Podcasts about heritage lottery

This fascinating bonus episode features curator Jon Swinstead. Jon is responsible for curation and creation of the First Museum of Youth Culture, opening in Digbeth Birmingham in 2027. The Museum of Youth Culture - www.museumofyouthculture.com -  is a new museum dedicated to the styles, sounds and social movements innovated by young people over the last 100 years. Championing the impact of youth on modern society, the Museum of Youth Culture is formed from the archives of YOUTH CLUB, a non-profit Heritage Lottery & Arts Council Funded collection incorporating photographs, ephemera, objects and oral histories celebrating our shared youth culture history. From the bomb-site Bicycle racers in post-war 1940s London, to the Acid House ravers of 1980s Northern England, the Museum of Youth Culture empowers the extraordinary everyday stories of growing up in Britain. Ladies and gentlemen – meet Jon Swinstead... If you can, please support the Electronically Yours podcast via my Patreon: patreon.com/electronicallyours

Khadijah Ibrahiim's essay, A Journey of Things Past and Present, looks at how Leeds's built environment has changed and what that tells us about it as a society. Leeds is a rich north England city in a beautiful rural setting, but only the former is reflected in its physical development. The starting point is a much-loved mural that Khadijah contributed to as part of a school art project about the city's historical and modern architecture. Khadijah still lives in the city and has watched as the skyline has become blotted out by high rise buildings, changing the view and creating a sort of forest of grey trees. She is struck by how beautiful the countryside is around the city, as are many of its historical buildings.The essay will consider what the built city tells us about its identity and why/how the landscape is developed, then move us into the future, talking about the imminent David Oluwale memorial sculpture by Yinka Shonibare, Hibiscus Rising, in currently empty open space down near the river. Khadijah Ibrahiim is a literary activist, theatre maker and published poet/writer. She is the Artistic director of Leeds Young Authors, and executive producer of the award-winning documentary ‘We Are Poets'. Recently work includes writing and directing ‘Sorrel & Black cake' A Windrush Story, a Heritage Lottery funded program as part of GCF. ‘Dead and Wake' Opera North 2020 Resonance and Leeds Playhouse Connecting Voices.Writer/reader, Khadijah Ibrahiim Sound designer, Alisdair McGregor Producer, Polly ThomasLooking at Leeds is a co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and The Space with funding from Arts Council England. A Thomas Carter Project for BBC Radio 3.

Ashook Rokade in conversation with Davis Deen. On behalf of Unity 101 Davis Deen conducts a series of conversations with local Southampton people, people that are part of the fabric of the City having contributed to the development of local  communities and the local services that they need

Avinash Patel in conversation with Davis Deen. On behalf of Unity 101 Davis Deen conducts a series of conversations with local Southampton people, people that are part of the fabric of the City having contributed to the development of local  communities and the local services that they need

On behalf of Unity 101 Davis Deen conducts a series of conversations with local Southampton people, people that are part of the fabric of the City having contributed to the development of local  communities and the local services that they need.  

On behalf of Unity 101 Davis Deen conducts a series of conversations with local Southampton people, people that are part of the fabric of the City having contributed to the development of local  communities and the local services that they need

On behalf of Unity 101 Davis Deen conducts a series of conversations with local Southampton people, people that are part of the fabric of the City having contributed to the development of local  communities and the local services that they need

St Lucia's Church, a Grade II Star listed church in Upton Magna, Shropshire was in danger of being closed but has now been fully restored and re-opened following a successful heritage Lottery funded restoration project. Now as well as being a hub  for the community the church is also accessible to blind and partially sighted people through collaborative work with the RNIB on large print and Braille Guides. St Lucia is the patron Saint of sight and it seemed an obvious idea when working on the Heritage Lottery funding application to make contact and link up with the RNIB to ensure that the restored church would be accessible to blind and partially sighted people too.  RNIB Connect Radio's Toby Davey was joined by Sue Woods, Church Warden at St Lucia's Church, the main person behind the funding bid who worked closely with Michelle Lee here at the RNIB on the large print and Braille guides.  Toby began by asking Sue what sort of state St Lucia's Church was in at the time of putting in the Heritage Lottery funding application and why it was maybe obvious to make contact with the RNIB. Sue then gave Toby an outline to how the church has been brought to life through the large print and Braille guides for blind and partially sighted people.  Sue also talked about how the re-opened St Lucia's Church has become a real hub for the local community and in many ways brought the village together with now lots of events going on in and around the church.  St Lucia's Church also has a sensory garden and Sue talked about how a young artist from the village along with a visually impaired man from the village worked together on a Braille plaque for the sensory garden too.  Sue ends by telling Toby about the final part of their Heritage Lottery funding bid to create an interactive media point in the church which will be able to display film and audio on the history of the church which will also be available online n the not too distant future. If you would like to find out more about St Lucia's Church and maybe book a visit or a tour you can email Sue via pr.sewoods@yahoo.co.uk or visit the following websites-  https://www.haughmondandwrekin.org.uk/#churches  https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/4664/ Image: St Lucia church with the graveyard in the foreground and the blue sky with a few clouds behind 

Kavita Kapoor in conversation with  Natalie BarrassThe Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record and resource for people in the future. 

