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• What does best in class museum retail look like?

  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.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 SkiptheQueue.fm.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  or Bluesky for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 21st May 2025. The winner will be contacted via Bluesky. Show references: Museum Wales website: https://museum.wales/Big Pit National Coal Museum: https://museum.wales/bigpit/Catherine Pinkerton LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-pinkerton-b1905a110/Catherine Pinkerton is the Group Retail Manager at Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales.Having worked in senior management positions for some of the high street’s most recognisable brands such as Harrods, Selfridges, Dior and Guerlain to name but a few, Catherine spent 20+ years in London building her management career. Catherine is now the Group Retail Manager for Amgueddfa Cymru (Museum Wales). She is responsible for the management of all aspects of retail operations and development, across the national museums of Wales. Catherine is currently leading on a transformation project to create immersive retail experiences in each of the museum shops, reflecting the visitor experience and collections of each of the varied museums.Guests Also Featured in This Episode:Anya Kirkby, Freelancer - Anya Kirkby Ltd – Product Development and Graphic Design anyakirkby@gmail.comArantxa Garcia, Freelancer - Exibeo VM Creative Studio – Shop Design and Visual Merchandising Arantxa@exhibeovm.co.ukNia Elias, Director Relationships and Funding, Amgueddfa Cymru nia.elias@museumwales.ac.ukGuy Veale, Freelancer – Freelancer - Sound artist/designer - gbveale@gmail.comAmy Samways, Shop Supervisor, Amgueddfa Cymru - amy.samways@museumwales.ac.ukKate Eden, Chair, Amgueddfa Cymru - Members of Board | Museum Wales Transcriptions: Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue. I'm your host, Paul Marden. So today you join me on the top of a mountain in Blaenavon in Wales at Big Pit, the National Mining Museum. I'm here today for a really special event. I've been invited to the opening of Big Pit's new Museum Retail experience, which is a programme of work that's being done by the Museums Wales Group to improve the sense of place and the sense of feeling for what could be a blueprint for the rest of the group. We're going to be joined by a number of different people that have taken part in the project and without further ado, let's get started on our tour of Big Pit. Catherine Pinkerton: Morning, everybody. Hello, welcome. It is my absolute pleasure to welcome you all today and I know there's been a lot of you'd have travelled far and wide, so thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you coming to see the amazing store that we've created and I hope you love it. We're just going to cut the river now. Paul Marden: First up I've got Catherine Pinkerton, Group Head of Retail at Museum Wales. Catherine, welcome to Skip the Queue. Catherine Pinkerton: Thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me. Paul Marden: Absolute pleasure. And this is a corker of an episode. I think everybody is going to be really interested in finding out about the retail, the gift shop experience that you guys have introduced at Big Pit and then you're going to go wider into. Into Museums Wales. This is a really weird episode because you and I are recording the morning after the day before. So yesterday was the big launch event and I was with you at Big Pit and I've met lots and lots of people and we're going to cut to them throughout the episode and hear from those people that were taking part in the project. But you and I have got the benefit of having enjoyed yester today's event and we can look back on what that experience was like and talk a little bit about the project. Paul Marden: Before we do that, I think it would be really lovely for you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Museums Wales and Big Pit specifically. Catherine Pinkerton: Absolutely. Okay. So I'm Catherine Pinkerton. So I head up all of the retail stores within Amgueddfa Cymru, which is National Museums of Wales. I've been with the museum just under three years and I'm good that Cymru hosts seven sites. It's an incredible establishment to be part of and I think, you know, coming from a very commercial background, this is very different for me, but I think it's given me lots of insights into bringing kind of. Lots of. Kind of different skill sets, I guess, to this cultural sector. I think when I first initially joined Amgueddfa Cymru, there were lots of challenges. And that's not to say that we still have those challenges as they are in many of our museums. And I think coming from a retail background, it's. It's looking at something that's not. That's commercial, Paul.Catherine Pinkerton: That's key. But actually, how can we make it very collection and story based on our amazing assets that we hold within our museums? And I think that I felt was probably the biggest thing that was missing because I thought we've got these amazing exhibitions, these amazing collections, amazing, you know, opportunities, and how are we putting that into the retail structure and how do we offer that to us, you know, to our visitors? And I think. I think sometimes it may be. Have forgotten that you go around these amazing spaces and it's very based on that visitor focus and how can we make that visitor feel very happy and engaged. But actually the end part of that process is nearly always coming through, exiting through the retail space. Right. Catherine Pinkerton: And if they've had this amazing opportunity to go and, you know, a lot of investment in these amazing spaces, and then they come through that retail space which has some elements, but not all of what our collections hold, there's a confusion there. You know, that end piece. And for me, customer service and visitor experience is absolutely key to how they. How they finish and how they end their day. And if they're ending their day with something, oh, okay, I'll just have a magnet then. Because there's nothing really else here. Yeah, that pains me. That really hurts me. I think, come on, guys, we can do better than this. We are in an element of. We have our own assets, our own elements to be able to kind of display that. Catherine Pinkerton:  And I think very much it would be very easy and to take the kind of easy road of having, you know, let's. Let's pop a dragon on a mug and yeah, we're a Welsh museum. No, we're not. We have assets here. We have beautiful exhibitions, we have beautiful spaces. And actually looking from further afield into. In terms of an emotional connection. And I think, you know, for me, from all of my past kind of previous work, I'm working with Amgueddfa Cymru. It's probably been the most challenging to get perhaps senior management to understand a crazy way of Catherine Pinkerton working into a. What's emotional retail? What does emotive selling mean? This lady is crazy. What's she talking about? But actually, it's really basic, isn't it? Catherine Pinkerton: Because for me, if I take my daughter or my husband to any kind of day trip, I want to take something emotional that I've connected with home with me, and that's so simple. But actually, sometimes it's not thought about in that way. And, you know, for me, I'm all about the emotional connection. And I think we put so much investment in curatorial teams to kind of give that to our visitors. We need to end that. That end part is so important for them to finish, you know, that journey with that emotional connection that they can take home as a souvenir. So, yeah, I've probably said more than I needed to there, Paul, but.Paul Marden: Absolutely. So I think you're capturing the need to curate the. The ending experience because, you know, the nature of. The nature of people's memory is they remember the beginning and they remember the end and the bit that is in the middle is hugely important to the storytelling experience they have whilst they're at the attraction. But if you don't end on a high, then their emotional connection to you and the space and the stories they've heard is not going to be as impactful for them. Catherine Pinkerton:  Absolutely, totally agree. I think it's really key, and not just in the kind of, you know, the cultural sector, but in any sector, really. I think it's really important that connection is instant, really, because that is what you need to. That's the hook, isn't it, of getting that person, you know, and. And actually understanding what the visitor needs. I mean, it's very easy for me to say on a personal level, I'd love to have this collection of products within the shop, but actually, that's not what data tells us. That's not what our demographic tells know, you know. And they are the ones that are important. Our local communities, our demographic is key for us to be successful. Paul Marden: You know, so one of the things that I took from yesterday was the importance that you were moving away from being just any other generic Welsh gift shop to being a gift shop associated with the place. Yeah, that. That's the. That was the nub of I think, what you were trying to get to how do you go about doing that? How did you make it feel so much like a gift shop? About Big Pit? Catherine Pinkerton: It's taken a process of really pulling everything back and getting under the skin, what is the detail and the personality of the site. But actually it's talking to people and being humour. And Paul, you know, I think, very much, as I say, it'd be very ignorant for me to say this is what I think will work. And that's absolutely not what we want. What we want is for the visitors to say, I really. I mean, what was really interesting, actually, is that we did quite a lot of data analysis in terms of the demographics of customers that come through our sites. But also what was really key is areas of the sites that were really kind of, you know, three key areas that they really enjoyed or they really loved. Catherine Pinkerton:  And actually, one of the top ones was the pit ponies that they all love the pit ponies, they love talking about it, they love the stories that the mining team would talk about. It was a really inspiring, you know, inspirational moment for them to think, oh, my gosh, the pit ponies lived underground. This is really so, you know, I think in some respects that was probably missed in terms of our retail offer, because what we did after that is that we had a workshop with all our retail team and we almost did a little bit like a Dragon's Den effect. We said, right, these are the products that we have, right? Can you pick up out of these products, which products represent the pit ponies? Which products represent the shower rooms? Catherine Pinkerton: And actually, when you're talking to the teams in kind of a literal sense, there wasn't a lot within our retail offer that we already had. And I think it was a bit of a light bulb moment, really, for the retail team and said, “Oh, Kath. Right, I see, Yeah, I understand what you mean.” That's not represented in our retail offer. So what's represented currently was wonderful things and lots of Welsh kind of products. But actually, what. What makes that relatable to our site? And so I think what I wanted to do originally is just go on a journey and to kind of really, from a very basic stage, is understand what the site's POS was and actually understand what their personality was and what the curatorial team were trying to push forward as being their identity. Catherine Pinkerton:  And I think once we got the identity, we then broke that down into themes in terms of there's pit ponies. That's a huge part of the, you know, the exhibition. The other huge part of the exhibition were the canaries. So, you know, that was something that was talked about. There's a huge story around that. And then, you know, the kind of mining history and the community was massive. And actually that element was so important to me and the retail team to make sure that we got right. Because this is history, right? And this is. I come from both my grandparents were miners. So for me it was very much a, you know, a very emotional time for me to make sure that we got it right and that it was respectfully done. Catherine Pinkerton:  So that was really key in terms of how do we deliver this. That's really. That we are not stepping on people's toes. We're not profiting from something that was, you know, the strike range is very significant within what we've offered, but we really wanted to make sure that was respectful and that it was done in a tasteful way that people felt they could take a souvenir away, but know that was actually part of the exhibition. So it was those kind of areas that we really wanted to work. So once we have those themes in place in terms of what those looked like, it was then developing that and how do we develop that into an actual concept? Paul Marden: Yeah, and you've drawn in lots of people. You've already mentioned the kind of wide team that you brought in from Big Pit itself, but from the wider team in the group. Talk a little bit about what that experience has been like as a team. Who have you brought into this? Catherine Pinkerton:  So originally, when we wrote the retail concept and the retail strategy, you obviously have to kind of involve quite a lot of internal candidates to be able to allow them to believe that this journey and vision is a good one. And I'm super thankful. I've got the most amazing manager, Marc Simcox. He's the head of enterprises and he is incredible. He's very commercial, but very trusting in terms of understanding what the business should look like and actually giving that freedom to say, yeah, I think this can work. Kath. So you, you go ahead and that. That's huge. Right. We're not talking about a small project here. So that firstly was great for me. And then I think having the, you know, the opportunity to be able to get some key people. Catherine Pinkerton: And Matthew Henderson we've worked with previously and we've, you know, I knew straight away, for me, Matthew Henderson has gotten. Got a very unique way of working and we work very well together. We've got quite similar kind of ways of working, but I think that development and concept phase is really key and I think it really got to the point where we just sat in a room and kind of really understood what are we trying to achieve here, how can we achieve that? And really just making it very basic in terms of the key themes. And then in terms of product development, we brought on Anya Kirkby. So she is an illustrator and a very clever lady indeed. And we have worked with lots of illustrators and lots of suppliers over the years. Catherine Pinkerton: But what we wanted something for Big Pit was to be quite different in terms of the illustration and the product development. Because what we wanted to deliver with Big Pit was something that had been my vision since the very beginning when I started with Amgueddfa Cymru. And that is, you know, going into the shop and having those guidelines, you know, pricing guidelines, information guidelines, those small details which would probably mean nothing to the average person walking through, but actually a price ticket on something that's been illustrated pains me to see, because the work that's gone on behind that is so key. Catherine Pinkerton: And, you know, for most people not understanding that a price ticket on that is so I think those details are really key, Paul, and I think she really worked stringently with me to make sure that was, was, that was kind of a massive aspect of that role. And then Arantxa Garcia, who is just the most incredible designer. She's, she's a genius in what she does. She's incredibly creative and sometimes you have to kind of pull her back and say, okay, you want this? Okay, can you deliver this rancher? Paul Marden: Yeah. Catherine Pinkerton: And what was really interesting with a rancher is that, you know, she's got a huge, amazing CV of working with lots of people within the cultural sector and designing amazing, incredible pieces. But I think were very nervous because the, the original kind of renders that she sent through to us were quite amazing and impressive. And I said, arantha, are you able to deliver this under the kind of, you know, the budget? We've got a tight budget here. Paul Marden: That's the challenge, isn't it? Catherine Pinkerton: I mean, isn't it? Paul Marden: You do not want to be paying, you don't want to be offered the picture of a Maserati when you have got a Ford Fiesta budget, do you need to know that you can afford it. Catherine Pinkerton: Absolutely. And I think with Aranta, she was very, again, super creative lady. And I think I, as soon as I saw that image, I did say to her, right, you need to deliver this now. You've, you've committed to it, Arantia, so this needs to happen. And then finally, Richard Evans, who has, is hugely respected in the cultural sector and he really supported in terms of project management and the, you know, I hate to say this, and you won't mind me saying this, but the kind of boring kind of financial Gantt charts and keeping me in line actually. Right, Cath, we haven't got a budget for that. You can't spend that. Come on, Richard, make it work. Move some things around, you know. Catherine Pinkerton: So I think that was kind of the main area and then internally, Tracy Lucas, who was kind of my right hand woman, is our operations manager within Amgueddfa Cymru and she really supported me along with Amy, the shop manager, shop supervisor to really look at the product development. So I think, you know, and I think it was really nice actually to have them on board because I think it gave an opportunity for them to see what could be. And I think, you know, definitely in terms of retail, it's been an opportunity for us to be able to say, look, this, the impossible can be possible. Catherine Pinkerton: Actually this is an amazing project and I think what was really incredible is that when we decided to work on Big Pit, the Big Pit team and all of the mining team actually just came on board, Paul, they took it on board and I think the reason why they did that is that one of the mining teams said to me, he said, kath, you know, we never get any funding here. It's always in this big cities, you know, we, the Cardiff and it's never here, you know, we're just in the middle of nowhere. And I was like, absolutely not. That is not what this is about. It's about, you know, making sure that the community in that area is solid. Catherine Pinkerton: And I think the mining industry and they're very proud of that in terms of who works there, they're incredibly proud of what they do. And so because we chose that as our first project, they were so helpful in terms of, yeah, we're going to make this work, let's make it a success. Cath, how can we do that? What do you need from me? I mean at one point we had two of the mining staff pulling one of the drums which we upcycled out of it was like a lake or, yeah, I suppose a lake with a tractor. And I was like, this is crazy. This is crazy but just amazing that these team members are willing to do above and beyond to kind of go and help and support.Catherine Pinkerton: Dwayne Smith, finally I have to mention him because he went above and beyond. He, he's an electrical engineer for Amgueddfa Cymru and no feat was kind of Too hard for him. He helped us massively. He's got a huge team of people and anything that we needed done, I'm not, you know, I'm not a trades person, so anything Trady. I was like, Dwayne, yeah, I'm on it, Kath, I'll do it. Which is great because I was like, okay, yes, that was massively helpful, but huge learning curve, Paul. I feel I've never been so excited about drums in my entire working career as I am now. Paul Marden: And I never heard of one until yesterday. But what I found interesting was you see them all the way through the underground experience. I went down in the. The cage to the bottom of the pit head, did the whole tour. You talk about these drams and the importance of them and the transportation of the coal from throughout the mine back up to the top. And then you walk into the shop and it's subtle. The way that you've blended the museum into the shop is a subtle experience. It doesn't feel, it doesn't feel crude. But you've got a dram in the middle of the workshop. Now, I know it's a real one because we talked about it yesterday and I know the pains that you went through, but it's very subtle placed in there so that it doesn't feel crude. Paul Marden: It doesn't feel like you're trying to overwork the metaphor of the mine in the shop. It's very cleverly done. Catherine Pinkerton:  Oh, that's great, great, great to hear. Because that's absolutely what we did not want. And I think in terms of visual merchandising, actually, and picking up on your point there, is that it's very easy for us and this is something that we're doing in a different shop. It's very easy for us to look at some of our assets and pop them on a tote bag and say, there you go, that's done, we'll sell that. But actually, no, what can we do that's different? That's more kind of innovative? That's more creative. That is a hint or perhaps an opportunity for us to show and display something that is. Is then part of the visitors question. So when they're coming into store and they're speaking to our retail teams, they're questioning, is this a real drum? Catherine Pinkerton:  You know, and that is a conversation opener, isn't it? You know, and I think Kerry Thompson, who is the curator for Big Pit, he's a really inspiring man. I could listen to him all day. And he told me lots about kind of the drums and the history of Big Pit and the strikes. He's such an interesting man, but I think having the inspiration from him allowed us to make sure that we did it not in a crude way, actually, Paul, but that it was representative of the site, but not in a way that's, I guess, too obvious, you know. Paul Marden: Look, Kath, we could carry on talking for ages, but let's cut at this point to hear about some of the voices from the team that you worked with, your internal team, some of the partners that you worked with, about the experiences that they've had on the project. Paul Marden: So let's hear from some of the internal team members involved in the project. Firstly, we have Amy Samways, the retail supervisor at Big Pit, followed by Kate Eden, the chair of Museum Wales. And lastly, Nia Elias, the Director of Relationships and Funding at the Museum of Wales. Hey, Amy, how you doing? Lovely to meet you. What's your role at the museum, Amy? Amy Samways: I'm the shop supervisor for Big Pit. Paul Marden: What have you been doing in this whole project? I guess you've been integral to the whole kind of making it all about the place. Amy Samways: Yeah, so I've worked with Anya, who did all the products for the new shop. So we walked around all the exhibitions. We did a lot of underground visits and a lot of museum visits and just put things together. I've done a lot of work before this project for the last two years to try and get things more relevant to us and not just a Welsh souvenir shop. So a lot of those products stayed and then we just expanded them then. Paul Marden: So how do you go about looking for those products that make it local to here? Amy Samways: Well, we've got a fantastic exhibition at the top of the hill. We've got obviously our ex miners and we also have a lot of events through the times as well. So this year was a lot about the strike because obviously it's the 40th anniversary and we've got a massive exhibition down in Cardiff and also there's a smaller one up year as well. So we just walked through the museum and obviously, you know that disasters are obviously a big issue. We didn't want to make a big issue about those, but obviously they need. They're part of history, aren't they? So more books. We made sure we had books around that. And as you walk through, there's a lot of signs that the staff liked as well, because a lot of our guys have been done about the new projects with those as well on. Paul Marden: So do you then go looking for local suppliers to help you with that? And where do you find those? Amy Samways: Etsy, Facebook. Paul Marden: Oh, really? Amy Samways: Yeah, a lot of them. And also online. And then we've also. Because we work with a lot of suppliers as well, I'll say we need this and then they'll say, oh, you should ask so and so, and then we'll go and ask both. Paul Marden: Brilliant. So one of the things that's really interested me this year is talking to people that are running museum retail and that kind of process that goes from you as a buyer, having an idea, what do you want? How do you stock the shop? I think is really interesting process to go through, but flip it on the other side, as a local creator, you've got your thing and you want it in the shop. How do you get it found? Well, yeah, sticking it on Etsy is something that they're going to do, but then that might help them get into the museum. Amy Samways: Even if there is something that we want. Like at the minute, we're looking for NCB soap. Paul Marden: For what? Amy Samways: NCB soap. Paul Marden: What's that? Amy Samways: It's either bright green or bright pink and they used to buy it in the canteen shop and it's just imprinted with NCB. The guides have been asking and asking for it, but we have actually found a supplier now who's going to be working on it. So that should be coming this summer. Paul Marden: Wowzers. Amy Samways: Yeah. That's really exciting for you. Paul Marden:  What was the highlight? What's the one thing about this space, about the whole experience of the project. Amy Samways: That jumps out for me is seeing all the stock we've worked on and somebody actually buying it. Paul Marden:  And what is it that people are picking up? What are they walking in and gravitating to? Amy Samways: Anything Big pet, really. The little enamel little mugs have gone really well. I think the wording on those are great because it says they must not be removed from the premises. So our guides are loving those. And also our retro sign, which we had for our 40th anniversary and three years ago, but we kept it because it's such a brilliant design. It was the original from 1983 and it was on the original road sign as you drove in. So we've had that recreated and that sells really well. Paul Marden:  That's really interesting. So my wife with the family about 25, 30 years ago, came on a family holiday and they had the original guidebook that they picked up when they were here with the kind of the retro. Retro signage on there. Amy Samways: Yeah, we're back selling it again. Kate Eden: Yes, So my name's Kate Eden. I'm chair of the board of Amgueddfa Cymru. Paul Marden:  Tell me a little bit about your involvement in this project. Kate Eden:  As the board, we've been tracking the development of commercial and enterprises over the past year. Really. And really thrown our way, weight and support behind what the team has been trying to do here as a kind of flagship, really, for what we would all like the new benchmark to be across all of the seven sites of anger for Cymru. So seeing it all come together this morning has just been such a special experience. It's absolutely fantastic. I'm going to bring the rest of the board here as soon as I can so the trustees can see this and see the reaction of staff and of visitors as well, because it's a fabulous achievement and it shows us what we can do now as a national museum. Paul Marden: How well does it tie back into the original pitch at trustees? So I'm a trustee of a charity as well. The pressures that we're all under in terms of reducing funding and having to generate our own funding is so hugely important. This must be integral to the conversations that you were having as trustees. Did you have this in mind when you were signing off the agreement to spend the money? Kate Eden: Yeah. So I don't think anybody realised just how successful this could be. We'd had some mock ups and we'd had a presentation, so there was a lot of excitement and there was sort of the fledgling idea years. So we've got a sense of what it could be. But I think importantly for us, it's about that marriage of financial sustainability because it's got to wash its face, it's got to provide a working profit that can go back into the running of Big Pit here.Kate Eden: But it's got to be authentic to this place. It can't be the add on the visitor should shop that you walk through at the end. And it's a bit of a tedious thing to get back to the car park. It's got to be an integral part of the whole visitor experience in this place. And I think that's what they've achieved. Paul Marden: It's so impressive. So impressive. You know, just the structure that they've built to give you the impression of the mine in a really subtle way. The product that they've chosen, the way that they've laid out that, the shop is amazing. I think they've done an amazing job. Kate Eden: That's it. I mean, this is my local site. Paul Marden: Okay. Kate Eden: I live about three miles over the mountain there. So I bring my friends and family here. This is our go to place when I've got visitors. And I think just the way they've opened up the room, they've removed the barriers, which is really important. It's a small thing, but really important so that people feel welcome. They can walk in or they can walk ground. Paul Marden: Yep. Kate Eden: And it's. And it just feels a little bit more inclusive. It feels a bit more kind of, you know, we're here, it's easy to come and see us, you know, and spend time and then spend a little. Paul Marden: A little bit of money. Yeah. So where do we go from here as trustees? Are you fully behind rolling this out now? Kate Eden: Yeah, I mean, I think now that we've seen what we can do and the type of data that's coming through from sales, this is now the new. This is the bar. Paul Marden: Oh. So it has made a discernible difference to say. Kate Eden: So early data from Easter is really promising. Yeah. So this is the benchmark now from all of the other sites. Nia Elias: Hi, Paul. Hi, I'm Nia. Paul Marden: Lovely to meet you. Tell me about your role at the museum. Nia Elias: I am Director of Relationships and Funding. It basically means I get to work with all of the teams across the museum that work on the reputation, the reach, but also the revenue of this wonderful charity and national museum that we are. Because as well as getting funding from Welsh government, we raise our own income so it can be invested.Paul Marden: What sort of split? Nia Elias: What sort of split? So the majority of the money that comes to us does come from Welsh government because we're a public service, we're here free of charge for the people of Wales and we look after the national collection, which is over 5 million items across seven museums and a collection centre. Nia Elias: But there's a proportion then of money that we raise ourselves about sort of 30%, which is from our cafes and our car parks and the experiences that people have, and most importantly, our shops. Paul Marden:  So what was the inspiration