The perfect touring business model: forever chasing the unicorn?
Michel'Angelo Grima Hall Annex
Travelling exhibitions and partnership work present opportunities for cultural institutions to reach new audiences and develop revenue streams beyond traditional means. Institutions are disrupting their traditional models to rethink and expand engagement with their collections and ideas in new resilient approaches. So, what are the business models of the future, and how do we respond to challenges? What action should we take to ensure travelling exhibitions are ready for an unpredictable future?
From turnkey exhibitions to digital packages, panellists will critically review and discuss the different exhibition business models, the challenges and lessons learned from them while inviting the audience to share their experiences to provoke discussion of the topics in dialogue… because, just like unicorns, we want to explore with you, does the perfect business model for travelling exhibitions exist?
Outcomes: what will participants get from this session? Skills, knowledge, experience etc.
Participants will be equipped with knowledge to provide new revenue streams to their museums
Participants can discover sustainable exhibition design and how to lessen their impacts when creating exhibitions
Participants will come away with a rounded overview of the travelling exhibitions sector and understand the financial considerations of touring their own exhibitions
Session speakers
Senior Project Delivery Manager
The Science Museum Group tours exhibitions in various formats from turn-key exhibitions to object only and digital IP packages. More recently SMG has worked with partners in India and China to deliver three Welcome funded exhibitions on Covid-19 vaccination across the three countries. Using a range of examples we will explore that strategic and financial rationale for these formats, their advantages and disadvantages, and discuss how we balance the challenges of creating exhibitions that work for a variety of internal and external stakeholders.
The American Museum of Natural History has been touring exhibitions for more than 20 years now. Starting with traditional turnkey exhibitions, AMNH has looked into developing alternative forms of traveling exhibitions. More recently, the development of 2D panel exhibitions has been opening new ways to explore financial models, new markets, and collaborative models with hosts. AMNH will talk about the different challenges for both models, and how they have managed to create a sustainable activity with a diversified offer to serve a variety of venues around the world.
Travelling Exhibitions Coordinator
The Muséum in Toulouse has been trying a variety of business models for touring exhibitions. Lately, with the latest exhibition Impact, they tried to follow sustainability rules, not only with ecology side by reusing material, but also by testing the concept of economic sustainability: was it worth the challenge? What could be future improvements to enhance the economic sustainability of a touring exhibition project? Was the concept near anywhere the reality they met? Joy will also share their experience of the economic impact of co-productions in traveling exhibitions.
Exhibition Partnerships Manager, Touring Exhibitions
The Natural History Museum, London, tours its annual photography exhibition, Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and its collections in specimen-rich exhibitions around the world every year. We’ll explore and review established business models and discover more examples that present new opportunities, and challenges, when working together in co-production, with third parties and when licensing, all with an eye to the future and sustainability.
