National Museums Liverpool
Annual Review 2019/20

8 Venues 13 Exhibitions Over 3m Visitors

National Museums Liverpool
Annual Review 2019/20

8 Venues 11 Exhibitions Over 3m Visitors

A word from the Director

I am immensely proud of what colleagues have achieved in 2019/20, building upon the previous year’s successes as we continue to transform National Museums Liverpool into a more sustainable and impactful cultural business. We have focussed on our new strategic plan and significant progress has been made toward improving and streamlining our department functions and operations and upgrading our technology infrastructure, as well as delivering a spectacular and inspiring programme of exhibitions, events and activities for visitors in-venue, online and in communities.

National Museums Liverpool is a group of eight very different and wide-ranging museums and galleries with globally-important collections which helps us to share important stories from ancient times to today through more than four million objects.

We hold in trust and safeguard some of the world’s greatest museum collections, which are universal in their range – everything from archaeology and ethnology, natural and physical sciences, fine and decorative arts, maritime, social and industrial history.

Entry to all our venues is free with an annual programme of paid exhibitions, and in 2019/20 we introduced ‘pay what you think’ specially-curated exhibitions, which have been successful in generating an additional £20,000 income.

The year saw some exceptional exhibitions, including Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing; Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Making the Glasgow Style and Double Fantasy – John & Yoko.

Our shops, cafes, events and ticketing business has had another strong year generating over £4.7 million while our fundraising team had particular success with visitor donations increasing by 7% on the previous year.

Our refreshed and refocused education offer has continued to be popular and House of Memories, our world-leading dementia training and support services, continues to go from strength to strength.

Work has continued at pace on our Waterfront Masterplan, which will see a decade of change to ensure that all our facilities are revitalised to offer maximum contribution towards NML’s core purpose and sustainability of this important public offer. The time has now come for us to seize new opportunities to enhance our positioning as a cultural leader in the region and as international influencer. Our teams will continue to work on developing our case for support, securing much-needed funds and setting the stage for 2020 and beyond.

As we neared the end of 2019/20, we were faced the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdown that followed not only had a noteworthy impact on our end of year visitor and income figures but also meant that our teams needed to quickly reorganise and remobilise. It has been an extremely challenging period, but I must praise colleague’s agility and flexibility which has enabled us to continue to engage with audiences in Liverpool, across the country and around the world.

We are in unprecedented times and whilst the extent to which COVID-19 will impact on our audiences and income is still fully unknown we are already working hard to ensure we can continue deliver our fantastic public offer and our new ambitious strategic plan.

Visitors

In 2019/20, we welcomed 3,099,157 visitors to our museums and galleries. Of those visitors, 97% of people said they would recommend a visit, and we attracted 44,783 international visitors.

Engagement with young people continued as under 16s made up 20% of all visitors in 2019/20, an increase of 7% on the previous year. Of all visitors, 7% said they had a disability and 6% are from a BAME background.

Visits to our website were over 2.3 million in 2019/20, and our social media following reached over 275,000 followers across 23 accounts – a 13% increase on the previous year representing continuous growth. Views on YouTube exceeded 3.2 million, with a 25% growth in subscribers.

Five of our eight museums and galleries were in the top 20 most visited outside of London. The Museum of Liverpool took second place, while the Merseyside Maritime Museum was third and World Museum eighth. The International Slavery Museum and the Walker Art Gallery were also in the top 20.

Visitors

In 2019/20, we welcomed 3,099,157 visitors to our museums and galleries. Of those visitors, 97% of people said they would recommend a visit, and we attracted 44,783 international visitors.

Engagement with young people continued as under 16s made up 20% of all visitors in 2019/20, an increase of 7% on the previous year. Of all visitors, 7% said they had a disability and 6% are from a BAME background.

Visits to our website were over 2.3 million in 2019/20, and our social media following reached over 275,000 followers across 23 accounts – a 13% increase on the previous year representing continuous growth. Views on YouTube exceeded 3.2 million, with a 25% growth in subscribers.

Five of our eight museums and galleries were in the top 20 most visited outside of London. The Museum of Liverpool took second place, while the Merseyside Maritime Museum was third and World Museum eighth. The International Slavery Museum and the Walker Art Gallery were also in the top 20.