for this project? Why kick off a strategy project around the whole retail experience? Nia Elias:  Well, this whole project, in essence started three and a half years ago when the museum decided that it would bring a strategy together for all of its self generated income. So that means our philanthropic income generation and through our enterprise, including our retail. And from a retail perspective, we knew that what we wanted to achieve with all of the money that we raise ourselves is that it's really rooted in the collection, because we have an amazing collection. It tells the story of Wales and it's owned by the people of Wales. Paul Marden: Right. Nia Elias: And from a retail perspective, we knew if people could engage with that and could take away something from the wonderful experience that they've had on site, that it would be something that they would want and it would make it unique that it's only possible to have here. Developing a project like this is quite challenging. You need the time, you need the teams and expertise, some of which are on your permanent team, some of which are naturally not. And also you need investment. And so by starting the thinking and the route of where we wanted to get to three and a half years ago, it meant when we had the funding and the opportunity to do so here at Big Pit, we knew exactly what to do. Paul Marden: Okay, so you. You put all of those pieces together and then came here and did the first cookie cutter stamp. But what's interesting is it's not a cookie cutter stamp, is it? This totally feels like the gift shop for this museum, doesn't it?. Nia Elias:  Yeah. So we feel really strongly that we wanted the balance of knowing that you're at a National Museum Wales site, knowing that you're somewhere unique, but equally that it has a sense of a place. Because all of our seven museums together tell the holistic story of Wales, but you really get a sense of personality on all of those sites, not just from the collection and the buildings and the items, but also from the colleagues that work here as well. Paul Marden: Right. Nia Elias: They're very much a part of that in terms of the stories that they tell, their lived experiences, and we had a sense of responsibility and fun to bring that through in the shop. Not just the ambiance, but also the products themselves, so much of them, the majority of them actually, are grounded in being inspired by the collection in some way, and also has a really strong Welsh and local profit as well. What we think that will come through to our customers and visitors and guests is that because we've worked across all of the teams in the museum, so curators and people who care for the collection, our colleagues here at Big Pit, many of whom are former miners, and our colleagues front of house, it means that everybody will be able to speak about the product. Nia Elias: So as you're walking around picking things up, imagining them in your home or as gifts, our colleagues can talk about what they mean to the place. And that brings something additional that you can't really buy. Paul Marden: Yeah. There's a story to it. There's a background to it that roots it. Yeah. Lovely. For you, what's the standout experience from the whole project? What have you enjoyed the most? Nia Elias: Two things I think in terms of the way that it's been done, the fact that so many teams have worked together behind the scenes to make it happen. That means that as we want to change things or tweak things or improve things, we'll have all of the knowledge and expertise already baked in, especially learning from other suppliers who've come along and helped us. So we've got that baked in now, which is really exciting. And the second thing is that I can stand here knowing that this is the standard of a national museum that our guests and visitors expect and want to see. Paul Marden: And now let's hear from a few of the external partners that Kath brought into the project. Arantxa Garcia was the shop designer and visual merchandiser. Anya Kirkby was responsible for product development. And Guy Veal was responsible for sound design. Tell me about your involvement in the project. Arantxa Garcia: Sure. So I'm the shop designer and visual merchandiser. It's a freelance role, so. So I worked with the team, Matthew, Richard, Anne and Guy. Paul Marden: Excellent. Arantxa Garcia: So we kind of all came as part of a team and each one of us looked after different areas of the project. And my involvement was to kind of reinvent and reimagine what was already here. And the idea was to create a space that was connected to the experience and to the site itself. So we've basically ripped the space apart. We've kind of kept the structure, obviously, but we've opened up the space as well. Before the shop, it would be very separate. You'd have admissions and then you have the shop area, which meant that you were only really accessing the shop if you came to visit the site. But as a local, you wouldn't be able to come, for example. Or you could, but maybe not in such an open way. Paul Marden: Yeah, you wouldn't feel welcome. Arantxa Garcia: Exactly, exactly. You may not want to just because you didn't know, whereas now you can just come in and basically hang around and also browse the shop. Exactly. We took inspiration from life underground, from the mine itself. So before the building was white, the units were white, so it could be a shop anywhere. You know, it didn't really have a DNA, so to speak, or an identity that related it directly to the site. So when visiting down to the underground and King Call as well, the exhibition that we've got just up the hill, we took inspiration from basically sort of like the. The cladding that you've got on the walls. Cladding is not the right word. So if one of the miners hears me saying that, they'll be. Arantxa Garcia: That's not the word that we told you, but the idea is that all the materiality that we're using, it's really evocative of. Of the site and it's the materials that have been used underground. So even, like the safety lamps, they'll set authentic safety lamps. And the team on site, Dwayne Smith, has electrified them. So it means that now they work, obviously, as a normal light, but it's a safety. Paul Marden: But they are the original safety. Arantxa Garcia: They are the original safety. Paul Marden: Wowsers. And what about these styles? Arantxa Garcia: So, yes, I always like going for a hunt on the side. So basically the team took me to different rooms and we just found stuff, if you like. So they're like the pressure gauges, you know, we're gonna use them just to add, again, like, references to the site and the authenticity, of course. So you also find loads of tools that would have been used underground as well. Paul Marden: I would imagine that this has been a really enjoyable project for you. I can see it on your face, how much you've enjoyed it. Arantxa Garcia: It has. And I think for designers, sometimes there's projects that take a bit longer to emerge and you keep changing things because you just don't feel probably quite right. There's something. But with this one, it kind of. After the site visit, it was just. Paul Marden: I clicked immediately.Arantxa Garcia: It just clicked immediately. So we darkened the wall. So we've kind of given that sort of grey background just to kind of creating more of like a cosy and shrinking the space. Paul Marden: But you. It pops the orange. Arantxa Garcia: Exactly. And the orange is everywhere. So, like, we've also changed the lighting, so it's a lot warmer. So again, that hint of orange. Yeah, orange on the back, orange on the miners on here. And then it comes also from the products. So the identity is there, but without going fully corporate, if that makes sense. That's the colour that you remember, isn't it? You've just been on the ground. All our guides and miners wear the orange overalls and the sort of, like the blue jackets over it, whether it's a donkey jacket in the winter or then they wear the soft shells as well. So, yeah, it's all those details, like those hints to the experience that kind of are embedded in the design. And these are regional as well. The drums are regional, all the flatbeds. Arantxa Garcia:  So the team here took the metal sides off and then sort of like left the skeleton of the drum, varnished it. And then our shop fitters aren't here. They did all the sort of the cladding using reclaimed scaffolding boards. But the original Drums would have been made out of wood. Paul Marden: Beautiful. It's so tactile, isn't it? Arantxa Garcia:  It's tactile. Again, we're looking at the DNA all the time. And shops can be more than just shops. Shops can tell stories. You just connect with it in a very different way. And just having the time the team on site involved has been absolutely incredible. Like the sense of pride and belonging and provenance that this kind of has awakened, it's been great. It's your job done really as a designer. When you just feel like everyone owns it, that's your job, that's when you can walk away. Paul Marden: What an amazing testimonial for you and the work that everyone feels like that. Anya, lovely to meet you. Tell me, what was your involvement in the project? Anya Kirkby: So I mainly focused on product development. So we looked at where we could get inspiration from the site and how we could translate that really from the site experience into the shop experience as well. Paul Marden: Okay, so you're coming, you're experiencing what's going on and then looking to the outside world as to how you can source your products. Where do you go for the inspiration for the products? Anya Kirkby: Working with the team a lot. So Amy was a huge help on guiding us on what things would be very useful for visitors, what they really enjoyed when they were on site, what were their key take home messages that they experienced. And then working with Amy and Tracey as well to look at what products people like when they're in the shop anyway and how we can kind of marry those two up. Paul Marden: So what is it that people like when they come to Big Pit? Anya Kirkby: Well, unsurprisingly, the mine, they enjoy the mines, the mining experience. So that was just something that we already had in the shop. So we just expanded on that more if possible. But then we've also taken inspiration from signage. So they already had the original Big Pit signage and we looked at that and kind of again expanded on it. So then we've kind of expanded that to signage that you find in some of the other exhibits. So up in the showers, for example, in the canteen, signage, some of the original pieces from collections. We then translated that into products. So you'll see we've got the designs across mugs, original little metal signs, moved that across to prints, notebooks, postcards. Paul Marden: You've been developing a lot of the products yourself, so bringing that kind of the unifying feel to everything. Anya Kirkby: Yeah. So along with product development and making all the kind of the new things that we can have it's just bringing across the branding through the AC brand really strongly across everything. It's got such a strong message that we may as well have that on as many products as we possibly can do. Paul Marden: And how much of the stuff is actually locally sourced? Anya Kirkby: Oh, it's huge amounts. And the exciting thing is after speaking to Amy, the things that she needs to reorder are the local suppliers, which is so nice. So a lot of the confectionery that's locally sourced candles, soap, the coal figures, the wooden spoons, chocolate boxes, the biscuit boxes. So as much as possible. And then we've worked with local suppliers as well to do photography, to do some of the signage, to do the original signwriting in the shop as well. So beyond products, we've looked at the POS points like elements of the shop as well. So thankfully we've used as many local spires as we possibly can. Paul Marden: You've enjoyed this project, haven't you? Anya Kirkby: I absolutely loved it, yeah. It's fantastic to see it's absolutely amazing. Paul Marden: Yeah. Anya Kirkby: So yeah, it's really special. Paul Marden: And then from here you springboard on to the other seven sites. How do you, how do you come up with the ideas then? Anya Kirkby: Exactly the same process. So working with the teams to find out what it is that visitors absolutely love about their sites and bringing that into the shop experience. So again I get very lucky. I get to go around a lot museums and experience it. Paul Marden: It's a tough job, isn’t it?Anya Kirkby: It's tricky. But basically finding out what they love and bringing that through the really things that visitors take home with them anyway and just making it into a product that they can actually physically take a piece of the museum home with them as well. Paul Marden: It's great because there are some pocket money items here because I take kids on school visits and it's a very expensive experience. You know, if they catch take a fiver with them, often they can't get anything with a fiver but they can walk in and they've got pencils, they've got rubbers and they'll walk out happy with those little bits. But at the same time you've got some beautiful stuff that the grown ups can come and pick up and really enjoy. Anya Kirkby: It's the same as any museum visitor. You kind of have to look at who's going to be visiting. It's all types of people that come and just gauging it from that as well. So having an offer for everyone that they can enjoy. Someone said to me once that children for the first time. It's often their first time having a transaction monetary wise. Is that a museum on a school trip? So it's just lovely to kind of have something for them to experience that as well. Paul Marden: Never thought of it like that. They're out on their own. They're not with mum and dad. So they've got the money themselves and they've got to make the decision. So we are at. I took some kids to the science museum last year. Anya Kirkby: Oh. Paul Marden: And the amount of time we took in the shop because of the indecision that they had. Anya Kirkby: It's the indecision decision and then the queue of all them having a five pound note and having all the change come back or not having quite enough. But I think it's such an important. If you can't do that in a museum, where can you do it? Paul Marden: Guy. Hi. Guy Veale: Hi. Paul Marden: I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about what was your part of the project? Guy Veale: I was sound designer for the soundscape which we can't hear when everyone's chatting. Paul Marden: I can hear some birds in the background. Is that. Guy Veale: Is that canaries? Living canaries. Not dead gas. Paul Marden:  Coal mine canary. Guy Veale: So I did a little bit of research sort of towards the end of the project after lots of stuff had been built in, when they decided that some low level sound would be a good part of the experience. And looking at the brief and the shape of the room, the acoustics, a lot of this new ducting that's gone in that was not then easy to put cables into. We had to go for a wireless solution. Paul Marden:  Okay. Guy Veale: As part of that I found a Swedish company that had a system that creates its own network which is like a weird dream because normally you've got to go the IT guys and then something goes wrong and there's some sort of address problems or. Bluetooth is not always reliable. This has been a revolution just in terms of. Guy Veale: Don't if you can see them. There's little. They look like light fixtures that are centrally over these panels. Paul Marden: Oh right. Guy Veale: And they're quite. Paul Marden: Oh. And so they're speaking speakers pointing down onto the panel to separate it. So what. What. The other kind of sound pictures that you're painting. We've got the canary. What else have you got? Guy Veale: So the whole idea is that you're trying to represent the industrial heritage of the site and have as many authentic sounds from the site as possible. Paul Marden: Right. Guy Veale: So we've reused some of the really high quality recordings that also feature at different parts of the site already. Paul Marden: Yep. Guy Veale: But then, also sourced about another 70 or 80 sound from the BBC archive. Paul Marden: Oh, wow. Guy Veale: Paid for. And so. But if you think about those sounds, they're quite punctuated and aggressive. You think of any industrial sound and like chipping away or different tipples working. You know, the idea is that you don't want to surprise someone that while they're shopping and leaning over next to a speaker and hearing. So it needed to be softened in some way. And you know, traditionally the way I've done work is music and sound design is using different textures and tonal design and like a drone, I suppose, is this as a sort of basis that can be moving and organic, not totally static? Paul Marden: Yeah. Guy Veale:  And the idea was to sort of try and include fragments of relevant songs using the male voice choir.Paul Marden:  Really.Guy Veale: And we tried several things and I looked at it and I realised that you might catch someone coming in for five minutes here and they catch a snippet and it's all well and good for them, but the staff and you've got to hear this eight hours a day, every day, you know, four weeks, a month, so forth. So even just one little identifiable recurring melody starts to get too much, even on quite a long five. Paul Marden: Oh, really? Guy Veale: And I found that it wasn't sustainable. So I, in the end, I ended up using the. Almost like the vocal warm ups and breaths of the choir artificially extended out so they're not breathing, just this constant low level, breathy sort of expulsion. I mean, if went quiet now, we'd hear it as the. As a backdrop and it's embedded with a few other little musical elements that just sort of try and soften and support. I think of it like the vowels of the track and then the consonants. Paul Marden: Or the industrial chipping noises and the harsher noises. Guy Veale: So they're harsher but they're there and they're a bit removed and reverberate and in the background. Paul Marden: But it's really interesting how you describe it in that kind of. Using the metaphor of the letters. Guy Veale: Yeah, that's what it felt like. Just trying to find something that was like a vocabulary of work that has to tick so many different boxes, including like a therapeutic retail experience. People leaving the site with a sense of well being. Also like summarising what they've been through, not sort of projecting them out the door with, you know, a completely new thing or somewhere that they haven't been through yet. So, you know, fair few things to try and fit in there and, you know, hopefully it works and we'll see how things are in a year's time. Paul Marden: Yeah. Cath, the last point I wanted touch on before we finish today is oh my God, how happy everybody was at that event yesterday. How positive the experience was for all of the team members. What was for you the big standout moment for the entire project? Catherine Pinkerton: I mean, there's so many, Paul. But I think for me it's an opportunity to see what can be achieved when people collaborate. And I think, you know, joining the museum three years ago is really collaborating with lots of different departments to achieve something as a team.Catherine Pinkerton: Teamwork is absolutely the key to kind of success and I think you can only achieve that by having that really product professional kind of embodiment with all of the collaborative teams to work together for the same goal. And I, I was really proud yesterday that it took a lot of work, but actually without a team of 40 people as well as the wider organisation, it would not have been, it was no mean feat, but it was certainly wasn't just down to one person saying this is my project because it was a team effort. Catherine Pinkerton: And I was so proud of everybody that was there to kind of thank them along the way to say, this is, we've done this and now onwards and upwards. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. You should be so proud. It really was. Catherine Pinkerton: Thank you. Paul Marden:  It's a demonstration of what a museum gift shop experience can really be like when you work together like that, when you collaborate. So well done to all of you. It was such a lovely experience yesterday. Thank you for inviting me. Catherine Pinkerton: Thank you so much for coming, Paul. I appreciate it. Paul Marden: Before we go though, I always ask for a book recommendation from our guests. Now it would have bankrupted me to have asked everybody yesterday for book recommendations. So you have to take the responsibility of a recommendation on behalf of everybody. What have you got for me? Catherine Pinkerton: The secret for me is, you know, that that book seems to be. I always go back to that book very often and I think it's a key one for lots of areas. So that's definitely a takeaway for me. But the other one I'm reading at the moment called A Monk's Guide to Happiness. I'm not sure if you've had enough to read it. Yeah, it's a 21st century take on A Monk's Guide. It's written by Gelong Thubten and he had a very high powered job and he had a burnout and interestingly he changed his whole mindset in terms of what makes him happy and really making it quite basic. Right. Catherine Pinkerton: So it's a, it's a real eye opener in terms of just pulling things back sometimes, you know, at the end of the day, come on, let's just live life and be happy but, you know, not stress out about things. I'm quite easy to do that. So this is very much a. Just breathe, Kath, get through it. But it's a good one. If you want to just strip it back and just kind of understanding the basics of being happy, then, yeah, he's great. Paul Marden: Oh, Cath, that's a great recommendation. If you go over to Bluesky and repost the show message that Wenalyn put out and say, I want Kath's book, then the first person that does that will get a copy of the book sent to them. Kath, it was absolutely delightful. I enjoyed my day wandering around Big Pit yesterday no end. Given that half my family is from the valleys and most of them were miners, I feel like I should have done this a very long time ago. But it was lovely. And to enjoy the experience of the celebration that you had yesterday, it was a real privilege. So thank you. Catherine Pinkerton: Oh, huge privilege to have you there. Paul. Thank you so much. I'm really appreciative. Did you purchase? Paul Marden: I did purchase on my way out. Catherine Pinkerton: Yay. Great, great, great.Paul Marden: Deal. Catherine Pinkerton: Deal. Thank you so much. Paul Marden: So after my trip 90 metres down to the bottom of the mine shaft, where I of course couldn't take microphones, I'm now back up on the surface, microphones back in hand and enjoying myself, wandering around currently in the winding house, which is where all the machinery is for lifting the cages that 90 metres down to the bottom of the pit head. I've had an amazing day here at Big Pit. It's been so interesting to see this museum and to talk to many of the amazing staff that have taken part in this big project to redesign their gift shops. Highly recommend a day trip to Big Pit. Really has been very enjoyable, if for no other reason, to see that amazing new gift shop experience. Paul Marden: Now, as always, if you'd like a copy of Catherine's book, head over to Blue sky and repost the show notice that Wenalyn will post out and say, I want a copy of Catherine's book and the first person to do that will get that copy sent over to them. So all that remains for me to say is thank you to Catherine for inviting me here to Big Pit today. And I'll see you again soon. Take care. Bye Bye. 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 to find us. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them to increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcripts from this episode and more over on our website, skipthequeue fm.  The 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsDownload the 2024 Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

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  50:58
• 25 Years of the Millennium Projects - Dynamic Earth

  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.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 SkiptheQueue.fm.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  or Bluesky for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 7th May 2025. The winner will be contacted via Bluesky. Show references: Dynamic Earth website: https://dynamicearth.org.uk/Dynamic Earth X: https://x.com/ourdynamicearthDynamic Earth LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/our-dynamic-earth-dynamic-earth-enterprises-ltd-dynamic-earth-charitable-trust-/Mark Bishop joined Dynamic Earth in the summer of 2022. The Edinburgh Science Centre & Planetarium provides science engagement to over 250,000 people a year at the centre and across Scotland. Prior to joining Dynamic Earth, Mark was a director at the National Trust for Scotland for seven years. In the 23 years Mark has been in the voluntary sector, he has also held senior roles at Prostate Cancer UK, Leonard Cheshire Disability and The Royal British Legion. His commercial sector experience includes roles at HarperCollins, Sky, and he co-founded two Internet start-ups. He continues to be a Trustee of Dads Rock, which is a charity dedicated to supporting men to be great parents. Transcriptions: Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in and working with visitor Attractions. I'm your host, Paul Marden. The Millennium Commission was set up by the UK Government to celebrate the turn of the millennium. Funded by the National Lottery, not only did it fund the Millennium Dome, now the O2, it also funded many regional venues, including a number of science centres such as Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh, which was the first major millennium attraction in Edinburgh. In this episode, I'm talking to Mark Bishop, the CEO of Dynamic Earth, about those millennium babies and what the next 25 years looks for them. After a career in charity fundraising, Mark moved to the attraction sector in 2015 at the National Trust for Scotland, before becoming CEO of Dynamic Earth nearly three years ago. Now let's get into the interview. Paul Marden: Mark, welcome to Skip the Queue. Mark Bishop: Hi. Morning. How are you? Paul Marden: I'm very good. I'm very good on a very sunny morning here down in Hampshire at the moment. I don't know what the Easter holidays are like up there for you at the moment, Mark. Mark Bishop: Well, people always talk about the weather being different in Scotland, so here in Edinburgh, we had the most amazing first week of spring last week, and that made me sad because indoor visitor attractions often benefit from when it's cloudy or rainy. So I am delighted to say the second half of Easter is terrible outside, but amazing inside our building. Paul Marden: Oh, good. So, visitor numbers are good for you this Easter holiday, are they? Mark Bishop: Well, we had probably the best number of people in since COVID Yesterday. We had 1302 people in. Paul Marden: Wowsers.Mark Bishop: That's great, because to have families and groups in celebrating science in our building during their holiday time makes me happy. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, went. I've been doing day trips with my daughter just recently over the Easter break and you can definitely feel there's lots of people out and about and enjoying themselves over these Easter holidays. So good to hear that it's been kind to you as well. Longtime listeners will know that we always start our interviews with an icebreaker question that you cannot prepare for. So I think I've been kind to you. I've got a couple for you here. This is an A or B question. If you're going out for a night out, is it going to be a concert or is it going to be a museum nighttime exhibition? Mark Bishop: I think I'm supposed to, on behalf of the sector, go for the latter, but I am going to answer it in an authentic way and say A, a concert. So before I had kids, I'd probably go to about 150 concerts a year. Really, in the days when NME existed and it had a print edition and I'd pretty much just buy it, flick it and go, that looks interesting. And go without ever even hearing things because Spotify didn't exist and he goes to stuff and it was terrible or brilliant, but I loved it just from the variety and the surprise factor. Obviously, these days we kind of plan our music events a bit better. We know the artists and in theory we make better choices. But perhaps we don't do such good random things as well. Who knows? Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, now this one's a little bit more in depth. If there is a skill that you could master immediately, what would it be? Mark Bishop: Trying to understand how my three kids think and how I need to respond to that. But I don't think I'm the only parent on the planet that loves seeing the variety of ways they behave. But just question, how on earth did they come to be and think like that? Paul Marden: Yeah, it sounds like almost a kind of being able to speak child and become an interpreter, a child whisperer. Mark Bishop: And I think we, you know, sort of kind of be a bit more profound about these things. As an Earth Science Centre, that predominantly kind of has family audience, actually, some of the best questions we get are from younger people. So sometimes minds are probably more open and liberated. