What we do
“We help you understand your audiences, evidence your impact, design more impactful experiences, and develop future-proofed strategy”
Since 2006, we have worked with a unique mix of clients spanning the Art, Science, Cultural, Heritage, Research, Digital and Corporate sectors. Through this, we have built up a deep understanding of people, how they engage and participate, and the impact of a well-designed project.
We apply Experience Design Thinking to our work, an approach that takes our understanding of an individual as a starting point, defining the change you want to see before choosing the tools to achieve or measure this.
We will work closely alongside you to make sure our work can be used by you to make decisions and act on insights. Using our skills in research, evaluation, training and facilitation we support you to make informed decisions, evidenced with robust data.
Understand your audiences
From formative research exploring potential audiences and their attitudes, to understanding the barriers and motivations of those you engage with, formative research gives you a sound foundation upon which to build. We combine analysis of quantitative data with deep qualitative insights to help you to build an understanding of who you engage with (or not) and how to widen your reach and deepen outcomes.
- V&A Adobe Creative Residency Programme – What can we learn about removing barriers to engagement and learning existing and future diverse audiences at the V&A?
GLAM Oxford – Who doesn’t engage with the city’s broad cultural offer and why?
We apply Experience Design Thinking to our work, an approach that takes the understanding of an individual as a starting point, defining the change you want to see before choosing the tools to achieve or measure this.
We will work closely alongside all our clients to make sure what we do can be used by you to make decisions and act on insights. Using our skills in research, evaluation, training and facilitation we support you to make informed decisions, evidenced with robust data.
Understand and evidence your impact
Sometimes you need support in really distilling the change you want to make in the world to bring your peers onside or to communicate it clearly to others. Other times, you already know the value of the work you do – but you lack the evidence to demonstrate this to funders and decision makers.
Whether you are designing learning and engagement programmes or looking to evidence the impact of academic research, we use tools such as Theory of Change to define and capture the data and insights you need. We design bespoke evaluation frameworks and tools to embed within your activity, and where possible involve you in consultation and analysis to provide you with timely and actionable insights. We offer training and mentorship to upskill you and your teams to continue to develop your impact.
- BRIT School Transforms Revue – a deep dive into the school’s long-term impact for its students, understanding and evidencing the power of creative education for its 30th anniversary
- Kings College London – Supporting academic researchers to evidence the impact of their research
- National Gallery Evaluation Framework – embedding evaluation and reflective practice at the heart of their new education programmes
UCL School of Advanced Studies Being Human Festival – evaluating the nationwide reach, economic benefit, and activity of the festival with a focus on developing the impact for contributing research teams.
Develop future proofed Strategies
Our clients are forward-thinking and open to learning and being challenged. We will work with you to understand the context of what you do, identify gaps that could be filled and the best levers to do so. Our work has been used to shape decision-making on an institutional, national and international level, from audience development to education strategy and interpretation planning.
We often work across departments and organisations to align thinking, understanding that your public reach or offer depends on organisation-wide collaboration. Our experience of research and evaluation will help shape your offer through actionable insights, bespoke research and drawing on our extensive insights from the experiences of our team and collaborators.
- Scarborough Museums and Galleries – Through a series of facilitated sessions and background research we supported this group of museums and galleries to align their ambitions and identify the impact they want to make locally and nationally. From this, we created an audience development strategy and evaluation tools to provide guidance and evidence as the group restructured and underwent capital development.
- National Portrait Gallery: Charging Schools, how and why? – research commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery took a snapshot of current charging models across the UK. It resulted in a briefing document that has been shared across the sector and is being used to inform education programming and funding.
- AlUla Learning and Engagement strategy – Working with international exhibition designers KCA we researched and developed a Learning and Engagement strategy for Saudi Arabia’s AlUla project, considering how this astonishing collection of Unesco sites can enhance the 21st Century Skills and cultural connections of the people living, working in and visiting the region.
Design more impactful experiences
Our work is underpinned by our expertise in Experience Design – we take the impact you want to have, and the people you want to serve as the starting point for any project. Whether we are conducting audience research, consultation, testing or evaluation, we work alongside you as critical friends to keep you focused on your ‘why’ rather than what you do. This way you can design with outcomes in mind and consider the emotional and conceptual journey you will take people on to get there. Working in this way provides a framework to aid decision making, allowing you to make the best use of your time and resources.
National Trust: Reimagining Clandon Park – audience research, testing concepts, piloting stories, object selection and visitor experience to inform Interpretation Design and Architectural for Riba Stages 2 and 3.
Science Museum Group, Sustainable Food: public attitudes and engagement in the UK, Brazil and India – International research and consultation exploring the knowledge and views people have about food sustainability, and how they could be engaged more effectively by scientists, policy makers and science centres.
Environmental Engagement
Our founder, Bridget McKenzie, specialises in engaging audiences with climate and biodiversity issues and helping clients develop their environmental ‘handprint’ of innovation, education and future resilience.
With Bridget leading, we can deliver audience research, learning resources, evaluation, mentoring and training that focuses on environmental public engagement.
- Livestock Environment and People – evaluation of the public engagement programme of this major research project at University of Oxford about the environmental impacts of the meat and dairy industry
- Green Futures – evaluation of The Royal Parks schools programme on conservation and climate resilience.
See also Bridget’s range of work with Climate Museum UK, Culture Declares Emergency and delivering her course, Earth Talk. https://bridgetmckenzie.uk/
Some of our recent work...