across recently. We were going to a meeting with a fairly well known venue that's got two or three different strands to what they do. So we spent a bit of time looking at which of those different strands they actually fit into, because it can be really hard to know how to improve your digital presence, how to make your marketing more effective, if you don't even really know where you're starting from and what the data in the survey allows anyone that wants to access it to do is to see where they fit.

Oz Austwick: And you may think that the country park is what you are and the house is second, or you may feel that, I don't know, maybe the adventure playground or the science centre, whatever it is, whichever of those. You may think that you're one, but the data says you're the other and at that point it's not a problem. But at least you need to understand, if you don't have the information, you can't make any decisions that are going to be helpful in the long term. And I think. Sorry, I know I'm talking a lot here, feel free to shut me up.

Paul Marden: That's what we're here for.

Oz Austwick: I think it's a huge surprise to me that more people aren't coming to us and asking us about this.

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely.

Oz Austwick: This survey isn't really a cynical way for us to make money. The survey pretty much loses us money year on year, but it's really valuable and I think every time we've done it, the conversation has been, “Do we need to do this again?” And the answer is, well, “Yeah, we do.” Because not only is it a valuable thing to do year on year, but to show how things have progressed and to show those evolving patterns. I think it's really important and it's a phrase I use all the time, but the rising tide floats all the boats together and if we can put this information out there and it helps everyone improve, then great.

Oz Austwick: You know, as an industry, those that are part of the industry, those like us that sell into the industry, we all get better at the same time and I think that's a really important point.

Paul Marden: Absolutely. And there's loads of things that we're doing this year as we launch the survey to try to improve it so that, you know, you've just been talking about those attractions that are many different things and definitely in previous years we've made it really hard for those attractions that are many different things to be able to identify what they actually are. And that ended up being lots of people saying, I'm an other attraction and our biggest category was other, wasn't it? So we want to try and make it much easier for people to identify themselves.

Oz Austwick: I hate Other as a category. I realise it's entirely our fault, you know, if we don't give the right categories and we give you the option to say Other, that's what you're going to tick, but it's the least helpful thing we could possibly do because what does Other actually mean? So we've tried really hard to be more accurate in the choices that we offer in the survey this year.

Paul Marden: Yeah. So should we talk a little bit about what we're going to do this year?

Oz Austwick: Yeah. Yeah, let's do that.

Paul Marden: First of all, we're really fortunate this year that we've got two amazing sponsors that are supporting the survey and the work that we do. So we've been really lucky that our friends at Convious have come back again for the third year running to sponsor and support what we do. And they're sponsoring the digital report and the launch webinar that we'll have towards the end of the season and show everybody what the results are that we found. So we're really appreciative of the work that the team at Convious have done. It's not just a financial sponsorship, it is a real collaboration that they bring to the party and they really do help us a lot.

Paul Marden: And then this year that we've also been joined by the team at Expian who are a ticketing platform and they are sponsoring our new Advisory Board, which we'll talk a little bit more about later on. But we asked for people in the sector to come and join us, to advise us and in order to be able to make that a reality, Expian have sponsored that advisory board throughout the entire year. So that's. It's brilliant. It's great that other people are seeing a real value in the thing that we've been doing for the last couple of years and want to sponsor us going ahead and making it better year on year. So thank you to both Convious and Expian for supporting us this year.

Oz Austwick: I think just at this point, again, I'd like to interject and maybe a little shamelessly say that there are still a couple of aspects of what we're doing with the survey and the report that it would be really nice if we could maybe get some help from another sponsor. So if you'd like to maybe get involved, we're thinking about an in person launch event like we did in year one. That's a big deal to organise, to run, to fund. So if maybe that's something you'd like to help with, get in touch, that'd be great.

Paul Marden: We are always happy for new people to join the party with us and help to support the good work that we will trying to do here. So, yeah, there's more information about that on the website at rubbercheese.com/survey.

Oz Austwick: Survey yeah, I think it's maybe worth mentioning the advisory board in a little bit more detail. I know that it's something that you've been really keen on for quite a while now that we try and make it clear that this isn't a digital agency that builds websites for the visitor attraction agency telling you how to have your website and that you should come to us. It's actually an objective report of the digital landscape and that if we can make that more objective and more transparent by getting together a group of experts then we absolutely should.

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. We've got an amazing group of people that have agreed to join us. We have more people asking to join than we have the capacity to be able to include in the board, which is humbling in and of itself. And those people who offered, who aren't part of the board this year. That doesn't mean to say we don't appreciate you and we'll be really keen to find other ways in which those people can help us going forwards.

Paul Marden: But yeah, we're looking for the board to kind of provide advice and guidance help us. You know, going back to what you were saying a minute ago about people helping us to identify what's important to the sector so that we then go and follow the data, we ask the right questions, we look deeply into the data, we understand where the interesting stories are and then reflect that back to the sector as a whole in the final report. That's so much easier when we've got a board of people that are advising us what matters to the heads of digital of the attractions around the country. So yeah, we've also got some really helpful advisors from different sector support organisations. So suppliers like ourselves who know what the larger sector are talking about in different areas.

Paul Marden: And those people as well will be helping us to understand what are the right questions to ask. How should we ask them? They'll also be helping us with testing the survey before it goes out into the wild and supporting us with understanding what the answers are at the end of it and what they think are interesting. So I'm really excited about the Advisory Board and totally appreciative of everybody volunteering their time to join that board and giving us that advice. So that's a really exciting thing for us to be doing this year and totally appreciate the work of Expian to sponsor that.

Oz Austwick: Absolutely, yeah. Couldn't agree more.

Paul Marden: So there's some other things that we're going to do, aren't there, in terms of trying to improve things?

Oz Austwick: We've got some goals. Are they ambitious? I don't think they're that ambitious, to be honest. But, yeah, I mean, obviously the most important thing when doing something like this and repeating it on annual basis is that we want to make it more useful. We want to make the data more valuable to the people that need it. So we've spent a lot of time going through the previous survey and looking at what we asked and what we got in response to those questions, whether we got the information we thought we would and whether that information is even of any help to any. I think we've cut it down fairly significantly this year, I think.

Paul Marden: Yeah, we've taken a red pen and scored through quite a lot of the questions, haven't we?

Oz Austwick: Yeah. I wonder if perhaps maybe people were getting a little bit tired of the survey by the time they got towards the end, because it was really long and it's still quite long, but I think there's very little in it that isn't really, or at least to me, feels really valuable to be able to say, “This is where I am. And if I can compare where I am to the wider industry around me, that would be a helpful thing to be able to do.” And I think pretty much every question does that. We're hopefully going to grow the sample size because year one to year two was a really significant step up. If we get the same size step up or even the same percentage step up, I mean, that would be absolutely incredible. I'm not sure we will, but I think.

Oz Austwick: I think we need to keep growing it. We need to get it to more people and make the data in itself more relevant. Because obviously, if you've got a tiny sample size, it's really difficult to draw any conclusions from that data. But if you've got a huge sample size, then you can say that the averages across this are probably relevant. And that's information that I should know.

Paul Marden: I talk about that a lot, don't I, when I'm slicing and dicing the data that, you know, sometimes it can be hard to draw conclusions because there's insufficient data there and it could easily be chance that gives the answers that you get.

Oz Austwick: Well, absolutely. And it's so hard to look at it and think, is that cause or effect? You know, we can say that there's a pattern or is it just fluke? 

Paul Marden: Exactly. I think some of the questions, some of the data is illustrative of what the wider sector looks like. So when people answer questions about the content management system that they use by far the most popular one was WordPress. I'm willing to bet good money that is fairly illustrative of the outside world.

Oz Austwick: Yes.

Paul Marden: Yeah. You know, WordPress is the hands down most popular content management system on the web, so it's not. It's hardly surprising that it is then the most commonly used one in attractions. But some of our numbers around ticketing systems, e commerce systems and some of the conversion rate information as well, I would not be surprised if that is being skewed because the sample size isn't necessarily big enough. So the more people that join, every person that is submitting their data is making a substantial difference to the quality of the answers that we give afterwards. And I also think that kind of the intersectionality of stuff. So when you're talking about historic houses that have got animal based attraction at the same place. Yeah.

Paul Marden: When you start to zero in on those smaller sample size or smaller groups, they get so small that it's very hard to draw any conclusions. If we can make the sample size bigger, then those intersectional groups will still be fairly small. If there's a Venn diagram, there's not a lot of overlap in some of these groups and they will be pretty small groups, but you'll still get some interesting answers rather than a sample size of one, which some of the smaller groups do drill down to that at the moment. So the more people, the better. And the more diverse types of attractions that fill in, the better.

Oz Austwick: Yeah. I think it's probably worth recognising that some of the groups that people fall into are going to be really small.

Paul Marden: Yes.

Oz Austwick: I mean, how many safari parks are there in the UK, for example? It's not a lot. And if only one safari park fills in the survey. So if there's a call to action from this bit, it's like, please fill it in.

Paul Marden: What else are we going to do? So we talked about simplifying the survey. We want to increase the sample size. We wanted to introduce some new themes as well this year.

Oz Austwick: Yes. The survey is designed to represent the digital landscape of the visitor attraction industry in the UK, but obviously there are things happening in the digital world that we've not spoken about in the survey. For example, AI, there's a big. A big amount of development. There's a lot of AI stories hitting the news. People are using it for all sorts of things. We've never asked any questions about it at all. Does anybody use it? Is it relevant? What's going on out there? We don't know. So we're going to be asking a little bit about that. And the other main theme that we've not really looked into before that we're going to be asking a little bit more about is sustainability. It's become really clear over the last sort of six months or so, looking at the conversations we've had with venues.

Oz Austwick: Everybody's doing stuff, not everybody's doing the same stuff, not everybody's doing the right stuff, but everybody's doing something. And it would be really nice to know what's standard. And obviously there's stuff on site that you can do at the attraction itself, but there's things you can do around the website and the hosting and the way that your digital presence works. So we're going to be asking a little bit about that as well.

Paul Marden: I think in every conversation I've ever had about digital sustainability, I learn a little bit more about the subject. And I can remember there was an amazing speaker at the Umbraco conference a couple of years ago that spoke, who's now a friend of mine, and he just told some amazing stories about the impact of digital on CO2 emissions. And it was, you know, I used to work in an airline. It was fairly clear to see that airlines are fairly polluting. You can see it coming out the back of the plane. But I don't think I'd ever really seriously thought about digital technology being a major contributor to climate change in the way that I now understand it to be. So, finding out what other people are doing, we're willing to bet that quite a lot of attractions will have a sustainability plan.

Paul Marden: Fewer will have done any sort of benchmarking of their digital platform, and fewer, again, still will have done anything to actually reduce their CO2 emissions. But that's just instinct. I'm really interested to understand what the actual numbers are at the end of this, because once we start measuring it, we can start improving things as an industry.

Oz Austwick: I think it's fascinating, and that goes back to exactly what Polly was talking about when you interviewed her two episodes ago I think.

Paul Marden: Something like that.

Oz Austwick: About the fact that, you know, we all start from somewhere and you can look at this and think, oh, I'm actually not doing a great job, but you've got to be honest about it because you've got to know where you are. You know, everything that comes to us is completely anonymised. We don't give out anybody's data. We give out, you know, the raw data in a way that means that nobody can track anybody else. So you nothing that you say is going to put, you know, anything that you're maybe a little bit unhappy out there. But if doing this survey forces you to think about what you're doing and look at it and think, actually, maybe I do need to do this, then brilliant. You know what an amazing achievement that will be.

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So we want to enable people to give better answers. So we're going to reduce the number of category type questions that we've got and drill down to real numbers. We'll get better understanding of conversion rates. And there was some other standardisation that we wanted to do, wasn't there?

Oz Austwick: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we noticed that. And again, it's going back to this, trying to reduce the fact that you can just tick other when we're trying to look at what sort of attraction are you when you're filling in the survey. In fairness, we've got a pretty good idea of the different attractions there are out there and we created a fairly good list, but we still got quite a lot of Others. So were kind of looking at how we can improve that list and we thought, well, why not standardise it with a list that's already out there? And it turns out that VisitBritain has a perfectly good list, which is really quite comprehensive.

Oz Austwick: So we're using their list for attraction type rather than ours because it allows us to standardise the data a little bit more and hopefully people will already know where they fit. But I think we've also allowed people to tick more than one option this time, which previously we didn't. If you were a historic home that also had a safari park or an adventure playground or something, you'd have to pick which of those am I? And obviously, you know, for the big attractions around the country and for an awful lot of the smaller ones, we would look at them and go, “Oh, they've ticked that. That's odd. I wonder why they've done that.” Whereas now you're able to say, “Actually, I'm three different things.” And that's great, because again, it allows us to be a little bit more granular.

Oz Austwick: And if it turns out that maybe there are other attractions that have the same breakdown of what they do as you, that will become clear, hopefully.

Paul Marden: So one of the big areas that we want to, we're excited to grow into is that we'll be having a US focused survey for the first time, supported by our friends at Convious.

Oz Austwick: Lots of Zs instead of Ss in that one.

Paul Marden: Yes, we've had to do some localisation and that will be published alongside the UK version of the survey. And we'll have a US report and a UK report that we'll be launching at the end, thanks to our friends at Convious. But we'll also have versions of the survey localised for attractions in the EU, because there was actually, last year, we got quite a number of european attractions submitting and we think that can improve when the survey tool itself is focused on the EU and is, you know, the numbers that we've got in the survey are denominated in euros rather than in pounds. So, yeah, that's increasing. The number of international responses, especially in North America, is super important for us this year.

Oz Austwick: Yeah. And I think it's worth saying that it's quite a potentially valuable thing to do as well, because if we can look at the surveys and say that, weirdly, the UK sites tend to rate here, but us sites rate here for something, why is that? What do they do differently in the US that allows them to be more successful in this instance than we in the UK are here? You know, with any luck, either, we'll be able to say no. Globally, this is all pretty much on a par. So you can see where you set in the world, rather than just in, say, Shropshire. But you could also say, right, well, these guys are doing better. Let's look at what they're doing and try and emulate that and improve what we're doing to bring it in line with what we know is possible.

Paul Marden: So lots to change, lots of improvements that we're making. Pretty big ambitions to grow the survey in a number of different ways, but not in the number of questions that are there. So hopefully, it will take less effort for people to submit their responses this time and the survey will be launched around the time that this episode comes out. So you'll be able to go onto rubbercheese.com/survey and follow the links and submit your data, which is pretty exciting for us. We'll be sat there watching the responses rolling in. I got very excited last year, watching people respond.

Oz Austwick: I can't wait, genuinely. I know that sounded sarcastic, didn't it? It wasn't supposed to. I genuinely. I'm quite excited about this. Yeah.

Paul Marden: You might need to work on your sincerity. There's an area of improvement there are.

Oz Austwick: Recording this at the end of the afternoon on a Friday, so, you know, this is as good as you're gonna get, I'm afraid.

Paul Marden: So. We're really keen for people to go onto the website and fill in the survey, but there's other things that you want as well, isn't there, Oz?

Oz Austwick: Well, for me, I want people to talk to us. I want people to talk about the survey. I want them to talk about last year's survey and the rapport. I want people to come along and say, “Look, it'd be really interesting to know where I sit it in this. This is our attraction. This is what we think. Is it true?” Get in touch, give us a shout, let's have a chat. You know, let's have an excuse to get together with a coffee and a laptop and look at some spreadsheets. But, you know, if there's something that you want to see from the survey moving forwards, because I think it's probably safe to say this isn't going to be the last one we do.

Oz Austwick: Then again, let us know if there's things that we aren't talking about and you've got a better viewpoint and you can see that there's a gap in what we're asking. Please let us know because we can't do this by ourselves and we're not really doing it for ourselves. So the more people talk to us, the better, really.

Paul Marden: So if you want to talk to us, all the usual social channels that we normally talk about, but also send us email at [email protected]. Both Oz and I will get that. And really keen to spark the conversations and see where it goes from there.

Oz Austwick: Yeah. And if we bump into each other at an event or you see me, give me a shout, I'll buy you a coffee. I mean on him, obviously.

Paul Marden: Of course. So your episode number one on skip the queue, how was it for you?

Oz Austwick: That was all right, actually, wasn't it? Yeah. Okay. I mean, hello. Let's, let's see. Well, I enjoyed it.

Paul Marden: I've enjoyed it. Not quite the same as talking to Kelly, but not the same. Not better or worse, just different.

Oz Austwick: I'll take that as a compliment.

Paul Marden: You take it however you like, mate.

Paul Marden: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. 

Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, SkiptheQueue.fm.

The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! 

• Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industry
• Gain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion rates
• Explore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performance
• Learn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion rates
• Uncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversions

Take the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report
 

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is Paul Marden, CEO of Rubber Cheese.

Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast

Competition ends on 22nd May 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

https://www.rigb.org/

www.linkedin.com/in/shjfranklin

Steven Franklin is a self-confessed social media addict, with 4 years’ experience of work in social media, drawn from a mixture of heritage, cultural, government, and the charity sectors.

To date, he has worked at Egham Museum, Bradford Museums and Art Galleries, The National Archives, and now The Royal Institution.

When he’s not making TikToks or trying to write witty posts on X, you’ll find him thinking about how the latest evolutions in social media could translate and be used within the cultural and charity sectors. His passion for innovation has seen him deliver huge social media at every organisation that he has worked, bringing his distinctive mixture of creativity and storytelling to every account, which has resulted in an attention-grabbing tone of voice that has greatly increased brand exposure and recognition.

Transcription: 

Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Paul Marden. 

In this episode, I'm joined by Steven Franklin, the Social Media Manager at the Royal Institution. Steven has seen some phenomenal increases in subscribers and engagement whilst managing the organisation's social media, which, as we'll find out, is pivotal to the role the RI has in science communication. 

Paul Marden: Welcome, Steven, to the Skip the Queue podcast. It's lovely to have you.

Steven Franklin: Yeah, thank you very much for inviting me on, Paul. Really looking forward to this chat.

Paul Marden: Yeah, me too. Me too. So, before we get started, where are you sat at the moment? Because it's looking like a pretty impressive location.

Steven Franklin: Yeah, no, I thought I'd make an effort for the listeners and viewers. So I'm currently in the very salubrious surroundings of Mayfair. To be more specific, the Royal Institution on Albemarle street, in the historic writing room, which dates all the way back to the sort of mid 1800s. Interestingly, a little anecdote. This is the room where our discourse speakers are locked in and have been locked in for quite a while, for a couple of, well, approaching a couple of centuries, following one specific instance where one of our speakers got so overwhelmed by anxiety and nerves that he basically left before his talk. So, in order to prevent that from happening, we now locked speakers up half an hour before their discourse is supposed to start, so they don't have the chance to run away and leave the audience wanting more to speak.

Paul Marden: And for the Skip the Queue audience, I would like emphasise that is not my plan going forward with the podcast. I am not going to lock people up half an hour before that.

Steven Franklin: No.

Paul Marden: So, Steven, we always start with some icebreaker questions. So I've got a couple for you. First one, what's your earliest memory of travelling outside of your hometown?

Steven Franklin: Oh, I think it would have to be travelling up to see one of my aunties who lives in Northamptonshire, and I always remember sort of going up the M1, which is an interesting thing to remember, seeing sort of the lights. But I think, more importantly than the sort of mundaneity and boredom of travelling up a motorway, it was just sort of the excitement and good times of getting treated by different relatives who also had a golden retriever called Barney, who I was very fond of. And, yeah, that was probably my earliest memory.

Paul Marden: Yeah, family trips like that are lovely, aren't they? I remember lots of trips up into South Wales. So mine would be that my memory would probably be the M4, travelling from Somerset up to the South Wales Valleys to visit Auger Farrell. Okay, so the next one. How would you describe your job to a two year old?

Steven Franklin: I'm in the business of entertaining people. And the way I entertain people is by either doing it through the form of video, or by doing it through the form of written word, or by doing it in nice visuals, whether they are still photos or animated graphics. And as a byproduct of my entertainment, I hope to also educate. There you go.

Paul Marden: Lovely. So another thing that we always ask our visitors onto the show is, what's your unpopular opinion?

Steven Franklin: So I've been. Obviously, you gave me the heads up for this, and I've been thinking long and hard about what's the most unpopular opinion that I came up with that I truly believe in, and mine is that audiobooks are a more pleasurable and enjoyable experience than reading a proper book.

Paul Marden: Oh, wow. Okay, so what's wrong with reading a proper book? There are librarians among us that might actually care about a physical book.

Steven Franklin: Yeah. Yeah. See this where it becomes a poor reflection on my own self, basically, because the reason that I don't really enjoy reading proper books is that I find it quite difficult to sort of sit still for long periods of time. I also find it quite difficult to shut my brain off for long enough to only be really focused on the one, the book that's in front of me. So, yeah, whilst I do appreciate the romanticism of sort of reading a book in the sun or reading a book over a cup of tea or, you know, reading a classic novel on holiday and the sort of the tactile nature of the book experience, it's never really sat with me.

Steven Franklin: So I think in some ways, that sort of unpopular opinion isn't really surprising, given what I work in and sort of age I am and sort of the media that I create, so I don't know whether it's a sense of the tail wagging the dog or the dog wagging the tail, but either way it's, you know, there's a nice sort of closed loop there.

Paul Marden: I've got my subscription and I've got a few credits that I need to spend at the bank, but I like an audiobook, but they send me to sleep, so if I can't do factual books on audiobook that sends me straight to sleep. But even listening to fiction on audible, within five minutes, I'll be out. Whereas I can sit and read a book and that can hold my attention for a couple of chapters before nodding off. Audiobook, I just need. I was listening to a Stephen Fry narrated one the other day, the lulling tones of Stephen Fry, but off I went to sleep.

Steven Franklin: I think Stephen Fry is, you know, he's sort of a silent assassin of the audiobook world insofar as he has such a, you know, his dulcet tones just naturally send you off and give me the Harry Potter audiobooks read by Stephen Fry, and I'm golden, so to speak. But, yeah, now, I also got into a bit of a nerdy sort of. And this is a very typical conversation at the RI, but a nerdy chat about whether you retain more information having actually read the book than listening to the book. Because I was of the opinion that you probably didn't take as much in if you were listening to it than if you were reading it.

Steven Franklin: I can't exactly remember what the figures were, but I think the long and short of it was that actually, the science suggests that sort of retention is slightly less, but not as drastic as you might have thought. So that gave me some sort of, you know, made me feel a little bit better about myself and my inability to sit quiet for long periods of time and read.

Paul Marden: So, anecdotally, I'm reading to my daughter as we read every night before she goes to bed. She's ten years old. She can be doing something else. She could even be reading a different book that I'll be reading to her. And I'm like, “You're not listening to me. What did I just say?” And she could just recite exactly what I just said. So she is listening, somehow, doing two things at once. I do not understand how she does it.

Steven Franklin: I don't know whether this is actually correct, but somewhere somebody might have said something or have read it, but there's something about doing two things at once that, you know, sort of gets your brain in a state of flow and maybe ups your performance again, I actually don't know whether this is true, but if it's not, this is a lie that I tell myself.

Paul Marden: So it's a pinchot that we're not actually scientists of the RI, so why don't we. You've told us what the two year old view of your job might look like, but why don't you tell us a little bit about the RI? Lots of listeners will be aware of the RI from the Christmas lectures, but it's got really long history. So tell us a little bit about that, about each role today and what you do.

Steven Franklin: Yeah, so the RI founded in 1799, basically from its very inception, a science engagement institution. I think that's something that has always and will continue to always set the RI apart from other sort of science organisations, insofar as we haven't been an organisation that's got a traditional focus on research and research outputs. Our sort of modus operandi, for want of a better phrase, has always been the core principle of connecting the public with science. Back in 1799 and through the early 1800s, you know, that would have been done traditionally by. Well, it still is to this day, but obviously that's back. Back in the day of ye oldy, victorian times, it would have been done by sort of, you know, lectures and demonstrations.

Steven Franklin: So the likes of, you know, Humphrey Davy, Michael Faraday, you know, these are some of the big figures that are associated with our long 225 year history. And in fact, pretty much every, you know, sort of famous scientist of the Victorian age is likely to have been a member here at some stage. Yeah. So, you know, we're very difficult. We're very different from the likes of the Royal Society in the sense that we've always welcomed women. We've always sort of had an ethos of connecting children. The Christmas lecture has been the most obvious example, but we're connecting children to science. And I think also, you know, we've also been quite historically wedded to the idea of being slightly different, less snobbish for, you know, I think, and more. More sort of open, more playful. We don't take ourselves too seriously.

Steven Franklin: And in fact, during sort of the Victorian period, we were sort of lambasted by famous caricatures of the day for that very fact. For the fact that sort of. We were obsessed with teaching the public. We allowed women in. We sort of broke the traditional rules of the day. So that got us into a bit of not trouble, but people laughed at us and pointed at us and sort of said that weren't doing it the right way because we weren’t an academic members only organisation. So that was. That was sort of our founding. And I think, you know, pretty much from that point onwards today, we've not really changed in that regard. The thing that's changed is sort of society around us. So we still have a lecture theatre.

Steven Franklin: I've mentioned earlier that we have our discourses. They used to happen every Friday, and they now happen once, the last Friday of every month. Christmas lectures continue to this day, and next year it will be the 200th anniversary of them.

Paul Marden: Wow.

Steven Franklin: And the Christmas lectures have pretty much been a constant. They were stopped or paused during World War II but, you know, by and large, a tradition that's sort of a line that links us from the present all the way back to the past. And, in fact, even the desk that sits, that's in the lecture theatre today, whilst it's not Faraday's original, part of it, is, so every time they rebuild it, they keep a part of the old desk and use that. So it's a bit like that, you know, that famous Titanic sort of riddle like, if you were to change all the parts of the Titanic, would it still be the Titanic? And, you know, or bicycle, whatever. But, yeah, so there's that. And I think, to the present day, our scope's much larger now.

Steven Franklin: So we have a sort of traditional stem learning framework in place where school kids, pretty much of all curricular curriculum ages, can come to on site and be taught. So we've got a very buzzing, very healthy science programme. We also do a lot off site science engagement for the schools that aren't based in London. We also have a very thriving public programme that, you know, sees some of the foremost, greatest scientific thinkers of today come and provide lectures in the Faraday lecture theatre. We're also home to a wonderful collection of scientific history. So there's been ten elements of the periodic table that were isolated here at the RI. So, yeah, we've got a history of that, and we have, well, basically, we've far too much for even us to talk about. And then I guess.

Steven Franklin: I guess for me, working in sort of digital social media, I guess part of my remit, well, my remit is to engage people with science to get them interested in science. We believe, and we're quite unashamed in our belief that, you know, science is for everyone and science is important. It is quite fundamental and crucial to everyday life, regardless of how old you are. So a knowledge of science is important. And, you know, another key sort of part of my work is to sort of show off what the RI has in our heritage collection, our public programme, to get people onto site, to encourage people to become members and support our mission, and just to, I guess, entertain people through science. There you go.

Paul Marden: That's interesting, isn't it? The entertainment element of it. I guess there's an element of trying to get people on board and engage in their RI's mission, but at the same time entertaining them. And everyone likes a good explosion video, don't they?

Steven Franklin: So, yeah, I mean, yeah, I've sort of. Not a day goes past where I don't feel incredibly fortunate, really, because, you know, in some ways, I get a lot of the credit for success that we see on social media when videos go viral. But I'm not the one exploding hydrogen balloons or making, you know, really impressive looking sort of demos, chemical reactions, so to speak. So, you know, it's very much an all sort of team sort of mission. But, yeah, I do have it very good, actually, because I've got so much. I'm like Aladdin in the cave, got so much to play with.

Paul Marden:  Lots of material. So that's interesting. So let's talk a little bit about social media at the RI. It's really important to the organisation, because when I was doing my bone round research to all of this, and I open up the annual report, then on the trustees report, on, like, page one or page two of the annual report, they are talking about the impact of social media on the organisation. So it's obviously crucial to what you do. How do you think that it's become that important for the organisation?

Steven Franklin: I think, genuinely, it does link back to that core fundamental purpose. All social media is the 21st century way of connecting people with an idea. In the Victorian times, you would have had to sit in a lecture theatre and listen to the lecture given. If you were lucky, you might have been able to read it, if you were in the right sort of circles. But, in many ways, the way in which technology has evolved and where we sit here today, it's never been easier to sort of publish ideas and communicate thinking. That isn't to downplay the craft that goes into it, because I think that's two separate conversations. It is very easy to publish.

Steven Franklin: It's a little bit more of a science to publish in the right way with the right sort of thinking that goes into it. So, yeah, I think, it's fundamental about connecting people with science, and that is what the charity and the institution is built on. I think we're quite fortunate, the RI, in the sense that we have a leadership team that truly believes in the importance of connection and doesn't devalue digital connection against physical connection. So, whether you're supporting our social media channels, whether you're a subscriber on YouTube, or whether you're sitting in the lecture theatre, that is a valuable engagement that is fulfilling a function and part of our purpose. So, yeah, I think that's why. And actually, it's really nice to be working at an organisation that does play such onus and importance.

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So what is it like having responsibility for over a million followers across social? That must be a little bit bolting.

Steven Franklin: Yes, it is. And I've thought about this a lot, and indeed, I've had quite a short career in social media, but I think even I've begun to mature in the way I think about this, too. I think, first and foremost, if you're working in social media, you probably aren't somebody that's overawed by that fact that you can hit huge numbers of people pretty much instantaneously. And I think if you are somebody that would get anxious about that, you probably wouldn't be working in social or indeed comms. So I think there's that. But I think it's a great honour, to be honest, to be trusted pretty much within reason, to sort of spearhead a strategy and have a bit of fun.

Steven Franklin: And translate sort of, scientific ideas into a medium that makes sense for the 21st century, or indeed the trend, or indeed the platform. I think that's in a very entrusted position. Yeah, so there's that. And then, I think, for me personally, there's been a bit of maturity in sort of realising that, actually, whilst you still get that rush, when you see a viral post really take off and you get that lovely dopamine hit and you're on cloud nine, actually realising that this is not your account, you're doing the work of the organisation. This isn't Steven Franklin out there and sort of going viral.

Paul Marden: This is some of the jokes. There's a little bit of you in there, I think.

Steven Franklin: Yeah, no, there is, there is. But I think the thing that I've realised is that when things. When things go well, then you've got nothing to worry about. But in the odd moments where you get into a bit of a sticky patch, something didn't go quite anticipated. That's when having too close a personal connection with it does become health sage. Correct. Yeah. And actually, I think, by and large, for the most part, that sort of talking to a million people is 99% not a problem. It's that small 1% of moments where something goes awry that you didn't quite anticipate, we didn't expect. I try my best to think 360 degrees about what possibly people could think in response to it.

Steven Franklin: A post that I think is harmless, but in reality we're posting to the Internet and everybody on the Internet is able to hold of you. And so I was having this conversation with my line manager a couple of weeks ago, 20 years ago, you would have published something in the press and somebody would have had the same thought. The only difference was they were having it in their living room and they were just uttering it to their other half. Today they can literally give you instantaneous feedback. So that's how the dynamic shifted. So yeah, I think hopefully that's answered your question. Paul.

Paul Marden: Yeah, you touched on this a minute ago, you touched on kind of the broader strategy. So what are the goals for social, for the organisation going forwards?

Steven Franklin: I mean more, more, more. How do you like it? How do you like it? I mean there is an element of that. So obviously we want to continue growing all of our channels as much as possible. We want to be talking to as many new people, raising the awareness of the institution, raising the awareness of our work, but then also sort of subsidiary to that, just sort of communicating good science and providing that sort of educational offer. So I think, there is that sort of vanity metric in terms of raw number of followers, but we're also really interested in engagement and you know, there's no point to us in having 5 million followers if only 5000 people engage with your content each month. That to us feels a little incongruous.

Steven Franklin: So, putting out quality content on channels that our communities on those channels respond to and enjoy and engage with is sort of a big motivation factor for us. And then secondly, or maybe thirdly, we've been quite agile in adapting to technology in the 21st century. So some of our channels we have monetised and sort of use digital content to help drive revenue and bring in revenue. So that's a sort of secondary or tertiary sort of thing on social.

Paul Marden: Yeah, it's a nice bit of feedback, isn't it, in batching to the organisation. So who are the audiences, those communities that you touched on a moment ago, who is it that you're trying to speak to?

Steven Franklin: So I think by and large, like any organisation, we have an audience sort of strategy that sort of segments all of our audiences into various catchment terms that represent people and we have about six to eight of those. And we made a conscious effort to focus on to two groups that we internally refer to as the science connected and the science curious. So science connected being people that might work in science, might have done a degree in science, might have a connection through science, they might be studying it. So, that traditional science call, they work in a career that is adjacent to science and then the science curious, probably, are those people that don't fit into that group, but are probably more arts and culturally orientated.

Steven Franklin: They are interested in learning new things, they are open to ideas and exchanging ideas and. Yeah. So those are the sort of two audiences that we predominantly focus on. That isn't to say that we are deliberately excluding the rest.

Paul Marden: If you're not focusing on some bit, you're focused on no deal.

Steven Franklin: Exactly. Yeah.

Paul Marden: So I guess the reason how the way that we got connected, the way that our conversation started together, was more interested in data and pulling data out of the sector and understanding how the sector works. And in a conversation I had with Rachel at the Association of Science and Discovery Centre, she said you'd be a really good person to talk to because you're really motivated by the data behind social and you use that a lot to be able to influence what you do. So tell us a little bit about that. How are you using data to make decisions about what you do next?

Steven Franklin: Well, that's a big question. I think one of the great things about working in digital social being a part of digital, is that there's no shortage of data that is at your disposal. I think one of the things that makes me sort of sad working within the charity cultural sector is that actually, by and large, the level of resource isn't there to truly sort of get to the bottom of what that data tells you. 

Paul Marden: Yes. 

Steven Franklin: So I'll get off my soapbox now. Yeah. So, as you say, I'm very interested in using that data to inform my content choices. And I think by far and away, the clearest example I have to show you today is the way that we've sort of looked at data in terms of our Instagram growth.

Steven Franklin: To put that into context, in the last six months we've grown organically by 110,000 followers in about 130 posts. So absolutely staggering numbers. And then within the last four or five months, we've done approaching 10 million impressions on just Instagram alone. So, huge numbers. And the thing that I noticed was that whenever I posted a static image or graphic to the grid, so just a post, the only people that saw it were your followers, and there was a tiny fraction of people that weren't your followers. So I posted a reel and then I realised that percentage and was completely skied the other way. So, depending on how successful the reel was, you could have anything up to 75% non followers versus 25% followers on a truly viral reel, that was over a million views.

Steven Franklin: So what that told me was that if I wanted to grow, the easiest way to grow is to obviously get your content to new people. And the way the platform and the algorithm was telling me the easiest way to do that was to just publish Instagram reels. So. And, there have been other stories. I think the Washington Post sort of in 21, 22, grew their Instagram channel to over a couple of million by publishing three Instagram reels a day. And they had exponential growth of which hadn't been seen before. So I didn't do three times a day. I just did three a week one on Monday, one on Wednesday, one on Friday. All videos about 60 seconds, some 40 seconds and some, up to a minute and a half. But yeah, just got into that pattern.

Steven Franklin: Posted, posted posters, and then I would supplement those reels with, a couple of grid posts. And the way that I sort of was seeing or the way that the strategy has sort of evolved is that the reels are the things that grow the channel and the grid posts are the things that cultivate the community. So, our Instagram reels are our calling card.