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's a nice segue, isn't it? So why don't you tell us a little bit about the Dynamic Earth? What stories does the Dynamic Earth try to tell? Mark Bishop: So Dynamic Earth, for those who don't know it, is the Edinburgh Science Centre and Planetarium. And as I'm sure we'll talk about, we were the first out of the millennium babies to launch back on 2nd July 1999. Our building predates being a science centre. It used to be a Scottish and Newcastle brewery. So when people say, I can't organise the proverbial in a brewery, I go, possibly released half row. And in the mid-1990s, they stopped making beer and handed the land over to public benefit. And it's become the UK's leading Earth science centre. So we're very much a science centre, but we're a science centre with a very specific theme around our planet and our universe and the experiences are very deliberately immersive. Mark Bishop: So we allow people to experience in a safe way what it feels like to be in an earthquake, to see a volcanic eruption, to touch a real iceberg, to dive to the bottom of the ocean and then fly out to the outer reaches of space. And we do all of that because we think our planet is beautiful and fascinating and the wonders of the world need to be celebrated. But increasingly, we also want to showcase the perils we're placing on our planet, our only home. We have about a quarter million people come through our doors a year, and that would be families, that'd be tour groups. There'll be a lot of school groups coming in, 30,000 kind of school groups coming in, and then we have about 400 conferences and events a year. Mark Bishop: So we have everything from Arctic conferences, water resilient conferences, and electric aeroplane conferences. You name it, we have it in our building. And I think a lot of the conferences have keynote speakers that tend to be first ministers or senior politicians, because unless somebody can tell me otherwise, I think we are the closest science centre in the world to a seat of government, because the Scottish parliament is 10 yards across the road. Paul Marden: Excellent. So you have the year of government as well? Mark Bishop: We like to think so. Paul Marden: So I've not been to Dynamic Earth yet, and I need to solve that problem. Yeah. But I'm getting a picture in my mind of telling the story around the geology of the planet, and there's going to be lots of physics around. The planetary stuff that you talk about when you take that big zoom out. Are there other elements of the science, the different sciences, that you bring into this storytelling? Is there elements of biology and botany and things like that you bring into this? Mark Bishop: Yeah, absolutely. So, for example, one of the galleries I didn't mention to you is a rainforest gallery. So you go into a tropical rainforest, regardless of what the weather is like outside in Edinburgh and Scotland, you come into a tropical rainforest, but the sounds and smells and sensations of that rainforest immerse you. And we do that because, you know, probably very few people will travel in their lifetime to a tropical rainforest. And there's lots of environmental reasons why you probably wouldn't encourage people to do that. But to be immersed in that space and to feel what it's like to be in a rainforest allows you to understand that it's humans' relationship with the world around them, and that we're not the only beings on this planet. And so hopefully we try and humble people by realising there are other habitats and species than ourselves. Paul Marden: Excellent. So today's episode, what we want to do, we've got a series of episodes that we want to do around the Millennium Project. I've got particular interest in this because my first job whilst I was still at uni was at the National Botanic Gardens of Wales, which was a millennium project. So I was there whilst they were digging. I can vividly remember it being a building site, and this dome where they built the gardens, sort of lifted out of the earth. So I felt, I can remember being there and feeling like this was something important, we were building something for the long term. It was an exciting opportunity. And we're at this kind of big anniversary, aren't we, this year, 25 years since many of those millennium projects opened. Paul Marden: And I wanted to kind of look back on those 25 years. Did it work out the way it was planned to work out? Did it turn out to be this exciting new opportunity, building a long term legacy for the country? Were there some growing pains, that kind of thing? And what does the future, what's the next 25 years and beyond look like for those millennium babies? So let's take a little step back because although I was wearing my wellies and walking around a building site, I didn't pay a lot of attention to what drove the investment in the first place. So there was a big explosion, wasn't there, through investment from the Millennium Commission in science centres. So what drove that in the first place? Why did these science centres come into being as a result, the Millennium Commission? Mark Bishop: Well, I think the thing that probably everybody felt in the 90s, from the mid-90s onwards, was you just heard about the millennium coming, as if this was going to be a significant zeitgeist kind of piece. We're all being told that every electronic device was going to break because of the millennium bug. Paul Marden: Yes. Mark Bishop: And that one didn't come to be kind of thankfully. But I think beyond that kind of anxiety piece around technology, there was a sort of spirit of looking to the future, thinking what might be. I felt like a time of optimism and hope. And so therefore it kind of made sense for government and other agencies to invest in thinking about the future, because a lot of museums and galleries and other institutions are fantastic custodians of the past. Mark Bishop: And of course galleries and museums reflect present times in terms of exhibitions and storytelling and interpretation. But there really weren't many science centres or organisations that were specifically existing to help each of us come to terms with what hasn't yet happened. So I think that's probably the kind of founding driving spirit behind it. And Dynamic Earth was very much part of that wave. Paul Marden: You talk a little bit about being a former brewery. How did Dynamic Earth come into being? What, what was the background story to it? Because these things didn't just appear on the high street in the year 2000. They were projects that ran up to that point, weren't they? Mark Bishop: Yeah. And I love going through our limited but really important kind of archive of documents to try and understand these things. And I sort of love heritage because my last job was working at the National Trust for Scotland. So therefore I'm kind of fascinated by the past as well as kind of looking to the future. And so when I go through our kind of archives and records, it shows that we stopped being a brewery in the early 1990s. Scottish Newcastle said to themselves, you know, we want to give the space over to public benefit. At the time, it wasn't defined to be a science centre. And this part of Edinburgh, the bottom end of the Royal Mile, had a royal Palace. It's had that for a long time. But it was pretty much run down housing and factories. Mark Bishop: And so this whole end of town was very down on its luck and everything kind of needed to be thought through again. So Edinburgh City Council and other agencies like Scottish Enterprise and major kind of funders all got behind thinking about this whole part of town in Scotland's capital, rather than just thinking about a side centre. Paul Marden: Right. Mark Bishop: So the land that Scotland Newcastle gave over to doing good things was partly sold off by dynavicarth to allow, you know, to allow flats to be developed next door we've got Rockstar North. The other side of me, we've got the Scottish parliament that opens 24 hours away from Dynamic Earth kind of stuff. So they opened the same week. So it's a whole story of kind of urban capital city regeneration that lies behind that. But very specifically, why did Dynamic Earth become an Earth Science Centre? Yeah, and you can't see it, but if I dramatically look out my window, I can see Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags through Holyrood Park. Anybody who comes to Edinburgh, whose legs allow, will walk up the hill and experience an old volcano and a beautiful view of the city. Mark Bishop: And now the reason that's significant is that a guy called James Hutton, 300 years ago was a real leading light in the Enlightenment, and he managed to challenge all those kind of religious zealots in terms of the age of the planet by studying the rock forms right outside my window. And he went, “Guys, I've got a thought. This wasn't done in a day or seven days”. I'm telling you now, there's billions of years of laying down of rocks and stuff like that. And so, therefore, when we thought, what does this brewery need to become? Mark Bishop: A number of good people said, well, let's make this centre a homage to James Hutton, the idea that the Enlightenment is still alive with us today, the idea that you should be able to challenge existing hard set views by using insight and science to inform your thinking. And then the rest happened. Paul Marden: Excellent. So I didn't know that Edinburgh was the kind of the seat of that thinking around the geological history of the Earth and what drove the purpose for the centre. It makes lots of sense now. So let's talk about opening up. What was that experience like for the Dynamic Earth? I know there were lots of positives for many people. I know lots of millennium attractions didn't bring in the numbers of people that they were perhaps hoping for. What was that early life like at the centre? Mark Bishop: Well, so inevitably, anything that's new attracts a crowd of people who are curious. So the early couple of years were really good from a kind of visitor attraction side of things. But actually quite early on, within the first couple of years, my predecessors realised that you just can't, generally speaking, break even or make a profit from just running a visitor attraction, particularly when your purpose is educational rather than just pure entertainment. Paul Marden: Yes. Mark Bishop: And so our building had the answer built into it, in the sense we have an amazing set of conference suites for businesses, weddings and other kind of celebrations. And so quite early on, we started an events team and that now means we have 400 plus events here a year. Half of them, I would say, are kind of environmental science specific events. But that generates, you know, one and a half getting off £2 million of income ultimately for us. And that's very significant way of A, making sure that we are a place where ideas take place. Our convening power, if you want to call it that, but actually also the net contribution of that is a very significant way to fund any gap you have on the visitor side of things. Paul Marden: Yeah, I should imagine having the seat of Government 10 yards from the building helps with bringing in the events. And that's certainly not going to detract from the events portfolio, is it, being smack in the centre of the city like that? Mark Bishop: Well, if I think, I mean, in the space of what, the last three or four months, ie, 20, 25, we've had the first minister here two or three times, we've had the Deputy First Minister here the other evening. And so therefore, if you're a company or a conference organiser and you want to attract all the good and the great in terms of delegates, knowing there's a senior political figure to do the keynote address is a good way of making your marketing literature kind of really sing. I think, you know. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. Mark Bishop: And also from a. I guess for the politicians as well, because their time is in demand, very precious. So the idea that they can reach their key stakeholders on pretty much any topic in the space of 10 yards, half an hour here and then back at your desk within the hour, that's quite attractive from a political perspective. Paul Marden: Absolutely. So, going back to those early days, as your predecessors were finding their feet, of figuring out what operating a science centre was going to be like, what were the growing pains? Were there some challenges along the way? Mark Bishop: So, inevitably, what is brand new doesn't stay new forever. And I think if you design a science centre and retrofit it into a brewery, there's obviously some trade offs in terms of layout and the design. And you have beautiful architects come in and do amazing things for you that look amazing at a kind of brochure, aesthetic level. But when you trade them day in, day out, you do sometimes question the infinite logic behind the design principle. So, for example, if you come through Dynamic Earth, we're a beautiful tented structure like the Millennium Dome or the O2 as it is today. And if you're coming in and you're buying a ticket in person, you would turn left and go to our ticket desk and join the queue there. But then the actual experience side of things is completely on the other side of the building. Mark Bishop: So the intuitive flow of coming in, getting a ticket and joining the experience is designed in a counterintuitive way where, in effect, audiences sort of meet in the middle to a certain extent. So that's probably an example of things that you just wouldn't have got right on day one, but kind of are a gentle living curse for you every day since. Paul Marden: I wonder, though, by retrofitting the centre into this old historic brewery, whether you may not have fallen foul of some of the other attractions that were built around that time, because many of them have got problems with the fabric of the building now, haven't they, these new buildings that perhaps were built with the same level of care and attention that we might lavish on them these days. Mark Bishop: Yeah, I mean, that's a good thing. I sit in this amazing sort office that basically looks like a castle turret. The walls are this thick, you know, they are very sort of stone and authentic. So it's a very authentic historic building, but with new ideas and thinking and experiences within it. So it's a trade off, I guess. Paul Marden: Yeah. So now that these centres are getting to early adulthood, how do you think they're doing? Mark Bishop: Well. Thankfully, the vast majority of science centres and other experiences that launched inspired by the millennium are still in existence. So survival in the first instance is a form of success. And I think that the fact that we're open shows we've all stood the test of time, which I think is an important achievement. I think what's clear from talking to all the science centres that I bump into is we all find it quite challenging to get that balance between your purpose and your profit, trying to get that balance between why you exist in the first place versus how you fund the building, your staff and your other bills. And so that's an ongoing kind of challenge that the original business plans are used to justify an investment probably don't reflect reality 25 years on. Mark Bishop: I think the other thing I would say that's a real shift is I think centres like Dynamic Earth were opened at the time when the Internet was absolutely in its infancy.Paul Marden: Completely. Mark Bishop: And I still remember from my homework and university work, going to libraries and getting books and using physical things to kind of acquire knowledge. And of course, the Internet now means that any facts and figures are available at the touch of a button. So if you want to know about a volcano, you can find as many facts and figures as you want on the Internet, Wikipedia or other sources. It means that Dynamic Earth and other science centres have kind of shifted from simply thinking about ourselves as a knowledge exchange centre to being a place where we inspire people to think for themselves and that. Mark Bishop: I don't know whether that happened on day 4009 or whatever it was, but I definitely think that when you look at what were doing on day one versus what we're doing in our 25th year, there's been a shift in emphasis and approach. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. You're right that all of these facts and figures are the fingertips of the young people who are completely immersed in that as a natural way for them to research. But I've done enough school party visits, I've taken kids to different science centres, and you can't replace the storytelling, you can't replace being immersed in the place that is so powerful. Mark Bishop: I think 100% agree, and you'd be surprised if I didn't say that. But the idea that you learn as a shared experience, either as a school group or a family or a tall group, you have some jokes, you bounce ideas off of each other. And I saw that recently when my daughter came here a few months back for her last primary school visit, aged just 11, coming at 12.  And she begs me over breakfast, she said, “Please, Dad, don't do anything to embarrass me.” And I absolutely, solemnly swore at breakfast, you know, I will not do anything to embarrass you today. And I maintain I kept my promise. Mark Bishop: But when her school bus pulled up outside our building, the doors open, the kids poured out, my daughter's friends all pointed up to the top of the stairs and went, “There's a dinosaur there, Autumn, that's your dad. It's going to be your dad. You know that.” And I hope that you know that their school group had an amazing experience through the galleries, an amazing experience with our learning team and a fantastic sort of outer space experience in the planetarium. But even that sort of jokey bit of Dad's a dinosaur stayed with the kids. So at the end of their year's show, one of them hired a dinosaur outfit and they reenacted my daughter's embarrassment. And so even that tiny, silly example shows that shared experience is what it's all about. Paul Marden: Completely. I think those experiences that kids have when they go out on their school trips, it's something that Bernard et ALVA talked about earlier on this year as being really important, key points for that ALVA was asking of the government, was to make those school trips integral part of the curriculum. I think they're so powerful and so many kids don't get to experience that well. Mark Bishop: I think the challenge we sort of see here that be the same across Scotland and UK wide is even when there are opportunities to have subsidised tickets and you do everything you can to make sure the price of entry for school groups is as low as possible, often the barrier is the cost of the coach hire. Paul Marden: So I'm a governor at my daughter's school and I was talking to the head and they're in a really lucky position because they've got us. They're a very small village school, so there's only 90, 95 kids in total anyway. But they've got their own minibus which makes them mobile, so it means that any. We were at the Horse Crest, like the local heritage railway, just recently because we got invited for a trip and it was dead easy for us to go straight away. Yes. Because the kids can just get there easily and that's a different kettle of fish if you've got to hire coaches, because it's so perilously expensive now. Anyway, we digress a little bit. You've been in post now for three years, nearly three years, I think it is. Yeah. Paul Marden: What does your plan look like in the short term, but also what do you think the next 25 years look like for Dynamic Earth? Mark Bishop: I think that question sort of speaks to the idea that while an organisation should be proud of its 25 years of existence and everything it's done in that time, and we've certainly had some lovely staff celebrations and public celebrations to celebrate that important milestone. It's too self indulgent to spend all your time looking back rather than thinking about and facing into the future. And that's probably more true of science centres than anybody else, because if you were founded on looking to the future, you get to 25 years. Mark Bishop: Yes, have a little look back, but bang, think about looking forward to the future again and ask yourselves brave questions like what do we need to do that honours the spirit of what our founders did and thought about to put us together in the first place and not to betray our roots, but equally not to be constrained by them. Because the world is very different 25 years on, and particularly around the climate emergency and planetary crisis. We at Dynamic Earth, as an Earth Science Centre, feel not just an opportunity, but a kind of absolute responsibility to play our part, to kind of really shift the dial around helping people understand their role and responsibility when it comes to protecting our only home planet Earth. And so that's the kind of challenge we've set ourselves. Mark Bishop: And I'm going to do a dangerous thing of involving a prop. About 18 months, two years ago, we launched our 10 year strategy from beginning to end, and it's a document at the end of. But the exact summary is this. And of course you can see there's a clock there and you might be able to see the kind of temperature, kind of pieces, and the 1.5 is the 1 that we know quite tragically we're going to reach sometime very soon. And what we've done with that 10 year strategy is say how do we honour what we've been famous for, but how do we push and pivot that towards climate kind of response storytelling? Mark Bishop: And so therefore what we are trying to work through for ourselves is how do you maintain a popular visitor attraction? How do you inspire people, bring entertainment and delight into people's lives, but how do you absolutely hit home with some really hard truths around what we are doing to destroy the beauty of our only hope? Mark Bishop: And I'm not sure I've quite got the answers to that because becoming sort of quite purposeful and, you know, risks being didactic. And being didactic takes away the idea that you're helping people to think for themselves and risks being a bit preachy. So there's a really good set of conversations going on at Dynamic Earth and I think a lot of other places across the UK, which is, how do you, how do you exist on the right side of history while still existing as a visitor attraction? Paul Marden: Yes, because it is a tough story to tell, isn't it? And that doesn't necessarily sit comfortably with being a lovely day out with the family, but that doesn't take away from the importance of telling the story and telling it well. Mark Bishop: And I think what we feel is, if there's one criticism I'd kind of make of the past is we probably overdefined ourselves as a visitor attraction and underdefined ourselves as an Earth science education charity that happens to run the visitor attraction. And that might feel semantic, but actually it's quite fundamental because if you realise that your purpose is about educating people inclusively across Scotland, including in Edinburgh, and now increasingly helping people come to terms with climate issues, then your visitor attraction is a tool, a prop, an asset to achieve a bigger thought than just visiting numbers. Paul Marden: So is there work that you do, outreach work that goes beyond the centre in Edinburgh? Are you talking to people outside of that centre? Mark Bishop: Absolutely. And some of the work that makes me most proud of being chief exec here at Dynamic Earth is the stuff you do not see day in, day out. So we have outreach work that goes into schools and community groups right across Scotland. There's about 10 regional science festivals that take place across the year. We're at every one of those with our pop up planetarium, it's got an inflatable planetarium. Unbelievably, 30 people can slip inside a big squishy tent, and the universe comes to life wherever you happen to be. And that's kind of pretty magnificent. We go into children's hospitals, we work with community groups, we do digital and in person delivery in schools. And so therefore what we do away from Dynamic Earth as a science centre is as important as what we do at the centre. Mark Bishop: Because probably the people who might not be able to come to us for geographic reasons or financial or cultural reasons are often the people we most need to reach. And if we really believe that everybody in Scotland should play their individual and collective part in responding to climate planetary emergencies, we can't just say, well, if you don't come to us, we're not going to come to you. Because the climate issues need all of us to respond. So we have the added burden opportunity to get out there and tell our story across Scotland with that in mind. Paul Marden: Is there a shake up that's going on in the centre as you move on to this next stage of the maturity of the organisation? Mark Bishop: So I think that the things that are different in our approach is thinking about channel mix and that we kind of music to your ears because I think that science centres absolutely pride themselves on that in person shared experience, and that shouldn't go away. But actually thinking about how a one off experience is part of a longer customer or supporter journey is really key. So how do you connect with people before they come? By setting them, I know, a kind of online quiz and say how many of these questions about our planet can you answer? And then ask people to redo the quiz afterwards and see whether a visit to Dynamic Earth or another science centre has enriched their kind of knowledge. Mark Bishop: How do you connect what a family does on a Saturday to what a school group do in a classroom on a Tuesday and Wednesday? How do you get to what I call a nudge strategy, a multiple engagement kind of model? Because it strikes me that most things that, you know, mean something to people are developed over time rather than just one off experiences. So that's a shift in thinking, and it's a shift in thinking by not thinking for yourself as a visitor attraction, but thinking for yourself as a charity that exists to promote learning and engagement more broadly. Paul Marden: That's really interesting. So I'm totally guilty of thinking about the visitor attraction first and the commercial elements of it, because I guess that's our job is to get bumps on seats and to drive revenue. But when you think of that visitor attraction as the tool, not the end, you're using that tool to meet your bigger goals, aren't you? And it changes your perspective on how you do that. Mark Bishop: Well, it does because it allows you to sort of exist in a dual way of saying at a customer, experiential level, digital attraction side of things. How do you make sure that the experience you offer to people is distinctive, compelling, exciting and all the basic service features of toilets, cafe, shop, all this car parking, all those sorts of things on the functional side are doing what they need to do and then it means on the other side that you're also saying, “So what? you know, what is that trip all about? What did somebody take away?” Mark Bishop: And part of what people take away is that sense of shared experience, fun, entertainment, something to do on a wet Saturday afternoon. And that's valuable. But if you fundamentally help even a small proportion of your audience think radically different about themselves and the world around them. You might be doing something that goes way beyond what this attraction could ever imagine. Paul Marden: Yes, absolutely. So is that what you're aiming for? Is it the few minds that you can change radically, or is it the nudge of making small changes to the larger numbers of people that walk through the door? Mark Bishop: I mean, the answer to that is both, because we think every one of us has an opportunity and a responsibility to do basic things. So, I mean, the obvious good examples would be how you recycle stuff. And I look at my teenage boys, are they always recycling things in the best way or am I going through the bin resisting things? But then you ask more fundamental questions of, well, it's not just a case of recycling the bottle of plastic water. Why did you buy a bottle of plastic water in the first place? Yes, this stuff like that. Mark Bishop: And so a science centre like us helps people not just do the right thing in kind of lip service ways, but think more fundamentally about your role and relationship with what excites you at school, what studies you take, what degree you might go on to take, or what job are you going to go on to do? And how do you make sure that where you buy things from, where you work, where you spend your time is reinforcing the good rather than perpetuating the bad? And that's, you know, maybe I'm an idealist, maybe I'm a lack of realism, but actually I really do think that on our day, that's what we exist to do. Mark Bishop: And there will be maybe 1%, 2% of the people who come through our doors who are so inspired by science that they choose careers that are acting as environmental activists. I can think of a lovely lady I met the other day. I'll change her name to Laura. She told me that she came To Dynamic Earth 20 years ago for our Saturday science clubs and she used to come most Saturday mornings. And she so fell in love with science that she chose science subjects at school, went on to do a science degree and is now just finishing off a PhD in understanding volcanoes with a view that she wants to look at volcanic eruptions, where they happen and help think about where humans live alongside volcanoes. So all of that came from her coming here on Saturday mornings. Mark Bishop: So she is living proof that you inspire people young, and it can inform the whole direction of their studies and clear intention.Paul Marden: And deadline. Yeah, completely. What a lovely story to end on, but there's one more thing we have to do before we end today's Interview. We always end with a book recommendation. So, Mark, what book have you got for our listeners to maybe win today? Mark Bishop: So it will sound slightly sort of sanctimonious, but I've just started reading Mike Berners-Lee's book, A Climate of Truth. Now, Mike was in Edinburgh the other evening to do a talk as part of the Edinburgh Science Festival. Such an inspirational guy in terms of kind of climate, sustainability kind of issues. His mum must be very proud to have him. And you know, his, you know, one of the boys invents the Internet, the other one saves the planet. You sort of think to yourself, that ain't too bad. And I'm going to cheat slightly. And also just recommend one poem to people. It's Scottish poet Douglas Dunn. And it's a poem that I first heard when I was at school and I would say I read it probably 20 times a year. Mark Bishop: And the poem is called A Removal From Terry Street and it's only about 15 lines. And what I love about it is it finishes on that, on a beautiful line. That man, I wish him well, I wish him grass. And the context the poem is talking about a family removing, you know, working class family moving away from Hull and the neighbour is looking at them moving out and saying, you know, I wish him well, I wish him grass. And so I think that's just a lovely line that stayed with me. It speaks to the idea that we should all think the best of each other and hope for the futur, and think positive thoughts. Paul Marden: Well, Mark, it's been lovely talking to you. Thank you ever so much for coming on Skip the Queue, telling the story of dynamic Earth and looking forward to what happens next for your amazing attraction. Thank you very much. Mark Bishop: 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 to find us. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them to increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcripts from this episode and more over on our website, skipthequeue fm.  The 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsDownload the 2024 Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

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  38:41
• Starting a new heritage attraction in the UAE