3,099,157

Visitors

44,783

Overseas visitors

97%

Would recommend a visit

Education

Our refreshed and refocused education offer has continued to be popular with more than 155,000 children visiting with a school group, and more than 600,000 taking part in our offer of activities or events across our museums and galleries.

We continued to develop our schools offer through our programme of enhanced school sessions from Early Years to Key Stage 4, specifically at the Museum of Liverpool, Merseyside Maritime Museum, International Slavery Museum and Seized. We’ve been able to provide fun, engaging and curriculum-linked sessions through our objects, displays and special exhibitions.

The International Slavery Museum also developed a series of work experience sessions for 16-24 year olds focused on employability skills.

We also continued to work with local community and partners to host the 20^th Slavery Remembrance Day events, and co-create content for the Liverpool Irish Festival, which saw over 3,000 people taking part.

Bespoke workshops on the natural history of ancient Egypt were created for young people from a specialist unit at Alder Hey Hospital, as well as a conservation event through the Seized! gallery.

In addition, we hosted activities for Anti-Slavery Day of Action to raise awareness of modern slavery and trafficking, working with several partner organisations.

Education

Our refreshed and refocused education offer has continued to be popular with more than 155,000 children visiting with a school group, and more than 600,000 taking part in our offer of activities or events across our museums and galleries.

We continued to develop our schools offer through our programme of enhanced school sessions from Early Years to Key Stage 4, specifically at the Museum of Liverpool, Merseyside Maritime Museum, International Slavery Museum and Seized. We’ve been able to provide fun, engaging and curriculum-linked sessions through our objects, displays and special exhibitions.

The International Slavery Museum also developed a series of work experience sessions for 16-24 year olds focused on employability skills.

We also continued to work with local community and partners to host the 20^th Slavery Remembrance Day events, and co-create content for the Liverpool Irish Festival, which saw over 3,000 people taking part.

Bespoke workshops on the natural history of ancient Egypt were created for young people from a specialist unit at Alder Hey Hospital, as well as a conservation event through the Seized! gallery.

In addition, we hosted activities for Anti-Slavery Day of Action to raise awareness of modern slavery and trafficking, working with several partner organisations.

622,930

Visits by under 16s

155,000

Children on school trips

Collections

The collections of National Museums Liverpool are vast and varied. In 2019/20, we loaned objects from our collections to 114 UK venues.

Our new progressive digital strategy underpins our efforts to ensure our museums and galleries can profile our extraordinary collections, events and activities and continue to elevate and tell important stories. We particularly continued to deliver digitisation and in 2019/20 with new online collections including Japanese prints, Liverpool Blitz, Oceania highlights, Maritime Archives and People’s Republic Gallery highlights. Our upcoming work will include digitisation and publishing collections including every painting on display in the Walker Art Gallery, highlight objects from collections including Titanic, Transatlantic Slavery and decorative art, as well as Museum of Liverpool highlights, film posters and the Archaeology Pool Hoard.

In 2019, we embarked on a new partnership with award-winning creative studio Draw & Code to explore the potential for a new digital immersive experience providing further access to our unseen collections – driving new effective ways of storytelling, creating new ways to experience our collections and to ultimately augment the way in which we drive further revenue generation.

114

Number of UK loan venues

Collections

The collections of National Museums Liverpool are vast and varied. In 2019/20, we loaned objects from our collections to 114 UK venues.

Our new progressive digital strategy underpins our efforts to ensure our museums and galleries can profile our extraordinary collections, events and activities and continue to elevate and tell important stories. We particularly continued to deliver digitisation and in 2019/20 with new online collections including Japanese prints, Liverpool Blitz, Oceania highlights, Maritime Archives and People’s Republic Gallery highlights. Our upcoming work will include digitisation and publishing collections including every painting on display in the Walker Art Gallery, highlight objects from collections including Titanic, Transatlantic Slavery and decorative art, as well as Museum of Liverpool highlights, film posters and the Archaeology Pool Hoard.

In 2019, we embarked on a new partnership with award-winning creative studio Draw & Code to explore the potential for a new digital immersive experience providing further access to our unseen collections – driving new effective ways of storytelling, creating new ways to experience our collections and to ultimately augment the way in which we drive further revenue generation.