Paul Marden: Yep.

Steven Franklin: For a traditional analogy, they're the billboard that you put on the motorway that lots of people see. And the content you post to your  followers or to those followers are the sort of entertaining, sort of, membership pack that they can read and that equivalent, the analogy sort of fell down. But hopefully you get my gist.

Paul Marden: Yeah, I get what you mean. So when you flip it on its head and you go with the reels, you get this massive increase in people that aren't following you, seeing what you're talking about. And what sort of conversion rate are you seeing how many people are actually following you as a result of that? Is that the great point there?

Steven Franklin: Yeah, so we've like, within a month, we've been growing on average, 20,000 followers a month. In some days, we've been doing one and a half thousand followers a day. You can link that. So, you know, Instagram, if you go into our most popular reel that has over 5 million views, it will tell you how many new followers that specific video has generated. That video, I think, for us, has in itself generated like 30,000 new followers.

Paul Marden: Many thoughts. Now there's just play by mind. That's amazing. What is it about the content? Have you changed the content over that time? So you'd say that you're presenting different things.

Steven Franklin: Yeah. So it's been really interesting. And the reason it's been interesting is because by and large, it sort of has gone against the industry received wisdom. So, for context, I am the sole person in charge of social media. I work in a digital and marketing team. We have two full time video producers who help me create visual content and assets and video. But by and large, you know, I am sort of a one man band. So I sort of decided that I couldn't create brand new content all the time. But what I could do is use the 40 minutes to an hour lecture that we have take place in our lectures sometimes three times a week that are by and large filmed.

Steven Franklin: I know that we've got some of the greatest scientists in the world coming to speak about really cool things. Okay, cool. Why don't I take that 1 hour talk and skim through it at two times speed and isolate 1 minute moments that peak interest. Okay. So that's all very well and good. What are the things that we internally think peak people's interest? Well, there's the obvious one. It's the demonstrations or the impressive science experiments, the bangs, the smoke and all of that. So there's that. Then there's the talking about something that's, you know, vaguely topical trending. So I think that, the probably most obvious example of that is the, is Chris Van Dulligan and his ultra processed foods or ultra processed people book.

Steven Franklin: So, yep, we released quite a lot of content around that. And that did very well. And then thirdly, I guess it's the content that is likely to somewhat divide opinion. I won't say it's controversial content, but I would say that it's content that is most likely to get people talking. Because another thing that I noticed was that if your video gets more comments, it seems that helps with performance than likes. So you could get loads of likes. But if nobody comments, then algorithm isn't interested. But if people start talking and commenting, then the algorithm says, “Oh, people really like this. And, you know, it doesn't matter what they're saying.”

Paul Marden: And that's what you're seeing with the reels. Is it that you push a reel out there? And if it's, if it is thought provoking, not controversial. Yeah. Then you're seeing people commenting on that and that drawings up more impressions, which itself drives more engagement and all the outcomes.

Steven Franklin: Yeah. So like to take that 5 million reel example, you know, it's got like 45,000 likes, so it's still a lot of likes. But if you did the maths, that compared to 5 million views, it's quite a small rate. The amount of comments, it's got huge. It's like the comment section alone is bordering on 5000. Conversely, we have another video that's done sort of approaching 4 million, the likes are at 100,000, but the comment section is far smaller and it hasn't received as or hasn't been pumped out. Now, am I reading too much into this? Probably, because at the end of the day we're all slightly at the mercy of the algorithm and there is a bit of luck. There is a bit of luck.

Steven Franklin: But I guess for me, having sort of worked on it and sort of adopted this strategy for six months, it does seem to be the case that the more people start talking and commenting and sharing, the more the algorithm sort of takes that as a sign or marker of good content.

Paul Marden: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So around the kind of content planning and production piece, there's a team of people around you. You're in a fortunate position because you've got all of these amazing scientists from around the world that want to talk about what they do in your lecture theatre where you can go and record their content and back, all of a sudden you've got a content plan in front of you of the year, haven't you? So that's a really fortunate position to be in. But how do you go from that plan of all of the activity over the year into figuring out what you're going to do on a daily basis on your Monday, Wednesday, Friday posts that you do.

Steven Franklin: So there's two ways. There's the official answer and then there's the unofficial answer. The official answer is in some ways the reels that we post are somewhat predetermined by the schedule of our public programme. Now that isn't to say, and this somewhat circles back to your previous question, but I think it still makes sense. Not all of our content that we published on Instagram or TikTok is, a clip of a talk. You know, we do supplement the content calendar with our own sort of original content, whether that be green screen or our own internal science demonstrations, you know, and interestingly, actually there's another anecdote. The green screen on Instagram just dives. People aren't interested in it.

Steven Franklin: The green screen on TikTok, people love it, whereas on TikTok you post a clip of a talk, people less don't like it. They probably don't feel it's very authentic to the platform. The green screen, you know, goes bonkers, you know, work that out, whatever. Yeah, but, yeah, so going back there is. There is obviously there's somewhat predetermined by the talks, but then also it's coming down to, okay, we have had, you know, how many physics, how many biology, how many chemistry, how many hard science, soft science. We are an organisation that is inclusive reflex all. So we don't want to just publish white men.

Steven Franklin: We need a gender balance there, we need an ethnicity balance as well to reflect the vibrancy of everyone that comes to talk here, but also the vibrancy of the scientific community and large because at the end of the day, our content has the ability to inspire and allows people to feel seen, I guess so. So that also sort of informs our planning process.

Paul Marden: I think you said something about when we were talking before, actually, if you were being really mercenary about this and just going for the engagement, then you would focus on certain demographics of who it is that's presenting all the subject matter as well. Those can skew as well. But you have this obligation to be more diverse than it used.

Steven Franklin: Yeah. And that is an internal challenge. And I think it is a challenge that you could let yourself get carried away by following, chasing big numbers and fall into a trap of sort of undermining your own institution nor mission. Just at the sake of  to get to a million followers or whatever. But yeah, no, there are some challenges, you know, there are. And this is me not trying to overstate things, but we do publish content that we know sadly won't perform as well as say something else that we know probably would. But I think that is also one of the great joys and great beauties of working here is we're not yet. We will never be at a stage where we just do things for the pure KPI's.

Steven Franklin: We are also all about engagement and inspiring and being inclusive.

Paul Marden: There's a big mission that plays. It's quite interesting, isn't it? Because it makes you wonder whether just if you focus on one demographic or you focus one segment at the expense of the others. Is that because the algorithm favours that or is that because the audience. You would think that even if it was the algorithm favouring it's because that's because the audience that the algorithm serves is optimised around the algorithm is optimised around the audience. So you would expect it to be the audience listening. But yeah, it's a. Which came first is a chicken and egg problem, isn't it?

Steven Franklin: It is. It is a chicken and egg problem. And I think, you know, sort of this comes back to you. What's it like to manage a channel of a million sort of people? You just got to accept that not everything you post is going to be to everyone's taste. There'll be things that fly and there'll be things that don't. But the things that don't, it doesn't mean that it was bad content, doesn't mean that it's not fulfilled an important or valuable function or done something that has meaning, even if it only gets, you know, 50 engagements. Those 50 engagements are very valuable and in some cases could be potentially more valuable if it's chimed with the right sort of people and got in front of the audience we wanted.

Paul Marden: Yeah, my daughter absolutely adores Mark Rober videos and the crunchlight boxes that he has. And he talks about, you hide the vegetables. Yeah. You give people the big exploding test tubes or whatever, but hidden behind that is the chemistry. Or you give them a toy that enables them to do amazing things with ping pong balls, but actually along the way they're learning some physics. You can hide the veg in amongst all of your exploding videos.

Steven Franklin: Yeah, correct. And funny you should mention Mark Rober. I was literally just watching a YouTube video about him earlier today on the way in. Yeah, I wouldn't say an idol of mine, but a really interesting sort of case study in somebody that sort of, you know, the way in which the creator economy is sort of pivoted to a way where you can become your own sort of advertiser as well as product. And you have the perfect closed loop. You create a product, you make a video for 30 million people that advertises your product, that then generates income so you can create more product, so you can just go round around.

Steven Franklin: Yeah, I mean, I guess for me, I'm a YouTube nut and I'm a sort of social media addicts and I think there's really big potential in sort of unlocking some of the secrets of how creators work and how they think and how they approach content and product and collaboration, taking some of those principles and concepts into the world of brands and organisations and institutions, because, let's be honest, that's kind of the future. And those people, regardless of whether they've got a marketing background or qualifications in marketing, they are cutting edge marketers who.

Paul Marden: Absolutely, yeah.

Steven Franklin: Who know exactly what they're doing, who are obsessed by the detail, who study and analyse retention graphs until it sort of makes them blue in the face. And that's the type of thing that I would love to do, to be able to do A and B tests on Facebook, to be able to do something as simple as publish the same video, publish one without a sort of timeline that shows how long you are through the video, publish the same video with that. See how that affects retention. Because if you believe that, as we're told, that retention is one of the keys sort of metrics of success or good content, then if you can find ways in which you can create longer retention metric, then that would be a key.

Steven Franklin: And even something as simple as that could possibly lead to some really big impacts. Another thing, you could post your video on reels and you could look at the or TikTok, look at a retention graph. Okay, we'll publish the same video, but we'll take that spike and we'll move that there and we'll cut the video short. 

Paul Marden: That's amazing, isn’t it? 

Steven Franklin: Yeah, but that is the sort of thinking that's happening with some of the biggest creators, and sort of I guess they're in a very privileged position because they have now huge teams behind them. But I guess for me the core point is that they didn't always have these people there.

Paul Marden: And did the data just add to that, isn't it?

Steven Franklin: Yeah, yeah. You know, and my suspicion is I've never spoken to the likes of Mr. Beast or Mark Rober or anybody with huge social following. But my suspicion is basically if you just take one piece of data and you optimise your workflow around that, then once you've got that sorted, you then turn your attention to another piece and then another piece, and then if you've optimised five pieces of data, then maybe you are in a place where you can get another person and then, so to speak.

Paul Marden: It's a positive reinforcing cycle, isn't it? So let's take that. How do you demonstrate back to the organisation the return on their investment for all the work that you're doing?

Steven Franklin: Well, as sort of referenced earlier, there is the sort of monetisation aspect to that. So I have a KPI of sort of quarterly and monthly budgets that I am against, that I'm accountable to. So there's that. So that's a very obvious straight line trajectory between a very opaque money and then digital content. But then I guess outside of that, there's other KPI's, obviously, growth on channels, engagement rates, numbers of engagements, link clicks through to our posts that promoting our membership offers, whether that be family membership or adult membership or our public programme events. So those are all the ways in which I can demonstrate value, I guess. And that's just numeric data.

Steven Franklin: But then there's also the actual stuff that I much more enjoy, which is the anecdotal, the sort of the written word where somebody says, give the social media manager a raise. I cheaply screenshot and send it over to my line manager to say, you know, just leaving this here.

Paul Marden: Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. This has been brilliant to talk to you, find out a little bit more about what you do and what the RI is doing with social media. It's been awesome. We always ask our guests to tell us about their favourite books that we could share with the audience. So have you selected a book for us?

Steven Franklin: I have selected a book that I listened to on audible. Yeah. So Steven Bartlett's the Diary of a CEO, 33 laws, business and life, something that I've just finished listening to. Yeah, I'm a big sort of fan of, or, you know, have great admiration for, you know, Steven Bartlett and sort of the way that he's sort of, you know, that a rags to riches kind of story. But yeah, I think there's lots of. It's a very consumable, accessible book with some really nice little ideas in there that you can take away, probably implement to yourself. One of the greatest is the idea of absurdity, and the role that can be and how that can be exploited not just in social but just within marketing.

Steven Franklin: And those sort of tidbits, stick with me, I guess. It's in that ever sort of growing pursuit of mind of trying to just make myself, you know, 1% better each day. And if I can learn from some of the world's best and sort of get any part of wisdom or insight from them and sort of implement that, then that's not going to do me, I hope, any bad. So yeah, that would be my recommendation.

Paul Marden: There you go, lovely listeners. So if you would like a copy of Diary of a CEO, then jump onto X, retweet the show announcement and say, I want Steven's book. The first person that does that will get a copy of the book. Steven, it's been utterly delightful. Thank you ever so much. I really enjoyed we said to each other when we finished the prep call, I hope the main call goes as well as the prep call did. It really did. I've enjoyed this one just as much as the prep call. So thank you.

Steven Franklin: No, thank you very much. And yeah, it's been really enjoyable. I just wish it could have been longer, to be honest.

Paul Marden: Well, maybe we'll bring you back for part two again sometime soon. Thank you, Steven.

Steven Franklin: Thank you.

Paul Marden: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. 

Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! 

• Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industry
• Gain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion rates
• Explore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performance
• Learn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion rates
• Uncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversions

Take the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report
 

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is Paul Marden, CEO of Rubber Cheese.

Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast

Competition ends on 8th May 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

https://thetypefacegroup.co.uk/

www.linkedin.com/in/polly-buckland-69146a12

Download the latest Impact Report

Polly sat on the client side in a marketing manager role at BMW (UK) Ltd before co-founding The Typeface Group in 2010. She’s an ideas person, blending creativity and commercial awareness to get the best outcomes for our clients.

The Typeface Group is a B Corp Communications Agency + Design Studio based in North Hampshire. Their mission is to counteract digital chatter by championing authentic and strategic communication. Team TFG work with brilliant minds in business to extract, optimise and amplify their expertise, cutting through content clutter and stimulating sales
while reducing digital waste at all costs.  

The Typeface Group have been B Corp certified since October 2021 and is currently going through recertification. 

Nancy Hyne: True Horizon: https://truehorizon.co.uk/

Seismic Change: https://www.seismic-change.com/

Transcription: 

Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with Vista attractions. I'm your host, Paul Marden. 

On today’s episode I’m joined by Polly Buckland the Owner Founder of The Typeface Group a B Corp Communications Agency and Design studio based in Hampshire.

The climate emergency is a subject that is gaining traction.  The changes to our climate are palpable, and finding ways to reduce our carbon footprint and impact on the planet is front and centre for many people that visit attractions.  

People are making mindful decisions about where to spend their time and money, to have as little impact as possible – but at the same time people still want to enjoy experiences.  

There are many attractions that understand this and are working to reduce their impact, and communicate this clearly to potential guests.  So today I’m going to be talking to Polly about how you can measure, and communicate the sustainability of your attraction.

Paul Marden: Polly, welcome to the show.

Polly Buckland: Thank you for having me, Paul.

Paul Marden: Absolute pleasure. My first in the driver's seat all by myself. So it was important to me that this was going to be an interview with a friend so that I could ease myself into the hot seat of being the main host of Skip the Queue.

Polly Buckland: Happy to help.

Paul Marden: Thank you. Thank you for joining me. So regular listeners will know that we always start the podcast with a icebreaker question or two, which is always a surprise. So I picked out some lovely ones for you. Okay. These were ones that came from one of the podcast alumni last week, Ross Ballinger from Drayton Manor. So these were ones that he prepared. So he said, “If you could master one new skill instantly, what would it be and why?”

Polly Buckland: Being able to focus one thing at a time, because I don't know what that feels like.

Paul Marden: Does any agency owner know that? I mean, I think that is kind of a skill for agency owners to be able to focus on 16 things concurrently.

Polly Buckland: No, I’m not sure. Yeah. I feel like it would be a superpower to just really focus in on just that one thing.

Paul Marden: It's interesting, isn't it, because different people behave in different ways. So some people just hyper focus, don't they? Right down into the cornflakes. I can't do that at all. I'm like, just give me the headlines and I'll focus on the six things concurrently, rather than write down deep.

Polly Buckland: Indeed. Lots of tabs open.

Paul Marden: Oh, yeah, completely. All right, so my next one then. If you could live in any period of history, what would it be?

Polly Buckland: Well, my mum told me recently that we descend from Vikings in our family. So maybe I'd go Viking. Maybe I'll go that era.

Paul Marden: That's taking it right back, isn't it? That's good.

Polly Buckland: Or all the 60’s, 70’s, because my mum also went to the Isle of Wight festival when Hendrix was there, and that sounds like it was fun.

Paul Marden: I think if I had to choose between those two, I'd probably go for 60’s or 70’s.

Polly Buckland: Life might have been harder as a Viking.

Paul Marden: I think it could have been quite a lot harder as a Viking. We went to Wealden Downland Museum a couple of weeks ago, and you could see the history of all of the different buildings and places that people lived. Yeah, no, I'll take central heating, please. Central heating and somewhere to cook your dinner. Don't really want to go back to just everybody sitting around a fire trying to. Trying to cook off a fire and live in the same space. That doesn't sound too fun for me.

Polly Buckland: No. Maybe I was hasty. Yeah. Let's go to the Isle of Wight festival and watch the doors.

Paul Marden: Sounds pretty cool to me. All right then, Polly. So the other thing that we always ask people is, what is their unpopular opinion? So tell me, what's yours?

Polly Buckland: I don't like ABBA. 

Paul Marden: Really?

Polly Buckland: Quiet, full stop. Well, just so overplayed. It makes me sulk a little bit if I'm dancing and someone puts an ABBA track on.

Paul Marden: Which is quite often, isn't it, really?

Polly Buckland: It's too often.

Paul Marden: So you're not too interested in watching some musicals with some ABBA soundtrack in it? That's. That's not going to light your fire?

Polly Buckland: My kids like watching the Mamma Mia films. They're okay. I like Meryl Streep, but.

Paul Marden: Not so much the music.

Polly Buckland: No. And I love musicals, but, yeah, not ABBA.

Paul Marden: So next wedding you go to, better make sure that they don't have ABBA on the soundtrack and ruin the end of the evening for you.

Polly Buckland: Yeah.

Paul Marden: Okay. So, Polly, thank you. We are going to talk about sustainability reporting because this is something that you do in your business. Yeah. But it's also something that you do helping other organisations with their sustainability reporting, isn't it? So really, I just wanted to start right back at the beginning. For people that have never done this before that heard the term bandied around, what does it actually mean to be doing sustainability reporting within an organisation?

Polly Buckland: Well, it depends what framework you choose to report by and what's most suitable for your business. And there are many excellent sustainability consultancies out there that can help you kind of decide which road to go down. But for me, regardless of what framework you choose to work by, sustainability reporting is important because you can't improve what you don't measure. 

Polly Buckland: And in order to move forward as a more sustainable business, you also need to bring your team on board, your customers on board, and you're kind of missing the most important communication tool if you haven't galvanised your mission and your targets into a report. So, yeah, it's really important, regardless of where you are in your journey, regardless of whether it's a legal requirement for your business or not, to actually get your goals down in black and white and start communicating them.

Paul Marden: So there's something you touched on there about it being a legal requirement for some people. So is it's mandatory for some sorts of organisations, is it? And then is it an optional for others?

Polly Buckland: Yeah. So quoted companies, LLPs, large businesses, there's kind of thresholds of energy usage and turnover that will define whether you are legally required to report or not. All B Corps have an obligation to produce annual impact report. And that's kind of how we started putting our annual reports together since our accreditation three and a bit years ago.

Paul Marden: Wow. Okay. So if you don't have to do it, if it's not a legal requirement for you to do it, why would you do it? It sounds like, not having done this before myself, it feels like it could be quite a lot of work. So is there a business benefit to producing this?

Polly Buckland: It is quite a lot of work. It's definitely not a tick box exercise. There's buckets of research out there as to the relationship between consumer behaviour and sustainability. So McKinsey did a study. 60% of customers actively prioritise purchasing from sustainable businesses. Capgemini, 77% of customers buy from and remain loyal to brands that show their social responsibility. 

Polly Buckland: That I could literally keep quoting stats as to why businesses should take their sustainability goals very seriously and the communication of their sustainability initiatives very seriously, because it's becoming clearer. There was another stat about primarily women making the decisions based on sustainability of a business, and millennials and Gen Z being sort of high up the list of people that are taking sustainability creds into consideration when they're making a purchase.

Polly Buckland: So, I mean, it's a barrel load of stats that suggest if you don't have your eye on sustainability reporting and communicating your sustainability goals, you perhaps should have.

Paul Marden: Yeah. So thinking about our listeners and sorts of people that listen to the podcast, we've got attractions. And, you know, when we as an agency going and talking to people, we're talking about the audience. Who is it that's actually going to be buying from an attraction? Those are key demographics that you're talking about and making buying decisions off the basis of sustainability reporting and sustainability an overlap of what they want and what the organisation is offering. That's a key buying decision for people that are making decisions about where do they go at the weekend with their family. Could be off the back of those sustainability goals themselves, couldn't they?

Polly Buckland: 100%. And actually, if you think of the little people that are going to these attractions, I know my daughter is in junior school at the moment, and they've done, it's part of the curriculum now. So she's coming home and talking to me about plastics in the ocean and looking at signage and looking at labels on fair trade, that there are little people out there that are looking for these messages now. Yeah, it's important to them. I even noticed the other day a new Sainsbury's opened near where we are, and there is an abundance of sustainability messaging throughout the shop.

Paul Marden: Oh, really?

Polly Buckland: Yeah. So I think people are switching on to the fact that consumers want to see this stuff.

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So the other group of people that listening to us are people that working with attractions. And I guess if you're doing sustainability reporting, does that also look at the supply chain? So the people that you buy from, you need to be buying from people that are also thinking about sustainability. So for agencies like us or other people that are servicing the attraction sector, for those attractions that are interested in sustainability reporting, they're going to look to that, to their suppliers to also care about those sorts of things.

Polly Buckland: Yeah, 100%. So doing your due diligence with your supply chain is a big part of what you claim to be as a business. We've just supported one of our clients with the design of their GRI reporting. And as part of that, as one of their suppliers, we had to write a statement to go into that GRI report. So, yeah, supplier due diligence is massive, and I think it would only help you as an agency or as a supplier into these big attractions to not only do the sustainability reporting get the accreditation with whatever framework that works for you, but communicate it to your prospects and customers as well.

Paul Marden: Yeah. So you're talking a little bit about frameworks, and you've talked about different types of sustainability report. Is there some kind of standardisation to this? You know, accountants have standards by which they do their financial reporting. Is that the same sort of thing happening in sustainability space?

Polly Buckland: There are just a number of frameworks you can report by. So if you are one of those larger businesses that we spoke about previously, there are SECR regulations that you need to be compliant for. There are reporting frameworks, as I mentioned, like GRI. There's the ISO accreditation, there's B Corp and our sustainability consultant that we use, Nancy Hine from True Horizon, based down in the New Forest. She very often says it's a case of choosing the framework that's right for you and what you're hoping to achieve as a business. So went down the B Corp route because that's suitable for us. One of our clients, as I said, has just gone down the GRI route. So there isn't one size fits all.

Polly Buckland: And there are a lot of consultancies out there, like Seismic Change, for example, that can support using whichever framework is most kind of commercially viable for you and where you're looking to go as a business, but keeping that credibility through the reporting.

Paul Marden: So getting some advice and guidance from some of the experts to help you pick makes a lot of sense then, I guess.

Polly Buckland: 100%. 

Paul Marden: We've talked a little bit about the frameworks. Now you might need somebody to help you with those frameworks, but let's just take it right back to basics. We need to talk a little bit about the sustainability report itself. How do you go about actually gathering all the data and being able to report on the numbers themselves?

Polly Buckland: Yeah, so like us, when we started, weren't really affiliated with any framework. And actually we started by just getting an environmental audit of our business because were interested in how we fared. And that's really how were then introduced into the world of B Corp. But at a basic level, I would split impact reporting into the story and what makes you different as a business and where you've been, where you are, where you want to go, what your commitments are and the data which would be your scope one, two and three emissions. 

Polly Buckland: So your scope one emissions, they include all direct emissions from the activities of your business. So that might include any company owned facilities or vehicles. Scope two emissions cover indirect emissions from electricity, heat, cooling that are used by the organisation. And then scope three is pretty much where everything else sits. So for us, a fully remote business, the majority of our emissions sit in scope three, and we are granular to the point where we know the majority of our emissions come from our coffee habit. 

Polly Buckland: And that is. That is fact. So once you get a basic understanding of what your scope one, two and three emissions are, there's so much training you can do as a business, whether it's through carbon literacy or you can find consultants to come in and do one one training. What I found was really important is getting the whole team involved in that training.

Polly Buckland: So everyone has a basic understanding of what we're measuring when we're saying scope one, scope two, or scope three, what we mean and what's included within those scopes so people can start to be mindful about waste. So understanding the emissions is important, but tracking your emissions as a business is really important. And we use a business called Compare Your Footprint. And it's basically an engine that you put your data into and it tells you what your carbon footprint is.

Paul Marden: And it's doing that across all of those three different scopes of emissions that you're able to put your data in. Because obviously that's going to really vary by types of organisation, isn't it? Because if you're running a big attraction, then you're going to be, you know, that's a big physical space, isn't it? So you're going to be consuming lots of electricity to be able to power that thing, and probably gas as well to be able to heat it. But, you know, there's ways of mitigating that. But your focus might be different than you are if you're a virtual organisation like us where you know you, a lot of it is very indirect, that kind of scope three type stuff.

Polly Buckland: Exactly. And I guess it's important to differentiate at this point the difference between carbon neutrality and net zero. So there are lots of businesses that will claim carbon neutrality and what that means is they've calculated their scope one and two emissions and have offset those emissions. You don't have to have any reduction plan in place for those emissions and you can offset them and claim carbon neutrality. So on one hand, at least, scope one and two emissions are being measured. However, we could, I could easily do that as a business and pay 30 quid in offsets and claim carbon neutrality knowing that I have tons of emissions sat in my scope 3, whereas net zero, you have to get your baseline of emissions, then you have to reduce them by 90%, I believe it is, and then offset the rest.

Polly Buckland: So there's a world of difference between claiming carbon neutrality and net zero and there's most people, if not everyone really is in between and doing the work. I digress going back to that very first impact report, getting a handle on your emissions. In our first impact reports, we said we've done scope one and two, we haven't done scope three yet, so being really transparent because you've got to start somewhere. And actually, we included in our Impact Report because weren't governed, it didn't have to be compliant in the way that a GRI report might be. 

Polly Buckland: So we're slightly more free with what we include. We really told a story through ours on what we set out to do, what we did towards that, what worked, what didn't work. Then our data and data visualisation around our scope one, two and three emissions. And then actually the biggest part of our first ever impact report was the to do list for the coming year.

Paul Marden: Oh, really?

Polly Buckland: What we wanted to focus on. Yeah. And actually the beauty of an impact report like that for us is, A, we get really good feedback because people love the storytelling aspect of it. But B, I'm just doing my third impact report now for us, and I go back to last year and say what we said were going to do, and I have a double page spread with what we said were going to do, what we actually did. So it's a really great accountability tool, as well as a way to tell the story of your sustainability progress.

Paul Marden: Yeah. It holds you accountable for setting a plan and then measuring how well you completed against that plan. And I'm guessing that varies. Some things you will have done really well on some things you didn't progress on, and there'll be some things that you do that you hadn't necessarily thought about as well.

Polly Buckland:  Yeah, yeah. And there are some targets in there, like revenue from purpose driven businesses. I think year one were at 30% and we said we wanted to get to 40%, and then we said we wanted to get to 50%. And I think we're at about 54% at the moment. So putting those targets in place really helps give you that focus throughout the year in some of the decisions you make as a business.

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely.

Polly Buckland: It helps you grow internally as well as provides a vehicle for communicating something that's actually very important to a lot of people that are choosing your product or service.

Paul Marden: You touched on the storytelling element of this. When I think about sustainability reporting myself, I guess I started from a point of view of, and this might because I'm a data geek, but I started from thinking there's a huge amount of data involved in this, you're going to have to gather lots, but equally important to you is the storytelling around it. So are you thinking about that in advance, about the narrative of where you want to take the business over the year ahead. And how are you thinking about that? Is that something that you get the whole team involved in?

Polly Buckland: So throughout the year, we have a slide deck open and it's called our Sustainability scrapbook. And any decisions we make or anything that we do mindfully around the sustainability of the business, anyone can chuck into that deck. It doesn't look pretty, but it's just a repository. Show us putting our money where our mouth is and making decisions that might not directly impact our scope, but could have a real social impact, for example. So we use that Sustainability scrapbook to help build up the story in our impact report for the following year. I think businesses are going through a lot of change at the moment, and there might quite naturally be a theme that pops up when you're starting your impact report journey for the year. So last year, for us, it was educating ourselves and other people.

Polly Buckland: So we'd done a lot of training internally, but we'd also created our digital cleanup challenge to help people understand their digital footprint. So that became the thread that worked its way through our impact report last year. This year, we have defined down our services. So our impact report is about kind of slaying in your own lane and being really clear on what it is that you do to reduce waste. Yet naturally, if the people that are writing and communicating your impact report are close to the decision making, you'll probably quite naturally know where your report is going to go in that any one year. If you outsource it, so we support businesses to help them tell their story through their impact report. We interview the key decision makers in the business and we will really draw from them that narrative.

Polly Buckland: And I think it's really easy to get bogged down in the data. It's incredibly important, but it can be quite stressful gathering that all together. So actually having someone interview you about, but what were the things that you loved? What were the things that you saw people coming into your attraction really engage with? What was the thing that surprised you about signage that you put up to do with sustainability? Or, I don't know, when you get the little activity sheets for the kids, what did the younger visitors engage with the most? Asking them that sort of question will really draw out the story to help bring the impact report to life.

Paul Marden: Yeah, and I love the scrapbook idea. I love the scrapbook idea just more broadly as just a place for the whole team to dump their thoughts about doing different things. So having one all about sustainability. It must capture so much that the more senior people, the people that lead the organisation, they may not see some of the smaller stuff going on, and they're. They could be really powerful stories. So it kind of makes it much more democratic across the team, doesn't it? To have a place where everyone can put their thoughts about sustainability and record the little things that they're doing. And then you can draw those stories out later on.

Polly Buckland: 100%. But you can use those stories to engage your customers as well. I've been on a couple of panels, the B Corp type events, and I've sat alongside a lady called Faye, who owns Beevive, which are the little vials that revive bees. I think they're in the Natural History Museum shop, and they're not B Corp yet, but they are a manufacturer. So their raw materials, their packaging, the mileage, their distribution, everything has to be considered. And what Faye and her team are excellent at is documenting all of that. And it's like we said one of the panels, just because you don't wear your Fitbit doesn't mean you haven't done the steps. And I think it is the same with sustainability accreditations. You might not be ready to be B Corp. You might not be ready to go through an ISO accreditation or GRI reporting.

Polly Buckland: You might not be ready to be B Corp. You might not be ready to go through an ISO accreditation or GRI reporting. You might not be legally required to do any of that. But let's start documenting it because people care. And you could run one initiative at your attraction, and that's you off the mark. You've started your sustainability story, and I think that should be documented and that should be shared with your audiences.

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So that story that you can tell, I guess, is kind of reusable, isn't it? Because it's not just about, you know, you start off thinking about sustainability reporting. I'm going to have annual report and I'm going to publish it. But this is a story that can thread through everything, I guess.

Polly Buckland: Yeah, 100%. I think this is the same with all content produced across most businesses, to be honest. Lots and lots of hours go into creating something, and then it gets shared once on LinkedIn or there's a paid Facebook campaign, and then it dies a death. I saw someone on LinkedIn the other day, say, for every hour you take to produce a piece of content, you should spend the same amount of time distributing it. And I think that sustainability reports, impact reports, can take weeks, if not months. So as part of your reporting, I would have a distribution strategy as well. So where are all the places that you can get people to engage with that report? Is there a QR code in the cafe at your attraction where it's like, do you want to have a look at what we're doing for sustainability?

Polly Buckland: Is it an email that goes through to all your members? I would imagine that investors want to see this type of information. I would imagine that it would be really important to go onto the bottom of job descriptions when you're recruiting because there is a huge influx of people out there in the market that want to work for purposeful businesses. So this impact or sustainability report should go everywhere, really, in the footer of your emails. You just want to get eyeballs on it. And of course you can break it down. Kew Gardens have got a really great video on YouTube about their sustainability mission. What I would say is, don't hide it. And I think previously, sustainability reporting sits with other financial reports and policies in the footer of a website.

Polly Buckland: I looked earlier at an attraction that me and my family love going to, and they have some really nice bits of sustainability messaging when you're there. I couldn't find their sustainability report on their website. It was kind of the group website and then it was hidden away in a sub sustainability page. And I think transparency is really important. And bringing your sustainability report to the conversation, not hiding it away once you spent all those hours creating it.

Paul Marden: Yeah, there was a. There's an attraction that we visited just recently that were talking to, and they've got biomass boiler on their site, and they coppice wood from the site and they use that coppiced wood then to power the biomass boiler, which then powers the hot water that people are sitting in hot tubs and enjoying. You know, there's a really powerful story to tell there about the sustainability of going to that place. And that's something that they recognise is not something that they're not telling that story very effectively. And I think for a lot of people in the UK, now they're making decisions about what they do for their long weekends or their holidays, even on the basis of trying to have a minimal impact.

Paul Marden: And if you've lost that story, even, you know, even the people that are doing lots of amazing work may not be spotting the opportunities to tell the story of what they're doing to be heard by those people that make the decisions.

Polly Buckland: Yeah. And I think that they're photo opportunities as well. Right. So if you're in a hot tub and there's a little sign saying this is powered by wood from the estate, that's a little Instagram opportunity for those people to be righteous about the choices they've made, about what attraction they've chosen to go to. So I think more and more there's an opportunity for user generated content with sustainability messaging on site. So, yeah, everything's really an opportunity to share that message and it shouldn't be just contained to the impact report.

Paul Marden: I was at the Natural History Museum last week with my daughter's class. I took the class, I was one of the responsible adults going along with them. And I had 15 10 year olds in the gift shop at the end. And of course I'm just stood there like a numpty in the middle, just watching them all, trying to make sure they would make a decision as quickly as they possibly could. And I did find myself looking at the signage that was in the shop and they were talking about their sustainability journey and how they reduced single use plastics from what they were doing and they tried to improve the sustainability of the gifts that were available in the shop. So those messages are there, but are they consistent? Are they shared everywhere?

Paul Marden: So that wherever people are touching that brand, is it available for them to understand that it's a sustainable brand? It's important, isn't it?

Polly Buckland: Yeah.

Paul Marden: So I think you've touched on this, but let's just. Is this something you would do on your own or is this something where you would get in help from experts to get you started?

Polly Buckland: I would get help because you've got to factor in the hours in your day as having a value. So the length of time it would take you to figure out how to do an audit on your business and to work out your starting point and to get your initial scope one, two and three emissions measured is probably going to take you three or four times as long as it would a consultant. So if you can, I would do that. If you can't, there are some great tools out there I mentioned Compare Your Footprint and their customer service is really excellent. So if you want to start simple, you can. But if you have the budget, I would go with a consultant because you'll get to where you want to go, which is ultimately to find your baseline quicker.

Paul Marden: Yeah. Is this something where you start small and get a consultant in maybe to help you with a small part of the organisation? Or is this something where you really want to be throwing your all into this to try to do everything that is kind of best practice all at once?

Polly Buckland: Oh, no. No one's perfect. So don't hold yourself to that standard because it's just going to stop you doing anything out of fear. I think you just need to get started. That said, hitting publish on my first ever impact report was one of the most stressful things I've ever done because I just felt like I was going to be judged.

Paul Marden: I think that worries me as well, is that thought that unless I do a perfect job, there's a risk that when I put this out there, that I'm going to be accused of greenwashing, and that my intent may not be well understood if I don't do it perfectly first time.