  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.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 SkiptheQueue.fm.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  or Bluesky for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 19th March 2025. The winner will be contacted via Bluesky. Show references: https://www.ajah.ae/https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-griffiths-63432763/Kelly's final episodeThe transformation of Painshill Park, with Paul Griffiths, Director of PainshillWhat it really takes to launch a podcast. With Kelly Molson and Paul GriffithsPaul Griffiths has worked in the Heritage, Museums and Tourism world now for nearly 30 years.After spending 16 years working in various role for English Heritage, in 2012 he moved to the Mary Rose Museum as Head of Operations to oversee the opening and operations of the multi award winning museum, welcoming over one million visitors before in 2018 taking on moving to the Painshill Park Trust in the role of Director of Painshill. Paul spent 6 years there before his move in December 2024 to Ras Al Khaimah one of the seven Emirates that make up the UAE. In this exciting brand new role Paul is Chief Executive Officer of the Al Hamra Heritage Village, part of the Al Qasimi Foundation. Transcriptions: Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in and working with Visitor Attractions. I'm your host, Paul Marden.Longtime listeners will remember my guest today, Paul Griffiths, when he was CEO at Painshill Park, from when he was interviewed back in season one by Kelly. In today's episode, Paul comes back to talk about his new role as CEO of Al Jazeera Al Hamrah Heritage Village in Ras Al Khaimah in the UAE. Now, I'm always interested in the first 90 days of people's experience in a job, so we'll be talking more about that and his for the future. Paul Marden: Paul, welcome back to Skip the Queue. Paul Griffiths: Hello. Thanks for having me, Paul. Great to be here. Paul Marden:  Long time. Listeners will know that we always start with an icebreaker question and our guests don't get to know that one in advance. I think this one's a pretty kind one. I was pretty mean to Paul Sapwell from Hampshire Cultural Trust a couple of weeks ago because I asked him whether it was Pompey or Saints and for political reasons, he felt that he had to abstain from that.Paul Griffiths: Testing his interest. I'd have gone Pompey at the time because that's where we live. Well, did live. Paul Marden: Oh, there you go. There you go. So you've moved over from Portsmouth. You're now in the UAE. Tell listeners, what is that one? Home comfort that after three months away from Blighty, you're missing? Is it proper English marmalade? Paul Griffiths: Do you know what? I've been able to get hold of most things, but I've not been able to get. I know people who cook properly, so I should be able to do this myself, but I haven't. Cauliflower cheese, one thing I'm missing from home, that doesn't sell it anywhere in a sort of pre pack or frozen form. I can even get hold of Yorkshire puddings in Spinny's supermarket, but I can't get hold of cauliflower cheese. Paul Marden: Can you get cauliflowers? Paul Griffiths: Can get cauliflowers. I'm sure I can make cheese sauce if I knew what it was doing. But you normally. I'm so used to normally buying a pack of cheese, cauliflower cheese to have in my Sunday roast. Paul Marden: Okay. So if I ever get to come out, I need to bring out a plastic wrapped, properly sealed so that it doesn't leak on the plane. Cauliflower cheese? Paul Griffiths: Yes, please. Yeah, absolutely. Paul Marden: So your last episode was actually. Or your last full episode was back in season one, episode 22. So five years ago and the world has changed a lot in five years, but most recently it's changed a lot for you, hasn't it? So why don't you tell listeners a little bit about what's happened to you since you were with us in season one? Paul Griffiths: Wow. Yeah, well, season one seems an age away, doesn't it, now with all the wonderful guests youu've had since on Skip the Queue, it's been a different program completely. But, yeah, no, well, back then I was at Painshill, were coming out of a pandemic and I remember, you know, Kelly and I were chatting over all the different avenues that everyone had gone and what we've done at Painshill and that continued brilliantly. And however, my life has taken a change in. In sense of where I am, but I'm still doing the same sort of work, so. Which is, you know, when our industry, and it's such a fabulous industry, it's great to stay in it. Paul Griffiths: So I am now over in the United Army Emirates in the Emirate of Ras Alhaima, which is the third biggest of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, behind Abu Dhabi and, of course, Dubai. So I was approached, God, nearly always, this time last year, about a call over here. Yes. My recruitment company got in touch and went through, you know, had a good look at the job description and thought, well, actually, we'll throw my hat into the ring. And applied, went for a series of online interviews with the recruitment company, then an online interview with the people over here at various departments within the Al Kassimme Foundation and the Department of Museums and Antiquities. Paul Griffiths: So, yeah, looking at this brand new job, which I'm now lucky enough to be in, I then was flown out in August for a round of interviews, met all the team. You know, one of those things that you later discover, the whole real four days was one big interview, although there was. There was a central one. But of course, everyone you were meeting along the way was being asked to feedback, And I love chatting to people and enjoying people's company. So actually went for dinners and lunches and all sorts, which was just a lovely four days and almost felt like a free hit in many ways, Paul. Well, this is going to be a brilliant experience. Paul Griffiths: If I don't get the job, I'm going to have a great four days in Rasta Taima, seeing it, meeting everyone, enjoying the time here. And, you know, the more time I spent here, the more time with the team, the more time, you know, going and visiting sites. I just became more and more that this would be an amazing job. Obviously gave my absolute everything, did loads of research, gave everything in the interview. The interview took a rather unusual turn. After the sort of hour and a half of questions and my questions, I was asked to leave the room for a short period. Not unusual in that sense because I was, you know, I wasn't just going to leave and go because obviously I was in their hands for four days. Paul Griffiths: But the doctor, Natasha Ridge, the executive director of the foundation, came out the interview and said, “Right, that's all gone really well. We're really pleased. We're now off to the palace for you to meet His Highness Sheikh Saud, who is the ruler of Ras Al Khaimah and on the Supreme Council of the UAE.” So I was sort of, I went to one of the small meeting rooms you. Now I know that. Now I know where I was, where I went. But at that point I had no idea. One of the lovely. There's a very much a service thing here. Paul Griffiths: So, you know, we have in the Heritage Village as well later we have a wonderful member of our team, Geraldine, who does lots of cooking, prepares stuff and just had a wonderful fish taco lunch because we're four hours ahead of you, of course, here in Alaihi. So, yeah, so one of the guys came in with, gave me an English breakfast tea and sort of, you know, sat there reviewing what, thinking what on earth was I going to be asked by His Highness. And then was put into one of the drivers and we drove up through Rat Sahma City, through into the palace, up the long driveway and there I was sort of eventually, after about 20 minutes, presented with. Presented to Sheikh Sword who asked me, chatted, asked various questions. Paul Griffiths: I don't think there could be many interviews that you end up with His Highness in the second half of it. You know, it's sometimes a presentation. Yeah. So that was. I was there for about half an hour and that's your time over and off he goes. And off I went back to then go and have dinner with some of the team. So it was a very surreal afternoon. Paul Marden: Being interviewed by royalty. But when you're not expecting that as part of the interview process, that must be quite unnerving. Paul Griffiths: I had a heads up that at some point in my trip I might meet him, but there was no formal arrangements. I had me had to get in a diary. So it hadn't even crossed my mind that's what was about to happen. When I was asked to leave the meeting room, I just thought maybe they wanted to come back with more questions or, you know, say I hadn't gone well, whatever. But, yeah, no, that was the. I took that as a good sign. I thought, well, actually, if I'm being whisked up there, the interview must have gone relatively well because I'm sure they would present me to shake sword if it hadn't gone so well. Paul Marden: Yeah. You'd hope that he would be towards the end of the cycle of the interview round. Paul Griffiths: Yeah. Paul Marden: Not doing the early sifting of CVs. Paul Griffiths: No. He certainly had seen who I was because he asked me some questions about where I'd worked and. Okay, things like that. So he'd obviously seen a CV. He's a very. I mean, I've met him subsequently a few times. I've been fortunate to be a dinner hosted by him a couple of weeks ago. But he is a very, very intelligent man. Works really hard. I mean, work. He, you know, for him, he spends every minute working on the emirate. He ruled, he. He's the ruler. But he's almost a. It's a sort of combo, I guess he's all Prime Minister at the same time as being the ruler. So he is constantly working. You know, I'm really committed and I'm lucky in many ways that where I am working at the Heritage Village is his real. Paul Griffiths: One of his real pet projects that he's really driving forward. So, yes, we come with sort of royal. Royal approval, if you like. So. Yeah. Paul Marden: Excellent. So I. I've not been to the Emirates before, so for those of us that have not been, tell us a little bit about Ras Al Khaimah, of course. Paul Griffiths: Well, Ras Al Khaimah is one of the quieter Emirates mentioned. Sheikh Saud there, he's really driving a sort of, you know, a sort of agenda of bringing in more tourists. But he wants to use culture and territory as part of that. So, you know, it's a more relaxed, low level, if that makes sense. It's not Dubai, it's not full on, it's more relaxed Emirate. It's relaxed in cultural and many of the ways it's not, as you know, some of the other Emirates are, for example, completely dry. Ras Al Khaimah has given licenses to hotels and big restaurants in hotels for serving drinks. And there are a number of sellers where you can purchase for your consumption your own home, whereas Sharjah, you can't purchase any alcohol, for example, so it's a bit more chilled like that. It's a lovely place. Paul Griffiths: We're very fortunate to have the heavier mountains go through the far side of Ras Al Khaimah. So where I'm based is more on the seafront but then not, you know, I can see the mountains behind and there's a number of drives up into the mountains which are absolutely fabulous. Up to the Jebel Jais, which is the highest point in the UAE, we have the world's longest and fastest zip wire. I have not gone anywhere near that yet. Goes up to 100km an hour and is the longest over from the top of the mountain, whisking you off to the other side. I think it looks terrifying. But my. Paul Marden: I'm more interested in cables that take you to the top of the mountain. Maybe with some skis on my feet than I am attaching myself to a cable and going down the mountain. Doesn't sound like fun to me. Paul Griffiths: There's a toboggan ride as well up there as well.Paul Marden: Oh, I'd love that. Paul Griffiths: So that's the toboggan ride's on my to do list when the family get off, I'll save it for then and take my son Barney on that. But you know, there's all this sort of venture sports up on the top of the mountain and driving up there is remarkable. They put a proper road in. It's not the scary driving up the Alps, terrified what's going to come around the other corner. It's very like driving up a road, you know, normal sort of dual carriageway, two lanes each way and then right going through the mountains to the other side to one of the other Emirates for Jazeera , for example. So you're over on the Indian Ocean side Gulf Vermont. That road is just beautiful. There's no traffic on it, you know. Paul Griffiths: So Ras Al Khaimah is only about an hour and hour to an hour and a half from Dubai airport. And Dubai is a sort of people go to Dubai in the same way that we, you know, you'd go to London, I'd go to London when I was in Port Soviet, we would. It's now, you know, it's not considered a. There's always someone from work who's in Dubai every day almost for some reason. So nipping up to Dubai, I was like, I went to a dinner there last week and you know, it just seemed very normal that he jumped in a car and drove up to Dubai and came back that evening. Whereas. Seems remarkable actually to be doing that. But yeah, so because of where we are, Abu Dhabi is about two and a half hours away.Paul Griffiths: And we are the northern point of the Emirate, So we border on to Oman, split into a number of areas. Again, I didn't know any of this till I got here, but there's a part of Oman that's at the top of Ras Al Khaimah. And so, yeah, so it's a beautiful Emirate with nature, with mountain areas, which does get a bit chillier when you go up the mountains. I looked quite silly in my T shirt and shorts when I went up there on a Sunday afternoon. People were going past me like they were going skiing. You know, people wore coats and hats and looking at me as if I'm really daft. But I was still. It's interesting that because it's winter obviously everywhere here at the moment and at home, but it's. Paul Griffiths: People here are often telling me it's a cold day when I'm still standing. I still feel really quite warm. But yeah, finding that sort ofPaul Marden: Talking 30s at the moment for you, aren't we? Paul Griffiths: Yeah, it's a little bit. The last couple days have been down in the lower 20s, really comfortable. But when we last weekend, people were getting a bit nervous that summer had come very early because it was hitting the early 30s last week. So I don't know how for me, when we get to August, when it's in the mid, late 40s with real high humidity, I think I'm just going to go from aircon building to aircon building to aircon building.Paul Marden: I am such a Goldilocks when it comes to that sort of thing. Not too hot, not too cold, it needs to be just right. So I would definitely struggle in that kind of heat. Look, let's talk a little bit about where you are in the new job. So you've taken on the role of CEO of Al Jazeera Al Hamra Heritage Village. So tell me a little bit about the village. Why is this village so historic? Paul Griffiths: Well, it's a really interesting one, Paul, because it is very important, but it's not that old. And that's why what coming to me about making it more alive is something that's going to be crucial to us. So the village has been lived in for many years. It was a pearl farming village. So most of the people who worked here were doing pearl farming, which is pretty horrible job to do. You were, again, learning about this. You were jumping off boats, going to the ocean depths for up to three to four minutes. No protection really, apart from a very light shirt and some little bits on your fingers. But actually you're nothing on your eyes. Paul Griffiths: So you're having to look through the salt water, find the pearls come up and they were going up and down sometime 15, 16 times or more a day. And there's a fascinating exhibition in Dubai at the Al Shindagha Museum which really does focus on how this worked and how these guys were living. So, so it's a real. So that was the village. So the village had that, it obviously had then had fishing men, merchants making boats, merchants selling, trading wares. And Ras Al Khaimah has been quite a strategic part as all of the UAE really for the sort of trades coming from the Middle east and out into the Gulf. So the villages was being lived in up until the very early 70s. Paul Griffiths: Up in the 1970s the Al Za'abi tribe who were based here were offered I guess a new life is the only way to look at it in Abu Dhabi with new jobs, with land, with housing and it's just a better way like pearl farming was now being done so much cheaper and easier in the Orient in Japan mainly. So that was, that dropped away. There wasn't the other merchant trading going on. So actually the oil boom basically led the tribe to almost one up sticks and head to Abu Dhabi. And in many ways good story because we're still in touch with quite considerable amounts of the tribes people who were here. Lots of the elders have done wonderful oral histories, videos talking about their lives here. But this village survived as just fell into ruins, but actually wasn't developed. Paul Griffiths: And where it becomes important is this would have been what all of the Gulf would have looked like before the oil boom. The UAE wasn't a wealthy nation before then. You know, when I went up to Dubai and spent some time at the Etihad Museum, which is based around which Etihad Union is the not Around Man City Stadium should point out very much around about how the UAE had come together and how, you know, so it wasn't the wealthiest nation, but actually they discovered oil. They then brought seven Emirates together. It then has flourished in the ways that we now know what Dabi and ifwe looks like and even Ras Al Khaimah in some parts and really quite glamorous. But this village survived. Paul Griffiths: So although it fell into ruin, all the other fishing, farmhome fishing, pearl farming villages across the Gulf had become, just got destroyed, knocked down, you know, turned into hotels and high rises. And actually when you visit the other Emirates, lots of them are now recreating their historic areas or re purposing some of the historic buildings and they're doing it very well. In Dubai, Sharjah has actually completely rebuilt. It's what it calls the Harp Sharjah, which is. Which was its historic sort of areas, but. Paul Marden: Right. Paul Griffiths: But this survived. Many of the buildings had fallen into disrepair. And what we've been doing for the last few years, as the Al Qasimi Foundation and the Department of Antiquities and Museums is restoring a number of these buildings, we've then sort of gone into a sort of activation so you can walk around. So we've got, you know, carving now. Only a year ago it was mostly sand. We've now got a path going through it, so you can walk in. And the job that I've really been asked to do initially on arrival here is to really push that activation forward and really look at my sort of. What I've done in the past and what we've seen other places do and think about what can we do to bring this bit more to life? Paul Griffiths: Because it’s the sort of storage village is around the 1970s. Well, it was abandoned in the 1970s. Well, you know, for us from the UK, from lots of other nationalities, actually, something in the 70s isn't very old. It's in our lifespan. You know, we are looking at this going well, actually. So when I was talking to a lot of. So RAK TDA's basically visit RAK tourism authority. So they are really supportive in wanting to push Al Jazeera Al Hamra Heritage Village, which will from now on abbreviate to AJAH to save me. Keep saying that. Long tanned. So they are really keen that we're doing more stuff. So why would a tourist want to come? What is there to see once you're here? Paul Griffiths: On top of some abandoned and now beautifully restored houses, mosques, you know, things that you would have expected in a village of, you know, a thousand or so population, 500 houses, you know, so more than a thousand people, really. So that's the sort of plan in that way. So in many ways I've got a sort of blank canvas to play with. But, you know, money's not unlimited, so it's about. So working closely with local communities, working with, you know, local traders, looking at what could we bring into the village on the back of the art fair. I know we'll talk about later, but it's, you know, this has been a. This is a real challenge for me to. How do I take this sort of place forwards.Paul Marden: In my mind's eye, we go to the Weald & Downland Living Museum so open air museum, lots of houses recreating life through the ages. Is that the sort of experience that I'm going to get if I come to the village of I'm going to see the properties and I'm going to see this previous way of life come to life in front of me?Paul Griffiths: Well at the moment you'll see you just see in the houses and the buildings but you're walking around looking at historic buildings but we have got a number of the houses we've put in. Each video is at the moment showing the audio visuals so you can walk around and listen to members of the tribes chatting about their youth and what's happening and you can see the buildings in real life. I guess what I'm looking for this is telling the story a little bit of the village which we don't initially do that well at the moment that's no criteria. Yes, this is what we need to do going forward. There's been several stages of activation When I came last August part not many the paths weren't all finished. We didn't have anywhere for visitor services to be at the front.Paul Griffiths: We only had a very small sort officey area which has now been built up to where I'm. Where I'm sat today. So I think what you're going to get is a multi as a blend of traders who will be in our suitcase. The Souk is fully restored sooke and shopping market area so that's my first point is to move some people in there. So I've already got a goldsmith and move to her studio in got some handicrafts we've got some textile people moving in the. Paul Griffiths: The main gallery of Nassau Heyman Design Gallery which is the one big gallery where artists can go is going to have a sort of satellite shop if you like not shop a satellite so there will be pieces of work there are in here with their little souvenir store which they sell because they get people a lot of what the design gallery does is making souvenirs of Ras Al Khaimah that are all handmade so quite special gifts. So what we're hoping is tying up with our local hoteliers who many of which have not been so it's bringing them in and they need something more to see to send their guests here. Paul Griffiths: So you know talking to some of them over lunch when I hosted some of them on Saturday it was a case of you know actually, can they send their clients and say, you can do all your holiday shopping because at the moment they're sending people to the shopping malls which are just, you know, nice, but actually merchandise them to go to a heritage village, get that experience of what the golf would have been like and bags of shopping at the same time. Paul Marden: So who doesn't love a. A museum gift shop at the end? So, you know. Paul Griffiths: Exactly. And we don't really have that here at the moment from an Al Jazeera perspective. So on my plan for this year is to put in. We've got an info booth, as it's called at the moment. It's not a world. It's not the best customer service friendly. It's like a caravan but with some windows. And yeah, it's probably a better. Now it's got air conditioning. Yes. But it doesn't work very well for customers. You're trying to talk through little windows because you can only have small windows to keep the air con working, not have too much open to. It's just passing out. Paul Griffiths: So, yeah, so I'm looking at building this summer, hopefully. Fingers crossed, touch wood, a visitor welcome centre, which is something we're really pushing along with, which will be lovely because that will be that proper visitor welcome with a shop with an induction into an introduction. Sorry, into the Al Jazeera story. And then let people go. And then when they get to the far end, they'll be the souk full of. He says again, hopefully slowly filling them out, but full of traders and local craftspeople and people who are. Even if they're not originally local, they're based in rack, so they are considered local. The UAE is built up of a lot of expat population. When I say expats, I mean just English people from around the world. It's a really accepting, welcoming community. I've been really. Everyone says hello to you as you're walking into the supermarket shops. There's no. Whoever they are where you're from. Paul Griffiths: Everyone's talking to each other because the local population know they've had to bring people in because there's thousands more jobs than there are Emirati population in Ras Al Khaimah. So, you know, it's always been. And when you look at the foundation of the UAE, it was about, we will need to bring people in to bring this. To build this nation with us. So, you know, it's been always a sort of welcome and melting pot of different people. Paul Marden: Yeah, amazing. Look, you mentioned when we had our initial chat. You've been there now three months, you've been doing lots of visiting of other attractions. Because I think you said to me, which I thought was quite interesting, that you were. There's lots that you bring with you from the UK in your experience, but there's lots of best practice and good practice happening within the Emirates already. So you've been kind of going out and visiting a lot of cultural venues and attractions in the Emirates. Tell me a little bit about those. Paul Griffiths: Yeah, so it's been a minute of a manic last month in February, because we've had the art festival. I know we're going to keep hinting at it, we'll get to it at some point, but when I've had some time away, what's been fabulous, it's just sort of. And I think as well, because the family aren't here in my own at the moment, said, “All right, I've got some time off, let's go and explore.” Yeah. So I've sort of driven across to Fajera, spent time in Sharjah and took myself up for a weekend in Dubai, which was fantastic. Booked a very reasonably priced hotel and just spent a weekend flowering around everywhere and just really immersed in my. So and only scratch the surface. There's so much more to see. So, yeah, so I've been going and looking at. Paul Griffiths: Well, you know, I don't want to do something that's not. There'll be alien to, obviously, the culture here. And that's been really. What's been great fun in the last few months is it's not just going into a new job, you know, and learning that. It's actually been a terrifying, at some points, fabulous experience. I was learning new cultures, new working lives. You know, things are working. It's done very differently here. You know, there's a different hierarchical process we have in the UK and permissions are needed in different places. And that's not. I'm not saying any of this is a bad thing, it's just learning those different things. So I've been learning all these different cultures. You know, we're just coming into Ramadan, which I've had no real experience with before. And that is. That is a massive thing here. You know, it's the month. Paul Griffiths: Every billboard you go past is someone trying to sell something for Ramadan, whether it be a new chest of drawers, you know, your family needs this new dining table for Ramadan. It's a bit like, you know, you will see at Christmas at home, everyone catching on, you know, IKEA will be saying, new table and chairs for Christmas. You know, it's. It's not. It's a sort of different repeating itself. You know, those sort of signs you have around the supermarket. Christmas back home. They're all up now in supermarkets here for Ramadan. Paul Marden: Right. Paul Griffiths: Encouraging what people are going to buy for when they break the fast at sunset Iftar. So, you know, so it's all sort of promoting. You need this for. So it's a real. We're going to a massive thing. And that's been a real sort of learning, cultural thing for me, which has been great because actually I've always enjoyed, when I'm traveling, learning about other cultures, you know, it's always been for me, I always try and visit museums, galleries, learn about the place I'm at. And so actually living somewhere and learn about someone who's been. I think it's added to the fun of the experience. But back to your question. Paul Griffiths: Yes, I've been traveling wherever the possibility to start to look at other historic venues, looking at where they've, you know, restored historic markets and souk areas and what sort of things are going in there, what are people doing there. Up in Dubai, there is a place called Al Shindagar Museum, which is where they've. Some of the historic buildings that have been saved by the creek of Dubai have been turned into the most amazing series of museums, is the only way I can describe it, because each house is a different gallery or different theme. So you have the story of the creek being built up, the story of Dubai seafarers. There was a faith and. Faith and religion room, talking about Islam and different cultures, how that's worked around Dubai. Paul Griffiths: Dubai being built up as a city, lots about the rulers and families, but every house you went to is a different place. What was so impressive there from a visitor experience perspective was the training that Stafford had was sensational. You know, you go into someone, you think they're obviously being managed really well because obviously this is. You don't just train. So obviously someone oversees this really well. But clearly the training, everywhere you went, the customer service was exceptional. People coming out from behind counters, giving you introductions, making sure you had everything needed, you know, as you were leaving. Have you got any questions? All those things we try and all have tried to teach over the years, and in many ways we've all been different levels of success of that. Paul Griffiths: But what was amazing was they also got the security guards in on the act as well, because there's a real culture here that there's a separate, they're secure, they're very different. You know, there's, we've got them here, they're in very much brown security, clearly marked, you know, protecting places. But what they've done there is they had clearly trained those security guards as well, because every security guard you came across was getting in the act of chatting to visitors, even if their English wasn't brilliant, they were really keen to direct you to the next. Come this way. So the next place, oh, you finished that room, you must go upstairs. And you know, that sort of. Paul Griffiths: And whether they, you know, really just said, look, you can have a much more interesting day than just standing, staring at people walking around. You can actually chat to visitors from around the world and get talkative. And I just had the most amazing. I ended up in this museum for over five and a half hours or something silly like that. And I thought I was going to be there an hour because it was priced very reasonably. You know, when you judge a museum on, well, actually I paid this, I'm probably going to be here for that amount of time. And actually it was just, you know, I found myself stopping for a coffee, stopping for lunch. But I was so impressed by the way the staff interacted. Paul Griffiths: They also had a number of cultural local guides as well, who really were, you know, in the full sort of Emirati national dress, but wanted to press on. This is where. This is what I'm doing. So I've some, you know, I traveled across to Fujairah every week and was in a, an old, what was the ruler's summer house. And the guy, and the guy who ran it just took me on a tour. I didn't ask