114

Number of UK loan venues

Exhibitions

The 2019/20 year saw 13 special exhibitions take place across our museums and galleries, including a number of NML collection created shows and touring exhibitions.

The Walker Art Gallery had a varied special exhibitions programme which featured the final show in our three-year Arts Council Collection partners programme – As Seen on Screen: Artists and Cinema. Other highlights were Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Making the Glasgow Style; An English Lady’s Wardrobe; and The view from the top of a pyramid, the exhibition of works by John Moores Painting Prize 2018 winner Jacqui Hallum.

World Museum hosted the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition in celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the moon landing; followed by Taki Katei: Drawing on Nature, a beautiful collection of works by the Japanese painter from the NML archives.

Over at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, two ‘pay what you think’ exhibitions were held showcasing two renowned artists – Rembrandt in Print and Matisse: Drawing with Scissors, while Sudley House hosted Whistler & Pennell: etching the city, featuring intricate drawings by the two artists from the NML collection.

The Museum of Liverpool closed its hugely-successful Double Fantasy – John & Yoko exhibition having been seen by 699,828 visitors. It also hosted Blitzed: Liverpool lives featuring photographs and stories from Liverpool during World War II; and Liverpool on Wheels: from horses to horsepower, a rare chance to see our collection of large transport made on Merseyside in one exhibition.

Elsewhere, a major loan of Greek and Roman sculpture from our collection in the form of touring exhibition Age of Reason was shown in Mexico Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH).

Exhibitions

The 2019/20 year saw 13 special exhibitions take place across our museums and galleries, including a number of NML collection created shows and touring exhibitions.

The Walker Art Gallery had a varied special exhibitions programme which featured the final show in our three-year Arts Council Collection partners programme – As Seen on Screen: Artists and Cinema. Other highlights were Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Making the Glasgow Style; An English Lady’s Wardrobe; and The view from the top of a pyramid, the exhibition of works by John Moores Painting Prize 2018 winner Jacqui Hallum.

World Museum hosted the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition in celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the moon landing; followed by Taki Katei: Drawing on Nature, a beautiful collection of works by the Japanese painter from the NML archives.

Over at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, two ‘pay what you think’ exhibitions were held showcasing two renowned artists – Rembrandt in Print and Matisse: Drawing with Scissors, while Sudley House hosted Whistler & Pennell: etching the city, featuring intricate drawings by the two artists from the NML collection.

The Museum of Liverpool closed its hugely-successful Double Fantasy – John & Yoko exhibition having been seen by 699,828 visitors. It also hosted Blitzed: Liverpool lives featuring photographs and stories from Liverpool during World War II; and Liverpool on Wheels: from horses to horsepower, a rare chance to see our collection of large transport made on Merseyside in one exhibition.

Elsewhere, a major loan of Greek and Roman sculpture from our collection in the form of touring exhibition Age of Reason was shown in Mexico Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH).

Our highlights from 2019/20

House of Memories

Support us

Impact

National Museums Liverpool makes a great impact on the local community and much further afield.

Our award-winning dementia awareness and training programme, House of Memories, continued to develop even further. In 2019/20, we delivered training for 521 professional and family caregivers in person to support more than 2,600 people living with dementia, and saw 2,736 downloads of our award-winning My House of Memories app.

Additionally, a packed and inclusive events programme throughout the year also proved popular with audiences. Our talks, insights, tours and workshops covered many important subjects, including Disability Awareness Week, Bee Happy (International Day of Happiness), LGBT+ History Month, Slavery Remembrance Day and Black History Month.

Lady Lever Art Gallery hosted the BBC Children in Need programme, featuring a choir of 170 children singing in the main hall, which was broadcast to over six million viewers nationwide.

Impact

National Museums Liverpool makes a great impact on the local community and much further afield.

Our award-winning dementia awareness and training programme, House of Memories, continued to develop even further. In 2019/20, we delivered training for 521 professional and family caregivers in person to support more than 2,600 people living with dementia, and saw 2,736 downloads of our award-winning My House of Memories app.

Additionally, a packed and inclusive events programme throughout the year also proved popular with audiences. Our talks, insights, tours and workshops covered many important subjects, including Disability Awareness Week, Bee Happy (International Day of Happiness), LGBT+ History Month, Slavery Remembrance Day and Black History Month.