Polly Buckland: Yeah. Which is why, again, that storytelling part of the impact reporting is really important for me, because I will say we are not perfect. These are the things that we know we need to work on, but these are the things we've done better. And that's what I really like. The B Corp BIA assessment and their framework is because it takes you across five categories of measurement, and no one's perfect in any of them, but what it does do is it provides a framework for you to better and measure yourself against. Yeah, I think the messaging behind your sustainability is really important. If you're professing to be perfect and you're not, you will get stung, because I think people can see through that.

Polly Buckland: But if you are showing that you're trying to better, I don't think many people could argue with that. So it's not just environmental reporting from a B Corp standpoint, it takes you across governance, workers, community, the environment, and your customers. There is a real breadth to that framework. So, actually, on our first go at certification, I guess our strongest category was governance.

Paul Marden: Oh, really? Okay.

Polly Buckland: Yeah. And then you have three years to make changes, make improvements. It's a continuous improvement journey, for want of a better word. And we're just about to re accredit. We're going through re accreditation now after three years, and you can see significant improvement across those categories.

Paul Marden: So that B Corp framework, that's going to be relevant to quite a lot of attractions that are profit making organisations. But of course, people like our charity based museums and some of the cultural organisations that could be non profit making. The B Corp route might not work for them, but it's something that quite a lot of consumers recognise now, isn't it?

Polly Buckland: It is. And the B impact assessment tool is still a useful framework, regardless if you want to become accredited or not, because it takes you through the five categories to focus on. And actually, I think if you're starting your impact reporting and you're not sure where to begin, it's a really nice framework to use.

Paul Marden: Lovely. Polly, really interesting talking to you about sustainability reporting and then going off and talking a little bit about B Corp and places like that as well. It's been lovely. We always ask our guests to leave us with a book recommendation, something they love, or it can be anything, a personal book recommendation, a business book. So what have you brought with you today?

Polly Buckland: I absolutely love Manifest by Roxy Nafousi, 7 steps to living your best life. It's not a book about visualise it and it will happen. It's a book that takes you through the steps to improve your chances of achieving what you want to in life. It takes you through your vision, removing fear and doubt, how you can align your behaviour to get what you want, how you can overcome tests from the universe, how you can embrace gratitude, turn envy into inspiration and trust the universe. So it sounds a bit woo, but everyone that I know that's read it absolutely loves it.

Paul Marden: What a lovely recommendation, Polly. Thank you. So that will go onto our list of the books recommended by our guests, which are blog posts that we've got. And as ever, if you want to win the book, if you head over to X and you retweet the episode announcement with the words I want Polly's book, the first person that does that will get the book sent to them. Once again, thank you ever so much for coming on the podcast and talking to me about sustainability reporting. It's been lovely. Thank you.

Polly Buckland: You're welcome. Thank you.

Paul Marden: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. 

Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! 

• Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industry
• Gain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion rates
• Explore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performance
• Learn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion rates
• Uncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversions

Take the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report
 

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.

Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast

Competition ends on 17th April 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

https://carbonsix.digital/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmarden/

Paul Marden is the Founder and Managing Director of Carbon Six Digital and the CEO of Rubber Cheese. He is an Umbraco Certified Master who likes to think outside the box, often coming up with creative technical solutions that clients didn’t know were possible. Paul oversees business development and technical delivery, specialising in Microsoft technologies including Umbraco CMS, ASP.NET, C#, WebApi, and SQL Server. He's worked in the industry since 1999 and has vast experience of managing and delivering the technical architecture for both agencies and client side projects of all shapes and sizes. Paul is an advocate for solid project delivery and has a BCS Foundation Certificate in Agile.

https://www.rubbercheese.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellymolson/

Kelly Molson is the Founder of Rubber Cheese, a user focused web design and development agency for the attraction sector. Digital partners to Eureka! The National Children’s Museum, Pensthorpe, National Parks UK, Holkham, Visit Cambridge and The National Marine Aquarium.Kelly regularly delivers workshops and presentations on sector focused topics at national conferences and attraction sector organisations including ASVA, ALVA, The Ticketing Professionals Conference and the Museum + Heritage Show.

As host of the popular Skip the Queue Podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions, she speaks with inspiring industry experts who share their knowledge of what really makes an attraction successful.Recent trustee of The Museum of the Broads.

Our guests:

Paul Wright from Made by Wag

Andy Povey from Convious

• Looking forward to 2023: Key digital trends attractions shouldn’t miss out on

Bernard Donoghue from ALVA

• Season finale, with Bernard Donoghue!

David Hingley from BOP Consulting

• Visitor Experience restructure at Tate, with David Hingley

Paul Griffiths from Painshill Park

• The transformation of Painshill Park, with Paul Griffiths, Director of Painshill

Ross Ballinger from Drayton Manor

• The importance of building a great social community and process behind rebranding a 70 year old attraction

Danielle Nicholls from Alton Towers

• The importance of building a great social community and process behind rebranding a 70 year old attraction

Rachel Mackay from Hampton Court Palace

• The importance of Sector Cooperation with Carlton Gajadhar and Rachel Mackay

Sophie from Eureka! The National Children's Museum

• How to write a website brief that agencies will thank you for, with Sophie Ballinger

Elizabeth McKay, CEO of the London Transport Museum

• Developing a culture of innovation, with Elizabeth McKay

Simon Addison from The Roman Baths

• How introducing variable pricing increased revenue by 2.3 million, with Simon Addison

Dominic Jones from The Mary Rose and Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

• Attraction partnerships and rivalries, with Dominic Jones

Transcription: 

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions.

Paul Marden: On today's episode, I'm joined by my co host, Kelly Molson, founder of Rubber Cheese, as well as a group of returning guests to the podcast. This is Kelly's last episode as the host of Skip the Queue as she's leaving rubber cheese after 21 fantastic years of the agency. Today we'll be turning the tables on Kelly as the guests ask her the icebreaker questions. We'll also be looking back at the impact the podcast has had as some of our guests share their experiences of appearing on the podcast with Kelly.

Kelly Molson: If you like what you hear, subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.

Paul Marden: So, how you doing?

Kelly Molson: I feel slightly. I feel slightly apprehensive. You just said, like, are you ready? Have you got your tissues ready? Like I have. I'm prepared.

Paul Marden: Good. So, listeners, today is a big episode, as well as being on 99th episode is also Kelly's last episode as the Skip the Queue host. Yeah. So many of you will know that after 21 years heading up Rubber Cheese, Kelly has decided to spread her wings and move on to pastures new. 

Paul Marden: And while this is news from many of the listeners, I've had a few months to prepare for this. So I've been thinking long and hard about this episode of what can I do? And I thought it'd be nice to look back at some of your best bits, but I didn't feel like I should do that on my own. I actually thought the best way of looking back at your best bits are to bring your best bits back to us. So I'm just gonna admit a load of people that want to join the edge.

Kelly Molson: Oh, no.

Paul Marden: So we have got a host of po face and audience members that are going to join us today.

Kelly Molson: I'm going to cry already.

Paul Marden: Excellent. I've done my job to start with straight away, so everyone's joined us for a virtual leaving party. So I hope you've got your whatsits in a bowl and your cheese and pineapple ready for you as we look back over some of your best bits and enjoy a Skip the Queue episode at its best. And so, for those of you that are listening and not watching, first of all, where have you been? These aren't facestrail radio. You should be subscribing on YouTube and watch these lovely people. But if you're listening, let me introduce you to the host of people that are joining us. We've got Andy Povey from Convious. We've got Bernard Donoghue from ALVA. We've got David Hingley from BOP Consulting. We've got Rachel Mackay from Hampton Court Palace. Sophie Ballinger from Eureka!

Kelly Molson: You're supposed to be on holiday.

Paul Marden: Sophie from Eureka! The National Children's Museum. We've got Ross Ballinger from Drayton Manor. We've got Dominic Jones from the Mary Rose. And we've also been joined by some of your lovely Rubber Cheese colleagues that wanted to say hi and goodbye.

Kelly Molson: Look at everyone's beautiful faces. Oh, God.

Paul Marden: And the tissues are going already.

Kelly Molson: Do you know what? Just before I came on, I was like, I'm not going to cry. I am completely in control of today. If it was yesterday, I would have cried, but I'm completely in control today. I am not in control at all.

Paul Marden: So, long time listeners will know that we always start off with an icebreaker question. And Kelly never tells the guests what the icebreaker question is in advance. So I'm afraid, Kelly, it's your turn. Bernard, you're going to kick off for us today. Would you like to ask Kelly your icebreaker question? 

Bernard Donoghue: Thank you. Claudia Winkleman. I'm delighted to join this episode of The Traitors. 

Paul Marden: Have you got the fringe to be Claudia? I'm sorry.

Kelly Molson: No, we have not.

Bernard Donoghue: Kelly, it's World Book day tomorrow. You've received short notice. What book do you go as to work, please?

Kelly Molson: Oh, I would. I'd have to take one of my daughter's books. So she has got this book called Oh, no, George. And it's about an incredibly naughty dog with. He's a ginger dog with a very long nose. I would have to dress up as George because he doesn't do himself any favours. He hopes that he's going to be good, but he's just. He can't cope with being good and he eats all the cake and he knocks over all the tulips in the house and he's incredibly lovable, but incredibly naughty. So definitely George. That's me. Right.

Bernard Donoghue: It's a lovely insight into your personality. 

Paul Marden: Perfect. 

Kelly Molson:  Great question. 

Paul Marden: It is a great question. I hope you're ready for a few more because we've got some of these lined up for you. So the next. The next person that's going to join us, unfortunately couldn't be here today, so they sent me a little message that we'll play now.

Paul Wright: Hi, Kelly. Remember me? It's Wag here.

Kelly Molson: This is my old co founder.

Paul Wright: My question to you. If every time someone clicked on a website and it made a sound. What noise would you want it to make?

Kelly Molson: Oh, it has to be a big old fart noise, right? A real big wet one, like a whoopee cushion. Fart noise, please. Thank you.

Paul Marden: So, Mrs. Marden, over breakfast this morning, as were talking through what I was going to talk about, said, oh, she's just going to say wet fart, surely.

Kelly Molson: Absolutely.

Paul Marden:  She knows you so well.

Kelly Molson: She’s my level 

Paul Marden:  Completely. Next up, we've got Mr. Andy Povey. 

Andy Povey: Hi, Kelly. It's been a while. So I'm very pleased to be here, but not for the reason that we are all there for. We spend a lot of time on the road, travelling around for our jobs. So my question is, what's your favourite motorway service station and why?

Kelly Molson: I tell you what, Peterborough motorway service station. Because I know that I'm probably an hour from home then, so I'm nearly home. I've had a good few coffees in Peterborough service station.

Andy Povey: I've not tried that one, I must admit.

Kelly Molson: I mean, I don't know if it's up there with, like, the best, but, you know, I just. I know that I'm going to be home soon.

Paul Marden: Bit depressing that the favourite motorway service is the one that's closest to home for you. Thank you, Andy. Next up, so here's a surprise. Danielle Nicholls from Alton Towers, you've managed to join us.

Danielle Nicholls: So my question to you, Kelly, is you've worked with a lot of attractions and theme parks over the years, but which is your favourite theme park attraction or ride that you've ever been on?

Kelly Molson: This is not a good question to ask, is it? Because I'm going to upset people. 

Danielle Nicholls: You can be diplomatic about it. 

Kelly Molson: My favourite ride, definitely not those ones that swing and literally make you one of them. My favourite ride. It's really hard. Yeah, it's really hard. Well, I was just trying to think of, like, where do I go with this? But I'm going to go with the one. It was mine and my dad's favourite when I was a kid and it doesn't exist anymore, which is really sad, but it's the Back to the Future ride at Universal.

Kelly Molson: Which was absolutely epic and I can remember years ago queuing up like four times on the trot to go on it with my dad and he just. It was just brilliant. Absolutely absolute. I mean, I love that. I love eighties music movies. Yeah. My genre, anyway, but, yeah, that ride was absolutely incredible. Oh, that's amazing. 

Danielle Nicholls: I never got to do that one so very jealous. 

Kelly Molson: Good memories.

Paul Marden: Paul Griffiths, can you take the floor and give Kelly a grilling? 

Paul Griffiths: Of course. Hi, Kelly. Good to see you. And good to see everyone else. We know that you love picking up souvenirs and knickknacks on your travels, particularly attractions. So what is your favourite souvenir you've taken away from one of your best tourist attractions?

Kelly Molson: I've got them all here. Look at them. I've got my bounty on my desk.

Paul Griffiths:  The show and tell answer then, isn't it?

Kelly Molson: Look, I've got. Yeah. Okay. What's my favourite one, though?

Paul Marden: For listeners, hey can't see you picking up a dodgy eighties ice cream box.

Kelly Molson: This is my ‘80s. It's a Bijam economy vanilla ice cream tub, which my parents were obviously really keen on feeding us well as a child. But in it are, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of rubbers that I've collected from different places and attractions over the years. And they smell. I wish this was smellyvision because they absolutely smell divine. There's so many in here. But I think, again, this is. And this is for memories. I'm going to go with this one and it's really old. This is my Thorpe Park rubber.

Paul Griffiths:  Very classic.

Kelly Molson: Isn't it great? So it's got the Thorpe park rabbit on it. Rangers. 

Danielle Nicholls: Is it the Thorpe Park Rangers? 

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Yeah. Thorpe Park Ranger. Yeah. Thorpe Park. So that was, again, that was probably the closest attraction to the closest theme park to me as a kid, and we used to go there a lot and, like, my uncle used to take me there in the summer holidays. The whole family used to go. So that one has got really good memories. That's a great question, Paul. There's so many in here, though, that I could have chosen.

Paul Griffiths:  I didn't age to have them all to hand, though. 

Kelly Molson: That sat on my desk.

Paul Marden: So I promised you that we would try and faithfully stick to the format once you hand the Batman to me. So I'm going to give you a breather from being grilled by everybody. What was your unpopular opinion that you wanted to share with everybody?

Kelly Molson: Peas. Peas. Peas are the food of the devil. Peas taint everything that they touch. Sometimes. Nobody tells you that there's peas in stuff on the menu as well. Like, I love a fish pie. Fish pie is delicious. When you open up a fish pie and someone's gone. No, we'll just throw a few handful of peas in there just for a laugh. That's not fun. You can pick them out of stuff, but you can taste them in absolutely everything that they are in.

Paul Marden: That's not an unpopular opinion, that's just. That's just a fact. I don't know how everybody else feels about peas, but I'm a pea hater as well.

Sophie Ballinger:  Oh, what about cheesy peas?

Kelly Molson: No, cheesy peas. Even cheese would not make peas taste appealing to me.

Dominic Jones: Wasabi peas?

Kelly Molson: No. 

Danielle Nicholls:  Minty peas? 

Kelly Molson: No peas. I like beans. Beans are okay. And like edamame beans, which I like peas. But not peas. It's just a very distinct difference.

Bernard Donoghue: Nurse. Nurse. She's out of bed again.

Sophie Ballinger:  Where do you stand on mushy peas? 

Kelly Molson: Oh, so far from mushy peas. I did have to cook them once for Lee's old granddad. Oh, God. No.

Paul Marden: Guacamole as. Who was it? It was one of the politicians and labour politics. 

Andy Povey: Peter Mandelson. 

Paul Marden: There we go. Peter Mandelson went into a fish and chip shop and asked to have guacamole with his fish and chips and it turned out was mushy peas.

Kelly Molson: I'd eat guacamole with my chips. That's fine.

Paul Marden: So should we go back to grilling you on some.

Kelly Molson: This whole episode is just awkward questions for me. Is it great?

Paul Marden: You've done this to everybody for 99 episodes. It's your turn to take one. Rachel Mackay from Hampton Court Palace, welcome.

Rachel Mackay: Oh, hello. I've decided to go against the grade. I'm not going to ask your revision question because I know you'll just stare blankly at me anyway, so I'm going to go more general. What is your preference, running shoes or dancing shoes? 

Kelly Molson: Oh, dancing shoes. Dancing shoes all the way. I really miss dancing. You don't get to dance enough when you get older. Dancing is the one thing that I used to really love doing with my friends. 

Rachel Mackay: I thought you would say dancing shoes because also it gives you a bit of a heel.

Kelly Molson: Which I need. No, you're absolutely right.

Paul Marden: So the dancing. You'll be able to get them back out again soon because, what, Eddie's two now? Two and a bit. It will soon be birthday party season, where you'll be doing the hokey cokey and you'll be doing the conga.

Kelly Molson: And she's already got all my moves. She's already got all my moves. Yeah, she's in the dancing zone.

Paul Marden: Excellent. Next up, we've got somebody else that couldn't join us today, so they've sent us another little video to share with you. So this is Simon Addison from the Roman Baths and number two in the hour, top ten paid attractions outside London. And I say, sorry, Dominic.

Dominic Jones: He deserves it. He's a great guy. And so is the Roman Baths.

Paul Marden: Exactly. You haven't heard what he says yet.

Simon Addison: Hey, Kelly, it's Simon Addison here from the Roman Baths. I'm really sorry that I couldn't be with you for the recording today. Before I ask you my ice breaker question, I just wanted to tell you about the impact that skip the queue is having, not just on those people who work in visitor attractions, but those who visit them too. Last month, I was walking around the National Portrait Gallery with Dominic Jones and a visitor genuinely pulled him over and asked him if he was the Dominic Jones from Skip the Queue. Kelly, you have created an absolute monster there.

Kelly Molson: I love this.

Dominic Jones: That is actually true. It actually happened. We were a bit bemused by it and were worried that someone had set this visitor up, but they genuinely wanted a Korean visitor attractions and had listened to it and I'd obviously said my name a bit too loud to Simon and they came up and asked for a picture. It was completely random, but brilliant.

Paul Marden: I'm a little bit heartbroken because I actually genuinely thought they spotted the face and knew you from the YouTube.

Dominic Jones: I think it was the voice, but, yeah, no, it was brilliant. It's all because of Skip the Queue, which is Simon's rise had a massive impact on everyone in our industry and actually people who want to join our industry. So you should be really proud. And hopefully that's the last random stranger that stopped me. But it was fantastic.

Kelly Molson: Do you know what? I do feel really proud of that.

Paul Marden: So, Simon's question.

Simon Addison: Kelly, my icebreaker question for you is what is the weirdest piece of advice that you've ever received? And did you follow it? Thanks very much, Kelly, and thanks for everything. Thanks for all the episodes over the years and I wish you the very best of luck with everything.

Kelly Molson: I'm trying to think what has been. Do you know, I have been given some advice about public speaking before, which I thought was quite strange. I used to really. I used to get really anxious about public speaking. It wasn't something that was massively comfortable for me. And I had loads of coaching from a really good friend of mine, Andy Loparta. And I don't know if it was Andy. I don't think this was Andy that gave me this advice. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been. But someone told me that if you go on stage and you clench your butt cheeks, you can't actually clench anything else. At the same time. And I'm like. I am, though. I'm clenching my butt cheeks now and I'm clenching my teeth so you can. But that's always stuck in my head.

Kelly Molson: So I definitely tried it, but I don't know that it helped with my speaking whatsoever. I'm doing it now. Is everyone. Is everyone doing it now? Is everyone trying it? Everyone's doing it.

Paul Marden: Standing desk practicing it right now.

Sophie Ballinger: Yeah. Start bobbing up and down in my seat. You'll know why. 

Kelly Molson: There you go.

Paul Marden: Lovely segue. Sophie Ballinger from Eureka. Why don't you ask Kelly your icebreaker?

Kelly Molson: Hello, duck. 

Sophie Ballinger: Hello, duck. Hey, I've got a bit of a random one. I think I might have. It might have been asked you this in the agency interview many years ago, but I'm not sure because it's one of my favourites. Who would win in a fight between a badger and a baboon? 

Kelly Molson: I don't remember you asking me this. 

Sophie Ballinger: Should have done.

Kelly Molson: Badger. I think Badger. Badgers are quite vicious, aren't they? You think the boots. Everyone's shaking their head. Oh, I think badger. I've never seen a live badger either, but I know that they're quite vicious.

Paul Marden: We went into South Africa a few years ago and we stopped because we saw a troop of baboons on the side of the road and there were other people watching. So everybody got out their cars and they all stood around. All of a sudden, this alpha male baboon just crosses the road to the car behind us, opens the back door, gets into the woman's handbag when he's rifling through trying to find chocolate and she's sat in the front seat going absolutely crazy. So I promise you it'll be the baboon. So next up, we've got another video. Joining us this time it is Elizabeth McKay, CEO of the London Transport Museum.

Elizabeth Mckay: Hi, Kelly. You were the nicest interviewer I ever had. So my question for you is equally nice, I hope. So, when you're getting around London, what's your favourite mode of travel? Is it tube, bus or cycle? 

Kelly Molson: Oh, I actually prefer to walk, so neither of the above. I know. Sorry. I'm sorry. I like. So I have to get the train in. So my train is the Liverpool street line. So I tend to get off. You know, I go. I'll go to Liverpool street and then I quite like to walk places. I do like the tube. Not gonna dis the tube, especially not to Elizabeth. But I quite like the opportunity to go and see stuff. And I think walking around London, everything feels everything so close together.

Kelly Molson: So it's nice to be able to just walk and see things that you wouldn't normally see.

Bernard Donoghue: Can I just point out that I've seen Kelly getting out of a disco rickshaw at least three times in the last week.

Kelly Molson: Fake news. Fake news.

Paul Marden: Now, Kelly, you did say to me that you had a few thank you messages that you wanted to share with people. So do you want to just have a couple of minutes to thank some people?

Kelly Molson: Yes, I would. I would like to thank everybody because people have always been so incredibly generous with their time for me, and I'm always so grateful of that. You're generous to come on and talk to me. You're generous to come on and answer my ridiculous questions, but generous to share all your insight and knowledge. And I think especially through the pandemic, that meant an incredible amount to me and hopefully to our listeners as well. It really felt like people were coming on and sharing kind of a real time. This is where we're at. This is what's happening, and this is what we're doing about it. Experience. And it was amazing.

Kelly Molson: The pandemic was incredibly difficult for everybody, but for me, the highlight was knowing that I was getting to speak to so many different people and being able to share that with other people as well. And it made it a really special time for me. So thank you for everybody that has ever come on the podcast and answered my stupid questions and shared all of their stuff with me. Thank you. Thank you to all of the listeners. I genuinely could not have imagined. I could not have imagined how well this podcast would go. I honestly can remember the day that I came in, I was like, “We should definitely do this podcast. I've been looking. I don't think there's anything like it. We should do it.” And my team going, “Yeah, how do we do it? I don't know. Let's just do it, though.”

Kelly Molson: And this is what happens. I come up with these crazy ideas, and I'm the driver of them, but it's all the people around me that actually make the magic happen. And that is. That's for the podcast, that's for the survey, the report, the agency itself. All I've done is just kind of drag it along and share it with people. It's all the other people behind the scenes that do it. Steve works his magic every single episode. He really does. He cuts out a lot of swearing. The very professional introductions that I record separately to the interviews. Jesus. The amount of swearing that he has to cut out on those is ridiculous. So well done, Steve, mate, you deserve that award winning podcast editor title just for this. And Wenalyn. So Wenalyn down here waving. She.

Kelly Molson: I mean, she really is the powerhouse behind the podcast because I'll get you to come on. We'll have a lovely chat. It goes over to Steve for the editor, and it comes back to, well, and she does everything. She does everything. She creates all the graphics. She uploads everything to the, you know, the website, she does the transcriptions, she creates, does all the podcasts, all the scheduling, all of the. All of it. So, you know, she really does do all the hard grunt work behind it. So thank you, Wenalyn. It's been such a lovely. It's been lovely to work with you over the years. Thank you.

Paul Marden: Wenalyn wins the award for the longest distance journey into the meeting today because Wenalyn is over in the Philippines. Wenalyn wins this award in every single meeting that we have. So she does.

Kelly Molson: She does. There is one more. Thank you. I wanna make, which is to the unsung hero of Skip the Queue. So it's for an old team member of mine, Ashley Mays, because if it wasn't for her, actually, there probably wouldn't be a Skip the Queue. She made this happen, really. Not only did she come up with the name, but she actually got one of our first guests to agree to come onto the podcast. Because I can't tell you how difficult that first season was. If you've ever gone back, it actually launched in July 2019. This podcast, myself and my co founder, Wag, who asked the ridiculous question I answered with a fart earlier. We both used to interview guests, but if you've ever tried to get someone to come onto a podcast and they go, great. Yeah.

Kelly Molson: How many listeners and downloads have you got? You're like, none. Absolutely none. No listeners. You are our first guest. Please help us make something magic. That was quite a hard sell. Ashley had a family member who agreed to come onto the podcast, and it was actually Lynne Whitnall, who is the director of Paradise Wildlife Park, which is now Hertfordshire Zoo. She was the biggest name that we could have possibly hoped for in that first series. So really, that was the kind of catalyst for all of the other amazing guests that have come on since. 2019 was a really tough year for Rubber Cheese, and I had to let Ashley go at the end of 2019, and I'll tell you now, that was the single worst thing that I've ever had to do in my whole career as an agency owner, because she was brilliant.

Kelly Molson: And I felt like I'd failed her at that time. So I really wanted to make sure that she got a big thank you. She's gone on and done brilliant things. Don't get me wrong, brilliant people always do. But that was genuinely the toughest thing that I've ever had to do. And it's probably my biggest regret of running the agency all of these years as well. So, yeah, big shout out to Ashley. She made a big difference.

Paul Marden:  Every agency owner enjoys the fun bits, the launches, the winning new business. Nobody enjoys that bit. But it is this life, isn't it? So, yeah, it was a tough time for everybody, wasn't it? And you said that Ashley came up with the name as well, didn't she?

Kelly Molson: She did, yeah. Skip the Queue was all Ashley. I take no credit for that whatsoever.

Paul Marden: Amazing.

Danielle Nicholls: What a moment that was. That was really touching. 

Kelly Molson: Thank you.

Paul Marden: Keep it together, mate. You've still got a few minutes to go.

Kelly Molson: Okay?

Paul Marden: So let's segue for some light relief to Ross Ballinger from Drayton Manor.

Kelly Molson: Now, I'm not gonna lie, I'm really apprehensive about this. Ross. 

Ross Ballinger: Hello, lovely. 

Kelly Molson: Hi, Ross.

Ross Ballinger: It's so nice to see and hear you. I feel like.

Kelly Molson: Likewise, mate.

Ross Ballinger: I've only known you, like, a short space of time but you were such a champion for me and Danielle when you spotted us at theme park award a few years ago.

Danielle Nicholls: Really.

Ross Ballinger: And we're just so grateful for that. You spotted our passion and our energy for the industry and obviously we just gravitated toward each other. Anything you've done for all the other professionals in the industry as well. So true testament to everything that you've done it just. It's all paid off and everyone loves you and thank you so much for everything on Skip the Queue.

Kelly Molson: Oh, mate.

Ross Ballinger: No, honestly, I think that was probably one of the best years I ever had in the industry, really, because it, like, it did stem up a couple of things did, like, fall out at the back of it because it got. It got me a little bit of 15 minutes of fame that I really enjoyed. And then I managed to do some presentations with different things and owe credit to you, really, for just, like, putting us in the limelight for a little bit. 

Kelly Molson: I'm so pleased. I'm so pleased. I just want to tell the story because I met the two of you at the UK theme park awards. It was at Drayton Manor, wasn't it? And these guys are on the table behind me and I've never had such enthusiasm. You two were the light, I mean, that. It was a bit of a. It was a bit of a. It was a. It was a tough crowd, wasn't it? Everyone was quite subdued in there, but used to, like, “Yes,” shouting and just.

Danielle Nicholls: Basically every time anyone won, even if it was like, Pleasure Beach or being anyone. We were like, “Yeah, go guys.”

Ross Ballinger: We were wooing everybody.

Kelly Molson: What awards do should be like. Like, you two were like the Persona of an awards day. It was. It was so good to meet you that day. I had the best day meeting you two, and I just knew that I had to get you both on the podcast, and you were such a little dream team at Drayton Manor. And now, you know, you've set off on your different paths, but it's lovely to see. For me, it's really. I think it's brilliant to see where you're all going and what your good things are.

Ross Ballinger: Yeah. Thank you.

Danielle Nicholls: That's really kind. Thank you.

Ross Ballinger:  Yeah, it was just one of those cases of, like, sat in the right place at the right time and the rest is history. Like, yeah, loved it. Loved the meeting on that day. Instant connection, you know? And you just get an instant connection with someone who shares the same energy and passion and insight, and they understand what you're doing and what you stand for. So, yeah, it was a really good day. Loved it. My icebreaker question, I did have four. Actually, so I don't even know if Paul knows what. I'm going to be honest.

Paul Marden: Well, I'm taking the other two that you did send me because they were awesome.

Ross Ballinger: I'm going to go with, if you could switch live with any fictional character, who would it be?

Kelly Molson: It's a really good question. You need to. You have. You've wrote all these down, right? This is a good one.

Ross Ballinger: Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly Molson: With any fictional character. I'm trying to think of all the books that I've just thinking about. Well, okay. I've got this thing about reading. Like, if you go on holiday, I like to take, like, a really familiar book with me on holiday that you've read, like, a million times. And I don't know why. I've read The Beach, like, a billion times, which is far better than the film. Like, far better than the film. And I can't actually remember a guy's name in it now. It's gone off my head. But the Leonardo DiCaprio character in the book, I will swap lives with him because I feel like that whole travelling culture, I never got to do that. I wasn't brave enough to do that when I was younger, and I'd really like to go and do it now, but it's really difficult for toddler.

Paul Marden: Not brave enough to do that. But you were brave enough to jack it all in and set up an agency 20 years ago.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Should I have done the travelling? Who knows? But, yeah, I think, yeah, I would swap places with him, although he goes a little bit crazy towards the end. I'd take that.

Ross Ballinger: Thanks for your long lasting impact on a door. Thank you very much. Love you.

Paul Marden: Well said, Ross. Crack and jog. So I'm going to take that and segue off quite nicely now to a video from your greatest fan, my daughter, Miss Amelia Marden. She wanted to be part of this, but she's busy at school today, so she sent you in a question and she said,

Amelia Marden: Hello, Kelly. I've seen the video of the roller coaster you and dad went on at Drayton Manor. My question is, what is your favourite sort of roller coaster? Vertical drop or a loop de loop? Love you from Amelia.

Paul Marden: For listeners. I kept it together on that roller coaster. There was no noise. I was completely composed. Everything was fine until it started moving at the beginning.

Kelly Molson: So was this. No, hang on a minute. Was this the, this was the in the Viking. This is the Viking one, wasn't it? Because we've been on two roller coasters together. And the second one, it was in the rain and there was a lot of screaming in my ear as well. The first one was. Yeah, the first one was relatively screamy as well. What is my favourite? I like the shock of a drop. I do like a loop a loop. I'm cool with those. But there's something about like that. There's a, there's a motion sickness thing with me that is a bit. So the drop one I quite like. And again, this has got another good memory of my dad is that is Terra Towers. He loves the Terror Towers drop so much.

Kelly Molson: My dad's got this thing in his head about taking Edie to Disney. Like my dad. My dad best in, he'll be when she's five, he'll be like 76. So, you know, he's getting on and he's like, that's my cutoff point. We're going to go to Disney when she's five, whether we all like it or not, because I can't do it any older than that. And he's like, we're going to go on Terror Towers, aren't we, Dad? I don't know if you should, dad. It's almost, I feel like maybe it was trigger of a heart attack. I don't know. A bit worried. But he's adamant that he's, you know.

Paul Marden: He's going to Edie's five and we're taking them on to Terror Towers.

Kelly Molson: Maybe it's going to work, Dad.

Paul Marden: I think we don't need to set dad's expectations, teacups. And it's a small world and that's about it.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, I'll have that chat with him.

Paul Marden: And we have got a message in from Mister David Hingley.

David Hingley: So I sit in a lot of meetings with Kelly, either in person or online, in her role as a trustee at Museum of the Broads. And it's usually not as dramatic as it might be. We talk about steamboats, coal, and our upcoming Pete exhibition, which is fascinating but can lack a bit of drama. So my question is, if every time you enter a room for the rest of your life a piece of entrance music plays, what piece of music are you choosing and why?

Kelly Molson: Oh, my God. I've never thought about this question. This is a great question. Why has everyone given me really good questions now that I'm leaving? You idiots.

Paul Marden: David is promising to play this at every future trustees meeting. As you arrive, he'll have Spotify on the phone ready to play.

Kelly Molson: What would be my entrance music? I feel like it's got to be something. It's got to be something dancy where I can get my groove on. So I feel like. Like this someone's. Loads of people have probably said this, but I feel like. Like here comes the hot stepper. Would be a good one for me because I can, you know, I can drive in. Here come the odd stepper, you know?

David Hingley:  I'll record the next trustee meeting museums of the broad and circulates to this group.

Kelly Molson: Oh, please do.

Paul Marden: Thank you, David.

Kelly Molson: I'll tell you what. I'll do it at the AGM. I'll dance in at the AGM.

Paul Marden: So last up, we have Mr. Dominic Jones from the Mary Rose, who, along with Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, the third most popular paid attraction outside of London in the hour list released yesterday.

Dominic Jones: Yeah, very happy about that. Very happy.

Paul Marden: I can take you one better because still the undisputed most listened to podcast guest on Skip the Queue as of yesterday. Wow.

Dominic Jones: I honestly can't believe that.

Paul Marden: I know, I know. It's not as if you haven't dined out on that fact several times before.

Andy Povey: He doesn't like to talk about it, Paul.

Kelly Molson: He's so shy, doesn't he? 

Dominic Jones: I am shy. I don't talk about myself. That's incredible. What did you say number one?

Paul Marden: Number one by country mile, I might say.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, by nearly a hundred downloads, actually.

Dominic Jones: Oh, well, that's fantastic. I'm absolutely honored about that. I have to say, I am so sad that Skip the Queue with Kelly is coming to an end because it's kept me company on many a motorway journey, on many a day when I've had a really tough day at work and thought, you know, what's going to cheer me up is Skip the Queue. Because not only do you motivate and inspire the next generation, like the person that sort of bumped into me and Simon, but you also motivate, inspire all of us. And actually, without Skip the Queue, and to be fair, ALVA as well, I don't think I'd have this amazing network of friends and colleagues that really keep me sane in some of the tough times.

Dominic Jones: So I know we often talk and Bernard talks about how visitor attractions are like sort of the fourth emergency service, I would say, when it comes to working in a visitor attraction, you and ALVA. So Skip the Queue and ALVA are the emergency services, because without you, I don't think we'd be sane. Absolutely. You've made such a difference to my personal life and I can't thank you enough. But for an icebreaker question, one of the things that irritates me on Skip the Queue is you can tell who Kellys favourites are. So if she has someone from the zoo and she likes them, whats your favourite animal? Or someone from a theme park, whats your favorite ride? And then she gets people that she just asks really difficult icebreakers. So I was thinking, how can I get the most random, hardest icebreaker?

Dominic Jones:  And I was trying to remember, but when I was a child in the eighties and nineties growing up, a lot of my friends had Sky TV. We couldn't afford Sky TV. We had BBC One and BBC two. Well, on Sky TV there was this thing called WWF. Now, this was before the Internet. So I went to the library and worked out that it was about looking after animals. Turns out it wasn't. It was actually wrestling. And so I used to sort of been in the playground, talk to my friends, but never ever watching it, never really understanding it. So I'd be in my bedroom. I was very young at the time, pretending to be a WWF wrestler. I was the praying mantis, because I did watch BBC 2 a lot. Mantis, one of the very strongest animal in the animal kingdom.

