Leeds Museums & Galleries Annual Review 2018-19

A Record of Success Annual review 2018-19

A Record of Success Annual review 2018-19

Record-breaking year

Our museums are popular

Our museums support our schools through inspiring work with young people

In 2018/19, our museums were visited by 1,698,640 people.

In 2018/19, we were visited by 46,956 pupils with 7028 teachers.

221,857 children and adults participated in our family activities.

We provided training for 1204 teachers.

Our museums bring in significant external funding

From John Roles, Head of Museums and Galleries

The nearly 1.7M visits to our venues this year have beaten all records, a wonderful testament to our amazing collections and the brilliant people who bring them to life.

It is the hard work and commitment of all of our wonderful staff and volunteers both across our nine venues and in our communities that have played an essential role in helping our museums and galleries become better every year; not only as world class visitor attractions but as much loved and valued community resources.

Visits to our venues have contributed nearly £28M to the local economy, a figure that underlines our conviction that museums and heritage are an essential part of Leeds’s visitor economy and help make it such a great city and an appealing place to live and work in.

I would like to thank all of the partners, supporters and sponsors who have supported us this year, including: Friends of Leeds City Museums; Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society; Leeds Art Fund, Arts Council England; National Lottery Heritage Fund; University of Leeds, University of Huddersfield; Leeds Beckett University; Leeds Arts University; White Rose College of Arts and Humanities; our Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle partners – Henry Moore Institute, The Hepworth Wakefield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park and all involved in the development of Yorkshire Sculpture International; the West Yorkshire Local Authority Museum Partnership; Decorative Arts Society; V&A Purchase Grant Fund; Concord; Hyde Park Source; Leeds Faiths Forum; Leeds Irish Arts Foundation; Leeds Playhouse; My Bright Kite; Peer Support Cultural Partnership; Skippko; Swarthmore College and; West Yorkshire Queer Stories.

I would also like to thank collectively the many schools, faith groups, community groups neighbourhood networks, dementia cafes, older people’s groups, support centres, residential and nursing care services and other groups and individuals we work with and without which we could never have achieved so much.

Our museum visits contribute millions to the economy

Our museums are working actively with virtual visitors and audiences

Attracting £7,580,176 between 2015/16-2018/19 (£1,895,044 per year).

We have a great staff team

In 2018/19, our museums contributed £27,884,048 to the local economy.

Supported 103 external jobs directly or indirectly.

Generated a further £388,841 through the direct impact of their spending on local goods and services.*

Our websites attracted 1,972,581 page views and we have over 250,994 followers on social media.

Our museums cost relatively little to run

Our museums contribute to community health and wellbeing

Our shops and commercial services are proving ever more popular with customers

£8,368,221 gross budget, including income and grants. £4,903,169 net budget.

Our 252 volunteers contributed 8570 hours, worth £150,224.20.

27242 people took part in our programme of community activities.

Our 7 shops and 3 cafes generated an income of £930,245 in 2018/19. Fees from room hire at our 7 sites brought in £189,900.

We also offer filming, canal moorings and more.

We employ 243 staff (FTE), researching, preserving and celebrating our collections, providing great experiences for visitors and working with all our communities.

*Using the AIM Economic Impact of the Independent Museum Sector toolkit 2014.

A Record of Success Annual review 2018-19

museumsandgalleries.leeds.gov.uk

World class museum learning

Newly acquired

Learning is at the heart of Leeds Museums and Galleries.

We welcome people as individuals whether at our nine very different museums and galleries or out in our communities.

Through our objects, artworks and their stories they are encouraged to be creative, to be curious, to play and make magic.

Our work helps people gain a sense of belonging to their neighbourhoods and communities. They are inspired and supported to try art, science and culture, to test, imagine and make. To form opinions, debate, participate and challenge ideas in a safe environment. The experiences we co-produce are high quality, innovative, and acknowledge our diverse audiences.

2018/19 has provided some splendid examples of how we are making a difference.

A new look for MyLearning This year has been a successful one for MyLearning. Managed by Leeds Museums and Galleries, MyLearning hosts learning resources from arts, cultural and heritage organisations from across the country. Since launching our totally redeveloped website in June 2018, we have seen a 44% increase in the average time teachers are spending on the site, at over 2 minutes each visit. Over 2000 teachers have chosen to register on the site, taking advantage of unique features such as a personalised homepage and the ability to create themed workboards to cut down planning time. We continue to work with cultural organisations, ranging from the smallest, volunteer run organisations, through to national museums, helping them expand their impact through hosting their online educational materials.

Putting the ‘H’ in LGBT History Month

Working with people from all communities, ages, faiths and backgrounds lies at the heart of our mission in Leeds Museums and Galleries.

For a long time, we have been wanting to make a weightier contribution to LGBT History Month which takes place in February every year. This year, we believe we have made a significant advance in how we engage with LGBT+ communities and portray their histories and lives.

Thanks to the engagement of partners from Yorkshire Mesmac, Leeds Beckett University, community representatives, departments across Leeds City Council and even local councillors, we were able to host Leeds’s debut as a Hub City for OUTing the Past, the national festival of LGBT+ history on 7 February 2019 at Leeds City Museum. The day involved speakers and talks on a huge variety of aspects of LGBT+ history – local and national – together with performances and celebrity appearances.

West Yorkshire Queer Stories staged a takeover day in Leeds City Museum’s Brodrick Hall two days later on Saturday 9 February 2019. Over 2000 people came to the event, which was the busiest LGBT event we have ever hosted.

Inspiring a generation of trainee teachers

A Curriculum for Leeds

A whole new generation of trainee teachers is being inspired to make better use of museums and arts and to use objects in their classrooms.