Lady Lever Art Gallery hosted the BBC Children in Need programme, featuring a choir of 170 children singing in the main hall, which was broadcast to over six million viewers nationwide.

2.37m

Online visits

275,323

Social media fans

Income

Commercial income (from retail, cafe and events trading) in 2019/2020 was over £4m. The Maritime Museum cafe also underwent a refresh to enable us to offer a better customer experience, improve back of house facilities and to be able to welcome an increased level of footfall over time – offering us the opportunity to generate further self-generated income.

Our events department continued to develop a key revenue area and delivered an outstanding programme of events for corporate clients, which is a significant and key area of revenue for the organisation. Our team delivered corporate events for clients, including Netball World Cup and Shop Direct. We also had another busy year for filming with major studios using our venues and spaces including Sky Atlantic, Warner Brothers, Netflix and BBC.

In 2019/20, visitor donations surpassed a previous record-breaking year, generating £377,000, taking donations per visitor up to 15p from the previous 11p. “Our contactless donation made it easier than ever to donate”. Our membership numbers continued to be strong, with 3,354 members, bringing in a total income of £82,000.

NML continued to raise significant funds from trusts and foundations, corporate and individual donors, totalling £856,651.

We refreshed and relaunched our corporate membership, patrons programme and legacy initiatives and hosted the first-ever Directors Dinner to recognise ongoing support and to build relationships and advocacy.

We will continue to develop to further generate income to support the funding we receive from the Department for Culture, Media, Sport and Digital. We thank all of our supporters, sponsors, patrons, trustees, staff, volunteers and of course, visitors, for their continuing commitment to National Museums Liverpool.

Income

Commercial income (from retail, cafe and events trading) in 2019/2020 was over £4m. The Maritime Museum cafe also underwent a refresh to enable us to offer a better customer experience, improve back of house facilities and to be able to welcome an increased level of footfall over time – offering us the opportunity to generate further self-generated income.

Our events department continued to develop a key revenue area and delivered an outstanding programme of events for corporate clients, which is a significant and key area of revenue for the organisation. Our team delivered corporate events for clients, including Netball World Cup and Shop Direct. We also had another busy year for filming with major studios using our venues and spaces including Sky Atlantic, Warner Brothers, Netflix and BBC.

In 2019/20, visitor donations surpassed a previous record-breaking year, generating £377,000, taking donations per visitor up to 15p from the previous 11p. “Our contactless donation made it easier than ever to donate”. Our membership numbers continued to be strong, with 3,354 members, bringing in a total income of £82,000.

NML continued to raise significant funds from trusts and foundations, corporate and individual donors, totalling £856,651.

We refreshed and relaunched our corporate membership, patrons programme and legacy initiatives and hosted the first-ever Directors Dinner to recognise ongoing support and to build relationships and advocacy.

We will continue to develop to further generate income to support the funding we receive from the Department for Culture, Media, Sport and Digital. We thank all of our supporters, sponsors, patrons, trustees, staff, volunteers and of course, visitors, for their continuing commitment to National Museums Liverpool.

£4.7m

Commercial income

£1.3m

Charitable giving

Influence/Partnerships

National Museums Liverpool is held in strong regard in the Liverpool City Region, the museums sector, across the UK and internationally and our work with partners and key stakeholders continued in 2019/20.

After eight years of constant use by families with young children, Little Liverpool, our important and significant gallery at Museum of Liverpool, was refurbished and reopened to the public in December 2019. Our Community Archaeology team also supported a number of local initiatives and partnerships including NHLF projects at a prehistoric site in Lunt Meadows and a restoration project at Lister Steps Library in Tuebrook.

Together with the wider culture and creative sector in the Liverpool City Region, National Museums Liverpool, is contributing to the development of the British Council Global Cities Plan, which recognises the global force of cities and the role that culture can play.

We’re creating a masterplan for our buildings and public realm on Liverpool’s waterfront, to identify interesting ways to open up the city’s quaysides, some of which are currently not accessible to the public.

During the year, we worked closely with city partners such as VisitLiverpool, Culture Liverpool, Liverpool ONE, Royal Albert Dock and St George’s Quarter to promote our museums and galleries.