Dominic Jones: But if you were a wrestler in the WWF, what would be your wrestling name?

Kelly Molson: I used to love the wrestling.

Dominic Jones: I bet you did. I bet you did.

Kelly Molson: I did. We went. So they did the one in the UK. They did the royal rumble and I had the finger and everything. Yeah. I used to like the bushwhackers and rowdy Roddy Piper and Jake the Snake. I was well into it. I was really into it. Yeah. I was not cool at school until I was well into the wrestling. So what would be my wrestling name?

Dominic Jones: Yeah. And why?

Kelly Molson: The trouble is, I'm a bit of a lover, not a fighter, so don't think I'd actually make a very good wrestler. I'm not actually that aggressive. Looking at me as if I've said something crazy, then I'm not a fight. I might have a fiery temper, but I'm not a fighter. Oh, God. It's. I don't know what rhymes. Like, Kelly's a really rubbish name to rhyme stuff, but Kick ass Kelly, it's rubbish, isn't it?

Dominic Jones: Good, that'll do.

Kelly Molson: Okay. Kick ass Kelly. Yeah. I don't know what would be my costume. There'd definitely be some neon in there. I feel like I'd be like the eighties girl. Like neon leggings and leg warmers and stuff. Yeah.

Dominic Jones: And maybe some fire in the background as well, just to spice it up. Yeah.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, maybe.

Paul Marden: I reckon there's got to be some cheese in there as well. You need some. You need some cheese in that wrestler name, ain't it?

Kelly Molson: There's not many cheeses that begin that, like, rhyme with Kelly either.

Dominic Jones: The worst ever icebreaker. I've ruined it.

Kelly Molson: Good question. No, I like it.

Dominic Jones: Oh, I should have done. What's your favourite boat? That's what I should have done.

Paul Marden: Oh, come on then.

Kelly Molson: What's my favourite boat? Well, it would have to be the falcon or the. Can't remember the name of the other one.

David Hingley: Well, the other one.

Kelly Molson: Is it the Marsh Harrier?

David Hingley: That's the one.

Kelly Molson: There you go. At the Museum of the Broads is a wonderful museum. You can also take your family out on a little boat trip. It's also dog friendly as well, you know, bring all your friends.

Dominic Jones: Great. Plug in one of your recent episodes. I was listening and thought about booking a holiday. It was a great plug in the last episode. You did?

Kelly Molson: Well, if you do fancy a little holiday trip to Norfolk, you know, there's a little holiday cottage that you could. You could hit me up for, Dominic. So just, you know, let me know.

Dominic Jones: Absolutely.

Paul Marden: I reckon I should have got 20 quid in my pocket every time you mention that guest house.

Kelly Molson: I really hope that someone books someday and they're like, “We heard it on Skip the Queue.” “Yes! It worked.”

Paul Marden: They'll insist on a discount. Thank you, Don. That was amazing. If any of our listeners would like to support any of the other guests and boost their listener figures to compete with Don, I'm going to put the details of everybody's episodes in the show notes, because frankly, 

Dominic Jones: Why would you do that?

Kelly Molson: That's mean.

Dominic Jones: Why would you do that? Surely this is the end now. Number one, the end.

Paul Marden: We're talking load of nonsense and I need to put something in the show notes. So I thought I'd put the episodes that everybody was in on the show notes. Can you exclude one, Paul? Oh, I'm sure I can, yes.

Dominic Jones: I think yours is okay, Andy. I wouldn't exclude you. Yours was a great one. 

Paul Marden:  So they'll all be in the show notes. And lastly, all of our guests asked to pick a book that they love. So Kelly, what's your book?

Kelly Molson: I read this book right at the very start of my agency journey. A very good friend of mine, he's been a coach of mine for a number of years, said that you should read this book, and it is How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. It's a very old book, but it is a classic. And this book opened my eyes and ears. So it really taught me how to understand and listen to people. And I think for me, building an agency like we have over the years, so much of that comes down to listening to people, understanding what their challenges are. You know, we have to network. You know, a lot of what we do is based on reputation and how likable you can be and all of those kind of things.

Kelly Molson: And this book really gives you an understanding of that, about what it is to be likable. And you shouldn't have to teach this to people. Like, really, it's pretty common sense, but, you know, it can be difficult for people to understand, like, why you should listen to people and why you should just let people talk. And I think a lot of the things that I learned from this book, I have applied to the podcast, so I just want to read out a little synopsis. Well, some of the things that I think are really important about how you listen to people, and it's. It's about becoming genuinely interested in other people.

Kelly Molson: And I hope that has come across in this podcast, because every single person that has come on and shared with me has just given me so much to think about, and I've learned so much from you all. It teaches you to smile, like smiling is just so important. I've always been amazed at how many people that don't smile back when I smile at them when I'm out walking the dog in the morning. Just smiling is the simplest thing that you can do to connect with somebody. Remembering people's names. Remember that a person's name to that person is the most important sound in any language. Make sure that you can just remember people's names. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. And I hope that I've done that. I've always hoped this podcast, you know, it's not about me.

Kelly Molson: It won't be about Paul. It will be about all the guests that come on and still continue to come on and talk to us about their stories and their challenges and their initiatives and all the brilliant things that they do. And I hope that I have gone above and beyond in making other people feel important. And I hope I've been sincere in doing that as well because it is all about you. You all make this podcast amazing and I genuinely am so grateful that you've allowed me into your ears and allowed me to share everybody else's stories in a really fun way. So thank you.

Paul Marden: Kelly, that was really. Yeah, awesome. Listeners. If you'd like to win in Kelly's book, then head over to the show announcement on X and retweet as saying, I want Kelly's book. That just leaves me to say that we are busy planning season six now. Wanlyn and I met yesterday with Oz to start brainstorming ideas for what we can do in season six. If you've got ideas, then send them in. Let us know on Twitter. We'd love to hear those X, I should say. If you would like to appear in an episode, let us know, because I love to interview people. So let us know if you'd like to come onto the podcast, that would be amazing. That's about it from all of us here today. So I want to thank my lovely co hosts, the Skip the Queue alumni.

Paul Marden: I want to thank the rest of the Rubber Cheese team that came along as well. I want to thank you, Kelly, for everything that you've done for us and thank the lovely listeners. I look forward to seeing you all in the next episode of Skip the Queue.

Kelly Molson: Thank you so much. This is amazing. Thank you. 

Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. 

Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! 

• Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industry
• Gain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion rates
• Explore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performance
• Learn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion rates
• Uncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversions

Take the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report
 

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.

Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast

Competition ends on 29th March 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

https://skiptontownhall.co.uk/craven-museum/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-hill-54503a189/ 
Jenny Hill is Lead Museums Curator at North Yorkshire Council, including at Craven Museum in Skipton. She has a degree in History from Lancaster University and a Contemporary History MA from the University of Sussex. She has worked in the sector for almost 7 years and is passionate about community engagement and making museum collections accessible for all. Between 2018-21 she worked on a National Lottery Heritage Funded capital redevelopment project at Craven Museum. In 2023 her team won the Kids in Museums Best Family Friendly and Most Accessible Museum awards.

https://kidsinmuseums.org.uk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alison-bowyer-0608a417/

Alison Bowyer has worked in the cultural sector for over 20 years with previous roles at LAMDA, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Southbank Centre and the Academy of Ancient Music. The longer her career has continued, the more convinced she is that we still need to work harder to make culture and heritage accessible to all.

She has a longstanding interest in museums and how people engage with heritage, having been a volunteer at Handel House Museum (now Handel and Hendrix) in London and completing degrees in Cultural Memory and History. Alison has been Executive Director of Kids in Museums for seven years. During which time, the organisation has become an Arts Council England IPSO, won a Museum + Heritage Award, developed a new national training programme, established a Youth Panel and delivered a range of new programmes.

Outside of work, Alison is a listening volunteer for Samaritans, a Director of the Family Arts Campaign and likes to crochet.

Transcription: 

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. 

On today’s episode I’m joined by my co-host, Paul Marden, CEO of Rubber Cheese.

We’re speaking with Alison Bowyer, Executive Director of Kids in Museums and Jenny Hill, Lead Museums Curator at Craven Museum.

It’s almost a Kids in Museums takeover as Paul is one of their amazing trustees.

Today we’re finding out what it takes to be a truly family friendly museum, why it’s important for you to engage with the Kids in Museums manifesto, and how you can enter the awards this year.

If you like what you hear, subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.

Kelly Molson: Hello, Alison, Jenny, and Paul, welcome. Welcome to Skip the Queue today. This is a treat. I am joined by Alison and Jenny today and we're going to talk about kids and museums. And I've also got Paul. Hello, Paul, who has joined me as co host today, and he is going to start the icebreakers. This is new.

Paul Marden: It is, isn't it?? It's a brave new world for us, isn't it? So I've got a lovely one for you, Alison. So should we get started? What are you most likely to buy when you exit through the museum gift shop?

Alison Bowyer: Oh, gosh, that's a really tough one. Definitely postcards. I'm also a sucker for a nice sort of pencil case or I do like museum jewellery. I have quite a lot of tattoo divine, especially museum themed jewellery. And I do also have a pushant for like, cute, fluffy things, even though I'm not a child. I'm 44 years old, but still.

Kelly Molson: I'm loving this. Hello. At museums, Alison is your best gift when she comes because she's filling up her bag.

Paul Marden: Think of all of those museum gift shops that you can go through with all the jewellery in because there are some amazing ones, aren't there, that have the jewellery stands in them.

Alison Bowyer: That completely are. And I like to buy all my gifts for other people from museums if I can. So I am a big museum shopper.

Kelly Molson: It's really lovely to do that. So just before Christmas, actually, I think it was. No, yeah, it was November time. I went over to the Ashmolean museum and their gift shop is really lovely, actually, and had a really good nosy around it in between meetings. And oh, my God, I bought so many of my Christmas gifts in there. It was brilliant. My best friends, I bought Edie a book called Bear at the Museum, which she adores. It's the most read book in our house at the moment, which is lovely, but I bought my mother in law jewellery. I bought her earrings from the  Ashmolean, which were absolutely lovely. So I'd never really thought about jewellery from a museum as well. There you go.

Kelly Molson: Good tip for you from Alison today. Thank you. Right, Jenny, have you ever been pulled off by security for touching a museum exhibit?

Jenny Hill: I haven't personally, no. But I did visit Manchester Museums with a friend and she was told off whilst were in the gallery because it was a really pretty furniture display and she just kind of automatically reached out a hand because she was like, “Oh, it's so pretty”, and instantly clocked by the security guard in the room and we very sheepishly left quite quickly.

Kelly Molson: I love that. It's really hard, isn't it, if you're quite a tactile person as well, and you're like, “Oh”, because you would do that if you were in a shop, right?

Jenny Hill: Exactly, yes. And she was just really excited by it was kind of just like an instant response. We were like, “Oh, no, shouldn't have done that.”

Kelly Molson: I love that. One day you will get told off. I know this, and you need to come back on and share that with us. Okay? Right, I've got one for both of you now. So, Alison, I'm going to start with you. If you had to wear a t shirt with one word on it for the rest of your life, what word would you choose and why?

Alison Bowyer: Oh, gosh, one word makes it really difficult because it can't be like a command.

Kelly Molson: Well, it could stop.

Alison Bowyer: Yeah, that's true.

Kelly Molson: It is a command.

Alison Bowyer: Because I have one at the moment that I'm quite fond of that just says “Be kind on it.”

Kelly Molson: That's nice. All right, well, maybe I'll let you have two words.

Alison Bowyer: You can't just say kind because that sounds really weird. And od, if I'm allowed to, it would “Be kind.”

Kelly Molson: Okay, we'll allow to, for the purpose of this podcast, we'll allow to. That's nice. I like that one. Jenny, what about you?

Jenny Hill: “Be curious” as well. I think that's something that always happy for our visitors to do when they're visiting, is to be curious. And I think it's just a good motto for life, isn't it, to always be thinking, always be inquisitive. Yeah.

Kelly Molson: They're very good one, Paul, I'm going to ask you as well. Sorry, dropping you right in it. What about yours?

Paul Marden: Learn. It has got to be if it's got to be one word, because one's a toughie. Learn.

Kelly Molson: I like that. Somebody actually went with the brief. Thank you for obeying me.

Paul Marden: Always. I know my place.

Kelly Molson: Doesn't happen often. All right. Thank you, everyone, for sharing that. I appreciate it. Right, unpopular opinions. What have you prepared for us? Alison? Over to you first, I think.

Alison Bowyer: Oh, gosh, this question made me so stressed.

Kelly Molson: I'm so sorry.

Alison Bowyer: No, no, it's fine. Not in a bad way, because I was like, oh, my goodness, I'm not sure what I have that's unpopular. And then I started googling unpopular opinions and I found all these weird lists of things that I never even considered were opinions, like people saying that C is the most redundant letter in the English language and you could replace all C's with S's and K's. Apparently, this is a commonly held unpopular opinion. So, yeah, then I started thinking, oh, goodness, I'm not really sure I'm up to this. I think what I came up with in the end was, which is going to make me unpopular, probably. I think pizza is the worst takeaway because it always survives cold and hard and the topping off, it falls off in transit, so you end up with a really dowsy meal.

Kelly Molson: I love a pizza takeaway, though. I can't be down with you on this one because I love a pizza. It's because we never get to eat pizza. Oh, no. Actually, we've had pizza quite frequently recently because Edie loves it. But Lee has always been a bit like anti pizza takeaways. Okay.

Paul Marden: I don't understand people that have the delivery of burgers and chips, because surely that is going to be cold by the time it gets to you and they're going to be rubbish chips.

Kelly Molson: Yes. That's weird. Yeah, that is weird. I've never ordered a burger to be delivered to my house. That sounds strange to me. Ok, let's see what Twitter feels about your pizza. Unpopular opinion. Jenny, what about you?

Jenny Hill: Oh, mine's similar on a food topic, which I feel is going to make me really unpopular. But something I always say that really annoys people is I really hate brunch, which I feel is very unpopular. But I'm a person that gets regularly hungry, so for me, waiting to go out for food in the morning is just not possible. So I will always have to have something to eat before I leave the house. So I'll always basically have breakfast and then before you know it, I'm eating again. So at that point, it's essentially lunch. So for me, brunch doesn't really exist.

Kelly Molson: Okay. All right. Let me argue this point back to you, though. So if your girlfriends or whoever had asked you out for brunch, you'd have breakfast first, right? So you'd have like 08:00 breakfast and then you'd go for brunch. But if you're always hungry, doesn't that just mean you just eat lunch a little bit earlier? So brunch is like.

Jenny Hill: I mean, I don't mind eating again, but it's just the concept, I guess, of calling it brunch just doesn't feel accurate for me by that point because I've already had a full breakfast.

Kelly Molson: Okay. So I have a similar challenge with afternoon tea. I can't stand afternoon tea. Sorry if this upsets people. I don't understand why you get to a certain age and all of your every thing has to be, “Oh, should we go for afternoon tea?” No, why don't we just go to the pub like we used to? Go to the pub. Just go to the pub. What is it about afternoon tea? It's really annoying. And it's one of those. It's always at like 03:00 so what is it?

Jenny Hill: It's not a meal. It's the same situation, but in the middle of the afternoon. I agree.

Kelly Molson: Exactly. Okay, I can get on board with your brunch thing then. If you're on board with my afternoon tea thing. Good.

Paul Marden: I'll take you afternoon tea and I'll raise you a kids party at 2:30 in the afternoon. It's neither lunch nor is it dinner. So I have to feed the child before. I have to feed the child afterwards. And then they're going to eat more food in the middle of the day.

Kelly Molson: They are. They are. But I mean, Edie eats constantly so that it doesn't really matter. But kid's parties are amazing because buffet food is the best kind of food. I'm all down for a kid's party. You get what's it, what's not to love? You get party rings. There's always sausage rolls, which is like my number one top snack of all time. I'm here for the kid's parties. I'll just take the food. You can have all the kids. Okay. Should we talk about some serious stuff now?

Paul Marden: Yeah. Shall we do that?

Kelly Molson: I mean, it's still equally fun, but let's get on, shall we? We're talking about Kids in Museums today.

Paul Marden: Which is really good, isn't it?

Kelly Molson: It is a great topic.

Paul Marden: I feel like I'm going to learn loads about Kids in Museums that I probably should already know as I'm a trustee of Kids in Museums. But I get to ask Alison all the questions that perhaps I've been a little bit too scared to ask for the last year because I might look a little bit silly if I don't know the answer.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, and she has to answer you because that is what the podcast rules are.

Paul Marden: Exactly. All right then, Alison, why don't we kick off, tell us a little bit about Kids in Museums and how the organisation was developed.

Alison Bowyer: Kids in Museums has existed in one form or another for about 20 years now, which always astonishes me a little bit. So we started life when our founder, who at the time wrote to the Guardian, her name was Dea Birkett and she took her young child, I think she was about two years old, to the. I'm going to name and shame, I'm afraid, the Aztec’s exhibition at the Royal Academy. And her son screamed at one of the massive Aztec statues, which, if I remember the exhibition correctly, was totally fair enough, because the statues were pretty. I mean, they were designed to be scary. That's one of the reasons why they built some of them. So they were thrown out of the Royal Academy because apparently he was disturbing the other visitors.

Alison Bowyer: And then Dea wrote about this in her Guardian column, and what happened after that was the Guardian got a lot of letters coming from families telling Dee about similar experiences they'd had when they were out and about in museums with their children. And so a campaign was born to make museums better places for families, children and young people to visit. And to an extent, what happened on that day at the Royal Academy, that kind of remains our guiding principle. We are led by what visitors tell us about their experiences and we really strongly feel that museums, galleries, heritage sites, as kind of public space, should be for everyone, and everyone should be free to have that access, to feel comfortable when they're visiting and to have a really great time during your visit. So since then, the charity has evolved in various ways.

Alison Bowyer: Today, we work across the whole of the UK and we will work with any kind of museum, gallery, heritage site, historic house, castle, any kind of outdoor heritage site to support them and lead them and encourage them to take action, to better places for families, children, young people. We're quite a small organisation. There's only five of us in total, but we feel like we achieve a lot. And last year we won the Museum and Heritage Award for being the Best Sector Support Organisation in the UK, which was a really amazing validation of our work. That definitely doesn't mean we're sitting on our laurels, though. We're always trying to spend time talking to families, talking to young people, talking to museums about how we can create new programmes, refine our existing programs to do better.

Alison Bowyer: And we really want to be approachable, supportive, trusted experts. So we are doing the best by both the audiences we represent and the museums we try to support.

Paul Marden: I think the size of the organisation. I know Vanessa, our chair, often says how much you, as a team, punch above your weight, because I don't think anyone would imagine that it was such a small team that was having such a loud voice. Is that a positive thing? That should be a positive thing. How much impact you have with such a small team? It's amazing.

Kelly Molson: It was lovely at the MandH Show. I was at those awards, and I saw that win happen, and it was fantastic because the cheer from the crowd was pretty phenomenal. So congratulations on that.

Alison Bowyer: Thank you. I was so sure weren't going to win. I wasn't there, and I'd gone to bed and gone to sleep.

Kelly Molson: Woke up to some spectacular news.

Alison Bowyer: Yeah, no, it really did. But, yeah, no, it was brilliant to get that recognition. It helps more people find out about us as well, which is always valuable.

Paul Marden: So what is it that you offer museums, and how can they get involved more with what you're doing?

Alison Bowyer: So we like to think that we've got something for pretty much any kind of museum, whatever your level of expertise in working with families, children and young people is whatever resources you have, how many staff you have. So we have a large, free offer, which is kind of the building blocks of what we encourage museums to do, and it's all centring on our manifesto. So our manifesto is something that we compile with children, families and young people. So every two years, which actually is something we're going to be doing this year, we will be out talking to museum visitors, doing a national survey, and finding out about what their good and bad experiences of museums are. And then we will take all that information and distil it down into six easy points that make up our manifesto.

Alison Bowyer: And then that's a document that we think pretty much every museum should be able to commit to in their work. None of it is particularly complicated, or a lot of it doesn't need to be resource intensive. They're all pretty simple things that everybody should be able to do. So that's a really good starting point. And over a thousand museums have signed up to the manifesto and hopefully are using it in their work. I know we'll hear later from Jenny about how Craven Museum did that. Once you've signed the manifesto, there are lots of other things that you can get involved in.

Alison Bowyer: We've got over 100 free resources on our website, which cover everything from ways to implement the manifesto at low cost, how to create self guided resources for families, right up to things like how you can engage children and young people with the climate emergency in your museum. So they cover a really wide range of things that we think are helpful to the teams in museums who are doing that work on the ground. We have a programme of UK training, so we run about trend training sessions a year for museum staff and we also work with museum development organisations on training and that's available to attend in person for a small ticket price or to buy us recordings.

Alison Bowyer: Then every year we run a program called Takeover Day, which is a really brilliant, fun, exciting initiative where children and young people age between 0 and 25 go into museums and they do adults jobs for the day. When I say 0 to 25, I really mean that. We have toddlers doing museum Takeover Days, being given tasks like polishing glass museum cases with soft dusters, doing some cleaning and doing some object packing with, like, wooden blocks. They don't let them use loose on the actual collection.

Paul Marden: With white gloves on. 

Kelly Molson: I'm laughing because Edie would be like up there licking the glass, not trying to clean it, thinking about my daughter. And Paul is smiling because he did one of these Takeover Days. 

Alison Bowyer: He did. Yeah.

Kelly Molson: He's got a massive grin on his face.

Paul Marden: We loved it. We got to be curators for the day. The kids got to run around the museum and then they went back into the learning suite of the Mary Rose Trust and they got told to design an immersive exhibition and they took ideas from all around the museum and designed out what they would do and such brilliant ideas that they had. It was such a great experience for them to get that kind of behind the scenes experience of what the museum is actually like.

Alison Bowyer: So we see from Takeover Day that impact Paul has described. More than 70% of the young people who take part say that they would like to go back to a museum again as a result of being part of Takeover Day. And more than two thirds of the museums say that they now know more about what young people want from their museums and will make a change. So it's a really brilliant initiative. Then we obviously have the Family Friendly Museum Award, which is what we're going to be talking about with Jenny and I'll talk more about it later. And we've got some new programs coming online this year. So for the first time, we're working with a group of museums to help them appoint their first young trustees. So they're going to have people on their boards by the end of the programme age between 18 and 25. 

Alison Bowyer: And we also are running some programs with our own youth panel that they've designed. So we are working with them on a project which will hopefully show that museums can help address social isolation that young people experience when they move for education or new jobs.

Kelly Molson: I think it's just take a pause there and just reiterate that there are five of you in the Kids in Museum’s team. That is a pretty phenomenal menu of things that you offer to museums with just five people.

Paul Marden: It's amazing, isn't it?

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Let's just keep that up there as we're talking today. Thanks, Alison. Jenny, I want to come over and chat to you about Kids in Museums. How did you first kind of find out about them and get involved with what they're doing?

Jenny Hill: So, I've been aware of Kids in Museums probably since I first started working in the sector around six, seven years ago now. I've been on their website, sort of seen their name come up and use some of their guidance when I was doing some of my initial sort of museum work. But I think they sort of really stood out to me. From about 2021, I got involved with some training with part of Museum Development Yorkshire, whose sector support as well, funded by Arts Council England, and they were running front of house cohort that I got involved with at the time. And we had a really great training session as part of that cohort with Laura Bedford from Kids inMuseums. She gave a really inspiring talk and session on creating family friendly interactions in museums, and that was really inspiring.

Jenny Hill: I learned a lot during that session and really made me think, oh, we definitely need to be involved with this more. And then later on in the same year, I actually did an in person event. It was at the auction museum, and actually got to have a chat with Laura there about Kids in Museum's work. So that was really helpful. So, yeah, we kind of taken it from there. We signed up to the kids and museum manifesto following on from that, started to use those sort of principles in a lot of our front of house work and then behind the scenes as well. So, yes, Kim, have been on my radar for quite a while.

Jenny Hill: But, yeah, it's sort of the past three years, really, that we've really sort of been taking on board a lot of their, using a lot of their resources and their ideas.

Kelly Molson: It's lovely to see that it was indirectly as well. So obviously, Kids in Museums and what they do, it's good that they work in partnership with other organizations as well. So there was like a crossover there. Why did you enter the Family Friendly Museum award last year?

Jenny Hill: So Craven Museum went through a National Lottery Funded redevelopment project between 2018 and 2021. So we completely redesigned our museum space. It used to be really inaccessible. It used to be at the top of Skipton town hall. There was no lifts up there. It was a really steep, horrible flight of stairs to get up there, and a lot of the interpretation was really outdated. A lot of it was not very accessible. So after our redevelopment project, which really put access at the centre of all of our work, and particularly looking at family audiences, this is a group that we really wanted to feel welcome to our museum. It's a group that we'd been working with a lot pre redevelopment and we really wanted to expand our work with this audience after we reopened.

Jenny Hill: So after all this work was completed, we spent 2022 in sort of that post Covid year, finding our feet when maybe our visitors weren't quite as confident coming onto site and people were still getting to know that were reopened as well. So we had got a lot of people coming in going, “Oh, I didn't realise the work had finished.”

Jenny Hill: That was sort of our sort of pilot year. Whereas last year in 2023, we really felt that we hit our stride and we've been piloting lots of new ideas in 2022 and embedding our family friendly ethos in our work. So it kind of was the year that work really felt like it came to fruition after having spent quite a few years developing it. So we thought, as a team, that we'd really like to sort of get this work hopefully recognised. And a family friendly museum award really felt like a way to do that and we really wanted it to sort of give a boost to our team as well, who'd been working hard on that. So, yeah, we just thought it would be a great year to get involved and we entered it with very low expectations.

Jenny Hill: We thought, we're a small museum in the north of England. We weren't sure if we'd be, I don't know, sort of recognised for what we've been doing. So it was absolutely amazing to get recognition through the award in that way. It's fantastic.

Kelly Molson: It feels like the recognition was for the team and for the people that were kind of working in it. Is that what was important to you about entering?

Jenny Hill: I think so, yes. It was to prove to the team that the work that they'd been doing was really valid and really important. And I think in the museum sector, sometimes there's quite a lot of pressure on quite small teams. Like Alison was saying, there's only five people in Kids in Museums, and we're a small team, too. So I think having that recognition for the team just really helps them to know that, yes, they're doing a good job alongside the fact that it's obviously important to us to sort of share with the families that do come and use the museum, that it's going well.

Kelly Molson: How difficult was it to write the entry? Because I think that there's often a barrier. I mean, certainly for us, there's been things that I've thought this would be great to enter, but I look at it and think, “Oh, my goodness, this is going to take me, like, four or five days to actually pull all of these things together and write it. And write it in a way that's appealing.” Did you find it was an easy process to go through?

Jenny Hill: Actually, yes, we did find it, because I've done some applications that, yes, like you say, it can be quite as difficult, quite time consuming. I actually found the process for Kim really easy. So when the applications opened, members of the public were asked to nominate their favourite museum through a form on the Kim website. And we're really excited that we got some lovely nominations from families. And then kids and museum got in touch to let us know that we could make full application because we'd been nominated. So after that point, there was an online form that we could fill out that asked questions like, how have you made visiting your museum accessible to families, children and young people with additional needs? So that was one of the sort of longer questions on the form because we applied for the best accessible museum.

Jenny Hill: And that was. Yeah, I think because of all the work that we've been doing and because that kind of ethos is embedded in our team, weren't talking maybe about a specific project that we'd been working on. As some applications, I feel like they're very sort of project focused, but having such a wide question like that meant that we could just talk about what we do every day at the museum, which is what's really important to us. 

Jenny Hill: So, yeah, there were nice questions to answer because they kind of felt like they gave us the space to talk about all of our work. So that was brilliant. And we also had the opportunity to upload some supporting materials so we could get some photos in there, send through some of our more visual. Yeah, I think we might have sent a video as well. So that was great, too, because it meant we could share lots of different aspects of our work.

Kelly Molson: I love that. And spoiler alert even. You won. You're not only be the overall winner, you were the Best Accessible Museum winner as well.

Jenny Hill: Yes. And I was still absolutely blown away by that.

Kelly Molson: It's phenomenal. Congratulations.

Jenny Hill: Thank you.

Kelly Molson: Huge for that.

Paul Marden: I wonder if the reason why you found it not too painful to do the application is because this is folded into you. This is running through your core. You're just telling people what you do every day, and so you're just telling the story of what you do all the time.

Jenny Hill: I think that's how it feel. Yeah.

Paul Marden: Alison, let's talk about. I remember sitting in the audience listening to you talking about all the different museums and what the judges said and what stood out, and I loved hearing those stories. So what was it, do you think, that stood out about the Craven Museum, about their entry for you?

Alison Bowyer: So there were a few things about the Craven entry that really grabbed us. The first that I remember reading was that they had built our manifesto into their visitor charter, which is amazing because they are taking what we know, families, children, young people need and want, and they're building it into that work that they do every day. Like Jenny was saying, this is them living that way of working, which is incredible. And I think throughout the application, you got a real sense that all of their staff really cared about this. There was a page in the supporting document with the whole team on it saying just, like, one little thing about everyone in the team. And it was really amazing to see that because you felt that where in some museums, this is kind of just what the people in the learning team do.

Alison Bowyer: That wasn't true at Craven. Everyone at Craven really cared about the families he visited, and I think that was really borne out in the family nominations we received. There were so many families who were telling us how much they loved going to the museum that their children saw it as, like, the highlight of their half term holiday. And they talked for weeks in advance about wanting to go, and the make and take craft seemed to be a particular hit. There were lots of families telling us that their children couldn't wait to go back and do that again. And the families who nominated the museum also, they sounded really proud that their town had the museum, which was really lovely. And also, I think, something that came through, which is a kind of sad reflection of the way the world is at the moment.

Alison Bowyer: They really appreciated that all of that was available for free. When they're struggling to find things for their family to do that don't cost much, it felt like it was a really important thing to have that amazing resource in their town. And there were other little things, too. The museum is a safe space. The staff have amazing access training and training in inclusive language, and those things really help with kind of broadening out who can come into the museum and something that we spend quite a lot of time talking about. That isn't always something museums pick up on. And the Craven Museum website is just amazing, incredibly informative. I think it came in like the top five or something in the state.

Alison Bowyer: The museum access website report in the whole of the UK for its access information, which a museum of its size is absolutely incredible. We spent so much time telling people that families like to plan, they like to look at a website in advance and find out about all the facilities, and Craven had actually done that and it really makes a difference. So were really pleased to see that. And then I think the final thing was the community case and how they had a space in the museum where local people, local organisations, could show things that were important to them. So they were really giving the local community the opportunity to see themselves in the museum and feel a sense of kind of belonging and ownership.

Alison Bowyer: So I think all of those things came together and it was really clear that Craven Museum was going to be a really strong contender, which was why they shortlisted them. And then it was over to the families to judge them during the second stage of the award.

Paul Marden: I'd say the fact that you gather together these real families to kind of go and look at the museums that have applied and pass on their feedback to the judges, I think is hugely powerful. Are there any little snippets that the families came back that you liked because there were so many lovely little comments that the families had given to us throughout the awards?

Alison Bowyer: Yeah. So I think this quote is one that I think sort of sums it all up, really. The family judge said, “This is one of the most accessible, family friendly and welcoming museums I have ever visited across Britain. Although small compared to city museums, this has a lot to offer and is well laid out. It is very inclusive and their website is a particular strong point in terms of helping people to feel able and welcome to visit. People can visit the museum or attend an event knowing what to expect and what options are available. We especially love the fact that the spot, the mouse activity involved actual exhibits. Often this type of activity utilizes soft toys or pictures that have been placed around the site and end up being a distraction from the collection, meaning families don't get to actually experience the museum and look at the artifacts on display. But this activity in Craving Museum involved looking for things that were part of the carvings and objects. A great way for visitors to get more close to the collection. We all really enjoyed our visit.”

Kelly Molson: That's so nice.

Paul Marden: That's just brilliant feedback, isn't it?

Alison Bowyer: Yeah.

Kelly Molson: So nice.

Paul Marden: And who would have thought having a website that told you information about the museum that was accessible could actually be of value to people?

Alison Bowyer: I know. It's amazing, isn't it?

Paul Marden: I know. I wonder who could help you with that.

Kelly Molson: Yes, although, full credit, this is not one of our websites, but we definitely could help you with that. This is incredible. What lovely words. We've all got smiles on our faces for people that are listening to the audio of this and can't see us. Jenny, I'd really love to know. We go back to the reason that you entered and, you know, part of that is for the team, it's for the people that have worked really hard to make all of these amazing things happen. What has the impact been for your team since you won this award?

Jenny Hill: I think it's just been the real boost that it's given the whole team. Like Alison was saying, everyone on the team really cared about this, know every single member of our team, not just maybe our learning team or our forward facing team, everyone cared about it. And I think it's just really inspired us to carry on with our work. We're all very conscious of the fact that working with families, working with accessibility, is never a finished process. You've not achieved it. So it's kind of really just. Yeah, it's given us that extra push to think, oh, actually, we're doing well in this and we really want to continue. We don't want to sit on our laurels, we don't want to take this for granted. We want to keep working on this. So I think that was really great.

Jenny Hill: It was also particularly lovely just to know that it was real families who'd nominated us and that, like were just saying with the undercover judges, it was real families who came to visit us during that judging period and had these positive experiences. So that was just fantastic to know that it was visitors who wanted to sort of recognise the work we've been doing. So, yeah, I think that's been the main thing, really. It's just been amazing being recognised by the sector and our colleagues and given us all that kind of. That boost. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Like a validation of all of the work that gone into it. 

Jenny Hill: Definitely.

Kelly Molson: And what about the impact from kind of general public? Has it had an impact on the visitors that are coming and what they're saying about it and then also the sector itself, you said it's been a good thing to be recognised within the sector.

Jenny Hill: So it's definitely had a real impact with our visitors. So we've had some visitors coming to site who've said that they've specifically come because they heard about the Kids in  Museum award, which has been amazing. Some people coming from a distance to visit family in the area and saying, “Oh, when I was looking for things to do, I saw that you'd won the award. So I thought while I was visiting I'd pop in.” So that's been incredible, that impact with visitors and our sort of more regular local visitors who've come in, we've got the award up on a shelf behind the front desk. Our front of house team are so proud to have it there behind them while they're working.

Jenny Hill: And we've had local visitors saying, “Oh, it's so amazing that our town's got a museum that's won this award and it's really lovely for local people that we've got this here.” So, yeah, that's been really nice for both bringing in new visitors and also for our local audience and then within the sector, it's just been so good for us, publicity wise, to sort of kind of get our name out there, really. So since the awards I've done, I was just counting up the other day, I've had seven different institutions in touch, asking for site visits to come and look at our work, have a chat with us about best practice. I've delivered another seven presentations either already or got them booked in for the rest of the year. And then obviously doing podcasts like this.

Jenny Hill: And then we did a blog post as well for Send in Museums with Sam Bowen. I think that's the pipeline, hopefully. So, yeah, it's really kind of boosted us and we even noticed on social media, new institutions following us that maybe weren't aware of us before, after the award, people taking interest. So that's been really nice as a small local museum to have that kind of more bigger awareness from the sector.

