The Shutdown Survey

How far have we come since March 2020?

As part of my MA research into the crisis management of Covid-19 in museums and heritage sites, I surveyed operational managers about the initial shutdown of visitor attractions in March 2020.

The findings are comprehensively discussed in my Crisis in Context blog series here. However, I wanted to publish the raw survey data now as a way of prompting museum and heritage managers to reflect on an extraordinary year.  

In one way, reading over these findings now prompts concern. Coronavirus hasn’t gone away, and we never know what the next crisis might be. Is your museum or heritage site any more or prepared for crisis than it was in March 2020? Would your answers change if you took this survey now? How does your organisation match up against the findings?

It’s not all doom and gloom. Some of the responses reflect the positives that have shone through in a challenging year. Despite 90% of us having no prior information on how to handle a pandemic, the UK’s museum and heritage sites were closed down largely without incident. Many of learnt new skills and took on new tasks to keep Britain’s heritage going. And contact with our sector colleagues has emerged as one of the main sources of support and information during a testing time.

So, this data isn’t intended to depress or scaremonger. It’s intended to prompt us all (myself included), at the end of a year like no other, to reflect on how far we’ve come, the lessons and skills we’ve learned and the work we’ve still to do.

You can read the survey here.