Influence/Partnerships

National Museums Liverpool is held in strong regard in the Liverpool City Region, the museums sector, across the UK and internationally and our work with partners and key stakeholders continued in 2019/20.

After eight years of constant use by families with young children, Little Liverpool, our important and significant gallery at Museum of Liverpool, was refurbished and reopened to the public in December 2019. Our Community Archaeology team also supported a number of local initiatives and partnerships including NHLF projects at a prehistoric site in Lunt Meadows and a restoration project at Lister Steps Library in Tuebrook.

Together with the wider culture and creative sector in the Liverpool City Region, National Museums Liverpool, is contributing to the development of the British Council Global Cities Plan, which recognises the global force of cities and the role that culture can play.

We’re creating a masterplan for our buildings and public realm on Liverpool’s waterfront, to identify interesting ways to open up the city’s quaysides, some of which are currently not accessible to the public.

During the year, we worked closely with city partners such as VisitLiverpool, Culture Liverpool, Liverpool ONE, Royal Albert Dock and St George’s Quarter to promote our museums and galleries.

The Future

Over the next 12 months, we have some exciting exhibitions and public programmes planned and our teams will continue to focus on delivering a series of major projects, as part of our transformation plan, including our brand refresh initiative, technology upgrades, continuing research and development for future exhibitions (including touring), digital immersive experiences and collections care and research.

Find out more about our plans and strategic aims for the future, on our website.

Our 2030 vision

Director Laura Pye sets the scene for the development and growth of National Museums Liverpool for the next 10 years:

“Established more than 150 years ago, our museums and galleries were created to complement and counterbalance the museums in London, and were brought together in 1986 as a nationally-funded group because of the global importance of our collections and as a symbol of hope and regeneration. Today, National Museums Liverpool is eight exceptional museums and galleries, sharing important stories and with big ambitions for the future.

“Our mission is clear – our eight different museums and galleries, which provide different experiences for different audiences, combining to create memorable experiences for everyone, which challenge expectations.

The ‘for everyone’ part of that mission is very important to us and by 2030 we want to have achieved some very clear goals:

We will have the most representative audience and colleagues’ profiles within the museums sector in the UK.
We will engage over ten million people each year: more than four million visitors to our museums and galleries and a further six million through digital engagement, touring exhibitions and outreach.
We will be a place where people want to work, are happy to work and proud to work.
Together we will generate over £50,000 a day, more than half our turnover, through commercial business, grants and gifts.
We will ensure that we provide great facilities to look after our valuable collections and colleagues, with accommodation fit for the next 30 years.
All schools in the Liverpool City Region will visit at least one of our museums and galleries each year.

Strategic Aims for 2019-30

To achieve our vision we will focus on five strategic aims:

Be more representative

National Museums Liverpool prides itself on being for everyone, but for this to be true our colleagues, audiences and displays need to be representative of the communities that we are here to serve.

Be more self-sufficient

We will transform our business model and embrace the digital revolution, to ensure we generate more income and offer the greatest value for money of any national museum. We will focus on our commercial business, grants and gifts to ethically generate more income which can be invested in our public offer.

Provide memorable experiences

Across our museums and galleries, and digitally, we have hugely diverse collections, each of which offers different things to different audiences. By allowing our individual museums and galleries to shine we improve the whole organisation and National Museums Liverpool becomes unbeatable. We will ensure each of our museums and galleries has the highest standard of offer; that as well as wonderful exhibitions and displays, our cafes, shops, community programmes and public spaces are also exceptional and that our collections and colleagues have all the facilities they need.

Partner and influence

We will work with a wide range of partners to maximise the impact of National Museums Liverpool in our region, nation and across the world. We will contribute to our city region through growing the visitor economy, placemaking and enhancing education, health and social care. We will be the partner of choice for businesses and will continue to use our collections to create positive social impact. We will represent and promote the best of the UK museum sector to the World.

Engage and empower

We will build an organisational culture which embeds trust, respect and inclusion. People will remain at the heart of our organisation. Supported by our THRIVE programme, colleagues will be engaged and empowered to drive and enable National Museums Liverpool to continually change and evolve.