Kelly Molson: I love this so much. And this goes back to something that comes up time and time again on these podcast interviews is just how collaborative and how supportive the sector is and how much they want to work with each other. It's so lovely that you can now showcase the processes that you've been through and how you approach accessibility and be able to share that with others so that they can go on and do the same and make theirs better and better. 

Kelly Molson: I think it's so important to be able to do that, and it makes me love this sector so much. It really does. What top tips Jenny, would you give to any museums that are out there thinking, “We really want to enter the awards this year.” What would you say were your best top tips for them?

Jenny Hill: This kind of links to something Paul was saying earlier, and it maybe sounds a bit cliched, but just be yourself. I think there's so much amazing work going on in the sector to do with making venues family friendly. And if you're passionate about what you do and you're working hard to make your venue inclusive, then that will shine through. So maybe sometimes not to overcomplicate it. So if you're doing the work and you really care, then that will make itself apparent. But I guess on a more practical level as well. Give yourself time with the application, don't try and rush it. We work very collaboratively at Craven Museum, so we really wanted the opportunity for all of our staff to be able to feed back into the application process and for lots of different people to read the draft, make comments, have their say.

Jenny Hill: So by giving ourselves enough time to do that, it really made the process a lot smoother. And also, have a look at the Kids in Museum manifesto. It's a great place to just, if you haven't signed up already, sign up and if you have, just refresh yourself on it, because it can really help that framework for how to answer questions and things.

Kelly Molson: Great tips. Thanks, Jenny.

Paul Marden: So with that in mind, should we talk about this year's family friendly awards. Nominations Open on 19th March, I think. Is that right, Alison?

Alison Bowyer: Yeah, that's right.

Paul Marden: So what is it that museums can do to enter?

Alison Bowyer: This year we have five categories, so there are three size categories, so best, small, medium and large museums, which will be organised by number of visits in the previous twelve months. That's all explained on our website. I won't go into that now. Then we have a category for the Best Successful Museum, which is the category that Craven won last year. And then our new category for this year is Best Youth Project, and that is a prize for museums who are doing long term, so work longer than six months with young people from the ages of 14 to 25. And what we're really looking for is work, that young people are given a sort of equal share in decision making, that they're really involved in shaping work.

Alison Bowyer: And the guidelines for that category, along with all of the others, are in the guidance notes, which you can download from our website. So that would be the first thing to do. Sounds very obvious, read the guidance notes carefully because that should explain most of what you need to know about how to enter. So then there are two routes to entry, really. So what Jenny described, what happened to Craven, that's what happens to most museums. Families will nominate them. So for a family to nominate, they can just go on our website. It's really simple. They just have to tell us the name with the museum they're nominating and in a few sentences why they're nominating them. That's it. And then we will contact the museum and tell them they've been nominated and ask them to fill in the museum side of the application process.

Alison Bowyer: We've got lots of tools to help museums promote nominations to families. So we've got social media assets for all channels and we've got some paper forms you can print out and put in your museum if you want to. Then the other alternative is if you want to enter but you for some reason don't have the time or the capacity to collect lots of family nominations, you can just enter as a museum on our website. That's totally fine. You just go on our website and you look at the museum application form. It's not essential to have a family nomination for the small museum and large category, but for the Best Successful Museum, we do ask that at least one family has supported your museum's nomination. Just because we feel for that category, it's super important that the museums are sort of supported by families for the provision that they offer in terms of accessibility. 

Alison Bowyer: What happens then is once we've got all the nominations together, we put together a shortlist. So the shortlisting panel is made up of. We normally have primary schools, young people from our youth panel, our staff and trustees, and sometimes representatives from museums who've won in the past. We all come together, we pick a shortlist and then we announce that in June. And then if you've been shortlisted over the summer, we will send out families like mystery shopper judges to your museum. So you won't know they're coming, they will just go on a visit and they will report back to us afterwards. And as Jenny says, it's their scores that choose the winners.

Alison Bowyer: We don't intervene in any way. We go with whatever the families tell us, so they really are in control. And I think that's one of the lovely things about this award. It is genuinely an award that is given by people who visit museums and then we will announce all the results in October at our award ceremony.

Paul Marden: We've talked a little bit about the mystery shoppers, the family judges, the undercover judges going in and actually looking at the museums. And that's how I first found out about Kids in Museums because I saw a sign when I was in the London Transport Museum suggesting that people could go on to nominate and also apply to be an undercover judge, which was how I found out about you first. This is a few years ago now. What can families do, though, if they want to be an undercover judge? Can they get involved?

Kelly Molson: Oh, yeah.

Alison Bowyer: Absolutely. So the best thing to do is to sign up on our website to our family mailing list. And then when we recruit the judges, which will be from June onwards, we will get in touch with you and let you know whereabouts in the UK. We need judges. It changes every year because we need the judges to be the museums on the shortlist. So it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing that we can't really start until we know where those museums are. But, yeah, the best thing to do is to sign up for our family mailing list.

Paul Marden: Yeah. It's such a great opportunity, isn't it, for people to go and have a mission, for the kids to go in and have a mission to go and check these places out and be the ones that decide who gets the award. What a great opportunity for a family to go and find that out.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Don't tell them until they get home, though, because they'll just be shouting that out in the museum.

Paul Marden: Do you know who I am?

Alison Bowyer: We get lots of families tell us that their kids really enjoy it because they tell them they're, like, having to play detective or something and not be seen. And apparently it makes the day out really fun. So, yeah, it comes recommended.

Paul Marden: So there's a call to action for all the families that might be listening to us to join the mailing list and get in there early to become an undercover judge.

Alison Bowyer: Yeah. And I should say that we will cover travel expenses for the family judges, up to 30 pounds a visit. So we try to make it as accessible as possible to be a judge.

Paul Marden: Completely brilliant opportunity.

Kelly Molson: Thank you both for coming on and sharing this with us today. It's been so lovely to hear about it. We are going to put all of the details on how you can enter and how you can sign up to be a family judge as well on the show notes, but essentially go to Kids in Museum's website because they have everything that you need on there. We always ask our guests to leave us with a book recommendation. Something they love or know can be anything, a personal recommendation, a business book. Whatever you like. Jenny, what have you prepared for us today?

Jenny Hill: Well, it's probably not one that people haven't heard of before, but I'm a massive Jane Austen fan, so I would always recommend Emma. Emma is probably my favourite by. Yeah, it's one of those ones that I always go back to. So, yeah, if you're thinking about you've never read Jane Austen before, you want to read some classics? I would always recommend that. Yeah, it's a lovely book.

Kelly Molson: Oh, it's nice. We get so many people come on and recommend their favourite. Mean something magic about rereading the book over and over again is that you always find out something different every time you read it, regardless of how many times you've read it before. Thank you. Alison, what about you?

Alison Bowyer: Gosh, I found it so hard to pick a favourite book. People who aren't watching won't be able to see the bookcase behind me.

Kelly Molson: Very full.

Paul Marden: Alison looks like a reader for the people that are listening.

Alison Bowyer: It's not probably necessarily my favourite book, but a book that I really love by an author who I think deserves to best known in the UK is Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiney. She is absolutely hilarious and it's just a really beautiful portrait of a family living in New York who are all slightly eccentric and unusual in different ways. And I guess I'm really curious and lazy about people's lives. So I love books that kind of open the window onto different kinds of families. And yeah, she's just a wonderful author. All her books are wonderful, but that's my absolute favourite.

Kelly Molson: Good recommendation. Thank you. And both of those books have never been recommended before as well, so they will go top of the list on our blog post that we have where we save off all of our guests recommendations. As ever, if you want to win these books, if you head over to our Twitter account and you retweet this episode announcement with the words I want Alison and Jenny's books, then you'll be in with a chance of winning a copy yourselves. Once again, thank you both for coming on. It's been so lovely to hear about the awards and the impact of winning the awards. Congratulations again on all of your hard work. It's just been wonderful to talk to you. So thank you.

Jenny Hill: Thank you very much. It's been lovely speaking to you today.

Alison Bowyer: Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure to share the award and some of the other work we do.

Paul Marden: And it's got us smiling all the way through, hasn't it, Kelly? It's been a lovely story to tell.

Kelly Molson: I hope people can hear that in our voices, that we're smiling. They can hear that we're smiling if they don't watch them, nobody watches our videos. Hey, go and watch our videos.

Paul Marden: There you go. See us grinning all the way through smiling.

Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. 

Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! 

• Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industry
• Gain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion rates
• Explore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performance
• Learn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion rates
• Uncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversions

Take the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report
 

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.

Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast

Competition ends on 29th March 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

https://carbonsix.digital/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmarden/

Paul Marden is the Founder and Managing Director of Carbon Six Digital and the CEO of Rubber Cheese. He is an Umbraco Certified Master who likes to think outside the box, often coming up with creative technical solutions that clients didn’t know were possible. Paul oversees business development and technical delivery, specialising in Microsoft technologies including Umbraco CMS, ASP.NET, C#, WebApi, and SQL Server. He's worked in the industry since 1999 and has vast experience of managing and delivering the technical architecture for both agencies and client side projects of all shapes and sizes. Paul is an advocate for solid project delivery and has a BCS Foundation Certificate in Agile.

https://www.rubbercheese.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellymolson/

Kelly Molson is the Founder of Rubber Cheese, a user focused web design and development agency for the attraction sector. Digital partners to Eureka! The National Children’s Museum, Pensthorpe, National Parks UK, Holkham, Visit Cambridge and The National Marine Aquarium.Kelly regularly delivers workshops and presentations on sector focused topics at national conferences and attraction sector organisations including ASVA, ALVA, The Ticketing Professionals Conference and the Museum + Heritage Show.

As host of the popular Skip the Queue Podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions, she speaks with inspiring industry experts who share their knowledge of what really makes an attraction successful.Recent trustee of The Museum of the Broads.

Transcription: 

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. In this new monthly slot, Rubber Cheese CEO Paul Marden joins me to discuss different digital related topics. In this episode, we're answering your questions from the 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report, asking what more you'd like to see in this year's survey and sharing more on how you can get involved next time. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue. 

Kelly Molson: Hello.

Paul Marden: Well, hello.

Kelly Molson: This is nice. So the two of us haven't been together for a podcast episode for a while.

Paul Marden: It does feel like, well, happy new year to start with.

Kelly Molson: Way too late for that malarkey. We've just been busy, haven't we've got lots of exciting projects that are coming to. Well, I don't like to say the end, but they're coming to point of launch.

Paul Marden: The launch, yeah. The exciting bit.

Kelly Molson: The very exciting bit. So we've all been pulled here, there and everywhere. So I've had lovely guests to speak to and you've had a little bit of a break from this. But we're back. We're back.

Paul Marden: Absolutely.

Kelly Molson: And we're going to start like we always do with these ones. With what attraction have you visited most recently and what did you love about it?

Paul Marden: I have been to Mary Rose Museum and I went with a bunch of nine and ten year olds. We basically went down there for the Kids in Museums Takeover Day. It's one of the kind of showpiece Kids in Museums events that they run every year all around, putting the ownership of the museum into the hands of kids. I managed to wangle my way to Mary Rose, which is relatively close to me. And I took my daughter's class, who I run a coding club for. So interestingly, theme around our coding club this year is all around the arts and how you put art into StEm and make it steam just like an amazingly.

Kelly Molson: I can't believe how well that's worked out.

Paul Marden: It gets better. The very first session of our club was all about what is the job of a museum curator. And so we took that theme and went and took over the Mary Rose and became curators for a day. So the kids got to go around the museum and have fun and see all the cool stuff that's going on there. They did the 3D Dive, the Mary Rose experience, and it was amazing watching a bunch of nine and ten year olds reaching out and popping these bubbles that were on the 3D screen in front of them. And then they went off and they designed their own interactive display around whatever was the thing that excited them about the museum.

Paul Marden: So there was lots of dog themed ones because there's a dog that is the kind of subject of a lot of the kids stuff focused around Mary Rose. But there was all different sorts of interactive displays, augmented reality within the glass lift that looks onto the Mary Rose and how you could gamify it. The kids just had a whale of a time and I just strolled around the museum and watched them having fun and say, that wasn't a tough day at all.

Kelly Molson: I'm actually really jealous as well because were due to go and then you got the opportunity to go because of that thing happening and I still haven't been.

Paul Marden: I know. And it's an amazing place. We had so much fun. They welcomed us. We had all the education department looking after us and making us feel special. It was just such a brilliant day. Apart from trying to park a minibus with 15 kids somewhere near the Mary Rose, which scared me whitlets.

Kelly Molson: Oh, you actually drove a bus?

Paul Marden: I did not drive the bus, no, I was a navigator. I had to find the parking spot. It's a level of responsive.

Kelly Molson: You were bus driver dad as well that day.

Paul Marden: There's a character in Peppa Pig, isn't there? I can't remember who she is, but she works in the supermarket. She drives the minibus.

Kelly Molson: This rabbit is the hardest working rabbit you'll ever meet in your whole.

Paul Marden: Exactly.

Kelly Molson:  No, I'm going to put her on par. Sorry, I'm actually going to put her on par with Mrs. Rabbit, who has got hundreds of kids who doesn't work, but she has to look after those. So she is probably the hardest working rabbit that you'll ever find. So there you go. Digress into Peppa Pig. You can see where my world is right now, can't you? That just gave you an insight into where I'm spending my time.

Paul Marden: So tell me about where have you been recently?

Kelly Molson: I have been recently to the Museum of the Broads. I don’t ever really spoken about this on the podcast that much. But I am a trustee of the Museum of the Broads and it is a lovely museum. It does not get as much love and attention as it should. So I felt that today was a good opportunity to highlight it. It's wonderful. It's on the broads, obviously, it's in Stallham. And it is such incredible value for money because you can buy a ticket to the museum and a boat trip. And the boat trips are phenomenal. Last year these were really popular, so they introduced some afternoon evening boat trips where you could go and spot kingfishers because that stretch of the broads is absolutely like prime Kingfisher viewing area.

Kelly Molson: I have only ever seen one Kingfisher out in real life, and they're so quick, like it was a flash of blue and I didn't have my glasses on it. She wasn't going to see anything in great detail. That is incredible. On one of the trips last year, on the boat trip, they saw ten kingfishers. It might have been the same kingfisher, just like, who knows? I'm going to say ten. I'm going to take the ten. But the museum itself is wonderful. Some of the artefacts they have there are just really fun and really engaging. And obviously they've got lots of information about the boats and the broads themselves and what the broads were traditionally used for and how they've developed over the years. It's a lovely little museum. It's volunteer led. They have, I think, two or three members of paid team there.

Kelly Molson: So much work goes into the management and the development of those museums when it's volunteer led as well. So it's lovely. It is really lovely.

Paul Marden: We both started doing trusteeship type stuff at the same time. So I started at Kids in Museums because I wanted to see a broad view of things. You started at Museum of the Broads because you wanted to see the inside running of the museum itself. What has the experience been like for you?

Kelly Molson: It’s so different. It's such a different environment to what I'm used to. So, I mean, it won't surprise you to know that museums are not quite as dynamic as an agency, or they're just not as fast paced as an agency. So I think the speed at which some things happen is I find it a bit of a challenge, if I'm honest, because we're used to kind of going, should we try this? Okay, let's talk it. Okay, great. Let's not someone run with it. And it's sort of just, I don't know, there's a speed at which stuff happens in an agency that it's incomparable to any other organisation. So it's nice in some ways that kind of take a bit of time to kind of think things through. I've really enjoyed understanding about all of the different facets that are required within an agency, within a museum. Sorry.

Kelly Molson: And the things that you have to understand about. Even when we had an office, there's a level of HR and a level of safety management that you have to do, but it's a whole other level when it's a museum and you've got members of the public coming along. So that's been really interesting to understand and learn about. I've really enjoyed kind of looking at how they're developing certain areas of the museum as well. So when there's a new exhibition that's on. So last year, the Pippa Miller exhibition launched. Pippa Miller was a really famous artist that was connected to the broads, and the museum was entrusted with some of her artwork when she passed, and it's the only place you can come and see it. It's a wonderful exhibition.

Kelly Molson: So understanding about how those exhibitions are developed and put on and watching those happen as well. And there's another one this year that will happen, which is an exhibition on peat, which I know that probably doesn't sound that interesting, but it really is my mate Pete. No, not your mate Pete. No, actual Peat. Peat soil Pete. So, yeah, that's been really nice to see and kind of understand how those things progress and are developed and the ideas that go into them. It's fascinating.

Paul Marden: Cannot imagine the effort that goes into curating a whole exhibition like that.

Kelly Molson: It's vast. And I will give a huge shout out to Nicola, the curator at the Museum of the Broads, because she works tirelessly there to just bring these stories to life. That's essentially what they do. They bring the stories of the broads to life. This is a little plea from me, actually. A little shout out to everyone that's listening. If everybody listening to this podcast, I mean, we get hundreds of people listen to these episodes. If everyone went and bought a ticket from the Museum of Broada that's listening to this episode today, it would make such a massive difference to that little museum. So if you are thinking about booking a little staycation this year, head to Norfolk, get a ticket to the Museum of the Broads, go and check out the broads themselves.

Kelly Molson: It is just a wonderful experience to go and see that museum and take a boat trip down the broads.

Paul Marden: There's a very nice place nearby to stay as well, isn't?

Kelly Molson: Yeah, I mean, a certain podcast host does have a lovely little place in Norfolk that you could rent out, which is literally 25 minutes from this museum as well. Just heads up. 

Paul Marden: Incidental.

Kelly Molson: If you want to give me a shout, I can put you in the direction of 28 Millgate. Or you could just search that on Google. No, honestly, genuinely, if you are thinking about having a staycation and you're heading that way, put it top of your list because it's a lovely afternoon out. Thank you. Thanks for listening to my podcast.

Paul Marden: So what are we actually talking about today then?

Kelly Molson: In this episode, we are going to be answering some of the questions that we've received from the 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report. So, as you can imagine, we launch the report, we do the survey. All you lovely people fill in our survey for us and we launch the report, which gives you an analysis of what that survey data has meant. And it's a huge undertaking. It really is a huge undertaking. And I don't say that lightly. It's massive. It takes over our whole lives. And there is so much data in the report that we send out, but there's always questions, there's always more, and there's always more that we can do as well. And I think it just is an awful lot of work. Right.

Kelly Molson: So what happens is we launch it goes out, people digest it, and then they send us emails and they say, “This is really great. Thank you for this bit. Is there any insight into this thing?” And there's quite a lot of those emails that come in and most of them we probably can answer. It just, again, takes a bit of work to go back and look at the data and crunch the data and see if there is any answers to those questions. So we have had some of these questions in and we thought, well, let's do it as a podcast. And then everybody can hear the answers to these questions because it might be something that other people are thinking about as well.

Kelly Molson: So we're going to talk through some of the ones that have been sent in, and then we are going to give you a bit of a heads up about what's happening with this year's report and survey and talk a little bit about that. Sound good?

Paul Marden: Does sound good. I need to get my geek hat on my numbers. Geek hat.

Kelly Molson: It's time for Paul to nerd out. I will be asking the questions. Paul will be nerding out on the answers. Right. Okay. One of the questions we had in was how many respondents were return respondents from 2022 to 2023?

Paul Marden: Yeah. This was a question that somebody asked in relation to. They saw some changes, I think it was in terms of ticketing systems that were being used and they wanted to know, “Oh, if there's been a change in the ticketing systems that were used, could that because we've got different group of people, or is it the same people changing systems?” So, yeah, I dug into that. It was actually relatively hard to figure this out because what people type in as the name of their attraction is not always exactly the same. It's sometimes different people, sometimes they'll write the same name in a slightly different way. So actually, comparing apples with apples turned out to be quite challenging and I had to change some of the data to normalise it between the two groups.

Paul Marden: I could see they were the same attraction, although their names were subtly different. What I worked out was two different views of the same thing. But essentially, in the 2023 data set, 20% of the respondents were return respondents from the previous year. But of course, the 2023 data set was much bigger than the 2022 data set. So if you look at it from the other direction, how many people that filled in a survey in 22? Filled in a survey in 23? It's 50% of the 2022 respondents replied in 2023. So we had a good return rate? Yeah, for sure. But there was 50% of people didn't reply. So that made me think, there's a job of work to do this year.

Kelly Molson: Where did you go 50% of you. Cheeky little monkeys.

Paul Marden: And they vary. Some of them are smaller institutions, some of them are much bigger institutions. There's the reasonable amount of movement of people in the sector, isn't there? So you can easily imagine. Actually, there was an interesting one there, isn't it? What if I were to match the names of the respondents? Did we actually get a reasonable number of returners, but they were in a different job with a different institution?

Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's really a good point, actually, because I do know that people, I know people personally, that I know that they've moved on and gone to different places, and actually, some moved out of the sector and moved into completely different roles altogether.

Paul Marden: There is a decent cohort of people that returned and responded in 23, but the 23 data set was much bigger. So when you do see swings between 22 and 23, some of that is just a sample size thing with the best will in the world. We talk to lots of people and lots of people respond with data to us, but we have not captured the whole entire set of all attractions in the UK, and so we will get sampling errors out. If one year we sample a different group of people than we did the previous year, the comparisons can be a little bit harder.

Paul Marden: If we could just get more people responding and we had more data, then you'll get that the role of chance and the role of sampling errors will have less impact on the data and you'll be able to compare more year on year outcomes.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Okay, well, there's your call out to get involved this year we'll let you know how.

Paul Marden: There's going to be lots of those.

Kelly Molson: Okay, second question. Can we break down the responses in the other type category? This is an interesting one, isn't it? Because we detailed out as many different visitor attraction types as we possibly could think of or find on internet and gave everybody the opportunity to be able to select what they specifically were, but we still had a huge amount of people put other. What's the reasoning behind that?

Paul Marden: Can I give you facts and then tell you what I think the reasoning is? Yeah. So there's some things that I know. Okay. 37% of all respondents mark themselves as the other. It skews when you drill into that 37%. It's a big group of people. It was like the second or third largest group of people in the report itself. They tended to be attractions that had lower visitor numbers. So they were under 100,000 visitor numbers in that other group. So it was about 45% of people were under 100. About 37% were between 100 and a million visitors. Those are the things we know. Then I started having a play with the data.

Paul Marden: So what if I were to group those people that were in other because they had the opportunity to type some stuff in for free text box, and could I make a grouping out of that? One thing that I did notice, and this is observation as opposed to fact. Okay. So I could see many of the places that chose other because we didn't allow them to choose multiple types and they were an attraction that had multiple things. So one of them was one of our clients. And they have a historic house. They have a guest house, they have a beach, they have outdoors activities. They've got.

Kelly Molson: So how do you categorise yourself based on all of those? Actually, with that client, I probably would have said historic house because that was what I would have put my hat on for that one.

Paul Marden: But then I met somebody yesterday. Not too dissimilar. Yeah. Primarily a historic house, but it's a historic house that has a hotel, bar, golf on the site. And if you ask them, it would totally depend on who you spoke to as to what they primarily were. There were people that ran the historic house who would have you believe that they were primarily a historic house, but there were other people that would say, “Well, actually the revenue is generated elsewhere in the organisation and primarily we are a hotel and golf destination and alongside we have a historic house.” So I think there was a nuance in the way that we asked the question, please choose what type of attraction you are. And the only option for the people that had lots of these things was to say other.

Paul Marden: And actually, I think going forwards we probably need to say, what are you primarily, and do you have other things and give people the option to choose multiples?

Kelly Molson: Yeah, I was going to say, because even if you put multi, it causes the same challenge, doesn't it? Without being.

Paul Marden: But when I had to play around with that group and I tried to assign them to things partly based on what they replied on their questionnaires and partly by looking at their websites and having a guess, a lot of them had some element of outdoor activity. A lot of them had food and drink. There was a large group that weren't multi activity. I don't know what a better way to describe those historic houses with other things going on, but there was a decent size of people or decent sized number of attractions that were tv themed and they were primarily a behind the scenes tour or something themed around a tele program. And we didn't have that. There was nothing like that in any of our categorisations.

Paul Marden: So again, it just comes down to refining the questionnaire every year to try to improve what we've got. Give people the option to choose multiples and include some other groups. But avoid getting to a point when you look at all the categories we gave, because you mentioned, we gave lots of categories, there was a very long tail. There was a large number of the actual categories where it had one or two attractions within that grouping. And then it's like, is that a meaningful way of slicing and dicing the data? So we have to be really careful not to throw too many categories at it, but at the same time give people some choices.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. You also have to feel that the people have to feel that they are included within this as well. So if those one or two people came along and they couldn't choose what they were, would they feel excluded from it?

Paul Marden: Yeah. Would they drop out? Because this clearly isn't for me.

Kelly Molson: Exactly. I'm all for having more choice in that. It's a tick box. That's fine. There's other stuff that we can take out, don't worry.

Paul Marden: And that's because you're not looking at the data. Add more numbers.

Kelly Molson: I'm all for cutting stuff out if it makes life easier for people and more people will be able to fill it in and that. But I think that one particular thing is not one that we need to cut back on.

Paul Marden: No, I agree with you. Totally agree.

Kelly Molson: Were all attractions who responded to the survey paid for, or how do those ecommerce results break down between those that have an entry fee and those that are free? This was a good question.

Paul Marden: Yeah, it really was. In many of the questions that we've got, some people chose not to answer us. Within this group, there's a group of people in the whole set of data that chose not to answer this, either because they didn't know or they felt they didn't want to answer the question. But if we take everybody that reported an entry fee, 15% of those people were free of charge. So they ticked the box that said they had no entry fee. That's already a fairly small group amongst the whole data set. So we're asking questions here that zero in on a smaller and smaller group. This sounds like I'm giving excuses before I give you my homework. Yeah. But as the groups get smaller, then the role of chance and sample error means that the data becomes less and less reliable.

Paul Marden: And I got to be honest, within that 15%, there was a large number of people that didn't tell us a conversion rate. So you're down into a very small number of people now. 85% of the free to enter attractions didn't tell us what their conversion rate was or said they didn't know or couldn't measure it.

Kelly Molson: So that's interesting in itself, because this is some of the things that we've been talking about in terms of the conversion rate and how we measure that effectively, because some of those free museums obviously will have probably smaller teams, less budget, less ability, maybe just less understanding of what we're asking in the first place. My assumption is that they will use off the shelf ticketing platforms that they might not be able to get the conversion rate from. So you've got that limitation in the data that they can actually then supply us because they genuinely just don't have it, they don't know it.

Paul Marden: Or because they're free. They don't think about the concept of conversion. But in that instance, how much does it matter the number of people that come to your website and then the number of people that actually buy? If there is no ticketing, if you're free to enter and you don't even need a ticket to pre book to enter, does it even matter? And I would argue absolutely, it definitely does. Because instinctively, I would believe that there is definitely a relationship between the number of people that visit your website and the number of people that visit your attraction. And if you can improve the ratio between those two, you'll get more bookfalls through the attraction.

Paul Marden: And even if you're free to enter a considerable portion of the money that you make out of the attraction is going to be from donations, from people walking through the door. It will be food and beverage sales, it will be gift shops, it will be memberships that they join to get other things. All of those things need bums on seats, don't they? If you don't get bums on seats, you don't generate that revenue. But it can be hard, I think, to join the dots between that big number of people that visit your website, hopefully, and the number of people that are actually walking through the door and creating a correlation between, or creating a relationship between the two.

Kelly Molson: It's when there's no purchase made from that thing to that thing, there's almost nothing to tie them together.

Paul Marden: Yeah, but it makes it harder to think about which, when you're a small attraction in those sorts of circumstances, if it's harder to think about, then it's not going to be a priority for you. But I would argue it would be a super important thing to do because you tweak those. We're all about tweaking the dials, aren't we? We're all about trying to increase. 

Kelly Molson:  Marginal gains.

Paul Marden: Exactly. And in that instance, it can be hard to see the point. But I definitely believe there really is a point to it. If I go one more thing, I would say, and this is where the data.

Paul Marden: I don't think the data is reliable, but were into this small group of people that we had, 15% of people say that they were free, and in that group we had a small number of people tell us what their conversion rate was, and it varied. There were some attractions that had a 1% conversion rate. There were some attractions that chose the 5% conversion rate, which was the higher end of the bracket, which was the average over the whole group. I bet you there's more data that would help us to understand what the difference between the 1% and the 5% was. Is it chance or is there something materially different between those two types of institution? I don't know, but there's a debate there.

Paul Marden:  And is it valuable for us to investigate that there's only so much time to be able to put to these things?

Kelly Molson: Well, I think this is why it's important. Well, this is why we value people asking the questions about the report. This is why we encourage people to give us feedback and to send us these questions in, because it all adds to the conversation and it all helps us make this better and better every year because we can understand what you send us a question and then that gives us an understanding of what's really important for you right now. So we can start to incorporate some of the ways to get the answer to that question into the survey and the report for this year.

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly Molson: So send us more questions. As a midway to this podcast, definitely send us some more questions. You can send them to me, [email protected], or you can send them to [email protected] but whatever you do, just send them in. And then we can again start to look at how we incorporate some of those questions into this year's.

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly Molson: Okay, next question. It's around ticketing platforms. One question came in and they noted the apparent percentage drop in use of access gamma in the past year. So what we saw was Digitickets and Merack both seemed to kind of hold their share, and they're UK based. With over 70% of the 188 respondents UK based and about a quarter of European. We found it a little odd that there was such a drop here in such a short space of time and wondered if you had any further insight. Interesting one, isn't it, because we all noted that access had dropped off a little bit.

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to caveat this again. I can go into more depth and understand the differences between the two, but I would caveat it that if we had more responsive, we could be more confident in the reliability of the difference across years. But we've gone from a large, but a sample in 22, a bigger sample in 23. The 23 sample included some of the 22 people. But really, I think what the question I was getting at is how many of those people actually switch ticketing platforms between that group? And I think that is unlikely to be the reason why we saw these changes. Yeah, of course people change ticketing platform, but it's the beating heart of the business. They don't change it on a whim and they don't change them dramatically very quickly. Yeah.

Paul Marden: By the way, there's no evidence to this in that respect. There could be changes, but my instinct is it's unlikely to be a wild change on the basis of the number of people because it's just not that easy to.

Kelly Molson: No. And we speak to agencies, our own clients have been through these processes, and we know how long they take and we know how embedded those systems are within an organisation and how difficult it actually is to switch from one to another and the time frame that it takes. So I would agree with you.

Paul Marden: On the basis of that. I think the differences are more easily explained by we got more different people included. And we're seeing more of what the sector buys. Now, whether, when we get into 24, whether we see another swing again. Well, that's entirely plausible, because the sample sizes, they're not big enough to be statistically valid. They give an indication, but they will suffer from chance in some areas. And it could just be the group of people that we've got, we know within the year demonstrates the usage of the ticketing platforms within the group of people that responded within that year, but unlikely to be comparable across the years. Only 20% of this year's data were responses that had been given in 22 as well. 

Paul Marden: So we've only got a small group. Within that group the data has changed dramatically in that year, mainly with people telling us they chose an other not listed system. So it was not one of the big ones that were familiar with, and no one reported anything in that group last year. So this is where you know as well as I do, we get people asking us for copies of their data that they've submitted, because there's a big period of timing between when they submit stuff and the report being published, and then they want to see what they did, what they gave to us, don't they? So people remembering what they wrote last year and putting it in again this year, it's no wonder we see differences between the two year groups. Apart from other not listed, which was by far like a country mile than largest number of responses.

Paul Marden: The biggest absolute change in the number of responses within the repeating group was digitickets. Digitickets had more people within that returning group saying that they were using their ticketing platform.

Kelly Molson: And I can't remember this off the top of my head, but where people are selecting other not listed, are we giving them the opportunity to write who they are using? So did we give them an open.

Paul Marden: Such an unfair question? I can't remember the answer.

Kelly Molson: I genuinely can't remember. But if we didn't, well, then we need to, because that space, I mean, there's a lot of ticketing platforms already, but there are new ones popping up all over and there are ones that are specifically focused on accessibility for an example. There are ones that are relatively similar in terms of what they're doing to everyone else, just packaged up in a different way. So it would just be interesting to see some of the names that people were putting forward and where people are swinging to. 

Kelly Molson: We know that there's Tessitura, for example, and Spektrix that are used quite predominantly in theatre world now. People have always talked really positively about those two platforms and it would be interesting to see if they are looking to make that transition over into the attractions world.And maybe some of these people are starting to kind of move over to those. Who knows?

Paul Marden: There's a few systems lots of people know about because they're not just pure ticketing, are they? They're ticketing. So they manage the ticket inventory, they do online sales, they do walk ups, they do EPOS, they manage a shop, they manage a catering, they do everything to operate the entire attraction. And then there were other systems that focus purely on ecommerce and the sale of the tickets themselves online. There are other people that focus purely on the EPOS offering. And actually, there's a lot of complexity within these systems that go to running the attraction itself. And maybe again, we need to give people more choice about what they choose and give them the opportunity to choose multiple things. Because we might say, do you use gamma or do you use Merac or do you use Digitickets?

Paul Marden: And there may well be people that use digitickets for their e commerce sales, and they might use Merac for their membership, or they're running the epochs in the shops and their food and beverage. I don't think we give people the opportunity to have the nuance of selecting multiple things that they use.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, for like, I literally just had a conversation with someone who uses Digitickets for their ticket in, but Merac for their K-Three, for their till. So, yeah, I totally see where we need to do that. Okay, good. Two more questions. Is there future scope to develop comparisons against other science centres?

Paul Marden: Yes is the short answer, and yes, we have done that. It's quite interesting because you and I both have been talking about this year's survey at different places and the science centres one is a good example. It’s good because I was the one talking. Well, it's good because I was the one, but. So I went to the Association of Science and Discovery Centres conference in Belfast. I talked about that one of the pods just recently, and I had a table talk where I was talking about essentially observations that I found about the data about science centres. But you've done talks in numerous different locations.

Kelly Molson: All over the place. I was all over the place last year. Here, there and everywhere.

Paul Marden: Slicing and dicing the data to talk to the group of people that you were talking to. So you were in Ireland and you talked about comparisons of the attractions that we've got in both the Republic and Northern Ireland. And then you talked to know that's a different slice of larger attractions. And in both cases, were slicing and dicing the data and trying to find what made that group of people special or what were the observations that we had, weren't they?

Kelly Molson: That was one of the nice things about the report this year, because the data set was so much larger, we could make the things that were talking about so much more specific for people. So the ALVA talk was really great, actually. So I was very kindly invited along to speak at one of the ALVA council meetings. And it was at Bletchley Park, oh my goodness. In their new auditorium that were the first group to speak in there. It was wonderful, such a good experience.

Kelly Molson: But that was lovely because I was able to talk about how ALVA members are performing and give them a specific breakdown of the things that they're doing well, some of the things that they potentially not doing so well, and give them some real insight into how they can improve on the things when they're not doing so well. So that was lovely. And then the same at AVEA. It was great to be able to give, again, a breakdown of how irish attractions are performing in terms of the rest of the country, but also showcase attractions that are doing really brilliantly from those areas. So actually in the talks I could highlight a specific Irish attraction that was doing an absolutely phenomenal job in terms of great website, great conversion rate, all of those things.

Kelly Molson: And it was really nice to be able to shine spotlight on people this year as well.

