Dr. Johnson’s House
| Sponsor: | Dr. Johnson’s House |  |
| Sponsor Liaison: | Monica Law, Celine McDaid | |
| Student Team: | Niko Canning, Jake DePietro, Jeremy King, Keenan Porter | |
| Abstract: | Dr. Johnson’s House is a small historic house museum tucked away in the heart of one of London’s most historic districts. The museum had historically attracted a narrow audience base. This project aimed to provide recommendations on potential ways to attract new visitors and diversify the audience of Dr. Johnson’s House. We sought to understand the visitor experience at Dr. Johnson’s House, examined the offerings of other historic house museums in London, and analysed our findings to identify ways Dr. Johnson’s House could adapt the museum to attract new visitors and broader audience segments. We identified engagement, immersion, and inclusion as the main areas of growth Dr. Johnson’s House could focus on to create a more meaningful museum experience for a wider range of audiences. | |
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Executive Summary
Introduction
London is home to almost 200 unique museums, around 60 of which are historic house museums. Historic house museums discuss significant historical figures who lived there or the history of a certain time period in the context of an original location relevant to the topic presented. One such museum is Dr. Johnson’s House, which teaches visitors about the life and work of Dr. Samuel Johnson (City of London, n.d.). Dr. Johnson’s House is located in the original building he resided in during his development of the first modern dictionary of the English language.
Like many house museums, Dr. Johnson’s House receives a narrow audience. According to surveys conducted prior to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, their audience is mainly White, and most are over the age of 45 (City Bridge Trust, 2023). Because they are located in a former tenement building, Dr. Johnson’s House does not have extensive amounts of floor space to devote to curation and exhibits. In 2023, the City Bridge Trust developed an Action Plan for the museum that provided Dr. Johnson’s House with suggestions to address their current issues. Dr. Johnson’s House wished to implement these suggestions and wanted up-to-date visitor data to help guide and justify their efforts.
To that end, our goal was to provide recommendations to Dr. Johnson’s House that illustrated potential ways to attract new visitors and diversify their audience. We identified three key objectives for this goal:
- Assess the current visitor experience at Dr. Johnson’s House and pinpoint strengths and opportunities for improvement. We collected demographic data and feedback from visitors to understand the experience visitors took away from the museum. We collected responses via three methods. First, we developed a museum map that invited visitors to place a sticker on their favourite room in the house, which received 135 responses. Second, we conducted exit interviews with museum visitors and event attendees to ask about their experience at Dr. Johnson’s House, which comprised 30 intercepts in total. Third, we developed a visitor survey and made it available both online and in-person to collect data and feedback from a wide range of visitors, especially those who may have visited in the past, to which we received 109 responses.
- Identify strategies used by other historic house museums to attract new visitors and diverse audiences. We conducted three interviews with staff at other historic house museums, namely the Handel Hendrix Museum, the Charles Dickens Museum, and the Benjamin Franklin House. We asked about their audiences, their exhibits and events, and what strategies they used to broaden their audiences. We also conducted site visits at eight total museums, noting the usage of strategies such as interactive exhibits, multisensory offerings, or presenting information pertaining to diverse audiences.
- Identify and recommend ways in which Dr. Johnson’s House can adapt their in-person and online offerings to attract and appeal to target audiences. We analysed the findings from our previous objectives and identified strategies that Dr. Johnson’s House could apply to address the opinions of their audience segments. We then evaluated how feasible making these changes would be and formulated recommendations based on the results.
Findings
The demographic data we collected indicated that the audience of Dr. Johnson’s House has not changed much. 72.1% of visitor survey respondents reported that they reside in the UK, which correlates with the similarly high percentage found in the Action Plan. Additionally, 77.9% of respondents reported identifying as White or Caucasian. 92.3% of respondents also reported being over the age of 46, which is more than what was reported previously. Figure 1 illustrates the distribution of age groups that respondents to our survey reported belonging to.
Figure 1: Distribution of survey respondent ages. (n=109)
Visitors valued immersion in the physical space and 18th century context of Dr. Johnson’s House. The exit intercepts showed that 27% of respondents reported enjoying the house’s ambience and atmosphere most during their visit.
The Garrett and the Library were the most popular rooms among visitors. The visitor survey results showed that 39% of respondents selected the Garret as their favourite room in the house. Furthermore, the sticker map results showed that 44% of visitors placed a sticker on the Garret, which supported the notion that visitors had a preference for the Garret overall. Figure 2 illustrates the distribution of rooms selected as a favorite by visitors on the visitor survey.
Figure 2: Distribution of rooms selected as the respondent’s favorite. (n=109)
Visitors expressed a desire for more information and interactivity in the museum. The visitor survey responses also showed that 35% of those surveyed thought their experience would be more engaging if Dr. Johnson’s House provided visitors with different ways to learn. In particular, several respondents suggested that Dr. Johnson’s House could have provided an audio guide.
