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.

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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 awards

Responsible 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 piv