Paul Marden: So pick out some examples of that. Yeah, so let's just pick out some of the examples from the science centre. So the ASDC members, it was interesting because ASDC members tended to have higher football than when you compared it to the whole group of respondents that we had. That surprised me. ASDC members tended to have higher entry fees than all respondents. ASDC members tended to have substantially higher mobile usage than all respondents. So you're up into 90% of traffic for ASDC members or ASDC members tended to have upwards of 89%, 90% mobile traffic, whereas when you look at the whole group of everybody, it was down into 60%. So still the majority, but not as big a majority.

Kelly Molson: That's interesting.

Paul Marden: So again, is this chance or is there something interesting about the audience that buy tickets to go to a science centre. Are they genuinely different than people that go to the all set?

Kelly Molson: Well, yeah. Is this stereotypically because someone is really interested in science and technology, therefore they are more digitally advanced potentially as an audience. And that's why that's higher. That's interesting.

Paul Marden: ASDC members tend to spend less of their gross profit on marketing. 18% of ASDC members spent more than 5% of their turnover on marketing, whereas when you look at the whole group, 24% of all respondents spent more than 5%. So it's interesting, isn't it, this difference in the outcomes and the difference for the inputs. ASDC members were much more likely to track their conversion rate, but most of them didn't track their cart abandonment rate. So they don't know how many people were giving up partway through. ASDC members were more likely to have a top level conversion rate. And of the ones that did tell us what their cart abandonment rate, it was more likely to be lower than the average. They updated their websites more frequently and they tend to spend more on their websites each year than the average.

Paul Marden: So there was markedly different things that happened across the different groups when you looked at ALVA, much larger organisations. So footfall is higher because that's a minimum entry criteria. They spend more on marketing and they have better outcomes. They had better conversion rates than average.

Kelly Molson: Unsurprising.

Paul Marden: Unsurprising completely. But what was interesting was within that group, the averages marked quite relative poor performance. So there were some examples where there were attractions spending a large amount on their site, but achieving poorer conversion rates than the average.

Kelly Molson: Hopefully those aren’t clients. Fingers crossed.

Paul Marden: So yeah, there's group averages and you can see differences by the different groups. I think in future, wouldn't it be interesting if potentially we did this sort of analysis based on the type of organisation? If you're a museum, are you more likely to have a higher conversion rate than you are if you're all respondents?

Kelly Molson: Well, this is the thing.

Paul Marden: What's of interest?

Kelly Molson: Yeah, exactly. We can say, oh, this is interesting. Wouldn't this be useful to know? But actually is it useful to know for you? One of the things that we did talk about doing was doing a regional breakdown of how attraction is performing. And I think that's probably on the cards for the next month or so to get that out. We raised that and got some quite good feedback on having that. So that's definitely top of the list. 

Kelly Molson: But yeah, again, are these things going to be useful for you? We've always had the ethos that any kind of information or support documentation or essentially our marketing has to be useful for you. Right? What's the point otherwise? We need to know what you need. So more questions, please more. Do you have this? Can we have this? If we can't do it, we'll tell you, but if we can do it, we'll damn well work hard to get you it.

Paul Marden: You can just imagine that some people find the full written port to be report to be really useful. It gives a fixed set of slices and dices and it gives interesting insights and it gives recommendation. But people might be interested more in more group comparisons or geographical comparisons with less of a large report and more of a. Well, I want to see a white paper about my sector or my location or what is special about me compared to everybody else, as opposed to telling me everything that is good in the sector. Where do we focus our attention to have the best value for people at the end of this?

Kelly Molson: Good. Last question. Is there a correlation between conversion rate and visitor numbers?

Paul Marden: It's really interesting because this got me playing with the data. I'm all over a pivot table in excel. All right, so I did loads of analysis. 

Kelly Molson: I am not.

Paul Marden: No. We've got our strengths and weaknesses and complement each other very well, I think when I did this first time round and I was working with a team of people that were analysing data, but I was slicing and dicing in different ways and I looked at these things and I thought there was no great relationship. But when this question came in, I had another stab at reorganising the data. And actually I did a heat map version of what is your average sales conversion rate? And we've got like zero to one to two, three to four to five and more than five. And then what is your annual visitor numbers in groups?

Paul Marden: And actually, the larger the annual footfall on site, the more likely you were to have a high conversion rate.

Kelly Molson: Just for our listeners, this data is quite difficult to visualise. We've got a graph, we've got some pre pictures that will explain this better, which we will put out on social media. If you follow our Twitter account, or if you're connected with us on LinkedIn, or follow our LinkedIn Rubber Cheese, or Skip the Queue LinkedIn pages, we'll put all of that on there. What we'll also do as well is when we edit this podcast, we always do a video. The videos don't get a lot of love, but there's loads of videos up on our YouTube. So head over to the Rubber Cheese YouTube channel and within this episode we will insert what we're talking about as well. So it's just a bit easier to digest.

Paul Marden: So yeah, there is definitely a relationship between these two factors. The more footfall there is, the more likely you are to have a high conversion rate. Just intuitively, they must be related variables. This is not just a relationship between the two. There is somehow one is feeding into the other the more footfall you have, the more budget you're going to have, the more you'll be able to invest in marketing, the more you invest in marketing, you'll have more people focusing on different elements of your marketing and you'll have more budget to spend on digital people that can focus on conversion rates and marginal gains. I don't know whether that's true. The data doesn't prove that. That's just my instinct that spending money on people like me is probably a worthwhile investment. But that's just instinct. There's no proof for that.

Paul Marden: The heat map shows there's a relationship, but there's loads of factors involved in what goes on. As I said to you before, spending more money does not guarantee you great outputs. And you have to measure these things, make regular changes, because just because you've got a large number of people coming through the door does not guarantee you a high conversion rate. And you need to graft to get to the point where your website is converting as best it possibly can. One major redesign does not an increased conversion rate may you need to do lots of little things regularly to nudge it in the right direction.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's just the start. Yeah. That comes back to what I said at the beginning about. I was just about to say we're at the end of the project. I'm like, no, we're not star of the project because the project is launching. That's the starting point for the rest of the process.

Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly Molson: Oh, this has been really good. Well, look, listeners, hopefully you found that useful. Hopefully some of the listeners that are listening, we've answered your questions as well. We'll send this out to all the people that did ask the questions specifically as well. But yeah, coming back to what we've said, is there something that is a burning question from you, from the data that we've already released? Is there something that would be so incredibly useful for you that we haven't released that we might potentially have? We just don't know. Or we don't know that you need it. And what does this year's survey hold and what would be useful for the survey and the report to hold for you this year? So we are at the point now where we're gearing up for the 2024 survey.

Kelly Molson: Last year we launched it in May at the fabulous Museum and Heritage show. Plans are afoot at the moment for when we launch it, but nothing is diarised yet. So it's a really good opportunity to get involved and have your say about what you'd love to see in it this year.

Paul Marden: Yeah. There's some key themes that have come out of our kind of retrospective. We've been belly button gazing and questioning what do we do next year? And there's obvious things that come out of it. One of our big things was we want to simplify 2024. We asked too many too complex questions last year and it took too long for people to submit their responses. And that's not fair.

Kelly Molson: It's a big ask that we're asking of you to trust us with your data as it is. We don't want you sitting around for like half an hour having to fill it all out.

Paul Marden: So we want to simplify, we want less questions, and we're going to look at potentially a different questionnaire platform. We've done different platforms each year in the last two years and I don't think we found the right answer yet. So that might be an area that we try and simplify things. My instinct of, and this is just based on my own struggles with life. Okay. I am struggling with Google Analytics 4 for everybody. All of my data has moved and I don't know how to answer my questions. And that data that's in GA4, it's the core of the questions that we ask in the questionnaire. And I'm thinking, if I do this every day, what must it be like for all of you guys listening? So what can we do to help you understand how to gather the data and how to submit it?

Paul Marden: Because there's obviously going to be a disparity, isn't there, between people that do this every day and people that do this as part of a bigger job and they don't do it all the time and they need advice and guidance.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. So one of the ideas that's been floating around is that we actually put on little workshop or little webinars, which it shows you how to go and get the data that actually is needed to fill in the survey. And then that's with you. It's a reference point. You can keep hold of that for the following years and the following, the subsequent years. And we might look at, we've got a brilliant circle of fabulous suppliers that we work with that are all attractions focused, and so we could potentially partner up with them and run the workshops and do something like that.

Paul Marden: The questions that we're asking, the data that we're gathering is likely to be marketers' dream dashboards anyway. So it's not just of use to the survey itself, it's of use to your day to day month to month reporting and demonstrating the efficacy of what you're doing. We want to increase the number of people that are responding from large multi site organisations. So the plea call to action here for digital markets is in large multi sites. We were interested in talking to you about. If you've got 50 odd sites that you manage ticketing for and multiple attractions all over the country, filling in the questionnaire based form approach that we've given may not be the right way for you to share data with us. No, we're really flexible. We want data. We want to ingest more data because it improves the quality of the responses.

Paul Marden:  So we'll be completely flexible around what different large multi site organisations can provide and the method with which it makes most sense for them to provide it.

Kelly Molson: So what are we doing? We're doing a vocal shout out here to National Trust, English Heritage, et cetera, to say if you want to be part of the survey and the subsequent report and the process that we're offering you, it doesn't work. You're not going to sit there 50 times, however many sites you've got and fill in this data. That's ridiculous. We can give you a better process of doing that and we can work with you one on one to work out how that works best for you as well.

Paul Marden: Completely.

Kelly Molson: If you do want to be involved, don't let the process of how we collect the data put you off. We can solve that challenge for you.

Paul Marden: Shout out, call to action. Really for everybody that submitted last year and would be thinking about this year's survey is tell us what key themes are of interest to you. We have what we think is interesting and we'll follow our noses and ask questions and ruble around the data to try and find the answers. But we don't know what you want as well as you know what you want. So tell us, as you said, Kelly, ask questions about what you'd like to see, but tell us what you'd like us to do. We might be able to do something really easily based on the data that we've already got. We might need to ask another question. There was a question that somebody asked that weren't able to answer.

Paul Marden: They wanted to know whether you were primarily educationally focused as an institution or primarily focused on selling tickets, whether that had an impact on your conversion rate. And actually, without us guessing, it's impossible for us to answer that question. And what's the point in us guessing because we're going to give you meaningless data if we ask the right questions. What's the primary focus of your website? What are the secondary focuses of your website? If we do that, then we might be able to slice and dice the data. So ask us the questions now because we can use that to influence what questions we include in the survey.

Kelly Molson: I would add to also as well, if you are well, to say thank you. We had a phenomenal amount of support with the survey last year and the report. But for us, being able to move from 70 respondents in year one to nearly 200 in year two, the difference in that was all of the membership organisations that supported. It's a mammoth task. There's no way I could have done that on my own just by sending it lots of people and hitting people up on LinkedIn and posting across social media. The biggest difference there is the support we've had. I mean, ALVA, ASVA have been huge supporters of us from the start, which we're super grateful for this year. We had AVEA come on board and help us. We've had AIM help us. We had ACE help us.

Paul Marden: We had ASDC.

Kelly Molson: ASDC. I mean there were just so many. I've got a huge list of all of the attractions and all of the kind of Hampshire's best attractions and these smaller regional attraction organisations that have supported Devon's top attractions. Without their support, we could not have done that, made that happen. So I guess what I'm asking for is continued support, please, would be great. And are there any other organisations out there that we should be talking to? And if there's any listening that haven't been involved in helping us distribute the survey this year, if you're up for it, give us a shout. I mean, the benefit to your members is phenomenal, right? What we produce for them and it's all free. It's all for free. Come and get it.

Paul Marden: That is a nice segue because yes, it's all for free, but it doesn't cost nothing. And actually what we would also like help with is sponsorship for 2024. So if there are organisations around the listening public, as it were, that would be interested in supporting the work that we do on this and would like to influence and help guide what we do, then we would be really keen on talking to people that would like to sponsor and that sponsorship could be gifting kind. So some people might be able to help us by doing things with us. Some people might be able to help us by financially supporting the data analysis or the production of reports or production of specific analyses of a slice of the sector that is of interest to them.

Paul Marden: There's lots of ways in which people could support the work that we do. And obviously the more support that we get, the bigger we can make this thing, because it is. I mean, it's a herculean task that you dreamt up two and a half, three years ago, isn't it? And you did the first one and it was amazing and you got a decent number of respondents and I think you were both amazed at the number of people that gave us data and downloaded the report and interacted with us. And then were blown away in 23. But we need to do more. There's a market for this. There's a value in what we're doing. It's not just chance. It wasn't a crackpot idea you had three years ago to do this.

Kelly Molson: It was not a crackpot idea about it at all. No, it wasn't a crackpot idea. It's really nice, actually. You've just given me a really good flashback, actually. The Museum and Heritage Show has played like a part in this for years, actually, because the survey itself launched last year at the MandH. But the previous year I sat down at the MandH and had a chat with Bernard Donoghue about. I've got this idea, Bernard, and I think this is good. I think this would deliver some real good value to the sector. Would ALVA be happy to help get the word out and stuff? And that was where it started. So isn't that funny that's a connection? I'd forgotten all about that. It's not crackpot. It is amazing and I'm so happy that we've been able to produce this.

Kelly Molson: The value that it delivers to the sector, I get. People tell me about the value. So this is not me going, it's definitely delivering value. The feedback that we've had has been so incredibly positive on it and it's just been wonderful to be part of that. So let's make next year's bigger and even better. But maybe some less questions so it doesn't take you as long.

Paul Marden: Yes, more rows in my spreadsheet, less columns in my spreadsheet.

Kelly Molson: Less time taken up. If you can do it over a cup of tea and a biscuit, then that's perfect, right?

Paul Marden: I reckon so.

Kelly Molson: Hopefully that's going to produce some good value today and we'll see you next time.

Paul Marden: Cheers. Take care.

Kelly Molson: Bye. 

Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. 

Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! 

• Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industry
• Gain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion rates
• Explore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performance
• Learn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion rates
• Uncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversions

Take the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report
 

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.

Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast

Competition ends on 29th March 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

https://www.theplotthickens.co.uk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinewarrilow/

Arival link - https://arival.travel/speakers/catherine-warrilow/

TikTok link - https://www.tiktok.com/@the5minutementor

Catherine Warrilow has 16 years industry experience and runs The Plot.  She creates brand proposition roadmaps for attraction and experience businesses who want to take a slightly rebellious approach to their marketing strategy.

Transcription: 

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson.

On today’s episode I speak with Catherine Warrilow, founder of The Plot, a brand marketing agency.

Today we’re immersing ourselves in brand. I’m asking Catherine what the heck is a brand proposition, why is it important and who in the tourism and attraction industry is absolutely nailing it?

Kelly Molson: You can subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.

Kelly Molson: Catherine, welcome to Skip the Queue.

Catherine Warrilow: Thank you very much, Kelly.

Kelly Molson: I'm really excited that you have come on to chat today. Catherine and I met in a toilet at a conference, which is where you meet all of the best people at conferences, I have to say. But I'm really chuffed that you've been able to come on and join us today. So thank you for your time. Right, we are going to start with our icebreakers, as usual. And I want to know, what would people remember you for that you went to school with?

Catherine Warrilow: Oh, my gosh. Probably the thing I remember the most, I don't know if anyone else would, is when body shop was at its height of popularity and all of their perfumes and stuff and their perfume oils. And I bought the vanilla one, which I was obsessed with, but I covered myself in the kind of the neat essence. So I spent a whole day at school smelling of ice creams with every teacher walking past going, "Why can I smell ice cream?". And everyone, "It's her.". So that is one of my standout memories. I think I was always quite creative and quirky, and I would braid my own hair like I'd been on holiday and put beads in it and come to school like that. Or smelling of ice creams.

Kelly Molson: I love that. I feel like we're of the same era. And my lasting memory of the body shop is the Dewberry. The dewberry smell. You never smelt this any other time like that school time. And I had a friend who used to buy the oil and the shampoo and all, and she just smelt of that continuously. But that was my grandparents name as well, so it was really weird. Their name was Dewberry. Anyway, very od. Good memories. And I quite like that you smell like ice cream. I would love that about you.

Catherine Warrilow: Yeah, it's worse things to smell of.

Kelly Molson: Okay, second one, if you had to pick a fictional character to best describe yourself, who would you choose?

Catherine Warrilow: Oh, my gosh. My instant one that I would like to say, but I'm not smart enough, would be Matilda. I would love to be Matilda, but I'm not. So who would it be? A fictional character? Gosh, that's so difficult. Maybe like Thelma from Scooby Doo. Problem solver.

Kelly Molson: Yep. Quick on her. Yeah, I can see that about you. Good one. You've got Matilda vibes as well. Don't dumb that down. You've definitely got Matilda vibes going on.

Catherine Warrilow: Well, I'll keep trying to move things with my mind and I'll let you know if I have any success.

Kelly Molson: Good. Come back on the podcast, let us know. Okay. What is your unpopular opinion? What have you prepared for us?

Catherine Warrilow: So I think this is one that's going to resonate with a lot of people and it's unpopular but common that travel tech is shit. So I don't get it. I don't get why we are so far behind other sectors, especially with ticketing tech. We sell billions of tickets to some of the most interesting and amazing attractions in the world. Not just in the country, in the world. Yet we still have major attractions who are having to reconcile paper tickets either because they're stuck with their tech, because they've had it so long they can't get away from it, or they're just not sure how to, or it's so difficult or slow or expensive. There must be someone or an organisation who can fix this, right?

Catherine Warrilow: And I know people are trying, like Okto are trying, which is great, but surely there must be an easier way to get the right people around the table and say, "Right. In every instance when you sell a ticket to a customer, it should kind of look like this.". But at the moment, everyone's got different systems. None of them talk to each other. Everyone's slightly different when they break. It could take months to fix. And ultimately it's the customer who loses out because we can't deliver a really effective service. Whether in OTA or an attraction yourself, it's the customer that's left with a bad experience, by and large, because the ticket you booked has vanished from your basket, or it was available 1 minute and now it's not. Or the price has changed, or something weird, you don't even get your email. Or it's confusing.

Catherine Warrilow: Which is why there's so little brand loyalty in our sector, I think. Because people will hop about and just book with whoever's quickest, easiest, cheapest at the time. And I think we've got a real challenge on our hands to up our game when it comes to tech. I don't know what you think.

Kelly Molson: Well, I'm nodding along for people that aren't watching and are listening to this, I'm nodding along probably from a different perspective because we deal directly with the ticketing that the attraction would use. So their ticketing platform for something. I think you're probably a bit more focused on the OTAs and that kind of ticketing kind of stuff. I am in total agreement with you. I am completely nodding along going that there's nothing amazing and there should be something amazing.

Catherine Warrilow: Yeah, I think it's unifying it. I think there's some good tech out there, and I'm not going to names, but there's some good tech. There's some average tech and there's some awful tech. But for the OTA and for the connectivity partner at that level, and ultimately for the customer. How do you bring together what's good and make it accessible across the board? I think that's the challenge, isn't it? How do we unify things so it's straightforward and you know what that process for B2B process should look like. And I think we're making progress, but I think it's slow.

Catherine Warrilow: And I think there has been so much change in the sector from a kind of customer perspective, from a trend perspective, from the impacts of COVID from the impacts of the cost of living crisis, that it always seems to get pushed back in the queue a little bit. Whereas it needs to be at the top of the list all of the time. But that takes a lot of time and resource and dev and investment. But I've heard whisperings of a few people who are doing quite interesting things. So I'll be interested to see what happens over the next kind of 6,9,12 months.

Kelly Molson: I think that's a challenge, isn't it? There's quite a lot of choice and it seems like every day there's a new ticketing platform or another OTA that's kind of that started and for good reasons, because obviously there's things out there that aren't working for people. But a bit more collaboration might stop giving people so much choice and actually start working together to refine the ones that are already out there and just make them better.

Catherine Warrilow: Potentially, yeah. Or give them one aggregated channel that they can all slot into in the same way. Because even when you aggregate systems, the way you integrate them is still different. I'm still trying to figure out where that ownership needs to start. Is it the attractions and experiences saying, "Okay, we have to be able to deliver this for the customer," because ultimately, starting with the customer need is the right place to start? But how do you layer that back through the process to figure out where to start fixing the right problems?

Kelly Molson: And you're right in what you said about that brand perception, then it's on the attraction, it's not on the OTA really, it's on the brand. And they need to kind of own that relationship with their client, which is what we're going to talk about today. So tell us a little bit about your background and where you've got today.

Catherine Warrilow: Yes. Which makes me feel old. Some days I feel like a spring chicken and other days I'm like, "How have I been doing this for like 15 years?".

Kelly Molson: I feel that.

Catherine Warrilow: So I got married in 2007 and shortly after we had our first son, which is all very exciting and challenging at the same time. And alongside that, I decided that it would be a great idea to start my own business with a newborn baby and that if I could do that, then everything from there on in would be a breeze, which was kind of ridiculous looking back. But I set up as a kind of freelance PR and marketing support and fell into travel totally by accident. I knew someone who was running the team at owners direct at the time, the holiday rentals company, and they wanted someone to come in and basically secure them pr coverage as being a great choice for booking holiday rental, mainly UK and Europe, but some further afield. And it just kind of spiralled from there.

Catherine Warrilow: I realised that there was a massive opportunity to up people's game when it came to pr and content, and that was before everything was about content creation and social. It was on the cusp of, "Okay, we can use Facebook to reach people organically and people just weren't really doing that.". It was pre having to pay to play. And I started making a bit of a name for myself within travel and started working for home away, which is now Vrbo. People like hard rock hotels, great little breaks. And it just grew from there. And I grew the business to a very small agency in rural Oxfordshire of about six people. And that's how I kind of accidentally fell into travel.

Kelly Molson: I love that. I had no idea that it was an accidental as well. For some reason I thought that was it. That was always going to be your focus. It's amazing how these kind of things happen that guide our career, isn't it?

Catherine Warrilow: Yeah, it just happened. And then we pitched actually for the pr for Days Out With The Kids many years ago. And were up against some really big agencies and I was like, "This is it. This is our kind of big moment.". And we really held our own against kind of top Manchester, Birmingham, London agencies. And in the end, the CEO at the time asked if I would go in house to set up their marketing strategy, their brand strategy, hire a team. They'd not long bought the business and it was covered in display ads and it was a mess, but it was driving millions of organic visits every year.

Catherine Warrilow: And it was a cliche sliding doors moment where I was like, look, I've spent nine years building up this incredible business and it's my baby and I love it and I feel proud to have built it up, but this is an incredible opportunity to do something amazing. So I ended up kind of selling the business and going into Days Out With The Kids, which was just such a great decision because it gave me probably what I was craving in terms of building effective teams and working for household name brands. And that was the start of me going into employed roles for about, gosh, another eight or so years.

Kelly Molson: Great. And now you've set off on another new adventure.

Catherine Warrilow: Yes, because we reinvent ourselves, don't we? And go where the opportunities feel most exciting. Yeah. So I lost my job with Days Out last September, which was gutting, because again, that passion for building the most incredible teams was real. I hired some of the best people that I have ever hired and we're still great friends now, but when I left there, I was like, "Okay, I will apply for roles and I will ask my network if they would like to work with me.". It was as simple as that. I will figure this out as I go along. You know me, I'm quite an honest, heart on sleeve type person. I'm a bit of an oversharer. So I went onto LinkedIn and said I was gutted to say that I wasn't with days out anymore, but that the world was my oyster.

Catherine Warrilow: And then people just started popping up from connections I've had for years. Connections through things like Arival, through other podcasts that I've done in the past, through content I've created, through past clients, all sorts, right back to my very early career. And I was like, "Actually, I think there is a big opportunity here for me to go back out on my own.". And I knew from the start I didn't want to build an agency. I didn't want to hire people. I just wanted to use all of that experience I've built up over travel over the last 15, 16 years and help people solve brand proposition problems that they can't see themselves with a slight rebellious streak in the middle of working with people who don't want to just follow the crowd. They want to do things a bit differently.

Catherine Warrilow: They want to stand up and be heard and it's just gone from there. So I took on my first paying client at the beginning of November and it's incredible and I bloody love it. And I'm so glad that I fell back into this way of working and I just feel very lucky that I've been able to stay in the sector that I absolutely love.

Kelly Molson: I'm so touched for you. I've got a big smile on my face as you're saying. I've watched your journey and I've watched how it's kind of played out. It's really interesting. Someone said to me a little while ago, you never know who's watching you never know who's taking interest. And I kind of like that. And I think you are someone that I've always, we have genuinely only met once in real life, in a toilet at a conference. But I've followed you for a long time on LinkedIn, and I've seen how helpful and supportive you are to the sector, and I've seen a lot of your posts that go out and talking about other issues and things like that as well, very openly and publicly.

Kelly Molson: I've always really admired that about you and I think you are someone who's super helpful and stuff like that comes back tenfold. So when you put that post out, I know how tough that was. Like, I felt the emotion in that post for you, but was just like, I'd read that post, I was like, "She's got nothing to worry about here at all.". And I could see people comment in and I'm going to connect you to the, "Oh, we should talk, we should do this.". And I was like, "There you go. Good people. Good things come back to in tenfold.". So it's lovely to see you in this position.

Catherine Warrilow: And it was amazing. And that gave me, I think, the foundation I needed to get back out there and carry on attending events and carry on creating content and sharing my thoughts and ideas and all of that kind of thing. And it was funny because a while before that, I'd asked a handful of people from my network kind of, what am I known for? And would you recommend me? And what would you recommend me for? And someone came back and said, "You care more about the result than you do about people's opinions.". And I think that sums me up quite well because I want the best outcome, whether that's for me and my business or for a partner that I'm working for. And I'm happy to say things people might not want to hear because I know it will get them a better outcome.

Catherine Warrilow: And I think that's so important. And I think hopefully that comes across when I either talk to people or I post online that I am authentically who I say I am and you will genuinely get the best of me regardless of how big the challenge is. And that's really important to me. I'd say that's kind of a big part of my values is to share authentic truth rather than either kind of saying what everyone else is saying or saying what someone wants to hear, which will put people off as well. And that's kind of a good screening process in a way.

Kelly Molson: Yes. It's a good way to cherry pick who's the right client, definitely wants to work for me and they're going to get me as well. I love this. Right, okay, we're going to talk about brand today. We're going to talk about brand proposition. What the heck is a brand proposition for our lovely listeners?

Catherine Warrilow: Yeah, and it's a big question. It's basically everything a brand stands for. Absolutely everything a brand stands for. And that sounds quite overwhelming, but really it's not. It's a combination of kind of vision, mission, values. So where are you trying to get to and what are you doing to get there and how are you being when you do that? So what are the kind of the morals and values that underpin the business and that foundation takes you through everything to the point which you sell a product or service to a customer. And that will be everything from your tone of voice and your brand personality, how your brand looks and feels aesthetically, the channels you use to communicate with people and sell through.

Catherine Warrilow: So it really is everything that kind of makes up what matters about a brand and what makes it different and why ultimately a customer would buy from you versus someone else. Which is why I touched on the kind of the challenges with ticketing in our sector because that is a huge obstacle for lots of OTAs in managing their brand proposition effectively because it will have a real knock on effect on the perception their customer has of that brand.

Kelly Molson: And that element of it is slightly out of their control as well, isn't it? Which is unfortunate. What I like about this is that we are, I think as a whole, we're kind of coming away from that thing where people used to go, "Oh, I've got my brand sorted, because I've got my logo.". No, that's a brand element. This is not what we're talking about here. Why is brand proposition so important to get right.

Catherine Warrilow: I think brand proposition comes down to what you sell, who to and for what gain. And the gain is the customer problem. So what problem do you solve for that customer? So days out, as an example, were going after the younger end of the audience who just want to find something with bragging rights and book it quick with the trust and ease of use of real person customer service on Whatsapp and pay with Klana. So book it Whatsapp to make sure you've got your tickets right backs and forwards with a real human being in real time and then pay for it later. So we knew exactly who were, who for and for what gain for that customer. That's why you have to get it right.

Catherine Warrilow: And I speak to a lot of people who, a lot of clients who say they fall at the first hurdle with the first question, which is, "Who are you targeting?" And they're like, "Well, everyone who wants to travel.". And you're like, "No, you're not." 100% not. You might want to be on the radar of lots and lots of people, and lots of people might buy from you, but most people won't because there is so much choice. You've got to know exactly who you are talking to and why you fit the needs and the values of that person. And those values need to be reciprocal because you will never create brand ambassadors otherwise. You will create transient customers who will buy from you once and then move on. And that's an expensive customer to have.

Catherine Warrilow: Whereas if your brand proposition is spot on and everything in the way you do business and the way you communicate, the way your customer service team communicate is consistent, people will buy into that feeling as well as what they're paying money for. And the booking process is part of what they're paying for. And that is part of the reason they will pay more, because they know it's quick and easy and if anything goes wrong, you'll sort it and they will pay 5% more for the privilege of that. Which means your pricing strategy is healthier as well. So all of these different things make up the brand proposition, not just the way your website looks or your logo. If it's lairy and orange and pink and green, that is not going to stand you apart from everyone else. It might get you noticed once.

Catherine Warrilow: But all of that substance of your brand proposition below, that is what will engage, retain a customer, create an ambassador out of them, i.e.  They will leave a positive review, they will engage with your content, they will share your content, all of those things.

Kelly Molson: That word substance is really important in this conversation, isn't it? Because a lot of people still, I think, view brand as very much the kind of aesthetic layer that sits on top of that. But it is about substance. This brand proposition has to run through the core of everything that you do. And it's not just about the visuals, it's about how you speak to people, your tone of voice, all of that kind of stuff as well. How do you start to shape that proposition? Where does an organisation start with that?

Catherine Warrilow: Like I said before, it starts with that vision mission values piece. Because if you are not clear on where you are trying to get to, then how do you even start building things like content pillars, for example? And quite often there's a vision stuck up on the wall, in the office, in the meeting room, which no one could recite back to you and it actually doesn't mean anything. So having substance within the vision is the first point of call. The mission is how you get there and what you're doing to get there. And if you don't know that, you can't create goals, if you haven't got measurable goals, how do you define what success looks like?

Catherine Warrilow: And that takes you into things like understanding your products and your revenue streams, because you might have really popular products and you're like, "Oh yeah, we're selling loads of these tools. They're so popular, everyone loves them. But why is that?". Is it because you're the cheapest on the market? And actually, if you look at your numbers, are you making any profit on that product? Because there's a massive difference between popular and profitable. So it matters because at the heart of the business is a need to be profitable. You want a product and service that people love and is profitable and that people rave about. And it drives you loads of repeat business and loads of new business through word of mouth.

Catherine Warrilow: But to get to the point where you can set those goals that are measurable, you have to know where you're trying to get to. And what often happens, and what I find with a lot of partners is their vision is either ten years old and they're still kind of running around in circles trying to figure out how they get there. And it's not that anymore, because the market's changed, the customers changed, pricing has changed, they've got goals, but they're not measurable, or they've got customers and they never talk to them, they never ask them what they can do better or where else they buy from. So they've got no data, they've got a website that performs pretty well, but they never look at the analytics, so they don't know how they're acquiring customers or how much is costing them to acquire a customer.

Catherine Warrilow: And that all of a sudden feels very messy and complicated, doesn't it? It feels overwhelming to start picking things off to make sure those things are happening in a sensible, logical order that takes you from A to B to make a profit. So I kind of break all those different things down into sections, create a roadmap specifically for the business, and bring to the table all of my expertise to start aligning those things. And what will happen is we'll find some massive gaps. The vision is totally wrong, or they're going after the whole market and they don't really know who their customer is, or so they're trying to talk to everybody, so their tone of voice is just beige, or their goals aren't the right goals, or they're not measurable, or they're measuring the wrong things.

Catherine Warrilow: And you start to see where those opportunities are and you start to see the holes that need to be plugged. And suddenly brand proposition feels like a much simpler, tangible route forward, rather than this kind of crazy maze of stuff that you just don't know where to navigate first.

Kelly Molson: Something you said at the start of that was really interesting, actually, as an aside question is somebody's mission or their vision, and the mission might be completely misaligned now it's been in place for ten years or so, and they're visiting it and the market has changed. How frequently should you look at those things? Like, I get my organisation together tomorrow, we set our new vision and mission. You would hope that we would be kind of checking in on that. Are we all aligned? Are we scenario? How often do you think that changes for people? And how frequently should you kind of refer back to it and go, "Is this still relevant?".

Catherine Warrilow: That's such a good question and I think it should be in mind daily. And if a business is asked what their vision is and they can't recite it off like that, then it's not right or it's too complicated. And I did a big exercise with a client a couple of weeks ago, which was actually around their why and their purpose, because it was really important to them that they were running an ethical, sustainable business, that they gave something back to the community. But their why was about an, a four page long. And I challenged them on it and they said, "Oh yeah, well, actually the community part is really important to us and it wasn't in there anyway anywhere.". So what I did is an exercise where we distilled it down bit by bit.

Catherine Warrilow: So we took out all of the filler words and had a look what was left and that came out as kind of care, community, making a difference and a handful of other things. So we stripped it right back and ended up with one sentence, which was about ten or twelve words long. I was like, that actually means something. And that is something you can look at every day and say, "Does launching this new product or service may give something back to the community?". Well, actually, no, it doesn't, because it's going to take us 20 years to fulfil that element. So do we scale it back? Do we make it simpler? Do we make it shorter? What do we do? Do we make it more accessible?

Catherine Warrilow: I think if you can't look at least your vision on a daily basis and say the things on my to do list absolutely fit with that, then you need to challenge yourself on the tactics that you're implementing to reach that vision and the goals you've set for the business. So I think most people would hope, I would say quarterly in the team meeting.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's exactly what people hope. Once a year we revisit that.

Catherine Warrilow: I don't think you want to change it more than annually. You might tweak it if you have to keep throwing it out every year and redoing it. There's something wrong with your business model. But if you can look at it, mine's up on my wall. Mine's really simple. It's rebel plans for travel brands, which basically means a bit kind of rogue compared to your typical marketing strategy. And my why is because you don't want to be the same as everyone else and I don't want to do boring work. That's it. Simple as that. So if I look at my to do list today and say, "Is that boring or is that going to make a difference, and it's not, then I need to challenge myself on what I am delivering for that client or for my own business.".

Catherine Warrilow: Am I saying I haven't written a blog for ages, I should write one? If it's crap to fill a space, then I shouldn't be doing it. I need to challenge myself to put the effort in, to think about what I want to say on that topic, how my opinion is different, how I back that opinion up, what other people are saying, bring in other voices and your vision and mission should make you do things properly, they should make you do them to a much higher standard and they should raise the game of your business, your team and the industry, because that's ultimately where you need to be to succeed, isn't it? You need to be pushing for better.

Kelly Molson: I think we're all getting a very clear picture of what it would be like to work with you, Catherine, from this interview. Love it.

Catherine Warrilow: It's a great screening process, isn't it? Some people will go, oh, my God, that sounds horrendous. That sounds like an awful lot of work. No, thank you. Other people will say, "I think she could see where we're going wrong, where we can't see it because we're so entrenched in what we're doing.".

Kelly Molson:  Yeah. I'm sitting here going, "She needs to come in and work on our brand. This is what we need.". Okay. How does the brand proposition translate into what the consumer or the visitor engages with? I guess. How do you get your brand proposition across to them in the right way?

Catherine Warrilow: Yeah, I think it gets really overcomplicated in a lot of businesses, and that's usually because bits have been tacked on at different times to try different things and see how they work. It should translate to everything. It should translate to the hero strap line across the homepage of your website. It should translate to the bios on your social channels. If you still have business cards, it should translate there. It should translate to how you conduct yourself in front of people, at events, in meetings, in pitches with customers. And one of the things that often gets forgotten and is why it gets all confused from a consumer facing perspective, is it should translate internally as well. Behind the scenes, how your team meetings run, how your one to ones run, the culture and the atmosphere in the office. It should translate through everything.