for a tour. He just said, would you. Well, he said, should I take you around? Yes, please. And we had this great hours experience as he was just chatting about all the rooms. And I think people here are very keen to share their culture and their heritage and very welcoming. Paul Griffiths: So, yeah, so I've done quite a bit traveling around the other parts of the UAE. I can't go out of the UAE because I've only got a hire car at the moment, so I can't go out to Omar, that's on my list. You get yourself a car. I can travel north of the border into Oman and explore that. But for now, seven emirates to. So no shortage of places. And I've not been up to Abu Dhabi yet, so still with that on my list. So yeah, Paul Marden: Wowzers. Okay. So I guess, and this is completely, what would I feel like if I was in your position of going to this new country, immersing myself in this relatively new place that you're leading? How do I say this without flattering you? You were a well connected guy. If I went to events, everybody knew you. You had this wide network of people having worked in the UK in the attraction sector for a long time and you've now jumped over to the UAE. What's happened to the network? How does that feel? I mean it must feel slightly kind of worrying or nerve wracking. What have you done to build the network in this new place? Paul Griffiths: There's a number of points to that. Right, so let's answer in a few minutes. So the world's a smaller place so I'm still occasionally having teams call zoom calls with really close ex colleagues, friends, you know, I'm sure, I mean I always say I'm sure but everyone keeps saying, “Oh I'm really loving the journey so please keep posting. So I am going to keep posting and probably going to start to annoy people after a while”, but the feedback so far is everyone saying we're loving the journey and following you with it and feel like we're on the journey. So I will carry on. I'm sort of keeping writing stuff up and sharing it and also I don't know how long I'll be here for. You know, probation is massive over here. I have to keep my fingers crossed. Paul Griffiths: I pass probation which is a six month period because it's a real right the UAE all not just off and across the UAE. It's a real big, you know, much more than at home, much more structured. On day one was given a series and this isn't a bad thing at all, a series of probation tasks, you know, around reports that are around other historic parts because the job that I've come over will eventually evolve into a wider heritage role. But at the moment the real focus is on Al Jazeera Al Hamra, which is great. Get one site, get it going, then see where we go next. So I think I'm still connected to lots of people back home. I'm still looking, seeing everyone's posts and enjoy. Paul Griffiths: I mean my usual jealousy of not being part of the ALVA network anymore as they're all having that great time in Belfast in the last couple of days and seeing everyone's post, not just one or two, but everyone you know, Bernard down with you know everyone's post. I wish I was there with them.Paul Marden: The FOMO was real. So I had Andy Povey in the office with me yesterday and we're both saying the FOMO about that ALVAe vent was very real for both of us having. Paul Griffiths: Having spent. You know I was at the Mary Rose few years where we joined ALVA and go experiencing those council weeks and knowing just hey how much they are great for networking A. You get very spoiled because every host wants to really show off what they can do and I think the Titanic always do that because we go there before for a council meeting but it's. Yeah. So you still see this stuff. So it's still sit home and there's still people I can reach out to.Paul Marden: Of course.Paul Griffiths: If we need to and I'm still calling on people things, you know, different projects we're doing here. But then again it's about slowly building up that network here and I think there's a slightly. You know, there's a. Within Ras Al Khaimah I've started making connections with lots of other people in the Heritage world and. And outside that. So we're already, you know, connecting up with different people from different parts of Ras Al Khaimah, the work we're going to do moving forward and for me I think it's been just a. I'm sort of still pinching myself I'm here and that sort of. So many things keep happening and you know. The weather's been gorgeous because I've come out of a grim English weather to this quite nice winter here where it's mostly been late mid-20s. Paul Griffiths: You're in she and shorts when you're off duty. You know, there's other things. The thing that really surprised me is how smart actually the dress code is for business over here. Paul Marden: Okay. Paul Griffiths: So I had to sort of all the usual brands that from home Mount Marks is next everything here so you could order online and get it delivered quite quickly. So I had sort of came out of one wardrobe thinking I was going to be far more in polo shirt and linen trousers are sort of very sort of summer at Painshill look, you know outdoor. But actually yeah my colleagues are still. Because of the aircon atmosphere. Lots of colleagues particularly in the head office are in suits. A bit like where I would have been when back in my London days. When we’re in the office you were in a shirt tie. So yes, I had to sort of buy A back home wardrobe almost once I got traveled out with very lightweight clothing. So yes, it's a bit different in that sense. Paul Marden:  Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about life as an expat. How have you found the transition? Paul Griffiths: Fine so far. I say there's lots of bits around work and practice and you know, no amount of inductions will be able to help you on some little faux pas you can make about not realising where you need approvals for staff. And obviously coming from the. For the last six years of being director of Painshill and only from feeding into a board of directors, board of trustees who we'd see quarterly and you know, I chat to the chairman every week. There was a lot of me sort of making those sort of decisions instantly was here, you know, particularly as were part of the foundation and we are representing Sheikh Saud as his name's in the title of the organization now, making sure we're going through those tick sheets. Paul Griffiths: You know, if I want to do anything that needs to spend more money, that's out budget, that is going to his Highness to be signed off. So any projects we're doing, we're needing to make cases to the highest man in the country to actually get those, you know, sign offs and things. And I'm not, that's not a bad thing. But you know, it's just that from an expat I guess it's getting used to. Everything's available here. Not the big supermarket up the road sells Waitrose and Marxist products and has a room at the back for non Muslims where you push the button, door opens, it's like a little bit of a naughty boys room. Paul Griffiths: You push back door open, slides you walk in and there's the pork heaven, you know, there's bacon, there's pork scratching, patays, you know, all because it's a real, you know, it's not just there's so many expats here, particularly from the Philippines and stuff who obviously pork is a big part of their diet. So yeah, that's available. I said earlier on there's cellars where you can pick up a great beer or a couple of glasses of bottle of wine or whatever you want. So actually it's not that I found myself flying into this really different world and I'm not really. Paul Marden:  It's a melting pot, isn't it? Paul Griffiths: Yeah. And I'm not someone who's ever been since very young, you know, going off to nightclubs or anything like that. But if you wanted that There is that. The hotels. So actually, if you're a younger person coming out and you wanted that nightlife, the hotels, particularly on Margin island and Minnal Arab, the tubing hotels have really nice restaurants, fully licensed clubs and stuff. But, you know, actually I found sort of the work is busy. Everyone's, you know, lots going on, actually, just going back to, you know, I was in a hotel for the first two months, which wasn't a dreadful thing because it was an apartment hotel. So, yeah, I had enough and now we've moved. I've moved into a villa ready for the family. Come out hopefully in about a month's time.Paul Marden:  Oh, that'd be exciting. Paul Griffiths: Yeah. So that's nice. So we've got the back onto the golf course. It's quite, you know, it's a nice place to be. It's going to be nice and, you know. Paul Griffiths: Yeah, so I've not struggled adapting because it's not. It's not that, you know, normally I've got a wonderful team here, Asia, you know, so with one Emirati and some Filipinos and other people from around the. From around the world. So that's been nice. And it's melting pot of learning their cultures as well as the local culture and. Yeah. And then they eat rice with everything. So it's. Yeah. Every lunchtime there's a bowl of rice, big bowl of salad in the main course and there's me pouring on the one on the salad, everyone else on the rice. But, yeah, it's been great, Paul. I mean, I can't. It's been one of those. Every moment you think this is just a great place to be. Paul Marden: Good. Let's go back to Al Jazeera and talk a little bit about some of the events that have been going on. So I know you're coming to the end of the Ras Al Khaimah Art Festival. Tell me a little bit about that and how well that's gone. Paul Griffiths: It's been brilliant. I know. I had no idea what to expect. First time for this. So this is the 13th International Art Fair. It started off back in the small museum back in the city of Central Town, moved to here, I think, five years ago is what I'm saying, and slowly grown every year since then. So this is the biggest one we've done, really. Lots of massive sponsors on board from across the Emirates, actually fully supported by His Highness, who's been here at least four times, if not five, since we've had the vessel. He was here at the opening ceremony for the big launch, you know it was, and it was like a proper opening ceremony. Paul Griffiths: Everyone sat round with a band and speakers and you know like not quite Olympics but you know it was a proper event. This is the opening of it and it felt like a big event. Yeah. All my female members of my team had, were given time off in the day to do hair and makeup. It was proper. Everyone looked, everyone looked the business, it was lovely. You know everyone was scrubbed up from the maintenance team to, you know, our executive director looking fabulous in a brand new dress. You know it was really was. No, I've had a new suit, I got a new suit for the occasion. Paul Griffiths: So yeah, it was a lovely evening and then it's rolled ever since and for me it's been wonderful because I've seen people in this village which has been quite quiet since I'd arrived and it's sort of been okay, how are we going to get this? But actually clearly putting something on has attracted a complete cross spectrum audience. So you know, we have people coming in, absolutely fascinating, obsessed with the art, beautiful and it's artists I should say from around the world. It's all exhibited outside or inside the little houses. So you know lots of the pieces have been blown up quite big and quite impressive. I mean do look at it on the website, you know people, you know if you go to ajah.ae you can then click on from there.Paul Marden: We'll put the links and everything in the show notes so people be able to find that. Paul Griffiths: It's been, but it's been, for me it's been fabulous because we've seen so many people in, you know I was, you know, we've had, we've got pop up restaurants so this won't mean anything to people back home but the restaurant called Puro P U R O has a restaurant at the top of the mountain at Jebel Jais. Really almost impossible to get booking, you know you have to book months advance for lunch or dinner. It's the place that everybody, both locals, internationals and tourists want to see and often frequented by his Highness. They've got a pop up restaurant here which just is fabulous. Paul Griffiths: They we've had a lovely couple, Kelly and Paolo in running a restaurant called Antica which is a sort of the chef's Italian Paolo but he's lived in Australia so it's a fusion of Australian middle Italy, sort of historic villagey type cuisine with an Emirates twist. But you're just served four or five courses without there's not a menu. It's not a restaurant as such, so it's sort of a sharing experience. But you know, the food is amazing. So I was fortunate to have dinner. Well, I've actually been fortunate enough to have dinner in Antica twice and lunch there as well. But one of the dinners I was then wandering around the village about 10 o'clock at night was full of people, you know, families just. Paul Griffiths: There is a different culture over here that people do more stuff in the evenings because of the temperature and a different way of life because the local people aren't obviously, for obvious reasons, down the pub on a Friday night, they're doing stuff with the family and you go past cafes and even outside of the village, you know, 9, 10 o'clock on a Friday night, they're full of people sitting very beautifully dressed in their finest, drinking coffee and eating desserts. That's a big thing. People seem to love coffee and desserts. Paul Marden: Okay. Paul Griffiths: But, but then of course it's because because of the heat most of the year we'll spend more time indoors resting in the day and then ready to go out at night and do some more stuff. So yeah, so we've had this sort of here in the evenings. It's really fun. What was interesting is our hours for the festival were meant to be midweek. So Monday we always close. Tuesday to Thursday we're meant to be open till 6 o'clock and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday open to 11:00. Often struggling to get people out then the first night. So the Tuesday night was the first night. Medusa goes at 6:00. 5:45, I had a queue of at least 40 people trying to get in. So we just had to make an on the hooves decision. Paul Griffiths: We're going to stay open later. And then we just opened till 8:00 in the midweek. We didn't want to push it too much because of obviously from the staff welfare perspective, an hour's work. But actually that first night were just. Myself and Sikrat, who's the director of the festival, Emirati. Wonderful. Emirati has been my cultural bodyguard in many ways because he's been the person, my go to person for what should I do here? What about this person? How should I do this? So Spencer Crouch just stood there. Look at this crowd. We both just said, “Well we can't turf them away. This would be daft.” So yeah, so we've had. And we've had about 40, 000 visitors will have come through the door by the end of the festival in 28 days. Paul Griffiths: The artworks then going to stay up in place for Ramadan. So we'll be working different hours again during Ramadan and this is the first time Al Jazeera will ever do. Has ever done anything special for. Because before now it's just been a come and visit, walk in, do what you like, leave now. We're trying to structure that visitor experience. So we're going to be for Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, because Thursday's the sort of Friday night in many ways. Because a lot of people have Fridays off here. Yes, because of the day of prayers and so a lot of people in Ras Al Hamah go to Dubai and Abu Dhabi for work. So Thursday nights they'll travel back. So actually we're going to be open till midnight on Thursday, Friday, Saturday for Ramadan. Paul Griffiths: So people will break the fast with the families and then they want to do the sort of head top of activity. They've now got food back in them and an energy source. And out they come. So again, first time we've done it, hopefully see numbers with the artwork will still be in place. We're then working on some different options around cuisine, food, coffee and hopefully get some musicians in as well, just to give a bit of an atmosphere. But it is a holy month, so it's not. It's not parties, but it's enjoying the family. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So what does the future look like for the Heritage Village and for tourism and attractions more generally in RAK? Paul Griffiths: I think for RAK itself, we're trying to bring more tourists in then trying to get the most hotels. Interestingly, as they had a lunch with five of our local big hotels at the weekend using. Using our Antico restaurant, this is excuse to have another lunch there and invite some people in and just take on their views, which is great. So just chatting and getting their thoughts on it. They were saying what. What happens in Iraq a lot at the moment is people are finding the hotels through travel agents, through, you know, searches. I know when were looking before I came out here, I know Ras Al Hamra came up on a Thomas Cumbin telescope. Yeah, similar. What am I thinking of? Probably Tui, I guess, or someone like, you know, someone like that. Paul Griffiths: I was doing a search for when went to Canary, but up came Ras Al Khaimah as a hotel and what they were saying. A lot of people will book that and have no idea really what Ras Al Khaimah is, other than it's part of the UAE. Some people think it's part of Dubai, you know, actually, because it's not, they don't realize it's seven emirates, etc. So a lot of people are booking their sort of tourists, their hotels. Our job is to try and then get them out and attract them to do other stuff. So there's lots of adventure tourism going on at the moment. We talked about the zip wire and lots of hiking, walking, camel rail, camel riding, you know, trips to the desert where you can zoom around in 4x Fours and go karts and stuff. Paul Griffiths: So from my perspective of the Heritage village is about bringing it more alive, bringing more people in, promoting it, more linking up with these sorts of hoteliers, concierges. And this is really early days for us because this has always been sort of slightly done but not really pushed yet. And sort of listening to what their advice is and seeing how we can act upon it, you know, and what sort of stuff we can take forward because, you know, there's a lot to be done. And there's lots of other heritage sites across rat about 90 on the list of actual heritage sites. And some of those are real ruins that you're never going to be able to do anything with. Paul Griffiths: Those sort of English Heritage free sites, you know, the ones you stumble across with a little brown sign and you pull up with a lay by, have a potter around and off you go without seeing anyone. There's a bit like that. But then there's a number of sites that will work well with some activation. You know, we've got Dyer Fort, which is on the World Heritage site tentative list and we're working on projects to slowly take that forward to World Heritage status. Touchwood because it's a really important for, you know, and it's perfect for visits. You climb up to the top, you get the most gorgeous views. You know, really is a gorgeous little site. So more interpretation, more things there is what's needed. But you know, again, this is all early days. Paul Griffiths: So it's all about sort of, you know, each day's excitement. What can we do, what can we push forward, who can we talk to? And what's been great is as the festival's gone on, more people have been coming and chatting to me. Mine have become more, well known. That sounds wrong, goes back to your sort of earlier question about, you know, people are sort of learning about, oh, this person's here now. Paul said, although people can call me sir or Mr. Paul, which is fine. I can deal with that. Keep saying now, people, I keep saying, please don't call me sir. You really don't need to. But it's so culturally great. But Mr. Everyone see everyone externally, she's called Mr. Paul, so I can put up with that. But I was there. Although when we host his. Paul Griffiths: His Highness hosted dinner that I was invited to, I then got even pushed up to His Excellency, which was a title. I want to go. Paul Marden: That's quite nice. Paul Griffiths: Yeah, I love that. Apparently. I always thought that someone else I knew was his title. His Excellency was part of the family, but actually it's. Once you get to a CEO director level in royal that circle, you immediately become His Excellency, so. Paul Marden: Well, there we go. I will correct myself in future communications. Paul Griffiths: Please do. Yeah, but I thought it was wonderful. That's why it's just been lovely, the funny comments coming from people back home saying, oh, well, I've amended my entry in my phone to now shake your he status. But yeah, so. But there's a sort of cultural things. It's just. Okay, right, lovely. That's fun. Paul Marden: It's been a whirlwind for you. It's been really interesting actually, talking about it and understanding more about. About what's happening there, about how exciting it is, this huge opportunity that you've got to make a something out of this beautiful historic village and then that, you know, the remit will grow from there. So I think. I think this has been lovely. We always wrap up our interviews with a book recommendation and you've had this privilege once before. So have you run out of recommendations or do you have something ready for me? Paul Griffiths: Well, I was going to recommend the Red island, an Emirati story, because it's based on Al Jazeera Al Hamra, but I thought that might be a little bit too niche. This guy. So, again, little things have come across. This guy's written a book, Adil, and he's going to be coming to Al Jazeera to do a book reading signing. These little opportunities. I have read the book, I promise. It was actually fascinating because it's all about local culture. It went off in a number of tangents, but actually from a point of view of how the Emirati local culture works and families, it was actually quite a really good induction. But now I've decided to go with a more book for management or book for running. And I don't think anyone's given this before, but if they have, I'm nervous. Paul Griffiths: But this book, Fish!, which is one of my favourite books. I've actually launched this as the Al Jazeera Book Club for the spring. So all the team have a copy. Book clubs are massive over here for work. Every department has one here in the foundation. So this book, Fish, is based around the Seattle fish market. My colleagues who've worked me in the past, both. I can hear them groaning now because they've forced everyone to read this, but it's basically around having fun when you're at work. And it talks about the story of the Seattle fish market, how they were just flogging fish, but actually one day decided, we need to liven this up. We need to want to be here. So introduced, sort of involving the crowd, fish flying through the air. Paul Griffiths: But It's a more of a story about a woman joins, it moves up in a company into a department that no one's been able to manage. She gets to the bottom of using the fish market. And it's just a really fun, easy reading book. And so I recommend it to. To listeners and viewers. Paul Marden: That's brilliant. So listeners, if you would like a copy of Fish,Paul Griffiths: It's quite a cheap book as well, Paul, so please, you have to give one away. So it's not too much money. It's just 9.99 in the non fiction section. So, yeah, cheaper. Paul Marden: Bargain. Bargain. That's the trouble with. So I've been doing a few live events where we have panels, four people with book records, recommendations. That's going to bankrupt me. No, not today. We got a bargain this time. So I like this. Yeah. If you'd like a copy of Fish, if you'd like a copy of Paul's book, head on over to Bluesky and when Wenalyn posts the show note, go over there and repost it and say, I want Paul's book. And the first person to do that will get a copy of the book. Paul, delightful as always. Three times on the podcast, at least. Paul Griffiths: I think this would be number. This would be number four because we had the original episode where Kelly grilled me about life at Painshill. Then we did the Turn the Tables episode when I grilled Kelly on setting up podcasts. And then we did. Then we did the Goodbye to Kelly, whatever it was. 100 episode. And then this. Yeah, four Skip the Queues. Which is always a pleasure and I'm so delighted as you're my favourite podcast, obviously.Paul Marden: It's, oh, you say the nicest things. That must be a record. I need to go back and check that I think four times on the podcast is pretty impressive. Paul Griffiths: I think I should get to add all mine up into one as a total so I can beat Dominic Jones, who's always had the biggest number, isn't he? Paul Marden: So, yeah, so he does and he still does. So, yeah, I think aggregating the number of listens for across all of your episodes, I think that might be within the walls. Let me see what I can do and I'll add everything up and we'll see if you can take Dom's crown. Paul Griffiths: Sorry, Dom. Paul Marden:  Because he's not competitive at all. Paul Griffiths: No, he's not, mate. He's a great guy, though. So, yeah, a friendly rival. Paul Marden: Exactly. Thank you very much, Paul. I would love to keep in touch. Paul Griffiths: Let's keep talking. Paul Marden: I want to hear what happens not just after the first 90 days, but I want to hear what happens in a year's time and two years time. So thank you so much for coming on and telling us about Ras Al-Khaimah and the Heritage Village. It's been lovely. Paul Griffiths: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great. Been a real pleasure. 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 to find us. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them to increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcripts from this episode and more over on our website, skipthequeue fm.    The 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsDownload the 2024 Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

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  51:12
• Sharing our secret squirrel project - Crowd Convert

  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.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 SkiptheQueue.fm.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  or Bluesky for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 13th March 2025. The winner will be contacted via Bluesky. Show references: Website: https://www.crowdconvert.co.uk/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crowd-convert/Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/crowdconvert.co.ukCrowd Convert has been created to provide attractions with the tools and expertise to create world class digital interactions that extend their incredibly moving physical experiences into the digital world. Very simply Crowd Convert is here to Rehmanise Commerce http://kellymolson.co.uk/Kelly Molson - The Lifestyle Agency AdvisorSupporting overwhelmed solo founders who crave long-term sustainable growth, through monthly advisory. Define your niche. Generate leads. Build your pipeline. Founding Rubber Cheese, a lifestyle web development agency in 2003, she grew the agency profitably for over 20 years transforming our success in 2019 by establishing it as the leading web design agency in the visitor attraction sector. She sold the business in 2024, and now support founders building specialist lifestyle agencies to find their own path – agency growth on their terms.• Gain clarity on direction, mission and positioning to win the right clients• Become confident in increasing prices and saying no to ‘stuff’ that sucks time and energy• Feel the excitement of building strategic partnerships that deliver your dream clientsBuild an agency on your terms, choosing profitability over pressure, putting life before work.  Transcription: Kelly Molson: Well, look who is back. They've let me loose with the microphone again. I might never leave. Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in and working with visitor attractions. Kelly Molson: Can I just say that you pretty much called me a queen just before we began recording this, and I think I wear that crown appropriately today. Andy Povey: Podcast royalty. Kelly Molson: She is back where she belongs in her rightful place on her throne with her microphone. Wow. Thank you. You two have been cooking up something interesting, and I am back here to tease it out of you both today. But because I am in charge again, I get to do things my way, which means Icebreakers are back on the cards. Yay. Kelly Molson: I'm so happy to be back here doing this. Right? Paul Marden: I've never done one of these. This is so. In all of the time. I know. Andy Povey: So I've got something over you now, Paul. Kelly Molson: I can't believe this. Even when we did the sessions that were us two, the episodes that were us two. Paul Marden: You didn't ask me icebreakers. I am dodged that bullet for two and a half years. Kelly Molson:  That's outrageous. Okay, well, then we'll start with you. I would like to know who's your favourite podcast host? Why is it me? Paul Marden: Wow. Kelly Molson:  No. Genuine question. Genuine question. Okay, so, I mean, obviously it is me. We could put that aside. Paul Marden: Yeah, yeah. So put a pin in that one. Kelly Molson: Put a pin in that. So listen there, I have seen in the last. Well, since we started Skip the Queue back in 2019. Goodness, July 2019, there's been lots of different sector podcasts that have kind of popped up, and they are brilliant. And I'm all for more and more niche podcasts. They are the best kind of podcast. But I want to know, aside from Skip the Queue, what is your second favourite sector podcast? Paul Marden: Oh, oh. Attraction Pros is the one for me. I do like listening to the guys at AttractionPros. Kelly Molson: They are good. They were around before Skip the Queue. So they're like. For me, they're the ones that we are looking up to in terms of the podcast. Paul Marden: We were. Kelly Molson: Oh, oh, Podcast Beef. Josh is gonna hear this. He's not going to be happy. Andy, same question to you. What other podcasts you listen to sector wise? Andy Povey: So, I mean, that's a really difficult question because. Well, it's not. The answer's none. I don't listen to sector podcasts very much. I become a politics junkie, or I've been a politics junkie for years. Kelly Molson: Okay.Andy Povey: So my podcasts are just full of politics podcast, which in the past two weeks I've stopped listening to. I've turned off completely because the world of politics is just such a mess.Kelly Molson: It's a car crash.Andy Povey: Within two minutes of having been published. Kelly Molson: What would be normally your go to, like, the regular one that you would listen to? Andy Povey: Me being a reluctant remainer. It's all the stuff that hangs over from that. So there's. Oh, God, what now? Quiet riot. The two. Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart. I can't remember what that one's called right now. Paul Marden: The rest is politics. Kelly Molson: Rest is politics. Yeah, cool. Paul Marden: What about the one with Ed Balls and George Osborne? Andy Povey: I tried it and haven't really got into it. Paul Marden: Yeah. So I'm the opposite way around. So that's the one I like. And I don't like Rest is politics. And I turned out that actually George Osborne is a human being and I quite like the guy. I'd go for a drink with him. Who knew? Kelly Molson: This is no news. Paul Marden: Yeah. Kelly Molson: I wonder if he'd like to go for a drink with you. Paul Marden: Probably no.Andy Povey: I'm sure he'll be delighted to hear that when he listens to this. Paul Marden: When these politicians, when they give up their day job and they return to normal life and then you hear them on programmes, they're actually quite relatable and you think, why could you not capture that relatability when you were actually doing the job? Andy Povey: Well, it's actually a key part of the job, isn't it? It's the only thing you need to be good at as a politician. Kelly Molson: You would think, “Oh, could I could make a good politician then?” I'm just generally nice to people. Andy Povey: Absolutely. What would be your policies, Kelly? What would you do? What would you bring in? Kelly Molson: Oh, new policies. Oh, well, that's a very good question. I have one about mobile phones and people walking and looking at them at the same time, which I would ban because I generally just want to kick people. Kelly Molson: You know when you, like on the tube and you've got to get somewhere and you've just got people walking up the stairs in front of you, like, whilst looking at their phone, like, I want to swipe their legs away. So something around that they would be useful. It would make me happy anyway. Andy Povey: Absolutely. Kelly Molson: Make some other people happy, too. Who knows? Good. Okay. Glad that went there. Second question. This is a good one. It's coming up to. Well, I mean, it's already started, isn't it? Conference season has kicked in well and truly. You're at NFAN. That's really the start of it. I am going to be at the Association for Cultural Enterprise Conference in March. So looking forward to seeing everybody. I'm going to be at the awards do as well. I've been judging the awards. Paul Marden: Have you really? Kelly Molson: Yes, there was a lot in my category, I'm not going to lie. That took a lot longer than I was expecting it, but it was really fun. And the short list of finalists is out now if you haven't seen it. And it's an amazing list. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing who the winners are. But I would like to know what is the worst food you've ever been served at a conference? Because let's face it, can be a bit dodge, can't it? Andy Povey: So this sticks in my mind. It was an awful experience. We were at Port Sunlight up in. Actually not that far from Liverpool where the ACE conference is going to be in March. And it was pretty close, pretty soon after lockdown and it was almost like the caterers just looked in the freezer to see what they've got left over and no other conference had been there and then just put it all out at the same time. And it was all beige and it was just such mixture. Kelly Molson: Hang on a minute, hang on a minute. Let's not dis beige food because I'm not gonna let. I am a bit of a fan of beige food. So if you. If there was a conference that basically the lunch was made up of like kids party food, that would be the best conference I'd ever been to. Like sausage rames. Andy Povey: As long as you can have half a grapefruit covered in tin foil with cocktail sticks with cheese and pineapple stuff in it. Kelly Molson: No pineapple, I'm allergic, that would kill me. Paul Marden: But cheese tinned pineapple, it's got to be. Kelly Molson: Oh, tin pineapple is actually okay. Weirdly, that wouldn't kill me. So yeah, I would be down. I know, it's weird, I know. It's just fresh pineapple. Who knew?Kelly Molson: So little classed. Paul Marden:  Still loves the sausage roll and a scotch egg. Andy Povey: That's fine. Sausage rolls and scotch eggs, absolutely no problem. It's when you mix them with onion barges and samosas and Chinese spring rolls and. Paul Marden: Sounds like every Boxing Day lunch I've ever been to. Kelly Molson: I'm not going to lie, it actually sounds like my dream conference. Paul, over to you. Paul Marden: Conferences that serve you food that you cannot eat with one hand. Andy Povey: Yes. Paul Marden: Yeah. So pasta with a sloppy sauce. Why would you do that to me? I mean, I am not the best eater. I need a bib at most times, but if I'm out in public, I don't want garlic bread, I don't want saucy food. I want stuff I can shovel crack quickly and politely. I mean, as politely as you can shuffle food, but, you know.Kelly Molson: I'm with you on this. Like, what is wrong with the sandwich? Yeah, genuinely, I don't feel like we need to push the boundaries of conference food. I'm happy with stuff that you can pick up with one hand and eat comfortably. Kelly Molson: Stuff that, you know, you're confident that you can sit because let's face it, you get quite upright cos. And personal to people at conferences, don't you, when you're trying to, you know, it's not. Let's not be overloading them with garlic or anything. Kelly Molson: Delightful, you know? Yep, exactly. I don't know, I still, I keep going back to the whole party food. I think kids parties have got the right idea. Party rings, sausage rolls, scotch eggs. Paul Marden: And what sits that you can put in your mouth like a walrus. Kelly Molson: Oh, you know my party tricks. Brilliant, guys. Okay, listen, unpopular opinions are back for one time only. So, Andy, what you’ve got for me? Andy Povey: So mine's food related and it's probably more unpopular in my house than it is anywhere else, but Chinese food is massively overrated. Paul Marden: Behave. Kelly Molson: Yeah, I'm very on the fence about this one. Andy Povey: My kids love it, but the things they love are all the stuff that come with the sugar sauces. So lemon chicken, the sweet and sour chicken balls, all that kind of stuff. We good? So we mean, I don't need dessert and the main meal at the same time. Paul Marden: So we're talking English approximations of Chinese food from the takeaway. Yeah.Andy Povey: Nothing very sophisticated. Kelly Molson: I'm afraid I feel like that is all the stuff that I used to like, but now if you served me up a big plate of all of that stuff, it'd be like, oh, God, I'm gonna, I'm this. I'm gonna really struggle with this and I'm gonna be up in the night, aren't I? Paul Marden: I'm basically just a nine year old. Because it sounds like my idea of heaven. Sweet and sickly, deep fried. What's not to love? Kelly Molson: All right, well, let's see how our listeners feel about the whole Chinese debate. Paul, what about you? What you got? Paul Marden: The best radio station, is in fact Radio 4. Andy Povey: I agree with you 100%. Paul Marden: So that's not a controversial opinion. I thought that was going to be massively controversial. They've been podcasting for about 100 years. They podcasted long before there was really a podcast. It's all just spoken voice. So if I got trapped on a desert island, my luxury would be a Radio 4 on a radio to listen to because there's always a variety of stuff that you can listen to. Kelly Molson: Do you not listen to any of the other? Paul Marden: I do quite like. I quite like Greg James in the morning. Kelly Molson: I love Greg. I am a Radio 1 fan. Paul Marden: So have you listened to Greg on Radio 4? Kelly Molson: No, I know he does do that. Paul Marden: But, yeah, he's got a program on Radio 4 where he delves through the BBC archives. Rewinder, it's called, and it's brilliant. I love it. It's Greg James. Funny, combined with the novelty of listening to new things on Radio 4. Kelly Molson: Okay, all right, well, I'll give that a go. Yeah. I'm not fully sold on the Radio 4. I do like it. Paul Marden: But if I've got three or four hours in the car, up to a meeting and then another three or four hours to drive back afterwards, I'd rather listen to Radio 4 than Radio 1 because I won't get repeats of stuff. Kelly Molson: Yeah, I definitely am with you on that. And I would not. Yeah, I would not listen to Radio 1 for that length of time for that reason. Well, I'm. I did used to like. What was the pop quiz? Was that on Radio four? No, that was radio. Paul Marden: That was Radio 2. Kelly Molson: It was two, wasn't it? Sorry, I'm getting my radios mixed up. Paul Marden: Getting your old person radio mixed up. Kelly Molson: If I'm honest, I quite like a little bit of magic every now and again, but that really does age me. It's quite gentle. It's calming. When you've had a three and a half year old toddler screaming at you in the car for a while, it's quite nice to put something neutral on. Andy Povey: Absolutely. Kelly Molson: Thank you. Thank you for indulging, actually. Paul Marden: That was enjoyable. Kelly Molson: You're welcome. Andy Povey: That's why she likes doing them. Kelly Molson: All right, listen, let's get to the good stuff. I mean, everyone likes that bit. Let's face it, they've missed it, they want me back. But let's get to the actual route of why we're supposed to be here. Andy Povey: So I have another unpopular opinion that sort of leads in as a segue to where we were going. Kelly Molson: Oh, for God's sake, who's in control of this podcast? Me. Go on, then. Andy Povey: So this unpopular opinion is that if you're an attraction operator, you don't want a ticketing system. Kelly Molson: Excellent segue. Andy Povey: We were just talking about conferences. There are sessions in conferences and one of my favourite conferences I go to is the Ticketing Professionals Conference. But there are sections in each of these conferences on how to find a ticketing system, how to choose your ticketing system supplier, how to get a better relationship with your ticketing system. And in my opinion, an attraction operator doesn't want one. They want happy guests who are giving them lots of money to come and have great experiences. They don't care how it happens. Kelly Molson: It's true. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that, definitely. But are you dissing ticketing professionals and saying basically the sessions you're putting on a rubbish no one gives them? Andy Povey: No, no, no. There's a certain section of society that really enjoys it. So I describe this as. When I go to B and Q to look for a drill, I'm one of the geeks that actually wants to understand how the drill works and how fast it is and all that kind of stuff. But the majority of people going to buy a drill don't want a drill. They want a hole. Kelly Molson: Want a hole. Andy Povey: Yeah. So he's an attraction operator. You don't want a ticketing system. You want happy customers who are giving you lots of money and having great experiences. Kelly Molson: Okay, right. So that was a great segue into where I was going. Look, you two, you two have been thick as thieves for a good few months, if not longer, and there's been something cooking up between the two of you. Kelly Molson: I have had a little bit of privy to understand what's been going on, but this is the first time that you've actually got to the point of talking about it openly and publicly, isn't it? And that why you've got me back on, basically, is to grill you on what you're doing. So spill up, fess up. What have you been doing in the background, the two of you? Paul Marden: Well, this all came about after a lunch that Andy and I had in August of last year, where were putting the world to rights and figuring out what do attractions need to do with their ticketing, what do they need to do with their websites, and what could we do to try to improve things? And Andy had thought lots about this stuff and he prepared me. It's quite the lunch. He prepared me a PowerPoint presentation for lunch. Kelly Molson: Wow. Like when you want your mum and dad to get you a dog. Andy Povey: Absolutely. Can we make this happen? Paul Marden: Yeah, it was. It was his wish list. Clearly, this PowerPoint has been worked on for many years because there was lots of wishes, lots of ideas, and being the developer at heart that I am, I'm like, how hard can that be? It's only a website. Surely we can do this. Surely we can do it. We've done bits of it before and we started to think about where we could go with stuff that had long predates me. Yeah. There are elements of Rubber Cheese that you and Wag were working on for years, probably prior to the merger with Carbon Six. But it's been a really challenging market. Paul Marden: And getting out there and meeting people and talking about some of these elements of E commerce and ticketing, sales and personalisation and things like that we're going to talk about in a minute are quite hard to sell into people when it's a challenging market. And it seemed like, well, that was our first date and we thought that it could be a marriage made in heaven for the two of us, because Andy's got a lot of understanding of the sector and the needs and the challenges and who would benefit from this sort of technology. And I'm in the lucky position after having merged Carbon Six and Rubber Cheese, of having some of this technology that we could then develop. So it was a seed that grew from there, really, wasn't it, Andy? Andy Povey: Yeah. And he's carried on growing. I mean, the intent behind it all was that everything is just so disjointed at the moment. So if you're a big theme park with accommodation and a decent retail and decent catering, food and beverage offering, you're looking at seven or eight different systems that you need to run your business and someone needs to plug all of those together to get a good guest experience. And unless you're the size of Merlin or Disney or Universal, with lots and lots of resource to apply to plugging these systems together, it just doesn't happen. Which is why we're still not delivering the Best in class Omni Channel experience to people who are coming out for a day out. Kelly Molson: I think this is a really exciting conversation. And if I think back to some of the conversations that we were having prior to me leaving Rubber Cheese, Paul,it's exactly the challenge that they were having. You know, thinking back to a particular pitch where there's a historic house, there was a plague playground, there was a golf course, there was a spa, there was a hotel, there was something else. And all of these things had so many different systems that were running them and there wasn't really a way to facilitate bringing them all together. And that's the challenge because that's exactly what they need. But they weren't of the scale to be able to invest in the infrastructure to be able to do that. But it is exactly what they needed. Kelly Molson: So is this thing that you've built, or in the process of building and developing, going to solve that problem for people? Andy Povey: That's the objective. Paul Marden: That was a very guarded statement, wasn't it? That was a politician's answer. I think the answer that were just groping for then was yes. Kelly Molson: Yes, it is.Andy Povey: Yes. Kelly Molson: It's exactly the answer that I wanted. Andy Povey: We're forming a company that we're calling Crowd Convert and we'll put a link to the URL and website and all that kind of stuff in the show notes. And the objective behind CrowdConvert is that we will make this all work together. It's a journey. We don't have it today. It doesn't exist. I worked for Merlin Entertainment for the two source group for 18 years now. We had lots of resource in comparison to smaller attractions, but we still didn't make it happen. So it doesn't exist out there at the moment and we're going to build it. Kelly Molson: Okay, so we've got Andy, we've got an industry veteran. Hope you don't mind me. Andy Povey: Not at all. Kelly Molson: Kind of makes you feel, it makes you feel ancient, but you're not. But, you know, you've got all of this historic understanding and experience within the sector. Paul, yours is building, obviously we've built that over the years with Rubber Cheese. But you're, you know, you're the digital specialist that can come in and support facilitating building these and you've both come together under the Crowd Convert name. So this is the new company that the two of you have formed. I love the name. Andy Povey: Thank you. Kelly Molson: So I want to understand, like how then there's a story there. What I want to get a little bit of a deeper understanding is what is the offer? So, you know, what is the thing that you are actually building and does that thing have a name at the moment? What does it look like? So firstly, where did the name come from? Crowd Convert. Paul Marden: Weeks and weeks of effort. I hate choosing names for things, so hard. You come up with a brilliant idea and then you say it to your wife, “Oh my God, you can't call it that”. Or you come up with a name and then somebody's bought the domain name and by the end of It I was just like, please, somebody just put me out of my misery. I don't care what we choose. Andy Povey: It was actually the most torturous thing about getting this all together. There were a few others that came in very close second. But choosing the name and getting that together was really quite painful. Paul Marden: But it was the right process because we were so happy with the result at the end of it. Andy Povey: Absolutely. But it seems or it felt to me like the choosing the name, when we actually got to that part of the process took two or three minutes. And if we'd have thought of that name right at the start, then would we have rejected it or would we have carried on? Could we have saved two minutes? Kelly Molson: So you worked through the process, which means the name has more meaning. Paul Marden: Yeah. Kelly Molson: So what is the meaning behind it? What's the ethos behind between Crowd Convert? Like what? Andy Povey: So we've reverse engineered this one a little bit. And if you're in the world of attractions, you have a crowd. You hopefully you have a crowd. And as a visitor to an attraction, you want to be part of a crowd. You don't want to be the last person in the pub or the only person in theatre, because that just feels weird. But as an attraction operator, I want to have a relationship with you. I want to know who you are, I want to know what you want. I want to give you a great experience. I want to give you a membership. If I'm a charitable organisation, I want to convert you to a donor. If I'm not, then I want to turn you into an advocate at a superfan. Andy Povey: So Crowd Convert is giving you the tools to convert those crowds into individuals that you can create that know, like and trust relationship with. Kelly Molson: That's nice. So you talk a lot on the website about kind of humanising that process. And I think it is. It's taking it back to that kind of one on one that talking to people as individuals rather than talking to them as a mass. Andy Povey: Absolutely. That goes back to the. You don't want a ticketing system. Don't show me what goes in the sausage. Give me a great experience. Paul Marden: Mixing your metaphors there. Andy Povey: I know. Kelly Molson: You lost me at sausage. So, sorry. So I want to go back a little bit, Paul, to what you. Something that you said earlier about that this predates you and your part that you play in Rubber Cheese and your ownership of Rubber Cheese. So I'm going to make an assumption here that something that you're using is something that we already kind of started, but quite a long time ago. So we had almost like a product at Rubber Cheese that was in the ticketing space. And if I'm honest, as a small agency, you only have so much resource to work on things that are for you and ultimately the things that were for us and for you, like the podcast and the survey and the report, always took priority. Kelly Molson: And that was an awful lot of work for an agency that was, you know, before we merged, there were six or seven of us. You know, we weren't huge. We didn't have a whole lot of capacity and resources to give up to these things. But we did start to develop a product that kind of. We knew that it could be good, but it almost. We just, we had to shelve it and we just said, you know, one day we might get investment or one day we might be big enough that we could actually kind of focus on that. It feels like that's the product that you are now. Paul Marden: That is definitely the great grandparent of the idea that we've got now. Kelly Molson: I like that. Paul Marden: So there's, I guess there's two parts to some of the stuff that you had developed previously. Some of it was in the ticketing space. So for very small attractions, you developed a system that had an inventory of tickets that you could buy online and it would issue the ticket, create a barcode, send it to them. But there was also a piece that you did that integrated with existing ticketing systems. And that's the area where I think my mind was going is around building a best in class e commerce experience. Because people sat on the sofa on a Thursday night trying to decide what they're going to do at the weekend, want to be able to find an attraction, get their tickets, and then carry on watching the telly. They want quick and easy experience. We can build that experience. Paul Marden: We know from the survey that it's nine steps on average to be able to complete an attractions checkout, plus or minus a couple of steps. So there's ones that are even worse. And that checkout experience is torturous in many cases. They want to know when you're coming, what time you're coming, what type of ticket you want to buy. They want to know who's coming, the names, possibly the email addresses of all of your guests that you're bringing with you. They'll want to know what your home address is, what your billing address is. They'll then want to sell you a guidebook. They might upsell or cross sell some other products along the way. And that's how you end up with 12 steps in a process that just feels torturous. Paul Marden: I had one last year where they even made me enter a password for a site I was never going to return to and told me off twice for getting the password wrong. I mean, the process that many attractions go through to make you buy, it's a wonder anybody ever perseveres. What's stopping us from achieving an Amazon like one or two click experience? How can we go from that really extreme version down to something really simple and quick? And we've proven that it is possible to do that. It's possible to get down to a couple of clicks and we do that. I know you look surprised. Kelly Molson: Yeah, well, yes, I, well, I am surprised, but also quite excited by that because that is one of the issues that has come up year after year in the visitor attraction, you know, website report is the amount of steps and the aggravation it causes people, but also the cost that it could save attractions. Paul Marden: Yep. Kelly Molson: I mean you said nine steps. I thought were, I thought were aboutbbetween seven and nine steps is about the average. Kelly Molson: Right. So we know that can cost attractions a huge amount in lost revenue. You know, I'm just going back to the 2022 report, but it was something like 250k for one of our best performing attractions. But it's also tied to, you know, that excessive amounts of CO2 emissions, which I know you focused on really heavily for the current report. So you're saying that the product that you're building could essentially take those average steps down to two. Andy Povey: It's not good. It does. Kelly Molson: WowPaul Marden: It does. Yeah. So the way that we do that is a number of different core principles. Yeah. So we are not going to ask you for anything we do not need in order to affect the transaction. We are only going to ask you to share the data we absolutely need to complete the transaction. We are going to start to make some assumptions about you through personalisation technology. We will know roughly where you are and how far you are away from the transaction. If you're within an hour's distance of the place, chances are if you're looking on Thursday night, probably looking for this weekend. If you're on a different continent, you might be planning for a long term holiday. Paul Marden: If we know that you're quite local, let's assume the date that you want to travel based on our understanding of average behaviour of people at that particular attraction and then let people change it if it's not right. Yeah. Another thing Andy talks about a lot is not overselling. So a lot of ticketing systems are trying to upsell, cross sell and increase the average order value, but by cannibalising the conversion rate. And you talk, Andy, don't you, about the maitre d at the restaurant? Andy Povey: Yeah. So it's. It's like comparing a McDonald's experience to go to a fine dining place. So if I'm in the McDonald's world, I have to choose what drink I want, what dessert I'm going to have, what main course I'm going to have, all at the same point. And it's a really artificial transaction. It's almost like if you were walking into a fine dining restaurant with the maitre d at the front going, “Welcome, Andy, come in. Lovely to see you. Can you tell me what you'd like for your starter for your main course? For dessert? Will you like coffee after dessert? Would you like a liqueur after the coffee?” We still haven't got to the table and that's where we are with attractions, upsells. Andy Povey: Because we believe mistakenly, in my opinion, that's the only opportunity that we've got to sell guidebook or the teddy bear or whatever to the guest who's coming. We should stop all of that because it's stopping the transaction, it's interrupting the transaction, adding extra steps and causing people to leave. Kelly Molson: It's a really good point. I mean, I actually have in the past have advocated for adding in upsells in that journey. And because I have often been like, well, yeah, actually it's a really good opportunity for people to sell a little bit more, you know, whether it's a guidebook, whether it's an experience, whatever that might be. So what would you say to people who they still want to do that? Is that, are we then talking about, you know, there's options for you to do that or actually that becomes part of the pre visit, pre boarding. So it funnels down into like emails, comms and stuff. Andy Povey: It's both options, really. For an upsell to work really well, it needs to be at the time where it's most appropriate. So back to the restaurant analogy, offering me a coffee at the point I walk in the door is completely inappropriate. Andy Povey: Offering me a coffee after I've had a great meal and I'm feeling quite full and quite happy with myself is entirely the appropriate time to offer me the coffee. So let's make the offers on the upsells appropriate to the time and to the guest. So if you're an attraction that charges for car parking, for example, it might be that 9:00 in the morning on the day of visit when the family are just getting in the car to travel to the venue is the most appropriate time to offer the car parking upsell. Not at the point where I'm buying the ticket. It might be if you've got a VIP upgrade experience. So if you're a water park there's a cabana you can have. If you're a theme park it's a fast track experience. Andy Povey: If you're a museum then there's a guided Tour that upsell VIP type experience you offer 48 hours before the day of visit. Kelly Molson: Sure. Andy Povey: Memberships are another great thing. So there's still the majority of first time membership purchases are made as the consumer is leaving the attraction. Had a great day out. Get today's entry feedback against your membership and that's still go and join this queue with kids who are overtired and a little bit disappointed because they're leaving and I'm stressed because I've got a. I'm tired as well and I've got a long drive home and then I've got to work out what we're going to do for dinner when we get in. There's all these negatives. Don't try and sell me a membership then. Sell me the membership for the next seven days and hit me up with lots of different messages through appropriate channels. Andy Povey: So it might be that a WhatsApp message on the way home offering me a really simple way of upgrading to a membership is the most appropriate that time. But it might be that 9 o'clock on Monday morning when we can assume that a lot of people are going to be sitting behind a desk. Then it's the most appropriate to send me an email and then hit me up again Thursday when I'm thinking about what I'm going to be doing next this weekend coming remind me of the great experience I had and give me an opportunity then. So just be, make it much more human. Kelly Molson: It makes sense. And there's something that you. I've been able to have a sneak peek of the Crowd Convert website. So we'll talk a little bit later about where people can find out a little bit more about you. But I've been able to have a little look at that and there's something that you talk about which is about rehumanising commerce and there's a really lovely story on there that you talk about, which is the Shopkeeper's Wisdom. And I read that, I was like, this is really nice because I've always. The local shop is or did sit at the epicentre of the community at one point. And I have got really vivid memories. So we lived on a little estate near my school in Essex and across the road from us was the corner shop. Kelly Molson: And it was where everything happened, you know, like it was the post office, it was where you got your papers, where you got your sweets. At one point is where you got your videos, not your DVDs because they did not exist. You know, you got your VHS cassettes and you could go and rent, you know, everything kind of happened there. And they knew you, they knew your family, they knew your mum and dad, they knew your names, you know, and it was a really, it was just quite a wholesome experience. And you talk about that, the Shopkeeper's Wisdom. So you say, you know, the local shopkeeper knew everything that it was to know about their customers. And that is kind of taking it back to that level. That's, that's what this feels like. Andy Povey: And that's completely where we're trying to get to. We don't want to get to the level of creepiness where people are getting all upset about what were. Andy Povey: And we don't want to be intrusive. But we have a great opportunity in the attraction space. Our customers want to engage with us. They're going because they enjoy what we do. They're going to see us because they want to experience the thing that we're doing. It's not like we're selling insurance or car tires that you just got to have and it's really tedious. People want to engage, so let's make it easy for them to do that. Kelly Molson: Okay. So we're doing that by making it quicker for them and less friction to buy a ticket in the first place. Communicating with them at the appropriate times and in the ways that they want to be communicated to and offering them. Because we don't want to stop offering people extra things. We're doing it in the way and at the time that's appropriate for that audience. Paul Marden: We're absolutely convinced that