The interaction of institutional history & policy in digital technology for audience engagement: a case study of Glasgow Museums, 1990-2022

Understanding the ways in which digital technologies can support audiences is imperative to museums’ functioning in a world where the digital and non-digital are enmeshed. As museums often find themselves short on resources with strong demand pressures to use digital technologies to address issues like access, this becomes increasingly important. Historic institutionalism as well as institutional policies and values are critical to such approaches. They frame the broader adoption and understanding of technologies in relation to engagement practices. Related subject matter has been addressed disparately in both academic literature and professional disciplines ranging between cultural policy, museology, digital engagement evaluation, and museum management. These fields rarely draw from one another and there are few examples of longitudinal studies of digital integration in museums, let alone the overlap between participatory practices employing digital technologies in this regard. Accordingly, this transdisciplinary study attempts to provide insight by linking these fields. It does so through a situated case study following Glasgow Museums over two decades (1990-2011) with further consideration of their most recent capital project, the Burrell Collection (2022). The research aims to examine how audience engagement has been supported by an evolving understanding, development and use of digital technologies in the museum service. This is underpinned by three questions: 1) what key factors have shaped the approach to audience engagement; 2) what role has digital technology played in this; 3) how these factors have shaped the use of interactive digital technology in support of meaningful engagement. The methodology used to study this included qualitative methods like interviews and close text readings that were abductively analysed for emerging themes. Through a longitudinal analysis centring three critical junctures in the service’s history, several key factors were found to have significant impact on Glasgow Museum’s approach to audience engagement and digital technologies. Most significant were factors that centred organisational values of access and inclusion; leadership support therein; awareness of the local audience-community context; external policy context; resource availability; practical application of values; insufficient digital literacy and skills; lack of space for creativity. Notably, it was the role of institutional history, policy and values in shaping audience engagement practices. Digital technology was never foregrounded for this aim, but instead a parallel factor. The research generates a suite of recommendations in consideration of museums’ situated contexts, with its findings contributing to broader understanding on how museums can incorporate digital technologies for generating meaningful audience engagement.