Ms Gina O'Kelly:

On visitor numbers in the wider sector, the drop in international and national tourism last year severely impacted the museum sector, particularly those in the Dublin and Belfast areas. Those in areas where national tourism was happening and people were staycationing were not affected as much. There were historic lows of 7% to 10% of previous years in summer 2020. That has recuperated this year with growing public confidence in taking part in activities again and a reopening of society. We advocate for the resourcing of an awareness campaign for museums, such as shared branding and a user-friendly online platform for access to museum contents. There are international examples of this, such as a museum in Finland. We also advocate for audience research to gain insight into who and how audiences engage with our cultural venues, based on visitor profiling reports such as those carried out by the Northern Ireland Museums Council.

We are looking at the expansion of existing programmes such as Culture Ireland. As part of the creative industries, museums would very much benefit from an expansion of these types of programmes to include the museums.

To go back to a previous point about events happening and a more holistic approach to the museum offering, museums very much fall within the creative industries and a huge part of their programming is engaging and supporting artists such as storytellers, writers and visual artists in terms of all their offerings, whether it be online or on-site.