Catherine Warrilow: Because if it doesn't, how do you expect your marketing team, your sales team, your customer service team to get that across to the customer if your staff don't feel it themselves? And that's probably the only thing that I miss about working in house, is creating that momentum and energy within a team. And it is absolutely astronomical. What a difference it makes to productivity, to engagement, to buy in, to smoothing out bumps when you go through difficult periods of change or reorganisation or someone leaves the business, or whatever it is. You can weather those kind of things so much more easily if you start with the people within your business and making that vision and mission exciting to them.

Catherine Warrilow: And that might be down to the fact that the quarterly team meeting is just so incredibly painful and dull that people just switch off so they don't absorb any of the information about where the business is going next, because it's delivered in such a static, boring way that you need totally transform that and it needs to be led by the teams or it needs to be designed as a quiz or something like just make it different, make it more fun. And I guarantee then it becomes very easy to translate that through to everything from the customer's perspective because it will come through in tone of voice and how you handle a difficult customer service query. It will come through in creating content on TikTok or whatever channels you use. It will just be ingrained in everything.

Kelly Molson: Because your team are owning that and they've got such an input into the kind of division and the mission and the brand proposition, they then can sell that on to the consumers. So they're your internal ambassadors. We talked about ambassadors earlier.

Catherine Warrilow: Yeah.

Kelly Molson:  And obviously that's going to help with recruitment as well. If you've got a really strong kind of brand proposition, more people want to come and be involved in that too.

Catherine Warrilow: Yeah. And it brings confidence to everything. I mean, our job descriptions at Days Out attracted people who weren't even looking for a job because they saw the ad. They were like, "Oh, my gosh, I didn't even think I wanted to move and now I do.". And I had to apply because they were written by real people, designed for real people who just want to be in jobs which they love and they feel invested in and appreciated and rewarded and recognised.

Catherine Warrilow: So it was less about, you must have five years of this, you must be able to do that and more about, do you want to come to work and actually feel like you want to be there and that you want to work really hard because you care about making a difference to that business because they are as invested as you are in the brand. And, yeah, recruitment is a difficult business and retention is a difficult business. So if you can bring together all of those things in such an incredible way across everything you do, then recruiting all of a sudden becomes a joy. And seeing people who want to work for you is incredible.

Catherine Warrilow: So, yeah, it affects everything and you can see I get really excited about that because I think we so often forget that it's our people that will drive the success and we just go over that shiny thing over there. But actually, if you don't tell anyone else in the business what that shiny thing is and why it matters, then how on earth are you going to move mountains to get to that point?

Kelly Molson: Totally agree with every single word that you're saying, Catherine. Totally agree with it. Right. We've talked about what it is, who's doing it well, tourism and attraction industry and why.

Catherine Warrilow: Gosh. So I mentioned my time at doubt with the kids, and it was a very different beast when I was there, because were really trying to make fundamental changes in how we monetise the site, whereas now they've come so far, and I think I have to call out their content strategy and their content team, because in an incredibly crowded market, where you are competing for the attention of parents, the most time poor people on the planet, they have totally understood what type of content resonates with people, and they've understood how to keep people engaged in a community. And that might be anything from behind the scenes, an attraction, quite literal content. But that whole kind of.

Catherine Warrilow: Oh, my gosh, you won't believe what's round this corner at this tiny farm park and bringing to life the lesser known attractions that have huge amounts to offer customers through to stuff that's trending, whether that's pop culture or music, tv, film, just tapping into the mood of the nation. My definition of that is situational relevance. So how do you bring together a situation or trend that's important to people now with the relevance of your brand? And it goes back to what we're saying about tone of voice before. What's your perspective on that topic? Why would a customer engage with your brand about that topic if it's not literally trying to sell them a ticket to an attraction?

Catherine Warrilow: And I think what they've done with channels like TikTok, for example, is they've absolutely understood, A, what problem they solve for the customer, but B, what's important to them now and what they're talking about right this minute, because that will be different today to it is tomorrow. And they are quick and they are agile and they are reactive to trends and topics, and they've understood how to have that conversation with someone within their audience demographic. And that's not easy. That is a huge undertaking of time and effort and research, and it doesn't take two minutes to create a decent TikTok that's going to engage people. People think it's like an instantaneous throwaway channel, but it's not. And you've got to hook people in about a second and a. So I think they're doing great things.

Catherine Warrilow: When it comes to attractions, Cannon Hall Farm in Barnsley in Yorkshire, I think are epic. I think, again, they captured situational relevance by streaming things like lambing season on Facebook. Years and years ago, they started doing that and they were like, "Oh, we're on something.". People want to watch the lambs being born and how we care for them and how we bring new life into the world and how good that feels. And that led to them doing a whole series with Channel five. And I just think they had their vision and mission and products spot on. They had the foundations. They knew what they were delivering, who to for what gain. They were bringing people up close and personal with farming life in a way that just captured families. And I think they've sustained that, and I think that's quite difficult to do.

Catherine Warrilow: I think they've evolved with the times, and they've carried on improving their products, and they've carried on communicating that to people who want that type of experience. So I think that they're brilliant. And then the other one would be Marsh Farm in Essex. Their understanding of events and how to capture people through events is out of this world. And what they do is they look, I don't think they intentionally do it, but what they've managed to do is create a triangle between celebrity. So someone like Daisy Solomon and how she celebrates Halloween, for example, and an experience that they can deliver that captures that to people in a way they can afford.

Catherine Warrilow: So their pumpkin patches and photo moments around Halloween are mind blowing, because what they've done, they've looked at what people want to achieve at the celebrity level, but potentially can't cover their front doorstep in a million pumpkins and have ghosts coming out of every part of the.

Kelly Molson: Catherine, honestly.

Catherine Warrilow: But they can go and have that experience at Marsh Farm with their kids, take photos of their kids in a wheelbarrow surrounded by pumpkins, and feel like they've had a slice of that lifestyle. And they up their game with every single event they do. And it's remarkable. And the effort that goes into delivering that wrapped up with incredible customer service is second to none. And I think a lot of attractions can learn from how they deliver that experience.

Kelly Molson: I totally agree. Marsh Farm is James Sinclair, isn't it? That's him, yes.

Catherine Warrilow: And Aaron Oathman. Yeah.

Kelly Molson: James actually came on the podcast.He was a really early guest on the first season of the podcast when me and my old co founder used to do it together. Actually, I think my co founder interviewed James on his own, actually. I don't think I was on that one. But we had seen James, he'd been on our radar for a long time. And he is a smart cookie. He really is a smart. I think he's probably a bit marmite for people, in all honesty. But that's a good thing, right? That's filthy. But I absolutely love his content. I love it. I can sit and watch it all day long and he's got so much to talk about and there's so much value that he delivers as well. So from a personal brand perspective, I think he's kind of nailing that as well.

Catherine Warrilow: Oh, 100%. And that's something we haven't even touched on, is personal brand. That's a conversation for another day. But it fits in neatly with getting your people invested in the business vision, because they are your brand ambassadors. They are the people going out to events and selling the dream. And some people don't see the value of that, but the way they conduct themselves, especially if you're in B2B and you're in trade events and you're negotiating relationships with suppliers or trying to get people to come to your stand and talk to you about a product or service, they're not going to do that unless your personal brand has that magnetism. And you're absolutely right, James has that magnetism.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Which, again, is going to help with his recruitment and then building those brands and then vision. So it's all part and parcel of the same thing. Exactly. I love it. Great examples as well. Thank you for sharing those. What are your top tips that you'd like to share with our listeners today?

Catherine Warrilow: So, the first one I won't labour over, because it's getting your people aligned with your vision, and we've talked about that a lot. It all starts there. If you can't get people to adore the plans of the business, then it's going to be hard work to get to that point. I think the second one is something we touched on early on. It's about authenticity. Whether you're customer facing and you're an attraction or an experience, whether you're an OTA, whether you're a res tech company. Authenticity, I think, is everything. If you can't do something, don't say you can. If you can't fix something, don't say you can. Be honest. Just be honest about everything, with your customers, with your teams, with your partners, and do your absolute best to find the right solution.

Catherine Warrilow: So if you let a customer down, don't gloss over and say, "Oh, well, we couldn't have controlled that.". Say, "We're gutted that this has happened, we can't fix it, but this is what we're going to do to avoid it happening again. This is the problem we've uncovered.". Just bring it all to the surface. I don't understand why brands don't let people see in. Because we know as customers that the brands we resonate with and have an affinity with are the ones we trust. It's as simple as that. So why not let people into that world a bit more? And the way we use social these days allows us to do that, allows us to have a window into our world. So use that to your advantage. Show you're listening.

Catherine Warrilow: Show that you take on board feedback, whether that's internally, externally or otherwise, and just be the best, genuine version of yourself and your business that you can be. And then the third thing I would say is, try new stuff now. So if you're not on TikTok and you're like, "We need to be on TikTok, but we don't understand it, we don't get it, we don't have the resource.". Don't put it off. You will never have enough resource for everything you want to do. You will never be a master at all things. But try them now. Don't have them on that forever to do list. Whether that's approaching a new partner or researching a new sector within tours, experiences and attractions, do it now.

Catherine Warrilow: And if you're listening to this or watching this and you've had one of those things on your list, please do something about it this week and come back and tell us both what you've done, because I think you just need that push in the right direction. People wait for the perfect moment to try something new or do something new or launch something new. There is never a perfect moment. You will miss the boat. And then you have that constant frustration of, "Oh, those guys are doing it brilliantly. Why didn't we just dot.". Because if you had have done, you probably would be creating great content on that channel now. You probably would be in a partnership with that new wine tour. Just don't wait. Trends come and go. Just get on with it. Stop waiting.

Kelly Molson: I feel like you've also just made us about 400 people's accountability partners there as well. So thanks for that.

Catherine Warrilow: Okay, I'm going to rescind that last bit. Tell me what you've done this week.

Kelly Molson: Take it, send and email us. All Catherine's details will be in the show notes. It's fine. You can email us both. Let us know what you've taken off your list and what you've gone ahead with. We want to know. I'm joking. All 400 of you and more. It's great tips. Thank you for sharing today. I've really thoroughly enjoyed this. Where can we get more from you? You're actually going to be talking soon. At quite a large event, aren't you?

Catherine Warrilow: Yeah. So you can see me in person at Arival first weekend of March. So I'll be talking about everything we've talked about today, actually taking your mission and vision and values right through to monetisation and figuring out where those gaps are in the middle. So that'd be a really practical, hands on workshop. I'm a real kind of sharpie marker and paper type person, so you will actually get a physical roadmap to take away and fill in yourself, which I think is going to be really fun. I'm a massive oversharer, like I said, so you can find me on LinkedIn a lot, on TikTok a lot. I can't profess to be a TikTok expert by any stretch, but I am persevering because I think it's a brilliant channel to share quick pieces of advice and tips and hacks.

Catherine Warrilow: So little things that you can do right now that will improve the brand strategy within your business. So, yeah, you can find me quite easily, I'm afraid.

Kelly Molson: We will put all of Catherine's details in the show notes as well, so you just can refer back to there and you'll be able to find her. One thing I would say about Catherine's website, you have to go and cheque it out, because there's a little line on Catherine's website that I absolutely love. It says, "You need help, we're ready to fix your shit.". And I was like, "Yeah, she absolutely is. This woman is going to fix your shit.". Okay. I always end the episodes with a book that our guests love. So, what have you brought to recommend to our listeners today?

Catherine Warrilow: So, it's ironic, actually, because my two book recommendations, the first one's called The Power of Doing Less, by an author called Fergus O'Connell. And this is about getting rid of all the distractions and noise. And it's a really simple, short book that you'll want to keep on your desk with post it notes in pages, because it's just a good reminder of things like, "Am I the best person to do this? Is there someone else in the business that is better at this and should be doing this? Do I need to do it now? Is it important right now? Or am I just doing it because it's the top of the list? Should I be doing it in the way I think I should be doing it? Should I be doing part of it and not all of it?".

Catherine Warrilow: And it's just a great sanity cheque deck for not being a busy fool. And I love that. And it just keeps you sharp in terms of prioritising because nothing's ever urgent. It's either important or it's not. And then the second one, again, a bit ironic, based on my kind of love of bringing lots and lots of different things together, is called The One Thing by Gary Keller. Actually, it's not ironic really, because really, that's about the vision. Like, what is the one thing we are trying to do here and does everything else we're doing align to that one purpose? That is just such a brilliant book and it really helps you get focused and clarity on what you're doing and why. So, yeah, those are my two recommendations.

Kelly Molson: Brilliant books, and they haven't come up previously as well. I love this. I always like it when a guest brings a book. I'm like, "Oh, that's gone on to my list as well.". Listeners, if you want to win a copy of Catherine's books, so as ever, go over to our twitter account and retweet this episode announcement with the words, I want Catherine's books and you'll be in with the chance of winning them. We also have a I'll put it in the show notes, but we have a brilliant blog on our website, on the Rubber Cheese website that lists all of these books that our guests come on and share. So it's become kind of a virtual library for people to go and refer to back to over the years. So thank you for adding to our library today.

Kelly Molson: Thank you for coming on and sharing. It's been a great chat. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I love talking about brand. It is a little bit of my background as well, so I completely understand and embrace everything that you've talked about today. Good luck at Arival. I hope that goes brilliantly and I look forward to all of those emails that we're about to receive about people taking things off their list, doing them.

Catherine Warrilow: And I'll see you in a toilet somewhere soon, hopefully.

Kelly Molson: Probably. Like I said, all the best people meet in toilets.

Catherine Warrilow: Thanks, Kelly.

Kelly Molson:  Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. 

Skip the queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! 

• Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industry
• Gain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion rates
• Explore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performance
• Learn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion rates
• Uncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversions

Take the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report
 

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.

Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast

Competition ends on 29th March 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-rose-yates/

https://mimagroup.com/

https://mimagroup.com/the-redesign-podcast

Download: VisitEngland Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses

Emily Yates is a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy living in Glasgow, Scotland. She loves to write, travel and is a real pink hair enthusiast. Emily has over a decade of experience as an accessibility consultant. Now the Head of Accessibility and Inclusive Design at Mima, Emily has worked with large transport, culture and heritage and global events organisations such as Heathrow Airport, COP28, the Science Museum Group and the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games to further their physical, social and digital accessibility measures.

She has also worked with the Council of Europe, international travel networks, and sat on equality boards advising various sporting, transport and travel organisations on their access and inclusion agendas.
Emily frequently presents and writes on disability issues, having fronted several documentaries for BBC Three and written for the Guardian, the Independent and Telegraph Travel. She also authored the Lonely Planet Guide to Accessible Rio de Janeiro. 

Transcription: 

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. 

In today’s podcast I speak with Emily Yates, Head of Accessibility and Inclusive Design, at Mima.

Mima worked alongside Visit Britain to co create the Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses, which aims to act as the resource for travel, tourism and hospitality organisations.

Emily and I discuss how it was created, why it is such a vital resource, and how it will evolve over time.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue. 

Kelly Molson: Hi, Emily. It's lovely to have you on the podcast today. Thanks for coming on and joining me and at very short notice, too. Appreciate it. 

Emily Yates: Not at all. Thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here. 

Kelly Molson: Well, we're going to have a good chat today. I'm looking forward to this. Right, I am going to start my icebreakers with this question for you. Have you ever been told off by a security guard for touching anything in a museum that you should not have been touching? 

Emily Yates: What a great question. I don't think I have, but something that immediately comes to mind. It was a very embarrassing moment that I had at the Museum of the Future in Dubai a few months ago, where I touched something that I shouldn't have done. And what it was there was an interactive kind of tabletop interactive going on, and there were groups of people from all over the world who were visiting this museum and there was this one couple who were trying to sort their wristband to make this interactive work and I just figured that they couldn't do it. So I put my wristband on to help them and I changed all the information to me and they were so annoyed to me, in a massive grump.

Emily Yates: Yeah, they just thought that I'd, like, nicked all of their information and their opportunity to do this activity and I was just trying to be helpful. 

Kelly Molson: That's the actual digital version of skipping the queue, basically. You wristbanded them out of the way. 

Emily Yates: I totally did. And the worst thing was that were on this group tour, so I had to stay with them for the rest of the tour.

Kelly Molson: They were with you. That’s a little bit awkward, those group tours, aren't they? Because you never know if you're going to like anyone or if ones are going to get on your nerves. So you just made it even more awkward than it needed to be. 

Emily Yates: There you go. 

Kelly Molson: Right. I love it. Okay, there's a three parter to this question, but it's a good one. And actually, thank you, whoever sent this one in, because I genuinely can't remember who sent me this one, but I really like. It's the first time that I'm using it, too. Okay. So they say the formula for visitor attractions is one, a great view, two, a great brew, and three, a great loo. So I want to know where you've encountered your best three of these. They can be different. So best view? 

Emily Yates: Best view, I would have to say. Can it be international? I would have to say Sugarloff Mountain, Rio de Janeiro. 

Kelly Molson: Wow. 

Emily Yates: Absolutely incredible view. Yeah. Like nothing else. Best brew. Oh, I'm trying to think of somewhere that has a great cafe, the V&A Museum in Dundee has a brilliant cafe that also has a great view, I have to say.  That would be my best brew.

Kelly Molson: We like that one. And then three best loo. 

Emily Yates: Best loo. It would have to be somewhere that has a changing places toilet. And of course, I need to say that being an access consultant, I'm trying to think where does. But I know for certain that a client I'm working with, the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, has one about to be kind of refurbished and all sorted. So I would say there. 

Kelly Molson: Excellent. Good choices as well. I love that you've got a Dundee one in there that was like two out of the three. I mean, there you go. There's a challenge for them. If they can up their game, they can get that third one from you as well.

Emily Yates: Yeah, absolutely. 

Kelly Molson: Nice. All right, what's your unpopular opinion? 

Emily Yates: Oh, my unpopular opinion? Both heels and handbags are overrated. As a wheelchair user, I have never, ever worn a pair of high heels in my life. I'm 32 years old, so I think that's quite an accomplishment. And also pushing all the time. Unless it's a cross body one, I can never hold a handbag, so, yeah, I'm a Converse and rook sack girl all the way. 

Kelly Molson: Right. Because, yeah, it would get in the way, wouldn't it? You need to kind of have it across and then, I guess, tucked in a little bit and then what's the point of having something fancy if you're going to just.

Emily Yates: Exactly. 

Kelly Molson: I mean, I'm kind of with you. I'm not a wheelchair user. However, my feet were not designed for high heels at all. I'm a flat scale all the way. 

Emily Yates: Maybe not. Unpopular opinion. Maybe there's just two camps, two very distinct camps, isn't there? 

Kelly Molson: I think probably two camps, but I don't think this is an unpopular opinion. Even in a camp of people that could actively wear those heels and might want to. I still think that there’s a.

Emily Yates: There's a secret loo. Wish we didn't have to. Maybe I'm in a lovely position, that I've got a lovely excuse. 

Kelly Molson: Never had to think about this. Never had to squeeze your tiny feet into those awkwardly pointy, evil contraptions. Right, let's see. Well, let's see what everyone on Twitter has got to share with us on that. Thank you, Emily. I want to find out a little bit about. Well, I want to find out a little bit about your role and your background and then tell us a little bit about Mima as well. 

Emily Yates: Yes, sure. So, I am a wheelchair user. I was born with cerebral palsy. I'm, as you can probably tell from my accident, from a little town called Skipton in North Yorkshire. And I'm also a twin, and my twin lives in Spain now, so she's got the sunshiny life. There's definitely a tan difference between the two of us now, for sure. And I've always worked in the world of accessibility and inclusive design, from leaving a university, really. And it's led me to amazing opportunities to be able to travel a lot, to be able to see, I guess, the importance of my capabilities as a disabled person, rather than just my limitations as a disabled person. And I've brought that into my professional work as well as my personal life as well. So I now work for an amazing human centred design agency called Mima. 

Emily Yates: It stands for Micro and Macro, so details and then zooming out into the big picture, looking at that end to end journey. And I head up the accessibility and inclusive design team there. So whether you're talking about airports or train stations or of course, museums and galleries or even global events and sporting events, we look at auditing, facilitating lived experience, user groups, standards, policies, disability awareness training, all of that good stuff, and bring our design expertise into wider projects with us as well. And it's brilliant. 

Kelly Molson: That's how we got chatting, isn't it? Because you've worked with a really broad. We work with a hugely broad range of clients, as you've just said. But I think David and I started talking somebody I can't remember, it was a good friend of mine, it was Jo Geraghty. She introduced us because we had visitor attractions and kind of heritage and culture organisations in common. So we had a brilliant chat about this and then we had a chat and then this project happened that you've all been involved in, which is amazing. So this is what we're going to talk about today. Now, you'll probably agree with this, but I think when it comes to accessibility and inclusivity, I think it's fair to say that kind of travel tourism organisations, they want to do the right thing. 

Kelly Molson: There's a real desire to be able to do the right thing, but they often don't really know what that is and where to go and find the support to be able to do those things, like where do they start looking to kind of understand the checklist of things that they need to go through to make sure that their venue is accessible. The Visit Britain Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses aims to change that. 

Kelly Molson: I saw Ross Calladine, who's the Accessibility and Inclusion Lead at VisitEngland, speak about this a while ago, before it had launched. He was speaking at a Visit Hearts networking event that I went to. It is an incredible resource for the sector. Like, absolutely incredible. I've had a really deep dive into it and it is so useful and so full of incredible information. But you and Mima have been involved in putting this together with them? This has been a joint project. 

Emily Yates: Yes, absolutely. So we were the toolkit authors and I feel very honoured to have worked with Ross and Hannah at VisitEngland for the last year know. They're just a wonderful client and we've got on really well. And Ross, as you will probably know from hearing him speak, absolutely has his heart in the right place when it comes to accessibility and inclusive design. But I think really importantly as well, has his finger on the pulse of the business benefit of this, which of course is really important. And you very rightly said there that a lot of especially small to medium sized businesses want to do the right thing, but often don't know where to start. And quite a lot of the time that's to do with budget, it's to do with time, it's to do with resourcing constraints, all of that stuff. 

Emily Yates: And what we really wanted this toolkit to do was to provide some holistic tips and advice for those businesses that actually says, “We understand the limitations that exist.” We understand that it's not possible to just click your fingers and magic up a changing places, for example, that were talking about earlier. But it is possible to think about your staff training, your recruitment, your policies and your processes. Things like making sure that your access routes are clear of seating and clutter. Simple things that make a huge difference. But of course, I said seating clear of access routes, but of course there needs to be seating somewhere as well. That's really important. But these quick wins that you can make, that will make a huge difference to people. It's not always about just installing a really expensive piece of equipment. 

Emily Yates: It's understanding those holistic changes that you can make that will make a huge difference. And the toolkit covers so many different sections. It provides some information about the purple pound. So the spending power of disabled people in their households, which is worth, I think, 274,000,000,000 pounds per year to UK businesses alone. So that's what you're missing out on if you're not physically or digitally accessible. And then the toolkit also covers the different impairments and medical conditions that you might need to know about how to best provide that inclusive welcome that can often not cost anything at all. It's just about changing your mindset. 

Emily Yates: And then we talk about the importance of inclusive marketing, changes in the built environment, employing more inclusively, and then the next steps to kind of continue the all encompassing journey that can never really be finished, but will hopefully provide people with stand them in good stead for a future that's a bit more accessible. 

Kelly Molson: I guess that goes for the toolkit as well. This is going to be something that is never finished too, because it's always going to change and evolve depending on what the needs and requirements are. How was it created in the first place? What was the process that you had to go through? Because this is, know what you've just described. I mean, the resource is phenomenal, it's vast, the things that you can understand and go through with this documentation. So that in itself will have been a mammoth task to have pulled together. How did you work with VisitBritain to do that? 

Emily Yates: So the first thing that was quite important was thinking about what each of the resources were going to look like. So what I've just gone through there is the more holistic toolkit, the main piece, if you like. But in addition to that, we've also got documents that have 20 top tips for businesses. We've got action checklists where people can almost say, “Right, I'm going to make sure I've provided something in particular for an assistance dog, for example”, and put a timeline of when they're going to do that, give ownership to a certain member of staff, of appeasing that checklist, and then carry on that way. So there's also some action checklists and there's also some technical guidance as an appendix as well. 

Emily Yates: So the first thing was really thinking about what information do we want to provide and how are we going to segregate that information, so it isn't awfully overwhelming and is actually actionable. And then the second thing was making sure, and probably the most important thing was making sure that we'd co-produced this information and consulted with the correct people. So we've consulted with over 30 disability charities and disabled people's organisations, also trade associations as well as independent reviewers. So everybody from the Business Disability Forum who gave us some great advice in terms of inclusive employment, to self catering trade associations, to museum trade associations, theme parks and things like that, there's so many people that got involved with this and gave us some advice. 

Emily Yates: And also we wanted to make sure that the information wasn't just actionable, but it was really relevant as well. So we've also created lots of different case studies within the toolkit. So whether that's more independent small farms who've done something amazing in terms of their volunteering and how that can be more inclusive to a local pier, for example, that's made something that, let's face it, in the built environment, isn't all that accessible sometimes. They've made changes to help that out. 

Emily Yates: We've added those case studies. So as you're reading through the information and learning lots, you're hopefully able to also read something that's quite relevant, that almost sparks that interest and that aspiration and gives you an opportunity to think, “Okay, I can do that. This might be who I might get in touch with and this might be the action I take.”

Kelly Molson: Yeah, I love that. The case studies make it so relatable to different scales of organisation. And I think what I found was it was quite inspiring, actually, that, okay, it's a pier. There's always going to be some challenges with accessibility. However, we have gone to these efforts to do these things. So you might have a checklist of 30 things you might be able to cover off, 20 of them, ten of them you're never going to be able to do. But to be able to read and go, “There's still so much that I can do. Even though I don't have something that's all 30, I can still do these things and make it significantly better for a much wider range of people that will be able to come and use these facilities now.”

Emily Yates: Absolutely, 100%. And we wanted to make sure that people really got that feeling and they were encouraged by the information rather than overwhelmed by it. And I think one thing that's also really important is that, let's be honest, when it comes to accessibility, we all think about wheelchair users and we all think about step free access, which is great for me as a wheelchair user. But actually it's not always about providing step free access or installing that really expensive lift. How can you think about the colour palettes that you're using to make sure that there's enough tonal contrast for somebody who's visually impaired, but it also provides an appropriate sensory environment for somebody who's neurodivergent? These are things that are so often forgotten or put down the priority list. 

Emily Yates: And these are the things that we wanted to say, "Okay, you can do these in a way that doesn't break the bank, that doesn't take all the time, but makes all the difference to a certain group of people."

Kelly Molson: Do you think that they are harder to associate with because you can't see them? I mean, with the wheelchair it's a very obvious. You can see that person has a disability, you can see that they will need something very specific from you to be able to use your platform. But with some of these other things, you just can't see that trigger. So you don't think to think about it? 

Emily Yates: Absolutely. Yeah. I think one of the really pivotal points that we have in the inclusive design industry now is thinking about things that are less visible. So somebody who has dementia, for example, that might find really dark flooring looking like a black hole and might really struggle to go into that museum environment that's particularly dark. Thinking about that is just as important as how wide your doorways are. But as you've very rightly said, are so often not thought about or not correctly understood is probably the more correct way of saying it. 

Kelly Molson: You mentioned earlier about some monetary value for organisations to do this, but why is this such a vital resource from someone like you who has lived experience of this as well? Why is this so vital? 

Emily Yates: I think it's really vital because it's specific. First of all, so we've created something specific to people within that tourism travel attractions industry. In fact, we've focused specifically on accommodations, attractions, food and beverage and events. There are four main areas that we focused on. So what I really like about it is you read through as somebody who works in one of those businesses and everything is relevant to what you do, and I think that's really important. So often you look at accessibility resources and they've tried to cater to a huge audience and actually made a bit less relevance by doing so. I think that makes it really vital and a really innovative resource actually. By doing so, I think another thing is it allows you to focus on that end to end journey in its entirety. 

Emily Yates: So if you feel like you're doing really well in the accessibility that you offer your customers, for example. But you want to focus now more internally on, "Okay, what's my culture look like? How inclusive can I be as an employer? What about my marketing? What about my website? I focused on the built environment, but what about what the information I'm putting out there?" All of that information is in there as well. So regardless of where you are on that accessibility journey, I'd like to think that there's something for you within that toolkit. 

Kelly Molson: There absolutely is as well. You definitely need to go and download it. So we're going to put a link directly to it in the show notes for the show as well. So don't worry about rent searching for it, just go to the show notes. You will find it very easily. How is it going to evolve? Because we said this is not a static thing. It's out there now. Needs requirements are going to change, policies are going to change. What does the roadmap for it look like for the next kind of couple of years, five years down the line? 

Emily Yates: So I'm doing quite a lot of work with Ross at the moment to think about how we're making sure that people are aware of it and they know exactly how to use it as a tool. Because, of course, with anything like this, it's all well and good writing it, but really it's only as successful as its uses. So we've gone already to the AA and the VisitEngland assessors who go into different hotels and restaurants and review these, and we've made sure that they're aware of the toolkit. We've given them a bit of a presentation and a few exercises on how to use it. We're going to do similar with visitor attractions as well. And then Mima. We've got a bit of a contract with VisitEngland for the next couple of years that focuses on providing updates to this toolkit. 

Emily Yates: So we will be going out and training different people, but also we really want people to write into us and give us feedback and tell us where they think certain improvements could be made or if they've got a great case study of something that's only happened a couple of months ago. All these things, we want to hear about them so we can make sure that it continues to be an updated, best in class resource. 

Kelly Molson: Oh, that's good. I love that little shout out. Right, if anyone's listening and something good has happened, you've got something to shout about. You know how to contact Emily. We'll put a link to Emily's LinkedIn profile on here so you can give her a shout out and about. And what do you hope that it's going to achieve? What do you hope that this will bring? 

Emily Yates: Oh, that's a great question. I think the number one thing I hope, and this is probably quite a personal, selfish plea, is that I hope it encourages businesses to be honest about where they are in their journey. By that, I mean it is no good somebody calling you up and saying, "Hi there. Do you provide step free access and accessible parking?" And you going, "Oh, yes, we do. That's absolutely fine." And somebody like me getting there, and there's five steps up to the front door. There's nothing heroic about not being honest about where you are in your journey. It just complicates matters. 

Emily Yates: So what I would really love businesses to have the confidence to do is have a statement on their website that details exactly where they are on that journey, is really honest about the things that they've done well, the things that they're still improving, and therefore gives disabled people, older people with access requirements in general, that autonomy to be able to make the decision for themselves, whether this place is suitable for their needs or not. And I think if we can master that and if businesses can do that would be an incredible thing for the industry in general. 

Emily Yates: And it puts, as I say, that autonomy back on disabled people, back on the audience to say, "Right, this is great, I'm going to go here, I'm going to tell all my friends about it, and this could be a great case study for this business to learn a little bit more from, et cetera."

Kelly Molson: That is such an important message, isn't it? The message of honesty? Because that seems like a really simple thing to do. Okay, look, none of us are perfect. None of us are perfect. We all have a long way to go to make things as accessible as they need to be. However, this is where we're at. We've got this. We're back to our checklist again, aren't we? This is our 30 step checklist. We've got ten of those knocked off already. And these are the things that we're doing. This is what we are hoping to achieve, and this is the time frame we're looking to achieve them. And I've just been through this process with the fire safety regulations that were brought out last October. So making sure that I've got. Yep, okay. I've got 90% of those. There's 10% that need to be looked at. 

Kelly Molson: This is what we're going to do. And this is when we're going to do it by. It's exactly the same message, isn't it? 

Emily Yates: Exactly. 

Kelly Molson: Do you not see that from many kind of tourism and attraction organisations then? Do you find that is quite a challenge for them, to be quite honest about where they're at? 

Emily Yates: I still see being very honest with you, I still see quite a lot of fear surrounding disability and accessibility and this real desire to do the right thing. All of this is coming from a good place. There's a real desire to do the right thing, but as you said right at the very beginning, no idea of where to start. And I think sometimes it's very easy to over promise and under deliver, and that is the worst thing that you can do. Equally what I want to say to caveat all of this is if you offer something that's amazing, please shout about it, please tell people about it.  Because equally outside of the coin, I see actually museums in particular that for all of these amazing things, be as a sell tours, touch tours, tack tile objects, nobody has clue that they even exist. So I’m asking really for both things.

Kelly Molson: Balance. 

Emily Yates: Absolutely. Be honest about what you don't have. Celebrate what you do. 

Kelly Molson: Another great message, Emily. Okay, what are your top tips? Like I said, this is lived experience for you. What are your top tips around disability awareness? What would you shout out and say these are the things that you need to be looking at. 

Emily Yates: Okay, first thing, it's quite a philosophical point, but it's quite an important one. I think we need to change our mindset when it comes to accessibility and inclusive designs, especially in the disability space, because each and every one of us at some point in our lives will have experience of disability. Hopefully it's just through old age, but it may be through injury, through something else. And it's important to think about not disabled people and nondisabled people, but disabled people and not yet disabled people. And I think if we changed our mindset around that, suddenly there'd be a lot more movement when it comes to accessibility and inclusive design. So I think that would be my one top tip, my one plea, if you like. I think the second one is to think bigger than wheelchair users. Start thinking about how to design for neurodiversity. 

Emily Yates: Start reading documents such as the new PaAS 6463, design for the mind. If you are, for example, a contractor or a designer working in these kind of spaces, that's really important too. And I think wherever possible, bring lived experience into your work. If you are working in a gallery and you've got this amazing new exhibition coming out in the next couple of years. Think about how you can represent deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people within that exhibition. Can you have a space where you have an access hub that has BSL, tactile maps, portable stools that people can take round with them? And even more so, can you have part of the exhibition where some of your interpretations, some of your objects are to do with deaf, disabled, neurodivergent creators? That would be incredible too. 

Kelly Molson: So making sure it's woven through every part of that experience and not seen as an add on at the end. 

Emily Yates: Absolutely that. Absolutely that. 

Kelly Molson: Great tips. Thank you. Let's talk quickly about the podcast. So at Mima there's a podcast called Re:Design. Actually episode five does feature Ross. Again, he's the Accessibility and Inclusion Lead at VisitEngland, and he comes on and talks about how do you create a seamless customer experience. So again, this comes back to a lot of the points that we've covered today. I mean, great topic. Congratulations on starting the podcast. In the first place there, what are the hopes and aspirations for Mima? What are they looking to achieve by putting this podcast out there? 

Emily Yates: I think what we're hoping for is that multidisciplinary design, human centred design, inclusive design, really gets its place on the map a little bit more because it's something that, especially inclusive design, it's spoken about a know you will read articles a lot, I'm sure, Kelly, that mention it and the importance of it. But there's a difference between mentioning it and knowing what to do with it and actually speaking to people that have done it. And I think that's what we're trying to do, really pull out some pearls of wisdom from different individuals that have gone through different scenarios, whether they've travelled a lot for their work, whether they've focused on inclusive internal culture change as one of our episodes focuses on, whether they focus specifically on the importance of inclusion within aviation, whether they're looking at a seamless visitor experience. 