Did you know that an elephant once got stuck in a ginnel in Kippax in east Leeds? Or that Leeds game-makers Waddingtons made special editions of Monopoly containing hidden tools to help POWs escape? Or, that prehistoric hippos once roamed around west Leeds?

For some years, we have been developing strong links with teacher training colleges such as Leeds Trinity and York St John. This has helped us to develop ways to integrate museums and cultural learning into the learning programmes of trainee teachers in colleges and local consortiums.

Throughout 2018-19, we have been working with these trainees through visits and placements.

As well as providing an amazing opportunity to explore the potential for off-site cultural and arts learning, it is proving an excellent opportunity to teach them how to use objects within their lessons to inspire curiosity and develop understanding.

These are just some of the stories we uncovered when we developed the Leeds Curriculum. This pioneering place-based curriculum focused on ‘what 50 stories do you want your child to know about Leeds before they leave primary school?’

It draws on information and resources from, and signposts to, over 40 arts, cultural and community organisations across Leeds, and has been developed with over 30 primary schools. Leeds Museums and Galleries have co-created all the stories with the communities and organisations.

It has been two years in the development, and launched in June 2018.

How our new service loaning museum objects is transforming learning Leeds Museums and Galleries (LMG) launched a new school loans scheme for museum objects in September 2018. Through this scheme, schools can receive curated boxes of museum objects on any subject for which LMG has relevant collections, ranging from prehistory and Ancient Egypt to fairy tales and the Industrial Revolution.

Schools subscribe to the scheme for a modest annual fee which also gives them access to a range of support services including curriculum planning, workshops at any of LMG’s nine venues and even inclusion in special projects and Continuing Professional Development opportunities.

As well as the objects themselves, each box contains helpful notes regarding the significance of each object.

Early adopters have welcomed the ‘wow’ factor the objects provide to lessons, and even Ofsted inspectors have remarked how these have helped engage students and contribute to their success.

Additionally, the Collector’s Galley at Leeds City Museum ran a display of material from the Feminist Archive North, showcasing Tshirts, badges and publications of LGBT+ activist materials from the 1970s/80s/90s.

Image courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

From Kate Fellows, Head of Learning and Access

Phyllida Barlow (b.1944), ‘untitled: venicecolumns’ (2016-17)

Egyptian sarcophagus base Late Period (Dynasty 28), 404-398 BC

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society through a special partnership with the Henry Moore Foundation and supported by Cathy Wills, the sculpture is a smaller version of part of Barlow's commission for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017.

The painted decoration on this coffin base fragment depicts two sandaled feet above a winged sun disc.

Leeds Armistice Flag

Taxidermy Muskrat, Ondatra zibethicus

The Leeds Armistice Flag was made by teenager Madge Howdill of Hanover Square, Leeds in 1918.

She paraded with it on the very first Armistice Day in November 1918, recently donated as part of events to mark the centenary of the First World War.

This stuffed muskrat, made by Linsley Brothers of Leeds, formerly sat in the office of the chair of the Yorkshire River Board, to remind him of the damage they did to the riverbanks.

‘Mr Widdas of Little London’, Monk Bridge Iron Works, (1854)

302.0 badge

The Window display at Leeds City Museum hosted 36.7 – an installation by Stuart Langley highlighting the 36.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS across the world.

The He She They exhibition at Abbey House Museum explored the changing face of gender in children’s fashion from the Victorian era to the present day.

By embedding LGBT+ history within the core offer of Leeds Museums and Galleries over an extended period, we believe we have taken up and run with a key element of the Arts Council England initiative Creative Case for Diversity, which challenges organisations such as ours to view the opportunities inherent in working with difference and diversity as the ingredients that help us to be better, more creative museums.

This painting was presented to Mr Stephen Whitham, former owner on Monk Bridge Iron Works, in 1954 by a dozen foremen from the works.

It is a valuable record of the radical transformation of the Leeds landscape being caused by the spread of large scale engineering and railway building.

This badge was created in 1978 by an early Rock Against Racism activist from Leeds, appalled that the World health organisation listed homosexuality as an illness, with the classification 302.0. A duplicate badge given to friend and musician Tom Robinson was referenced in his song ‘Glad to be Gay’ and was instrumental in a successful campaign to officially remove the classification.

A Record of Success Annual review 2018-19

A year of great exhibitions

As part of A Woman’s Place? at Abbey House, women from across Leeds took part in a community photography project to illustrate the diversity of their lives today.

The Lord Mayor of Leeds , Cllr Jane Dowson meets former miners involved in the Mining Memories exhibition at Lotherton.

Abbey House Museum

Lotherton

• • • •

• Himalayan Fashion • Mining Memories • Lotherton at 50

A Woman’s Place?

Remembrance Danger Zone He? She? They?

The Changing Face of Children’s Fashion

Leeds City Museum • Thomas Chippendale 1718-1779: a celebration of British craftsmanship and design • Inspiring Enterprise • Beavers to Weavers: The Wonderful World of Animal Makers • Michael Morpurgo: A Lifetime in Stories • Stories from the Spectrum • 36point7 • New Beginnings: Leeds Migration Stories

Leeds Industrial Museum • • • •

Queens of Industry Beat Back Wool Stories: The Felted Mill Potts Clock Display

Temple Newsam • Beer! A history of brewing and drinking • Fantastical Beasts

Leeds Art Gallery • Andy Holden and Peter Holden: Natural Selection • Francis Butterfield • Threshold to the Kingdom: Mark Wallinger • Leonardo da Vinci: A Life of Drawing • Glen Onwin • Woodwork: A Family Tree of Sculpture