That seems high to me but getting those numbers will depend on your
community as well and how much they use cultural resources.  Are there
other museums in the immediate vicinity that you could contact to ask
about their attendance figures?  That would at least give you an idea if
8500 is something that has never been done or something that is done all
the time locally.  For those kinds of numbers you will need marketing
money and you will need to be creative in getting free marketing.

Since you are on a community college campus you have a semi-captive
audience.  What about including the museum in prospective and incoming
freshman campus tours?  Could you work with faculty to have them include
a visit to the museum or a project in the museum in any related classes?
I don't know what kind of museum you are (natural history, art, etc.)
but you could be creative to get all kinds of classes in for a visit.
For example, an art class could visit a natural history museum to
examine color, texture and pattern in nature (shells, fur, feathers are
all great examples to use).  Marketing or sociology classes could survey
visitors and use the data collected for their own projects and get you
some valuable audience research at the same time.  Anthropology (or many
other social science) classes could observe visitors in the exhibits,
collecting data on how visitors react to the exhibits and interact with
each other in the museum - have you created a warm and friendly
atmosphere where people feel comfortable or is it a hushed, quiet
atmosphere where talking loudly is discouraged?  Art classes could help
you design, fabricate, and install exhibits.  These connections will
take some time and lots of personal contact to develop but could be well
worth it in the visitor numbers and, more importantly, your visibility
and value on campus.

Elizabeth Moore
Virginia Museum of Natural History


-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf
Of Julie Holcomb
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2004 7:06 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: annual attendance in small museums

I would like to hear from new, small museums.  Our museum has a staff of
1.5 and a budget less than $75k.  We opened in mid-October on the campus
of mid-size community college.  Our college president expects our
attendance should be 8500 this first year (actually, not even full year
since our fiscal year ends in August).  Our college population on this
campus is 2500, our city population is 25,000 and our county is around
50,000.  We're in a small, rural, east Texas county about an hour south
of
the Dallas Metroplex and an hour northeast of Waco.  I would be
interested
to hear from other museums like mine and Katie's as we are fending off
mid-year budget adjustments.  (If your department is not making its
projected income, your budget is adjusted accordingly.)

Also, how do you in small museums respond to those expectations?  How do
you increase attendance?  I come from an archives background rather than
a
museum background so I'm still learning how to pull this off.
Julie Holcomb
College and Special Collections Archivist
Pearce Collections Museum at Navarro College

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