Emily Yates: We want to hear from people that have experienced that and been through it, and are able to then give a bit of advice to people that want to learn more about a subject that everybody should at least have a bit of a basic understanding of. 

Kelly Molson: Amazing. Right. We will link to that podcast as well. So that is definitely one for you to go over and subscribe to. Emily, it's been so good to have you on today, and I know that we've had to keep this one short because everyone's got appointments that they need to get to. But this is such a key topic. 

Kelly Molson: My aspiration is that everybody that listens to this episode goes and downloads that accessibility toolkit and shares it with their network as well. Please. So that's a personal plea from me to you listeners. Go and download it and please give it a little share because it needs to get out to as many different people as possible, as many organisations that it is relevant for as possible. What about a book that you love, that you'd like to share with us today? Emily, I'm intrigued if you've gone on topic or not. 

Emily Yates: I think I have gone on topic about this. Sorry if I've been a bit one dimensional. 

Kelly Molson: Not at all. 

Emily Yates: My book of choice is one that I read recently and one, funnily enough, that I'm running a bit of an internal workshop on at Mima in a couple of weeks. We've started a bit of an inclusive book club and it's called the View From Down Here by Lucy Webster. Lucy is an amazing journalist. She's disabled. She used to work for the BBC before going freelance, and she writes this incredible memoir about what it's like growing up disabled, but really importantly as a disabled woman. 

Emily Yates: And she talks about so many different scenarios from trying to get into a nightclub on a Saturday night when the difficulty of doing so in terms of the gaze that you so often experience as a woman, but as a disabled woman as well, her thoughts on motherhood and how complex and nuanced that is as somebody who's disabled, friendships, professional lives, all of these different things. And I think it's just such an incredibly powerful, confident, but also very vulnerable account of the realism of what it's really like. And the thing that it made me realise, or the thing that it made me remember, should I say, is that we're not going to solve accessibility by just making sure that all of our train stations are step free. It's much more holistic and nuanced and complex than that. 

Emily Yates: And it's about human nature and human design and all those holistic things that we so rarely think about. And I would just urge everybody to read it. It's angry, it's sad, it's beautiful. It's just a wonderful book. 

Kelly Molson: Wow. What a book. I feel quite moved by just hearing your account of it, let alone reading it. Right, that's going top of the list. Listeners, if you would like to win a copy of that book, which, I mean, let's face it sounds like everybody needs to read that anyway, so do throw your hat into the ring for this one. If you head over to our Twitter account and you retweet this episode announcement with the words I want Emily's book, then you will be in a chance to win it. But aside from that, go and buy it and absolutely head over to the show notes download the VisitBritain Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses. You will not be disappointed, I can assure you of that. Emily, it's been brilliant to have you on today. Thank you. I'm sorry it's short and sweet. 

Kelly Molson: I'm sorry that you've got to dash off to an appointment and you're leaving me, but it's been so amazing to chat. I would love for you to come on and talk about some of the case studies, maybe with some of your clients at some point, because I think that would be a really interesting discussion to talk through some of the processes and the steps that they went through and just showcase that this is for everybody. This really is for everybody. 

Emily Yates: I would absolutely love that. Thank you. We're working with the National Railway Museum at the moment on their Vision 2025 master plan. So maybe when that's starting to wrap up next year, maybe that would be an amazing opportunity to talk about that. 

Kelly Molson: I think that would be brilliant. I'd love that. All right. Thank you ever so much. 

Emily Yates: Emily thank you, Kelly, thank you so much. 

Kelly Molson:  Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. 

Skip the queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! 

• Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industry
• Gain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion rates
• Explore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performance
• Learn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion rates
• Uncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversions

Take the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report
 

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.

Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast

Competition ends on 29th March 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

https://www.kew.org/ 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-willison-22347a10/

Julia Willison is Head of Learning and Participation for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.  She is passionate about engaging people – young and old and from all walks of life - in learning about the importance of plants and fungi and the need for sustainable development.  Julia is responsible for schools, communities and access, families and early years, outreach, youth and volunteers at Kew Gardens.  She previously worked with botanic gardens internationally to advocate for and establish education programmes for the benefit of local communities and the environment.

Transcription: 

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. 

On today’s episode I speak with Julia Willison, Head of Learning and Participation at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

We discuss Kew’s inspiring manifesto - their 10 year strategy to end extinction crisis and protect nature. Julia shares with us the 5 key priorities, and we focus on Kew’s desire to improve inclusivity and what initiatives have been formed to support the organisation in doing this.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.

Kelly Molson: Julia, it's really lovely to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for joining me. 

Julia Willison: My pleasure, Kelly. Thank you for inviting me. 

Kelly Molson: So we're recording this right at the beginning of January. It's the 9 January that we're recording it. So icebreakers have got a new year's resolution theme because I thought we should talk about this. I want to know, do you set them? If so, what have you set yourself for this year? 

Julia Willison: I do tend to set them in my own mind. I don't often share them, but I do set them. And this year I've set the resolution. I want to start learning to play the piano and I've actually had my first lesson. I'm really pleased with that. 

Kelly Molson: I love this. So we just had a little chat about this off air, because that was one of the other icebreaker questions I was going to ask you is, what's the one thing that you've always wanted to learn? And then we had this conversation and you're doing it already, and I was like, "Oh, this is great." So you've had your first lesson and how did it go? 

Julia Willison: Well, I found myself apologising to the teacher profusely because of my lack of ability to play the piano, but it went really well and he was absolutely delightful, very supportive, and I learned quite a lot in the first lesson, so I'm looking forward to the second lesson now. I've got a lot start playing and practising every day, which I'm enjoying doing. 

Kelly Molson: That's the thing about learning something new is that you've got to make it a habit, haven't you? So you need to kind of. This is the thing that I did about the gym, is that I had to diarize it, so I had to make sure that it was like in red in my diary, immovable. At the same time, on those days, that I could go so that you could do it. Are you going to do that with your lessons and your training? 

Julia Willison: Well, the lessons obviously will have to be in my calendar, but I have almost crossed the threshold where I made a decision to play the piano. I've got a long term goal that in maybe ten years time, I'll be able to play in a group or something like this. So I'm really committed to wanting to learn. So we'll see. You have to revisit this space. Maybe in five years time. See if I'm still doing it.

Kelly Molson: Right. I'm popping you on the list for five years to make sure that I check in with you, that you've achieved your goals. Okay. What is the worst thing that you've ever eaten or drunk? 

Julia Willison: Well, eaten for me is mussels, because I'm allergic to them. 

Kelly Molson: Oh, wow. 

Julia Willison: I only learned that through, obviously, eating mussels and even just a small piece just made me incredibly sick. Drinking advocaat. How do you say it. Advocaat? 

Kelly Molson: Is that what goes into snowballs? 

Julia Willison: Yes. I can't think of anything worse actually.  

Kelly Molson: I love snowballs. I had one over Christmas. 

Julia Willison: You can have mine. 

Kelly Molson: I'll have your mussels. And your advocaat. What a mixture. And probably not at the same time either. 

Julia Willison: No. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah. My friends did a Christmas party and we had a snowball and it was, "This is so retro." I can remember my grandparents drinking these when I was a child. I remember if you ever come to my house for a Christmas party that you are not to have snowballs.

Julia Willison: I'll bring my own, Kelly. 

Kelly Molson: Okay. Right. What's your unpopular opinion, Julia? 

Julia Willison: What I do feel, I suppose, strongly about is that, and I arrived at this opinion after talking to my children, after I had done this. And it says, I don't think that people should post pictures of their children and friends on social media without their consent. 

Kelly Molson: Yes. Yeah. This is an interesting one, isn't? Oh, ok. And actually, at what point do you ask their consent? Because I post pictures of my daughter. She might not be comfortable with me, she might not be happy with me, her face being over my Twitter account or my Instagram account. So, yeah, I guess at some point we'll have that conversation. If she says no, that's it. No more pictures go up.   

Julia Willison: Oh, sad. And the thing is, you can't take down the ones that you've already put up, can you? 

Kelly Molson: No. Well, I guess you can go back and delete them from an Instagram account or delete them from your Twitter account. So you could go back and delete, but then they're out there, so that doesn't mean that they're not elsewhere in the ether. 

Julia Willison: Interesting. 

Kelly Molson: It is interesting, yeah. But I think you're right, I think. Absolutely, for other people. I've definitely had this conversation with a friend of mine about. We've been out together with our children and we've both taken pictures and she's actually asked my permission if she can post the pictures on her social media, but her platforms are quite. Her Instagram is a private Instagram account, for example, so she's happy to post pictures of her daughter on that, but she's not happy for other people to post those pictures if they're not private account. It is a huge debate, isn't it? Well, it'll be interesting to see what people think. How do you feel about this? 

Kelly Molson: People on Twitter, which is where we do a lot of our talking about this podcast, how do you feel about posting pictures of your children or your friends and your family on social media without having their consent? Let us know. Could start a little Twitter debate there. 

Julia Willison: I'd be interested to read it. 

Kelly Molson: Right, Julia, tell us about your role at Kew and what a typical day looks like for you. 

Julia Willison: So, I'm Head of Learning and Participation at Kew Gardens and what I'm responsible for is providing leadership in this particular area at Kew and wanting to position Kew as a centre for excellence in plant and fungal science education. And under my remit comes formal learning. That's all the schools programmes and teacher training. So we've got about 90,000 school pupils that come on site each year and we engage with about 200,000 online. We have a youth programme which is growing. There's a lot of demand there for young people to get involved environmentally as well. Families, in early years, we run programmes for families, but up to seven year olds, specific sessions.  

Julia Willison: We run community engagement, and that includes community horticulture. I'm responsible for the access programmes across the site as well. That's for people who may have sensory needs or different access needs. We have a national outreach learning programme and then slight anomaly is that the volunteers also sit with me. So we've got 800 volunteers across Kew Gardens and Wakehurst, and the central function of that sits with my remit. So looking at some of the strategies around what we're doing with volunteers and diversifying our volunteers, et cetera, that's my remit.

Kelly Molson: They’re quite a bit. 

Julia Willison: Yeah. No, it's fantastic. I'm very lucky. And there's no one typical day, but you can imagine. Well, I get going with a cup of coffee every day and sometimes I'll spend one day a week working from home. 

Julia Willison: But the rest of the time, I like to be on site. Kew has got to be one of the most beautiful locations to work. Kew has got to be one of the most beautiful locations to work. I am so lucky. I know that.

Julia Willison: And I've probably got the best office in Kew. If you come and visit Kelly, you'll see that the office I have looks out over the Palm House of Kew, which is the most iconic glass house. It was a glass house that was built between 1844 and 48 and it houses the tropical plants, so it is just the most amazing place to work. I attend a lot of meetings, as you can imagine, with my teams and staff across the organisation about operations sometimes, and strategy and new and exciting projects that we're looking at what we can do. I sit on cross organisational steering groups and committees that focus on public programmes. 

Julia Willison: We have a strong focus on equality, diversity and inclusion across the organisation. And safeguarding. Well, I still am the designated safeguarding lead for Kew, so I'm involved in that still. And I also lead the steering group for Kew on the outreach strategy and the schools learning strategy. And then, as well, I often work on preparing project proposals, because funding is a major issue for our organisation, and so funding and reporting and then talking to potential donors. So that's my sort of typical day, really. 

Kelly Molson: I feel quite privileged that I get to speak to so many incredible women that have these hugely varied roles and do so much in a day. Very capable people that I get to speak to. It's quite humbling. We're going to talk quite a lot today about a manifesto that Kew implemented. I'm just going to take you back. So I think it was in March 2021, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew launched a ten year strategy to end extinction crisis and protect nature. And it's a really bold and incredibly inspiring manifesto. I'm just going to read out the ethos of it. 

Kelly Molson: So, the mission of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is to understand and protect plants and fungi for the well being of people and the future of all life on earth. Our aspiration is to end the extinction crisis and to help create a world where nature is protected, valued by all and managed sustainably. So this was back in 2021. How has the manifesto been implemented within the organisation? How did it get created in the first place, and how does that kind of get explained and put into practise? 

Julia Willison: Good question. We started in the pandemic, looking at the need to build a new strategy, because our older strategy was coming to the end, and over the years has been a building of staff in Kew, talking about wanting to see more urgency in the work that we do, or to describe it in a more urgent terms, what we're trying to do at Kew. And so the pandemic, while it was a terrible time, it was a time that Kew took to step back and look at the bigger picture and then come together around this urgency of climate change and biodiversity loss. And there was a lot of consultation, a lot of iterations of the strategy that went out to staff to feed into this. 

Julia Willison: It was a significant job, and there was a team, a small team of people that were working on it, taking the consultation back in centrally. And then what emerged through the consultation were five key priorities that we then agreed, or was agreed then for the next ten years. And that was agreed then by the executive board and signed off by the board of trustees. I'll mention the five priorities, and I can give a few bits of examples of some of the work we do around those. The first priority is deliver science based knowledge and solutions to protect biodiversity and use natural resources sustainably. Kew is primarily a scientific and horticultural organisation, and we struggle sometimes that many people see Kew Gardens as the gardens and don't see the science behind the gardens. 

Julia Willison: The gardens are essential and they contain precious plant collections. There is also science and research behind that. We've got over 400 scientists and about 150 horticulturalists. And so it's the bedrock accused contribution to ending biodiversity and maintaining sort of healthy ecosystems. So there are lots of examples that I could give. People probably don't know this. We have a resource centre in Madagascar, scientific resource centre, and scientists there are working with the rural Malagasy people on food security and particularly on conserving yams that are native to Madagascar. We work in over 120 countries, working with partners in Ethiopia to reduce biodiversity loss. The Ethiopian economy depends very much on coffee, and something like 25% of the population rely directly or indirectly on coffee for their livelihood. And so Kew is working with partners to maintain traditional forest based areas where coffee grows natively. 

Julia Willison: And that is proving vital for sustainability, for livelihoods and also for biodiversity. Close to home. We have scientists here at Kew working on the chemistry of nectar and pollen, because many bee species in the UK, there are around 240 different species of bees in the UK. So honey bees are just one species. There's lots of different bumblebees, lots of different native bee species, and they're under threat because of climate change from disease and parasites. So what scientists here are identifying plants that have compounds in the nectar and pollen that could help bees themselves manage their own diseases more sustainably. So that's an important area of research. Kew is also, as part of manifesto, we're digitising our collections. We’ve got a wrap quarter a way through digitising 8.25 million preserved plants and fungal specimens. So it's an enormous task. And 200,000 botanical illustrations. What else we're doing? 

Julia Willison: We have a sister site. I don't know if you know this, Kelly. We have a sister site at Wakehurst. It's our wild botanic garden in West Sussex and it's a site of excellence, really, in conservation and science. It's home to the Millennium Seed Bank, where we've banked something like 2.4 billion seeds from more than 40,000 plant species. And so there's the project being run at Wakehurst called Nature Unlocked, and that's using the landscape of Wakehurst, which is about two kilometres squared, as a living laboratory. And the idea is to collect high quality scientific evidence of the value of biodiversity in the soil as well as in the landscape. This evidence to inform land management policies and practises, so that can then key develop. Decision makers can then use this evidence to make informed decisions about what they do around the land. 

Kelly Molson: That's just one point. 

Julia Willison: I'll be quicker with the other. 

Kelly Molson: Please feel free to share. Don't hold back. But it's quite mind blowing, isn't it, how much that you do that people just aren't aware of? 

Julia Willison: Yeah, this is just a very small snapshot. I mean, I could have taken any one of hundreds of examples of what scientists here at Kew are doing. The second priority is inspire people to protect the natural world, and that really is threaded through all our public engagement work. And that's going from our festivals, our exhibitions, all the interpretive panels we do, the website, our social media, all the learning and participation programmes we do. So we use this as a lens to look through and to make sure that the work we're doing is all checking ourselves, that we are inspiring people to protect the natural world. I mentioned earlier we have a national outreach programme and this programme is inspiring communities to take action for biodiversity, specifically through transforming their local spaces with UK native plants. 

Julia Willison: So community groups we know will grow other plants, but we also encourage them to focus also on UK native plants as well. Another plan in the manifesto is to create a carbon garden, and that's to communicate stories around how carbon is captured in plants and soil, and how we use this to mitigate climate change, for example, through planting trees and also looking at different carbon related services, such as biofuels. And we have the plans for the garden. It's in planning permission. It's gone for planning permission at the moment and we're waiting to hear. And as soon as we hear, it'll probably take us about a year or so to build the garden, but we'll use it then very much for learning and communicating about the importance of carbon, so people know. So that's priority two. 

Julia Willison: Priority three is train the next generation of experts, new scientists and horticultural is critical to the future of life on earth. And so Kew has accelerated its work in this. And we offer three month PhD placements for anybody across the UK who's doing a PhD. Part of their PhD often includes a placement. So we offer those placements at Kew and we're very keen to attract PhD students. We also are working in partnership with a couple of universities, Queen Mary, University of London and the Royal Holloway, University of London, to run in partnership master's courses. MSc courses. And we've got three courses that we run. MSc in biodiversity and conservation, an MSc in plant and fungal taxonomy, diversity and conservation. And then the newest MSc is on global health, food security, sustainability and biodiversity. 

Kelly Molson: I can imagine that the world that we're in now, there's actually a lot more demand for those courses as well. I imagine that they're oversubscribed multiple times. 

Julia Willison: Yes. And they're open to international students, so we get quite a lot of international students coming. So that's really good. We had 60 students starting this year on the courses, but on a master's course, taking 20 students, it's quite an intense course. And I know that Kew has, like you say, there's a demand to study further in this area, and so there are still developing the possibility of new courses with universities. That's good. 

Julia Willison: But one of the things for my remit that I'm very keen about is that there's a pathway and that Kew considers its pathway from very early years, attracting kids to become very interested in nature, and then going through and providing school programmes that then encourage children to then take science as a possible career choice, or be informed about science, which is one of the reasons why we launched the Endeavour Online programme to make our resources that focus on educational resources that focus on Kew, science and horticulture, but make them available to schools across the UK. 

Kelly Molson: That's phenomenal. And that's a lot of the things that we're going to talk about today. What point are we at? We've done point 3. 

Julia Willison: Okay. So extend our reach. 

Kelly Molson: Extend reach. That's right. Point 4. 

Julia Willison: That's about cubing a go to place for anyone and everyone to explore the importance of plants and fungi and how they add value to our lives. And we're working hard to expand our digital resources to make sure that we can engage with as many people as possible. But we also recognise that there are large numbers of the population that would love to visit Kew or either have never heard about us or don't see Kew as a place for them. So we've set down a target to increase tenfold the number of visitors from underrepresented communities to the gardens. And one of the ways that we've done this straight away is to introduce a one pound ticket for people who were on universal credit or pension credit, and that's to remove the economic barrier to visiting. 

Julia Willison: To date, around 50 - 60,000 people have taken advantage of the initiative in 18 months. However, we have a very ambitious director and he feels that we should be able to dial this up to about 100,000 per year. So that requires us then to go out specifically targeting people who are on universal credit and pension credit and say, "Look, we want you to come to Kew." But on top of this, we also run a range of programmes specifically for people who face barriers to Kew. And that's not only economic, that could be social barriers, psychological or physical barriers. That's priority four, which I think we're going to go into more about some of that.  

Kelly Molson: Three and four we're going to focus on. 

Julia Willison: Yeah. So the fifth one is influencing national and international opinion and policy. So in order to do that, we need to encourage debate and shape decision making. And Kew works with a lot of policymakers. Kew is a large institution.  

Julia Willison: We've got about 1400 staff that work at Kew and 800 volunteers. We have lots of different teams and departments. We do have a department that focuses specifically on working with government and policy makers. And the idea is to support them, to provide the evidence that Kew brings to the table so that people can make well informed decisions. One example is about Tropical Important Plant Areas, those TIPA for short. Kew is working with six countries across the globe and the idea is to work with partners in the countries to help them identify important plant areas so that these areas will then be conserved. That involves an enormous amount of negotiation, discussion, and to date there's three TIPAs that have already been established, so that's really important for conservation of those areas. 

Julia Willison: And, of course, we work closely with Defra, that's our sponsoring department in the UK government, and they've recently asked you to take the leading role as a strategic science lead for a new institution, I suppose, that has been set up. It’s not a physical institution. It’s a consortium. It’s been called the Global Centre on Biodiversity for Climate. So what Kew will do is write the research strategy that will define the key themes for funding calls that will be given money, and then the projects that will then provide the evidence to feed into policies that will then help make decisions about the impact of biodiversity on climate and people's livelihoods. So that's a really significant thing that Kew's done. 

Kelly Molson: This is such an eye opener for myself, having been a visitor to Kew, appreciated the beautiful gardens and the plants that you have there, but actually really having no idea about all of the things that happen in the background. So this is just like you say, the attraction is just one very small part of this huge organisation. There's so much that you do. I hope this is eye opening for people that are listening to this as well, because there's a lot going on here. The points from the manifesto, the key priorities for manifesto are, I mean, each one of them you could take and break down into a different podcast episode. What we're going to talk about is points three and four. We're going to focus on those today. 

Kelly Molson: So point 3 was to train the next generation of experts, and point 4 was to extend our reach. We're going to focus on them because there's a huge desire at  Kew to improve inclusivity, and so we're going to kind of break down what is happening within those points to actually help support do that. So you said that one of the key changes that Kew has committed to achieving by 2030, I think this is to increase tenfold the number of visitors from the presently underrepresented communities to the gardens. And obviously the gardens facilitate the start of that learning journey. Right. That it's exposing people to, I guess, a world that they might not be familiar with, plants that they definitely won't be familiar with, or even just certain job roles that they might not have thought was for them. 

Kelly Molson: How do you begin to change the kind of views and attitudes from the general public who don't think that Kew is for them, a place for them in the first place? 

Julia Willison: Well, our aim is to break down that perception. So I think one of the things that has happened to be able to start on this journey is an organisational commitment to include everyone and bringing everybody on board, that we are really intent, we really want to do this. So that's involved training our visitor facing staff and our volunteers so that they provide a warm welcome to anyone, regardless of their background. We've trained our staff in accessibility and safeguarding and then diversity and inclusion. And this year we will roll out more diversity and inclusion training to staff across all areas of the organisation. So when people come here, it's making sure that they feel safe and they feel represented in the gardens. But just providing a welcome is not going to be sufficient. 

Julia Willison: We do need to reach out and connect with different communities to tell them that Kew exists. We have people visiting Kew from our local boroughs that have never heard of us, which is extraordinary, really. So we really try and encourage them to visit. So we have teams of staff who, in different teams, will visit the different groups and they'll run workshops with the groups at their venues so that groups can find out about Kew before they visit. They realise that the people that come to visit them are really quite friendly and really excited about them coming to Kew. And also, people have said that Kew is a very large place when you come here. I mean, people come and visit Kew, they come for a day, but you never see everything at Kew for a day. 

Julia Willison: So people feel that it can be a bit intimidating, especially if they've not visited before. So when we bring people on site for the first time, when we've made connections with community groups or other teams, what we do is we'll offer a programme or a tour, so that when they come to visit us, that they make them feel comfortable about returning on their own. 

Kelly Molson: Sure. So it gives them that level of familiarity by doing the tour that they can then come back and explore. They can do that again, or they could go and explore the different areas that were particularly appealing to them. 

Julia Willison: Yeah. So we have all sorts of different programmes and we have a community access scheme as well as the one pound ticket. We have community access scheme. So any groups that provide services to people who face barriers from visiting Kew, which I said earlier, sensory, psychological, social barriers, they can join our community access scheme and they can get 60 tickets for 36 pounds. So that works out about 60 pence a ticket and they can always top up as they go along. And then as part of the scheme, they all receive a newsletter and that informs them about the community activities that we run. So that's another way of connecting groups to feel that Kew is a place for them to come and visit. 

Kelly Molson: That's lovely. I was going to ask about the community access scheme and what initiatives have been formed to kind of support the organisations to do that, because I guess it's one thing the welcome is great, right. But that means that people have to come and get the welcome. So there's so much outreach that has to be done to bring the people to you in the first place. So the community access scheme, what kind of organisations would that be relevant for? 

Julia Willison: All sorts. We have about 350 members on our access scheme. When I first started at Kew, most of those groups, there were fewer number of groups, but most of those groups were, I would say, for third age people, different groups, but mainly servicing older people. Now we've got all sorts of groups, so we've got LGBT+ groups, we have deaf groups, asian women's groups. We have a whole different range of groups that see Kew as a place that they could join and come and bring with their members. And one of the things that we do run is continuing professional development training for group leaders, specifically for those leaders, so that they then feel confident to come to Kew with their groups on their own and will provide resources for them to use in the landscapes and enjoy with Kew. 

Kelly Molson: And that adds to that, I guess, like what you were saying earlier about, you want this to be the start of the journey. You need it to be the start of the journey for those groups as well, don't. You don't want to encourage them to come along once and that's like a box that they've ticked. They've done Kew. You want them to come back and keep reengaging with the environment there. So that's brilliant to then be able to train those leaders to take that bit on themselves. 

Julia Willison: I was just to say, a few years ago, we started a community open week, which is a free week for community groups, any community groups across London. In fact, some groups come from further afield, but we put on a range of workshops and tours during that week for groups to come and just experience Kew and the idea is, if we can, is to try and encourage them to sign up to the access scheme and continue, as you say, the journey and come back and find out more. 

Kelly Molson: I guess that's the community access scheme. And obviously you've got kind of partnerships going ongoing with kind of local community. What about national community groups? So how do you kind of expand your remit into the wider audience of people that aren't located near Kew?

Julia Willison: Yeah. That's a good question because that costs money, doesn't it, for them to come to Kew. So we have had people come from Birmingham and people can join. We've initially contained it within the M25, so a lot of people coming within the M25, but we've just removed that barrier now, I mean, it didn't need to be there. And we have seen some people, some groups coming from outside. We don't have bursaries to be able to provide, sadly, to groups to come to Kew. They are, of course, very welcome. I think one of the things is that we've just brought somebody on board this year who is doing some more community outreach to going out and trying to connect with new groups to visit Kew and part of that will involve producing some marketing materials that can then travel further than just our confines. 

Julia Willison: So we'll see. We may then receive other groups in from much further afield, which would be great. And also Wakehurst, our sister site, has set up a community access scheme as well, so they will hopefully then encourage those organisations and groups in further south of London.

Kelly Molson: Amazing. How is Kew helping to remove barriers and improve access to nature for children and families, both kind of on site and off site? 

Julia Willison: We've been running an early years programme since about 2018. Before that, we had a family programme and we've made connections with children's centres in our local boroughs. Every borough, every county in the UK will have a children's centre or multiple children's centres. And the aim of the children's centres is to try and help those families that may slip through the net to be able to ensure that they don't. And so what we have done is we have a recent project which is to work with children's centres in London and we're working in five boroughs with different about ten children's centres. And the team is going to the children's centres running nature based play sessions in the children's centres. And then over the summer, we invite the families to come to Kew. We give them funding to do that. 

Julia Willison: We refund their travel, we run activities on site and then later in the year, we've been running training sessions specifically for the children's centre leaders so that they can then take this work forward when Kew has to step back from going to the children's centres. And we've got this project running for about three or four years now, which is great. But on top of this, we also run on site sessions for early years and half of them are paid for sessions for those families that can afford to pay for earlier sessions. And then the money that we use from that, we then subsidise those families from children's centres, community groups that can't afford to pay. So we try and get a balance, because we don't ourselves have an endless pot of money and we're constantly looking for funding to try and support this work. 

Kelly Molson: It's really hard, isn't it, to get that balance right. There is a commercial aspect here, right. You have to make money to be able to do all of these incredible projects and initiatives that you have, but you also need the funding to be able to support the incredible initiatives that you're running, to be able to allow everybody access to it. So it's like a vicious circle. What about schools outreach? How are you kind of broadening your reach to engage all schools? And how does that become more inclusive against the manifesto? 

Julia Willison: So we've been very intent on saying that we want to extend our reach to embrace all schools, sort of all schools in different areas, but also, at the moment, we have about 60, 70. Well, it's now changed to 60% of pupils that come on site are from primary schools. We want to increase the number of secondary school pupils that we engage with. Children make career decisions around their GCSEs and their A levels, and many children from certain schools from more deprived areas will go for general science rather than triple science. And all the research shows that if children choose triple science, they're more likely to do science at a levels. So looking to try and influence those children in their career choices is important for us. And that means that we want to increase the number of secondary schools that we engage with. 

Julia Willison: And we also have an intent on increasing the number of schools that have higher pupil premium, because in London, pupil premium is, you probably know, is that those children who are generally on those children, on free school meals, the school will receive a bursary from the government to try and reduce the attainment gap between those children on free school meals and those children on not. 

Julia Willison: So we have had bursaries, we don't have any at the moment, but we have had bursaries then to attract specifically those schools on much higher pupil premium, and we've shifted the dial on this and we have higher numbers of schools with higher pupil premium students and those schools, then we try to influence and think about science as a possible aspect that they can consider further in their careers. So, in planning permission at the moment, we're looking at building a new learning centre at Kew, which would be really exciting. And we're going through ecology reports at the moment before we can get the planning permission through. 

Julia Willison: But part of the learning centre will include four science laboratories, and so pupils can come on site to Kew will be able to come on site to queue and do science experiments in the heart of a scientific organisation. And all pupils doing GCSE and A levels have to do practical science experiments. We know from all the research that teachers don't necessarily feel confident in teaching about plants. So this is something that Kew really can uniquely offer schools to come to Kew and bring their pupils and get hands on with plant and fungal science experiments. 

Kelly Molson: Oh my goodness. That would be incredible. 

Julia Willison: Yes. And also it will provide us with the facilities to be able to do CPD online as well. So that's something that we're really keen to do. 

Kelly Molson: That's a really interesting side of this, is because I know that one of your goals is to engage with all schools. Now, all schools aren't local to Kew. My school definitely wasn't local to Kew. So how do you do that? How do you make that jump from engaging with local schools that can actually access the site? What can you do digitally that can engage with more schools and more people, regardless of location? 

Julia Willison: And one of the reasons that we are committed to engaging with all schools is because Kew is a national institution and we are funded partly. About 28% of our funding comes from the government, so it's paid for by taxes by people all over the country. So our commitment is to make our resources as available as widely as possible. And so we have an online programme called Endeavour, and that's a bank of resources specifically for teachers on all sorts of different. It's strongly linked to the national curriculum, but all sorts of different activities that teachers can use then to teach about plant science and fungi. But it straddles the natural curriculum not only in science, but for the primary ages. 

Julia Willison: It will also look at history, it will look at geography, et cetera, so that we can try and make our resources as relevant as possible to teachers. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah, that is a phenomenal resource that maybe more teachers need to hear about that. I think I would have been really excited. I did do Science at school. I can remember. I'd have been really excited about doing something that was connected to Kew Gardens. There's quite a big buzz about that, you know what I mean? I don't know why there's a connection to that organisation that I think would have been really exciting to know that you were working on something that had been created by Kew.

Julia Willison: That's nice to hear that. We have a youth programme, which I'm very proud of. I think that the youth team is phenomenal, as are all the teams, but we run a youth explainer programme and that's on site, and young people come for a training programme every Saturday for six months and they go behind the scenes. They meet the horticulturist scientists and they learn communication skills. And what they do is we bring a game designer on site and they learn how to design their own game to play with the public about endangered plants or habitats. And the young people have to work together in groups and they produce this game. And then six months after, once they've finished their training, they then become explainers in the glass houses. 

Julia Willison: And the public, actually, they love interacting with young people and they bring a real buzz about it. So that's been a very successful programme. And on the back of this, we've developed a young environmental leader award. And the idea is that young people will develop their project and they will evidence different dimensions of leadership through their project. So they'll keep a portfolio and they have to evidence how they've developed their leadership skills during this journey. And then we award them with a young environmental leader award, and that's something that we do in house. But then the possibility is then to scale that, to make that available to young people outside Kew as well. 

Kelly Molson: That would be incredible, wouldn't it? Yeah, that would be a really special thing to be involved in. Okay, so we said earlier we're recording this. It's January 2024. Wow. How is Kew delivering against the manifesto after its first full two years? 

Julia Willison: Well, Kew is nothing if not ambitious. There is a real strong commitment to ending the extinction crisis. I mean, we can't do this alone and we have to do it in partnership. But I would say that we're firmly on the way to achieving many of the deliverables in the manifesto. And there's a real. People have really bought into. The staff have really bought into the manifesto, and you see that through. We run a staff survey every year and ask for feedback about whether what people think about the manifesto, do they feel their work is contributing to delivering it? And we get very high scores on that consistently we have since the manifesto was published. One of the deliverables in there is to revision the Palm House that I sit opposite in my office. 

Julia Willison: And we want that to become net zero and engage new generations with science and conservation work and make our data available to everyone. So we are moving towards that. And we've got some seed funding to be able to do this. I'd say that the bricks are in place and the foundations have been laid, and much of the work requires external funding and partnerships. But we have a vision, and I think people and organisations recognise what Kew's work is as vital. And I don't think that's overstating it, but that helps to open doors for support. So I think we're moving forwards, and I think there's a very positive feel about the work that we're doing. We're very fortunate. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah, it sounds very positive. And like we said earlier, there's so much to cover in this, Julia, and thank you for coming on and just talking about a very small element of all of the incredible things that are actually happening at Kew. So we always end our podcast by asking our guests to recommend a book that you love, something that you love personally or something that's helped shaped your career in some way. What have you chosen for us today? 

Julia Willison: Well, I chose a book that is a phenomenal book and by a woman who is phenomenal, and it is related to my work. But I chose the book because I think it is so inspirational. It's a book called Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard. And we awarded her the 16th Kew International Medal for her work and her devotion to championing biodiversity in forests. She's worked in British Columbia all her life in Canada, and she was the pioneer of the theory that plants communicate with each other through a huge subterranean fungal network. And the book reveals how trees connect and cooperate with each other, and that each forest contains hub trees. So mother trees. And that these trees in the forest play a critical role in the flow of information and resources. 

Julia Willison: So I feel that the book will change the way people look at forests. They're not simply a source for timber or pulp, but they are really part of a complex, interdependent circle of life. And I think it's a magnificent book. Well, if one reader reads it and enjoys it, I think that will be brilliant. 

Kelly Molson: Do you know what? I have to read this book. So this is the second podcast, interestingly, where. Oh, not the book. The book has never been recommended before. No, this is a completely new one. So David Green, Head of Innovation at Blenheim, was on the podcast a couple of episodes ago, and he talked about how trees communicate with each other, and that was a new thing for me. I had no idea that trees talk to each other, and the way that he described it was really interesting. And now this has come up in this as well. And I feel like someone is sending me a message that I need to read this book. So that's going to go top of my list, right.

Kelly Molson: Erveryboday, listeners, you know what to do if you want to win a copy of Julia's book, then head over to our Twitter account and retweet this episode announcement with the words, I want Julia's book and you could potentially be learning about how trees communicate with each other and are a vital part of an ecosystem. Thank you. That's fascinating. Everything that you've talked about today is so exciting, and I know that there's so much work still to be done. Thank you for coming on and sharing about all of the things that you do there and all of the things that you're hoping to achieve. I have no doubt that you will do them. It's been an absolute pleasure. 

Julia Willison: Yeah, it's a real privilege. Thank you very much, Kelly. Thank you. 

Kelly Molson:  Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. 

Skip the queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! 

• Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industry
• Gain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion rates
• Explore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performance
• Learn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion rates
• Uncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversions

Take the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report