moving some of these upsells and cross sell opportunities to later in your relationship will increase the likelihood of you closing the deal. Don't cannibalise the conversion rate at the initial conversation. You haven't built a trust relationship with someone, so don't keep throwing options at them. It's just too much. I'm a simple boy. If I go to a restaurant, I want a really simple menu, three or four things, and I'll make a choice. Yeah. If you give me too many options, I'll just sit there and I won't be able to decide. And I think that's what we do when we present people with nine steps and we want to know the email address of everybody, we want to know the postcode of where they live because we want to be able to market to them and that's important. Paul Marden: But there are other better ways of being able to identify where somebody is other than using their postcode and making them type something in. They don't need that hassle. Andy Povey: So this is all about the e commerce journey. Stepping back a little bit closer to what Rubber Cheese do. And the DNA behind Rubber Cheese is making attractions websites work really well. And it's back to the point about things being disconnected and attraction operators having to plug them together. How many websites are there or how many attraction e commerce journeys are there where you click on the button to buy a ticket and you're taken to a different page and that different page can have a completely different look and feel? Kelly Molson: Oh, yeah. I mean, that's a massive bug. It's been a bugbear of mine for years. Andy Povey: But how many websites do you have where I can be sitting there looking at the tulip experiences coming up? We heard lots of that kind of stuff at the end fan conference. I'm on the tulips page. But then you take me to a page where I've got to pick the date that I want to visit. I've already told you, I'm on the tulip page. I want to come and see tulips. I'm not interested in Father Christmas. Kelly Molson: I'm just all about the tulips. Andy Povey: So don't make me choose twice. Make it work together. Kelly Molson: Okay, So I want to play devil's advocate here because I'm sitting here listening to this going, this sounds great. I'm going back to what Andy said about, you know, attractions, they don't really want a ticketing system. They just. They don't really care about the system. They just want it to work. Right, I get that. But there's going to be a lot of people that are listening to this podcast going, “bloody ticketing system”. There's a lot, right? Let's face it. Paul Marden: It's a busy space. Kelly Molson: You are. It is a busy space. And if you are an attraction sitting here going,”Oh my God, another one.” We know that another one. You know that we know what we've got isn't working for us. We've, we've got workarounds, we're doing what we can with what we already have. But you know, ultimately we can't grow with what we have and we know we need to change it. This is a big task, right? You know, your ticketing system is often embedded so deeply into your organisation that the process of selecting a new one and then implementing that change is so vast and overwhelming that one people declare we just won't bother. That's why I've got these workarounds in place or two, you know, overwhelmed with choice. And yes, I know there's specialists out there. Kelly Molson: You know, we work with a couple that will help you go through that process and select the right partners for you. But if someone like me is sitting here going, “Okay, why do I come to Crowd Convert?” Like, why is this, what is it the thing that your product is going to be stand out for that is going to sit above or is going to solve the problems I've got above all of the other options that I've got out there? Andy Povey: So this is back to the comment earlier about this being a concept, an ethos of philosophy. Our business will grow through either building solutions, acquiring other solutions that have already been built, or selecting partners to integrate with. And we will do the whole integration. So it doesn't matter what ticketing system you're using that you have today, if you want the better digital experience for your guests, we will integrate to your current ticketing system. Kelly Molson: Okay, so you're taking the pain of having to change something that's deeply embedded in your organisation and almost putting something, a layer on top of that will actually facilitate this better customer interaction, purchasing process without the need for all of the stressful change. Paul Marden: Do away with the whole monolithic solution that solves the operation of the entire business and start to turn it into LEGO bricks. I want a LEGO brick from a website. I want a LEGO brick for my ticketing. I want my LEGO brick for my e commerce experience. I want my LEGO brick for my online shop. We'll either build or acquire those LEGO bricks or partner with the best of breed LEGO bricks that exist. Other building blocks are available and we will help to plug those together and make them work effectively. But you can imagine, you know, I always talk about, we talked a lot about ticketing today, but I, whenever I talk to somebody about ticketing, changing your ticketing system is like open heart surgery on the business. Paul Marden: Yeah, it's something you don't necessarily do casually, although I have met people who have changed it casually. But it's often so difficult because it's so deeply ingrained across the entire operation. But if you start to. It's a horrible, boring technical term. If you start to build this composable set of systems that can plug together, then it becomes easier. If you plug in an e commerce online ticketing solution and it plugs into your current ticketing system, well then later on when you change that ticketing system, you won't necessarily have to change the online experience in order to be able to do that. Yeah, we'll be able to plug into the new one that you choose. It makes it easier for you to chop and change things and become less dependent on one single monolithic provider. Kelly Molson: Yeah, because that's the thing. Right. You know, I think the past dream has been one system that does everything and suddenly that one system goes down and you're absolutely screwed. Andy Povey: That's not the way the world works anymore. And the human world. I use analogy of a TV. I got a new TV a few weeks ago out of the box and turned it on and I was presented on screen with an option to get the remote control for my new TV to operate other devices in my house. And my kids could have set it up. Kelly Molson: Danger.Andy Povey: Absolutely. Why is integration so difficult? And that's the way the world is going. If you look at credit card processing two, three years ago, to be able to accept a payment by credit card, you had to sign into a five year agreement with a credit card process provider. I was in my local WIX yesterday and I could have bought credit card terminal off the shelf. Andy Povey: They were sitting on the shelf next to the suites at the checkout. For 50 quid I could have taken it home, unboxed it and I would be processing credit card transactions there and then. I'm not signing into a three year agreement. If I don't like it, I can take it back and get one in pink because I prefer pink to white. It's got to be much easier. The world is becoming much easier. The technology world is becoming much easier to make these things work together. So you won't need clever people like Paul to make it all work together. Crowd convert. Paul Marden: I'll be on the golf course, won't I? Kelly Molson: Do you play golf? Paul Marden: No. Never played golf in my life. Crazy golf. Kelly Molson: I like the analogy. I like the Lego brick analogy. I like this whole kind of the concept that it's, you know, like plug and play but you know, you haven't got. You're using the base of what you already have, but you can pop these things as part of it. That feels really understandable for people to get their head around the concept of what you're doing. Paul Marden: But still totally integrated. What we don't want is the solution that is that somebody, an attraction that we've been to recently, where to get in, you have to go through different turnstiles depending on whether you've got a day ticket or a membership ticket because the two different sets of systems can't talk to the same turnstile at the same time. And so then you need more double the staff to be able to man the turnstiles. Kelly Molson: And confusion, and it ruins that whole first impact of arrival because you don't know yet. Andy Povey: But we're exposing our dirty laundry to the consumer. Why? They don't care. Kelly Molson: Yeah, yeah. Andy Povey: It doesn't matter to them what ticketing system you've got. Paul Marden: That is the vision. And the vision is becoming reality as well. Kelly Molson: Okay, well, let's talk about that. So there is a website that I've had privy to and the product is in its, should we say it's in its infancy at the moment and it's being developed. Paul Marden: Yes. Kelly Molson: So this is the time to that you'll be having, I guess you'll be having conversations with people about what that product, you're almost building it for the people. Right. You're having conversations with them about this is what we see happening. This is how we see what we do. What are your needs? Paul Marden: Yeah. Kelly Molson: Okay, cool. So can people get involved with that process? Paul Marden: Exciting. Andy Povey: Absolutely. Paul Marden: Anyone can talk to Andy. He'll talk to anybody. Kelly Molson: It's true, he will. Paul Marden: I just get locked in a cupboard and told to design things. Andy Povey: Make it work, plug it together. Kelly Molson: Okay, so I've got a few questions about what does this mean for Rubber Cheese? What does this mean for Rubber Cheese? What does this mean for Skip the Queue. What does this mean for the report initiatives that we do? I guess that's all still happening. Paul Marden: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely no changes to Rubber Cheese at all. This is part of a wider, bigger family that Rubber Cheese is part of. And looking at different parts of the attraction operating experience. Paul Marden: Yeah. So Rubber Cheese is going to carry on almost single minded focus on websites that enable people to get to the buy button. Kelly Molson: I like that. Paul Marden: Getting them from being interested in the attraction to hitting that buy now button or get your ticket button. Yeah. That's our specialty and that will remain our specialty. The job of Crowd Convert then is to convert them. Kelly Molson: Pick up from that point. Andy Povey: Absolutely. Kelly Molson: That's lovely, isn't it? Andy Povey: And that's where the build, acquire and partner comes in. So there will be other organisations, other tools that we partner with and plug together. And that's the bit that Crowd Convert does. It's almost the umbrella, the glue that glues all of these things together. Kelly Molson: Okay, so what more do our listeners need to understand about Crowd Convert and how can they get involved? How can they be part of this conversation to define what this product actually looks like and does for them? Andy Povey: So we're launching the website. You can find Paul and me on LinkedIn. We've got a bunch of events and exhibition shows that we're going to be at over the next few months where we're actively going to be asking people to get involved. If you are interested, then pick up the phone and drop us an email. We'll have a chat. Paul Marden: Contact@crowdconvert.co.uk.Kelly Molson: I was going to say we need the domain name in there. Crowdconvert.co.uk is the place to go. Go and have a look, find out, have a little bit of a read through about the site. It's designed in a really nice way. I think that what I really liked as I was reading it through was kind of this real focus on building something for the greater good. It's not just another ticketing platform. It's not just about. It really is about working with the attractions to build something that is just, it just works. And it works for them in the way they need it to and it works for the visitors in the way they need it to. Andy Povey: And that's it completely. It's about putting the guest at the centre of everything we're doing. And looking at this from the consumer's perspective, does it make sense or am I going to have to work out where I bought my tickets? So I know whether I go through the right hand turnstiles or the left hand turnstiles, that's just rubbish. Kelly Molson: Yeah, okay, great. So website is launching.Paul Marden:  It is launched. It's up and running. Kelly Molson: Oh, it's out. It's out there all right. It's out there in the world already. So that's where you go, listeners, if you want to find out more about what's happening. And I would really recommend booking a call with Andy, booking a call with Paul, talking through, you know, if anything that we've talked about today has made you feel quite excited about what the prospect of this product could potentially be. Book a call with them. I mean, listen, if you're seeing Andy at a conference, you just need to up. And you'll find him. Or maybe it’s just me.Paul Marden: Me, not so much. Kelly Molson: Oh, it's just me. Okay, listen, I always finish off my podcasts with a book recommendation for our listeners, so I'd like to ask you both if you've prepared a book today. Andy, what do you have for us? Andy Povey: So I pondered this for quite a while because I was expecting it and I think it's the third or fourth you've asked me for. So I'm actually not going to recommend a book at all. I told you that I've given up on podcasts earlier on and I found Audible. So at the moment the thing that's occupying all of my attention is that, The Day of the Triffids on Audible which is fantastic. Fantastic escapism from everything that's going off in the world at the moment. Paul Marden: Interesting. Kelly Molson: That's nice actually. That's really good. But audiobooks are really good for long drives that were talking about earlier. They're quite good. I got into. Sorry, Paul, just. I'll come to you in a minute. Paul Marden: It's all about you. Kelly Molson: It's all about me today. I really got into. Kelly Molson: Just before the pandemic and during it there was a BBC podcast called the Lovecraft. Oh gosh, what is it called? The Lovecraft's Tales. I'm gonna have to have to check this on my.Paul Marden: Sorry, listeners. Well, she's out of practice on this. Kelly Molson: So I am out of practice. Apologies, but you know me. The Lovecraft investigations. Don't know if anyone would listen to it. It's brilliant. It's based on the love. It's loosely based on on Lovecraft books but it was quite like it's about supernatural. But what I really enjoyed about it was linked to like local places that I kind of knew like Retend and Forest and there was a lot of like, kind of like Norfolk, Suffolk and Dunwich and stuff. And that was. They're really good for like long drives as well because you can really get into something on like a two or three hour journey. So I totally with you on the triffids thing. So I did bring it back to Andy in the end. Andy Povey: Thank you, Kelly. Kelly Molson: Paul, what have you prepared? Paul Marden: I am an absolute Fan of classic British crime novels. Love an Agatha Christie. Love, a  mystery of some sort. But I'm not going to recommend an Agatha Christie one. I'm going to recommend one that I've got on Audible as well, that I found originally from Audible. Paul Marden: And it is one of the British Library classic British crime series, where they're republishing stuff from, like, you know, the 20s and 30s, and it's called the Wintringham Mystery Anthony Barclay. It's a classic whodunit in a kind of locker room mystery in a massive stately home. It's just like a Poirot novel, but it's not Poirot. It's a different one. But I love it. It's a brilliant book. Kelly Molson: When you find stuff like that, it's really comforting, isn't it? It's like a little a warm hug and a cup of tea. Andy Povey: Absolutely. Kelly Molson: Lovely. Well, do our listeners still get to win copies of those books even though they're audiobooks? Paul Marden: Yeah, but they don't do it on X anymore because, you know, who wants to be posting on X? So if listeners. If you'd like a copy of Andy’s. Well, no, you can't have Andy Lovecraft books but it was quite like it's about supernatural. On Audible or mine. On Audible or on Paperback, then head over to Bluesky and repost the shownotes where Wenalyn has announced the podcast and the first person that does that will get a copy of the book. Kelly Molson: Lovely. Well, it has been an absolute treat to be back on the podcast today. Thank you. Paul Marden: You're not coming back over again? It's still mine. It's mine there. Kelly Molson: Please let me come back. Please. Anything that we've talked about today will, as ever, be in the show notes. So you'll find links to the Crowd Convert website, you'll find links to Paul and Andy's LinkedIn profiles and email addresses, whatever. However, best to get in touch with them. But I highly recommend having a chat with them. Can I just say, because it is all about me. I’ve been very sad to not be part of the podcast moving forward. But I am also been really thrilled that you have taken completely up to the ownership of it. So I just. While I'm on here, and it is about me, I just wanted to congratulate you for taking over and making it your own, because you really needed to do that. And it's brilliant to see. Kelly Molson: And I've loved listening to the episodes. I think the bravery in doing some of the live ones. Paul Marden: Stupidity. Kelly Molson: Well, maybe a tad. Paul Marden: We won't talk about what happened at NFAN last week. Please let's not talk about that. Andy Povey: What happens in Blackpool stays in Blackpool. Kelly Molson: Next time I come on the podcast, I'm going to make you spill that as a guilty confession. Paul Marden: But you know what? I absolutely loved it. I came back afterwards and I listened to that episode and it's the first one where I've been. I really thoroughly enjoyed listening to the conversation. I'm finding my feelings only taken me a couple of years. Kelly Molson: Well, it only took me a couple of years as well. But you're there now and it's brilliant. So, like one, well done. I genuinely think that you're doing an excellent job and I'm very glad that I got to hand the baton over to you and you're doing it differently. Paul Marden: You can just come back as a guest star. Andy Povey: It was more of a temporary end, wasn't it, than a handover. Paul Marden: It's mine. It's mine. Kelly Molson: I think it was a, "Here you go, dumped on your lap." Paul Marden: Thank you for coming back and talking to us. It's been marvellous. Kelly Molson: Thank you for having me back. I've loved every minute. 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 to find us. Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them to increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcripts from this episode and more over on our website, skipthequeue fm.  The 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsDownload the 2024 Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

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  52:50
• Innovation in the Cultural Sector - the View from the Top

  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.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 SkiptheQueue.fm.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  or Bluesky for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 5th March 2025. The winner will be contacted via Bluesky. Show references: https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/zakmensah/Zak Mensah is the co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust. He is passionate about helping their service make an impact by focusing on the needs of over 1 million visitors. He is encouraging the organization to adopt a "digital by default" approach. Zak's mission is to ensure that their people, skills, and services remain adaptable to the rapidly changing landscape of the cultural sector. He is exploring new ways of doing things, including innovative business models, partnerships, and arts-related KPIs, while sharing as much as possible publicly.With a background in staff development and digital, Zak has been involved with the web since the late 90s and has seen its influence grow in all aspects of life. Prior to joining the arts sector in 2013, he helped small businesses, charities, Jisc, universities, and the Heritage Lottery Fund "do" digital well.Zak also runs his own consultancy to promote positive change and keep his skills sharp. His goal is to make a ruckus. https://www.vam.ac.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyakino-wittering/Amy Akino-Wittering is Head of Operations and Commercial at Young V&A, which opened July 2023 and recently won Art Fund Museum of the Year and Kids in Museums, Family Friendly Museum of the Year awardsResponsible for the general management of Young V&A she directly manages the visitor experience and teams, catering contract, volunteering and back of house operations, collaborating closely with central V&A colleagues to deliver operations and income for Young V&A. Previously Amy worked at V&A South Kensington as Senior Visitor Experience Manager-Sales and was on the opening project team leading on visitor experience and retail at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery.She started her career at Imperial War Museums working across sites from assistant to management roles in Retail and Admissions and systems management.  https://www.hampshireculture.org.uk/​​https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-sapwell-b3b2a281/Paul Sapwell has been Chief Executive at independent arts and culture charity Hampshire Cultural Trust since 2018, having joined the trust in 2016 as Chief Operating Officer following an early career primarily in hospitality and leisure. Paul is a passionate believer in the transformative power that cultural experiences can have on the wellbeing of individuals and communities, and a prominent advocate for the role of commercial growth, underpinned by a flexible, entrepreneurial team culture, in sustaining museum and arts organisations. Transcription: Paul Marden: The museums and culture sector are facing unprecedented headwinds. Static or reducing funding from local government, fewer grants from trusts and foundations, all while dealing with increased people costs. The continued headwinds from cost of living crisis. But this sector continues to deliver more with less and support the cultural life of our country. Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue. I'm your host, Paul Marden and in today's episode recorded the Science Museum at the Association of Cultural Enterprises View from the Top event. I'm joined by Amy Akino-Wittering, Head of Operations and Commercial at Young V&A. Zak Mensah, Co CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust, and Paul Sapwell, CEO of Hampshire Cultural Trust. Paul Marden: And we're going to talk about how the cultural sector can innovate in order to thrive. Anyone that's listened to the podcast before will know. And this is the nervous bit. Paul Marden: We always start with an icebreaker question which my lovely guests victims have not been prepared for. So, Zak, I'm afraid you go first, my friends. So if you were a cartoon character, which cartoon character would you be? Zak Mensah: That's easy. I think I would be the thing that gets chased by the. Is it the wild Cody who runs around all his home? But I'd be the. What's the little, the stupid Roadrunner. Yeah, so I would be Roadrunner because you constantly are literally running 100 miles an hour and then a giant piano lands on you at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon, but you respawn on the Monday and you start all over again. Pretty much feels like me. Paul Marden: I love that. I love that. Amy, you're next. Let's think of all of the inventions over the last hundred years that were offered. Flying cars, those sorts of things. What is the one thing were promised that you really miss and think we really need in our lives? Amy Akino-Wittering: I think a Time Turner, which is basically from Harry Potter. Basically you can just go and do things like six. They do six days all at once. Paul Marden: You can be Hermione if you've got a Time Turner. Amy Akino-Wittering: Yeah, great. Paul Marden: Excellent. I love that, Amy. Thank you. Paul. Paul Sapwell: You said these were going to be under no pressure. I wouldn't have liked. I wouldn't have liked either of those. Paul Marden: Oh, well, you're not going to like this one then. I'm sorry, mate, I'm, I, I live in Hampshire. Paul runs Hampshire Cultural Trust. Paul. Paul Sapwell:  Oh, even better. Paul Marden: Saints or Pompey? Paul Sapwell:  Oh, blimey. Okay, well that's, I'm an Arsenal fan. Paul Marden: So there we go. Paul Sapwell: I couldn't possibly answer Saints or Pompey? I mean, we border both. So I would just be in so much trouble if I pick one or the other. So I can. I've got to get out. Paul Marden: Are you dodging that one? Paul Sapwell: Yeah. I thought you might watch Arsenal regularly. Paul Marden: I thought you might. So we are going to start with a question from somebody from the audience, a young man named Gordon. Apparently he might be a millennial. And he says, After 15 years of turmoil, financial crash, austerity, Brexit, Covid, we face continuing cost of living issues, rising national insurance and a Trump presidency. Are we doomed in 2025? Or to put it slightly better, what are the biggest risks for your organisation and the wider sector, and what are you each doing to thrive in the year ahead? And I'm going to start with you, Paul. Paul Sapwell: That's an easy question, isn't it? Paul Marden: You can thank young Gordon. Paul Sapwell: Brilliant Gordon, Yeah. I mean, I think 2025 is going to be an incredibly tricky year, but to sort of look further than that. I'm certainly an optimist, but I think we're in a time of transition, particularly in terms of our sector, in the cultural sector, in terms of what's going to fund us and what's going to sustain us going forward. You know, I think the years of the level. I think a lot of the speakers have touched on it, but the years of the level of public sector funding is, whatever happens with this government and next is going to be going down and we just have to face that. I run an organisation which we started out in 2019. We're about 85% publicly funded. Now we're 34% publicly funded with the same turnover, I hasten to add. Paul Sapwell: And so we've made a good go of it, but I think the headwinds this year are really difficult. That said, I think that we have to be confident investing for the longer term and particularly, obviously, in this conference in areas of commercial growth. I think that, okay, the growth projections have been downgraded. I am confident that we will, as the decade continues, move into a period of growth. And we've got to be looking at the long term rather than the short term. The trick is, of course, not running out of money in the short term. And that's a really difficult place to be. Paul Marden: In the water, just here. Paul Sapwell: I don't have an easy answer to that, but I think fundamentally, you've got to give the customer what they want and the customer is still there. Paul Sapwell: And we have a fantastic product. But we've got to certainly pivot much further towards what customers want commercially, in my view, than putting as much emphasis as probably we did 10 years ago on trying to find more and more public funding, because I think that's going down. Paul Marden: Zak, have you got any thoughts on that? Zak Mensah: Yeah, I mean, in terms of money, just generally people want to back winners. So I think one of the difficult things that internally we can all say it's doom and gloom, because it does feel that doom and gloom. There are definitely days, weeks and months. I think it's right to say that it's doom and gloom. Like you can be optimist but still understand it's difficult time. And I think a lot of our, you know, a lot of our workforces certainly feel that, it can feel very difficult because every year they ask, will they have their job? Right. And that's a really fair question to ask. And we sometimes as leaders kind of say, “Oh, if we can get through the next two years, but two years for normal staff are sometimes a very long time to try and say, “You or may have not have a job to make life through.”Zak Mensah: So I think that's something I always think back in back of my mind. I think a lot of the difficulties, whichever flavour of government is about understanding how to be more savvy, about understanding the trends, about things that are fundable. Because there are lots of things that were funded 10, 20 years ago, that money has dried up. And so we've all got to think about, for example, a lot of people now looking at, well, being a speaker this afternoon was talking about more on EDI, for example, and how younger people certainly are interested in having more of a purpose driven business. Is how for us, we can make sure we're focused on the, what I was called, the user need. So the needs that people use us. Zak Mensah: Because if you can concentrate and focus on what they want, whether it be money, otherwise that ultimately does lead to a business model. Because there's no point saying just because museums and galleries have been around for 100 to 200 years, they have an absolute right to exist. The only way they exist is because every decade or whatever there's another crisis comes along and a group of people, including ourselves here, live in this room, but also listening to this make it happen. Like, we've got to convince councillors, government, businesses to be part of that journey. Because the funny thing I will say is that, you know, at Birmingham Museums, the art gallery was founded in 1885 by industry people. It was industry people that founded it. It was industry people who wanted the city to have great arts. Zak Mensah: And so now we're turning back to those same people and saying, "We need you to now step up and contribute." It doesn't always have to be money. It could be in kind support, could be advocacy. That's the kind of thing that we need to do as leaders right now, in addition to the normal making the money work and stretch as far as we can. Paul Marden: Absolutely. Amy, what are you doing at Young V&A to thrive in the year ahead and face some of these challenges? Amy Akino-Wittering: Yeah, absolutely. So we've now been open for just over two years, so I feel kind of, well, coming up to two years. And so I feel we're kind of in that stage where we kind of opened and sort of just try to make sure that we are operationally savvy. And last year was very much about refining that. And I think this year is very much about what's next and how can we build upon kind of success of opening, looking at ways in which we can innovate through doing new kind of commercial opportunities, but also how can we develop our audiences. And as well as part of kind of the wider V&A, we've