Some visitors suggested that Dr. Johnson’s House could have featured staff members in the house for visitors to talk to and learn from. Of those who responded to the visitor survey, 15% specifically recommended hiring impersonators or more staffing when asked what could have improved their visit. Figure 3 demonstrates the various areas of improvement that visitors provided in response to this question and how frequently they were suggested.
Figure 3: Suggested areas of improvement from visitor survey responses. (n=67)
Other historic house museums offer a variety of experiences and accommodations to visitors. Six of the eight historic house museums visited offered some form of guided tour. One of those six included the tour in the entrance, and the other five required an additional fee. Half of the museums also provided some sort of audio guide or induction loops for hearing-impaired visitors. Three of the museums provided options for an impersonator to guide the tour instead of a regular staff member.
Some museums appeal to multiple senses through their presentation of information. For example, the Foundling Museum featured a row of chairs and headsets that allowed visitors to listen to audio transcripts of interviews with former residents of the Foundling building.
Other museums add variety to the visitor experience with interactive activities. The Postal Museum, for example, encouraged younger visitors to find the Jolly Postman around the exhibit space and read the fun facts he provided.
Some of the historic house museums we visited employed video components in their exhibits. For example, the Foundling Museum featured a sitting space with a projector that played a 30-minute “Life at School” film in the introduction gallery for visitors to listen to.
Other historic house museums provided accommodations for people with accessibility needs. For example the Charles Dickens Museum featured an interactive tour on their website that allowed visitors to move virtually throughout the house, hover over key items, and access information about each room without physically visiting. This enabled physically disabled people to experience the museum in the same way as any other visitor.
Historic house museums curate their events and offerings to attract target audiences. Six of the eight historic house museums we visited had specific activities that were for younger audiences. For example, the Postal Museum provided play spaces and activities to visitors that aimed specifically at attracting children and families to the museum.
Historic house museums intentionally focus their exhibits on information that is related to diverse ethnicities. The Foundling Museum, for example, had a temporary gallery space that displayed art by women, Korean artists. Elsewhere in the museum, their permanent exhibit space featured a sculpture by a British-Nigerian artist.
Recommendations
After we collected our data and analysed our findings, we developed a set of recommendations for Dr. Johnson’s House that could attract new visitors and broaden their audiences. We organised our recommendations into three major categories. These categories are as follows:
Providing an engaging and interactive experience for visitors. To increase engagement, we recommend that Dr. Johnson’s House modify their presentation of information throughout the house, giving the audience multiple options to learn about Dr. Johnson. This could involve placards on each portrait to let visitors get an immediate overview. Then, if visitors wanted more information, they could read through the physical packets presented throughout the house. We also recommend they draw attention to the architectural features throughout the house. Putting up signs that show off the unique aspects that visitors might not otherwise notice would allow all parts of the house to feel more engaging. A longer-term recommendation is to provide an audio tour of the house. This would allow a new path for visitors to absorb information without relying entirely on reading.
Improving the depth and quality of information presented to increase immersion. For immersion, we recommend that Dr. Johnson’s House utilise various media types throughout the house to enhance the atmosphere. For example, utilising background audio or sound effects could captivate visitors and help them feel like they are back in the 18th century. We also recommend that they add more interactive objects and activities to the various rooms of the house. Making the house look and feel authentic with interactive experiences could improve visitors’ immersion during their visit. Our long-term recommendation is to provide an impersonator in the house to answer questions and speak with visitors. Alternatively, an impersonator could provide guided tours throughout the house. Visitors would be able to speak with impersonators about Dr. Johnson, his life, friends, the house, and so on, adding depth and interactivity to the experience that immerses visitors in the context of 18th-century London and Dr. Johnson’s life.
Enabling visitors to have a meaningful experience at Dr. Johnson’s House no matter their race, gender, or age. To diversify their audience, we recommend that Dr. Johnson’s House displays more information about the identities underrepresented among current visitors in his life. For example, having an exhibit related to Francis Barber, his Black servant, or one relating to Dr. Johnson’s neurological challenges could enable visitors who relate to these experiences to find meaning in their visit to Dr. Johnson’s House. We also recommend that they offer more events catered to diverse audiences. Having curated events that target younger audiences or more diverse topics would allow them to widen their audience. We also recommend that Dr. Johnson’s House provide accessibility accommodations on their website as a long-term goal. For example, they could provide an accessibility map, noting sensory devices and the different offerings that might cause any accessibility issues. Furthermore, by digitising their information into an interactive map of the house on their website, it would allow visitors to tour the house without having to walk through. This would provide those with accessibility issues an alternative, yet comprehensively similar, experience to attending in person.