got two more sites opening as well. Amy Akino-Wittering: So how as an organisation are we going to work together to kind of be in this new family of sites and work together through there? So I think for us in the kind of coming year is all about, what's next? We've opened the door. We started with a really strong foundation and a really strong vision, but then how can we keep on innovating and keep iterating that to improve? Paul Marden: Excellent. I'm going touch on stuff that Lewis talked about a minute ago. One of his reflections I really liked was thinking about how do we create a space for colleagues to engage with some of these really important issues that have been on the PowerPoints. Zak, maybe you could start. What do you think your organisation can do to act as bottom up catalyst for change as opposed to trying to drive these changes from the top down? Zak Mensah: I think the first thing is about understanding that there are a lot of people who do want to be able to voice their hopes and fears around a whole host of subjects, whether it be specifically around, if you're ethnic minority, about your fear of living in the UK, if you have climate, lots of important subjects people want to talk about. You know, I think certainly internally, and I'll be very clear about this, I think there's a very different view sometimes about the difference between internal and the external voice of the organisation. So what we see a lot of is staff individually believe that as a service there are lots of things we could and should be talking about publicly that may or may not directly align with how as a leader we see it. Zak Mensah: So, you know, there are lots of fights we do get into. We can't get into every single fight. And sometimes there's a real fine balance around what we decide to go for. So if you take during Black Lives Matter example, me and Sarah Shropshire started in November 2020, there was an expectation that immediately we would be like the spokesperson for the whole museum sector about black and brown issues. And like, it's really hard to say, actually. I am not speaking on behalf of every single person in the whole country. I do take it seriously and we set up internally ways people to talk about it, but didn't always feel appropriate. Zak Mensah: And I'll give another example is around, for example, war. Any one time there's something like 15 global conflicts happening and, you know, we talk and go backwards and forwards internally sometimes about, you know, do we talk about them publicly? If we talk about them internally, how we talk about them, do we single one out or do we talk about them all? Are they equal? How do you equally talk about things are very horrific for a number of people?Zak Mensah: And knowing that we've got staff from dozens of countries who all have different views on how their homeland or area they're interested in is impacted. Things are very horrific for a number of people. But I do think that there's always. It's always really tricky because the best conversations and the best conversations need care and a lot of the conversations happen in like, pockets that we have no control over. Zak Mensah: And so it's again, how do you set an environment as a leader that is allowing the bottom up to do their own thing, but in a way that isn't going to be detrimental to the whole workforce? Because I think it is. Again, I mentioned it's been. It's really tricky and that's the simple truth. It is no easy answer to these things because if it was easy, we'd all solved it. Yeah. But acknowledging it there, it's the elephant in the room, I think is really important and growing to be more and more important for us as leaders. Paul Marden: I think Lewis was saying it's really important to know where you stand on issues and it is okay for you to have a stance on issues that says, I'm not going to make a stand on this one issue. I thought that was a really interesting perspective. Imy’s talk. I think were talking a lot about the journey of Titanic Belfast, which I love as a museum, to go to a museum that emotionally moved me as much with so very few actual artefacts. I just think it's an amazing storytelling experience. But you talked a little bit about the team and what you do to be able to nurture that team. And one of the things that we're talking about is trying to get 110% out of everybody getting to more with less, getting them to innovate. Paul Marden: How do you balance all of those challenges and not break the people and maintain a 98% retention rate like Titanic does? Paul? Paul Sapwell: Well, maintaining a 98 retention rate, I think fairly unprecedented and huge congratulations. I mean, I think it follows on a bit from what Zak was saying, actually. You know, it's tough, isn't it, being leaders in terms of whether you're making that kind of external message or whether you've got a tough internal message. I mean, I've always taken a stance that you've got to be as transparent as you possibly can be and people will go a long way with you if it doesn't appear that things are being taken in a dark room somewhere. And I think for us, what we've tried to do is to put in the mechanisms for that to happen. I've been really fortunate to work with a fantastic people director, Hampshire Cultural Trust. Paul Sapwell: One of the first things, I think you've also got to make a stance, by the way, on people being important. One of the first things I did as CEO was say we need a people director. It's quite rare in the heritage sector. I came from hospitality, it was the norm. It's an odd thing that people and HR doesn't always sit at the top table. Sometimes it's sort of delegated down in operations or even finance. So I think that's really important and we needed a strategy and part of that is putting in place a lot of the stuff that you talked about of the Titanic, which I think is really impressive. And we're somewhere on that journey, but not quite as far along, but proper employee forums where you listen. Paul Sapwell: I meet with an employee elected employee forum quarterly and talk to them about all issues with nothing off the table. We also have an EDI group with a mix, again, senior leadership on there talking about these issues. And I think that, you know, if there was one thing I would say it's, you're not always going to be able to give easy answers, are you? This year we're being hit with an enormous national insurance hit to the staff costs and that is going to affect pay. I can't pretend that it isn't. And if we're going to not run out of money in the next few years, we're going to have to give less of a pay increase this year than we would like to. Paul Sapwell: But we've been talking about that openly since it hit and I hope that our team will go, will understand, but obviously that doesn't make it, make it easy. And I think the same is true with the issues that you're talking about. You can't take a stance on every single issue that comes through each of these forums every quarter, but you have a conversation about it. And I think that's the most important bit for me. Paul Marden: Amy, I'm going to segue wide away from today's talks. Regular listeners will know that I'm a Trustee of Kids in Museums and I was chatting with my fellow trustees about today's event and we wondered, given the impact of the cultural sector, on the impact that it has on the lives of young people and how there are so many challenges at the moment for disadvantaged young people to engage in the sector. You know, we all know that post Covid, many schools have cut their school visits into museums and galleries. I pick you because Young V&A was the winner of Kids in Museums Family Friendly Awards last year. So let's just start with you and talk about what are the innovative things that you've done to break down barriers to encourage children and families to engage in the museum. Amy Akino-Wittering: Yes, of course. So Young V&A when we kind of opened its entire purpose is about engaging children. It's all about kind of that creative confidence in Generation Alpha. And so the whole museum has been designed with and for young people. So its target audience is between naught to 14 year olds. We spoke with over 22,000 young people in the development of the museum to hear what do they want from it. I think there's a survey which said that 40% of children thought that museums were boring and it weren't places for them. So, well, what can we do as we've got this opportunity to redevelop, to make sure that it is a place that people want to go and enjoy and be themselves. Amy Akino-Wittering: And so that was kind of like the North Star in terms of what every kind of decision in the kind of opening and making and running of Young V&A is really centred around this as well. And so it goes from the aesthetic in terms of the height of things, the bright colours from this swirling staircase that we have at Young V&A, which came from an idea that someone wanted to helter skelter in the space to the tone of voice in our interpretation and also how the objects are displayed. We've got objects from across the V&A, we've got over 2,000 objects. But it's not just the museum as was the Museum of Childhood collection, it's from across all of the different departments of the V&A. And it's been curated with that kind of child centred and child focused way. Amy Akino-Wittering: Co design is also a really kind of core part of it as well. So we kind of co designed with local audiences and children for various design displays and also co curation. So each gallery was co curated between the learning team and the curatorial team as well. And then obviously we've kind of got to actually open the building and have a team to deliver that visitor experience. And again, that is all very much fed through that audience lens. And so we looked at our structures of, you know, what types of people do we want in the space? You know, our core audience are children. We need people who want to engage with that audience. It's a very specific kind of audience, but also we are a hyper local organisation as well and so how can we encourage applicants from the local boroughs? Amy Akino-Wittering: So we drove a very inclusive recruitment process where we basically did a behaviour led process for recruitment, we redid all the job descriptions, went out into our local community, did workshops and CV surgeries and basically just made it as easy as possible for people to apply and get interview. And the kind of core things that were looking at was behaviours. We can teach people how to go on a till or to learn how to do fire evacuations, but actually it's much harder to get people because that's what the job is. You know, the majority, you know, all your visitors will come to a touch point with the front of house team. They are your most important ambassadors. Amy Akino-Wittering: So we need to make sure that we've got the best kind of resources and time and structure in place to support them, to give the best possible experience that we can. So we spent a lot of time doing that. We spent a lot of time as well working Kids in Museums come in and do training about specific family engagement training as well, which has been really beneficial. And then also we really believe that, you know, the customer experience, the visitor experience is directly impacted by the employee experience. You can't expect the team to deliver this amazing, joyful visitor experience if actually they're pretty miserable behind the scenes. So how can we make sure that the structures that we have and the environment that we have is reflective of how we want them to be on the floor as well? Amy Akino-Wittering: So we make sure that we have forums to make sure that, you know, people can have their say. We make sure. So we did this team charter, which was this sort of collaborative effort to see, like, how do you want to feel in the workplace, but also how do you want your visitors to feel? And actually, it was all very similar in terms of the outcomes that came from that kind of exercise. And it's these kind of agreement that we have together to how we're going to work together and those kind of things which we do to ensure. It's that kind of frequent communication and making sure that we're on the same page and it kind of brings that joy which then comes out to the visitors. Amy Akino-Wittering: And that is kind of I think all those things together has all really helped in terms of when someone comes into the space, children, they're front and centre. They really feel like it's a place for them and they've got kind of people around them which really get them and that they will help facilitate their curiosity and things like that. So that's what we've done. Paul Marden: Amazing. Paul, have you got some thoughts? Paul Sapwell: Yeah. I love what you're saying about the visitor. The visitor services guys on the front desk. I mean, they are the most important people, essentially, and that's why I was nodding vigorously. I think that's part of what I was talking about earlier in terms of pivot into more of a commercial view, because a commercial company completely relies on their customer who comes in. And I think my experience of being in an organisation that's moved out of being run predominantly by a council to one that's independent now was, I've got to be honest, at the start, that wasn't how it felt. Paul Sapwell: And actually you could produce big lists of visitor figures, but ultimately, if they went up or down, it didn't really matter because the funding was going to stay the same, whatever, and there would be other metrics, and I think that's the big shift in mentality, because if you don't give the customer what they want, and that means really valuing people on your front line. And, you know, we've had conversations at the Museum Association about it, about how there's almost been that divide in museums between the people who talk to your customers and the museum staff. And I think that's a really. Or people who would see themselves doing proper museum work. And I think that, you know, that's something we've got to. We're moving in the right direction, but we've got to move quicker. Paul Marden: All of our best memories, aren't they, of going to these places are not necessarily about the amazing artefacts, it's the stories that your team tell people when they interact with them. You feel so happy as a result of it. I think of some amazing experiences. Zak, have you got any thoughts on this? Innovative ways in which we make museums family friendly, how we encourage make them more children friendly? Zak Mensah: Well, the first thing is it's something like 50% of people have children. And so knowing that is in the UK is a thing. Just knowing that as a fact. Right. Means that thinking then about families who will come, but also the staff workforce. Because again, like, you know, if your staff, you're your biggest advocates we just talked about is making it friendly for people to have children in the workforce means that most people recommend it and word of mouth is the biggest way that you can influence people and then from that when people come. So we've got nine venues overall pre pandemic, have a million visitors a year. Zak Mensah: We say we're family friendly, but I've got two young children and quite often the experience, not just my place, but other places doesn't actually say match up with that because like just saying to a seven year old, you must love art, doesn't really work, right, if it's Blue. Paul Marden: Can't tell them. You can't just make them like, yeah. Zak Mensah: I can't tell anything because anyone in my family anything. If you convince about bluey=, then you've got another chance. But you know, you've got to think about actually what is their experience going to be. So, you know, have you got picnic area? Have you got toilets? Lots of toilets. Do you allow your staff, for example, in previous roles? We allow people, if they want to do potty training, they could do potty training in the gallery. Because the reality was if they didn't use the potty that they had in their bag, it was going somewhere else. And so I remember watching in horror as someone literally tried to scoop up a child and move their parent out of a gallery to start to go to the toilet. Zak Mensah: And I was like, there was no way they were going to make it out that door. I would love to have that CCTV footage because I bet that was quite interesting. But, you know, it sounds, you know, some sort of flippant and fun. Zak Mensah: But that's the little thing because like all those little things about making it, you know, enjoyable. Because if you can make it enjoyable for the. For the parent or the guardian, you can make it fun for the, you know, for the kids. You know, you have to have sharp crayons and pencils. Whatever it is, like always things that's really kids don't want much. That's the little thing because like all those little things about making it, you know, enjoyable. Right. Like, if you can give them almost that version of experience to make people think it's good. Because I think we sometimes dissociate the child's experience with the fact they're with someone else. So actually you've got to make it good for the people that they're with. And quite often people do it, you know, who take. Zak Mensah: They might take the extended family. So they'll say like, you know, I'll take my niece or whatever, I'm there. And they don't usually actually have to have the children. So sometimes they need help as well, you know, to make sure the experience. Paul Marden: Extra needs to be able to solve the kids’ problems. Zak Mensah: Absolutely. So for me it's about making it that friendly from that perspective. So often with school trips, for example, it's how can you make the school trips fun? Because I see quite a lot of kids on school trips that they sort of being marched through and forced to go. So then they're less likely to recommend it to their parents and their parents just like to come. So for me, it's kind of like trying to use that learning visit which often people's first. Most people tell me, I've been to museum as a child and they usually get towards school age, secondary school, and they don't go anymore. Paul Marden: Yes. Zak Mensah: So it's like, how do we make sure that. I don't think as a sector where family friendly enough, other than those people who already are super engaged, they make the kids have fun. I'm probably talking about my trauma now. Paul Marden: Let's return today's speakers. Let's just talk a little bit about Mike's discussion of using behavioural models to influence buying decisions. Yeah. What are the biggest behavioural barriers that you see within your organisation? In terms of visitor experience, from kind of awareness through to decision making, what could you do? What could you change? Zak Mensah: So the first obvious one is a lot of people are terrified of being in spaces because they're not sure how to behave. There's this weird secret code that doesn't. It's not actually written down anywhere that people think the museum experience has got to be quiet, that it's got to be. That you've got to know what you're looking at. It can't just be fun. And actually having. Just having fun is a really important part of what you want to do. So for us, I think the problem is, as well as once you work in the sector, those barriers are invisible because you just work there. You feel comfortable now coming. Yeah. And so the behaviour part is super interesting. And so, for example, it's a phrase I sometimes use around, like. Zak Mensah: It's around this idea of, like, “People like us do things like this”, which I stole from Seth Godin. So, you know, what we did, for example, is w e now don't have staff uniform because we've got quite a diverse. We're dividing diversity in Birmingham and we want people to feel comfortable and recognise people outside the building who then might be going, like, sure, I might. Hoodies, for example. If you wear a hoodie, you might own. The museum's. Not for me, the museums for other people who wear suits, etc. So actually, if they see staffing. Yeah, if they see staff in hoodies or whatever, in hijabs or niqab, whichever outfit they want to wear, then that is a signal about those people are welcome. Zak Mensah: That's one example where that idea came from the team about how we can show and tell and do what we say we're going to do, rather than just saying, “Oh, but we're really friendly museums are great and come in.” Because actually they are intimidating from the outside. They're often intimidating intellectually. Paul Marden: Yep. Zak Mensah: The train, the media, all the time is being really high brow all the time. So it's like actually we. We have to find ways to accept that those barriers exist. And that often means finding people who don't use you to actually tell you that. And we've just finished a citizen's jury, for example, which had almost 30 people who are representative of the city come in and 80% of them at the first meeting said they didn't think the museum is relevant to them. Those are ordinary people who live in the city who. That's 80% of those people. Four in five people don't think the museum is relevant for them, even though we know that we could make it relevant to them. And that was a really sad, shocking figure, but also is motivating. Zak Mensah: And I think our job, you know, as leaders is how do we help people feel inclusive, to be an inclusive space and then like. And go for it. Paul Marden: Excellent. Thank you, Amy. Amy Akino-Wittering: Yeah, I think a lot of what we have done as well is to try and go out of our four walls of Young V&A as well. So we do a lot of kind of community engagement as well through kind of the learning team as well as for volunteering programme. Like we rocked up at stores at Whitechapel Market and kind of saying, “This is our kind of programme”, just chatting with people where they haven't heard of Young V&A even though it's down the road. And so it's like, how can we, yeah, kind of go out and about and also kind of advocate across as well. And then also it's like when people do kind of take that step to actually go onto our site and then come into the building making sure that the visitor experience is as inclusive, as welcoming as possible. Similar. Amy Akino-Wittering: We also just have aprons and they can wear whatever they want underneath and just again, so as people feel relaxed and they feel when our audiences come in, they say, oh yeah, no, that's something that I might wear. Or you know, they just feel more kind of settled and at home. So that's something that's really important that we kind of do as well. Paul Marden: Lovely, Paul. Paul Sapwell: The biggest challenge for us, I mean being a smaller organisation and a brand that isn't known. As well as it could be, I think our biggest challenge now is that customer journey from online through to what you get when you arrive and we're not consistent enough. And I know we'd all talk about this forever but you know, big commercial organisations do this really well. You know, you're going to sell a ticket within a couple of clicks from a social media piece, you're going to get a follow up email that looks exciting and you know, then your product is either going to arrive or you're going to arrive at it and it will be like you thought you were buying. And I'm not sure that we always do that. Paul Sapwell: I've got to be honest and I think to do that you've got to put a lot of investment in it. And that's what we're part of the strategy that we've launched, we launched back in November is about that. Paul Sapwell: And again, that comes back to, you know, commercial mindsets that matters. It matters that we put the right image in whatever way that is to the right customer who we're trying to attract. We've got to understand those customers better and then make sure that's, that's seamless. And, you know, we run 20 venues. They're really different. We've got everything from the Great Hall, Mediaeval Hall in Winchester, which is full of people on from travel trade have come off of cruises and things. And then we've got Milestones Museum in Basingstoke, which is a sort of family living history museum. Paul Sapwell: They don't get any international tourists. So having a really limited pot of marketing to be able to go all these sort of areas is really difficult. But I think that would be the challenge. But thinking about it holistically, really, because it's the same person who clicks on the social media ad to the person who ends up arriving in your venue. And that needs to be really consistent. Yeah, it sounds like cash is the barrier. We're going to try and work with it. But that's the important bit for me. Paul Marden: I'm grinning like the village idiot because this is what I advocate all the time. I'm looking at my marketing friends in the audience who would also share. Share your thoughts on this. We know from the Rubber Cheese survey that it's eight to 10 steps it takes people to checkout. I tried to buy tickets for an aquarium last year and they made me enter a password along with the names and addresses of everybody that was joining me and then told me off three times for getting the password wrong in the checkout process. I had to be really to buy those tickets and. Paul Sapwell: Well, yeah, you touch on. Yeah. I mean, we could have a whole conversation, but no, I mean, we love a complicated ticketing system in the cultural sector, don't we? I mean, with all the right intentions. I mean, even the list in some places of different concessions. I mean, you don't want to go. I think I'm that or I'm that. You know, and it's done with the right intention. But it's an enormous barrier. Paul Marden: Yeah, completely. Paul Sapwell: And you know, we make things so complex and I don't have the fix, but I know we've got to fix it. And that means putting sort of. Again, learn from companies who do this really well rather than. Yeah. Looking for ideas ourselves. Lots of people do it really well out there. That's what we got to do. Paul Marden: Thinking of lots of my team who might think that this is something somebody should solve. Zak Mensah: The fix is simple, isn't it? Because you just said then that there are other people doing it well. What we're not really good at artists actually copying people. Zak Mensah: Like just copy someone else who's done it better than us. It's really. It really does annoy me. Let's just say that what always happens is that we make decisions by committee, don't we? So it would have been two steps, but then someone from marketing said, but you've got to have a newsletter. And someone from another team would say, “You've got to also ask for this. And then you've got to do this. Then you've got to try and get the kids to come for school trip.” Before you know it, people mean well and they've made it really complicated. I think sometimes it's like, actually, let's just do the simplest thing. Let's do all the hard work to remove those barriers and then we can try and flog them stuff when they get there. Paul Marden: So friend of mine, Andy talks a lot about you don't go to a fine dining restaurant and walk up to the maitre d and he says to you, “Would you like a table, by the way, are you going to have dessert? And would you like a coffee? And what are you going to have for your starter main course and dessert? Oh, right, I'll take you to your table.” You have a conversation with people and you lead them and you don't try and pack everything into the very first time you ever talk to the potential client. Zak Mensah: Which is why Greg's does so well. Paul Marden: Yeah, look guys, I could carry on about this conversation, but we are the barrier to everybody getting to their drinks and nibbles and so we've got. Paul Sapwell: Including us. Paul Marden: I know, sorry. We've got a couple of things that I must cover. So we always ask our guests for a book recommendation. It can be a novel, it can be work related. So Zak, would you like to go first with yours? Zak Mensah: Yeah. Turn the ship around! I think it's David Marquet. It's a book about a nuclear submarine commander who basically realises all these stupid rules. And so he just said to everyone, just tell me you intend to. So say to him, I intend to turn the ship left, I intend to take holiday, etc, because he realised that there were so many stupid rules and I think museum will have loads of stupid rules. It's a really good thing. And I know most of you won't read the book because most people say, “Yeah, I'll read it. They don't read it.” There's a 10 minute YouTube video. Surely you can spend 10 minutes of time if you can't be bothered to do that. There is literally a 30 second Wikipedia article about it. But please don't do it. Paul Marden: Zak feels very strongly about this. Paul, your book recommendation, please. Paul Sapwell: Well, last year I read Wild Swans by Jung Chang and I'm trying to find a way of getting into a business conversation. I think there's so much that comes out of that book, but I think, yeah, striving for Utopia is often, you know, the book. Right. Most people in terms of living under communist China and we know we could go on about utopian things that haven't worked, but I think there's, for this conversation, that's perhaps where we need to think, you know, going forward here. There isn't a sort of utopian way that things should be done for our sector. There is, you know, we're making our way here and yeah. Obviously it's a fantastic book. Paul Marden: Excellent. Thank you, Paul. Amy, your recommendation? Amy Akino-Wittering: Yeah, so mine isn't linked to like professional development at all. Mine. Paul Marden: Well, you did have one. Amy Akino-Wittering: Well, I did have one and you were like, no, just go for your favourite one. So I was like, Persuasion by Jane Austen. It's a classic. Paul Marden: We've got, we've got big anniversary at the moment, haven't we? In Chawton where Jane Austen lived has got big thing about 200 years, 250 years? Amy Akino-Wittering: Celebration for the whole year. So I'm gonna go in. Paul Sapwell: Yeah, everyone's trying to get in on this, by the way. I just have to put this out there. You know, she was born in Hampshire. Paul Marden: I know. Paul Sapwell: Born in Hampshire, actually. Born Basingstoke. Paul Marden: I know.Paul Sapwell: Yes. Paul Marden: There's a lot of celebrations for Jane this year. Paul Sapwell: Yeah, everyone's trying. I've seen so many angles for her. Oh, she was here and she went to the toilet. Fair enough. I mean, it's a big celebration. Paul Marden: If you'd like a copy of the book or any of these books, head over to Bluesky and like and repost the show announcement saying, I want Zak, Paul or Amy's book. And the first person to do that will get the book sent to them. Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this episode, then please leave us a five star review. It really does help more people to find us and remember to follow us on Bluesky , X or Instagram for your chance to win the book. Thank you very much, everybody. Paul Sapwell: Thank you. Amy Akino-Wittering: Thank you. The 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsDownload the 2024 Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

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