Manoj Patel in conversation with  Emma Golby-KirkThe Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record and resource for people in the future. 

Sarla Manek in conversation with  Manisha (Unity101)The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record and resource for people in the future. 

The Journey – A Changing SouthamptonEp 1 – “The British Empire & The Homeland”The 1st episode from our 18 month project ‘The Journey – A Changing Southampton' made possible by monies received from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.We have been training volunteers to record Oral History interviews with members of our community who have made Southampton home. Their journeys from India and East Africa are being heard, shared and saved for evermore in the city's archives.In this first episode we hear from Jayanti, Indra, Chandrakant, Ravi, Manoj, Vinod and K. They help us to understand the impact of the British Empire across the world and people's connection to the UK, despite great distance.Learn about the shared history that we are all a part of…Presenter / Producer: Natalie BarrassMix & Master: Anuj Deo

Jayanti Shah in conversation with Natalie Barrass (Part Two) (Unity 101).The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record afd resource for people in the future. 

The second of a series of round table discussions hosted by Kelly, and featuring the personalities that have contributed to the post war growth and settlement of Southampton.  This roundtable features Don John, race & diversity Expert, author of The Black History of Southampton 16th Century to 21st Century and one of the founders of Black History Month South.  Andi Lai former police officer in Hoe Kong and Hampshire. Former Secretary ad Chair of The Chinese Association in Southampton. Ravi Parmar, Vedic Society, Project management Expert and Meena Parmar.

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.Download the Rubber Cheese 2022 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the first digital benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends July 31st 2023. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references: https://bristolzoo.org.uk/https://www.wildplace.org.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-coe-mba-943a7985/ Mike Coe (MBA), Commercial Director: Mike has over 20 years' experience working in commercial and leadership roles within both charity and the private sector. Mike joined the Society in December 2021 and is responsible for the commercial and public engagement strategy.  Previous to joining the Society he was CEO at the Friends of Westonbirt Arboretum developing funding strategies and vision delivery in conservation, education and participation at the National Arboretum.  Before that Mike was also CEO of Arnos Vale, leading the successful restoration and sustainable financial transformation programme within the iconic heritage and wildlife estate. Mike also led the relaunch of the Bristol Aquarium alongside leading successful consultancy projects supporting organisational change and delivery within the visitor economy. Transcriptions:  Kelly Molson: Mike, thank you so much for coming on to Skip The Queue today. It's lovely to see you. Mike Coe: Thanks, Kelly. Kelly Molson: We are recording on a very snowy March day, but Mike and I are inside in the warm, so we're quite happy. Mike Coe: Yeah, well, still got a bit of snow outside at Wild Place. We had loads yesterday and had to try and shovel that all off and get the site open, ready for the visitors. Our visitor services team were out moving water around the site and shoveling snow, but it's all pretty much melted away now, so it's still quite wintry looking out there, but, yeah, not so slippery. Kelly Molson: There you go. The visitor experience team, they're the heroes of the day. Right, Mike, we're going to start off with some icebreakers, so I want to know if I could gift you a month off tomorrow and you could travel anywhere in the world. I know, right, please, let's put that out of the universe. Where would you go? Mike Coe: So when I left university, I actually travelled around Southern Africa. So I spent some time in Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa. Really enjoyed my time there. I was teaching there and working in a rhino sanctuary and did a number of things out there and always wished, always wanted to go back. I'll be back all the time, but actually, I never got the opportunity to head back there and then had children. You need a length of time to get out there. So, yeah, if I had a month, I would definitely go back and sort of retrace those steps and just see how much things have changed over that time period, from sort of 2000, 2001 to sort of where we are now, sort of 20 odd years later. Mike Coe: So, yeah, I think I'd love to be able to do that and take my time and travel those areas. I'm a massive fan of the culture over there, but also, as you're probably not surprised, the wildlife over there, so it'd be a great chance to see how that's changed and transformed. Kelly Molson: Amazing. Would you go on your own or would you take kids? Mike Coe: I think I'd probably go on my own. Kelly, boy, I think as much as I'd love it, my little boy loves an adventure. Charlie I just think, yeah, sometimes, you know what I mean? It's having to think about them while you're trying to discover the place. Might be getting away a bit. Kelly Molson: Yeah, I hear you. It's funny because we've always said if we were lucky enough to have children, they would be part of our travel adventures as well. Now I'm like, yeah, maybe not. I changed my mind on that.Mike Coe: Keep your eyes on them, as well as what's going on. Kelly Molson: Great. Okay, if you were in a karaoke booth, what is your karaoke go to song? Mike Coe: Probably Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer. You can imagine that after a few drinks, microphone on hand, thinking you're a Rock Gods, melting that one out. It's a classic. Classic's spud a goody.Kelly Molson: I feel like if you're going to do karaoke, you've got to do a crowd pleaser that everyone knows the words too and then they carry you along, Mike. Mike Coe: Absolutely, you can't go into karaoke singing a song that you can sing. It has to be something that you literally can't hit any note on. And that's definitely one of those for me. Kelly Molson: We could do karaoke together. We're on the same level of karaoke skill here. Right, last one. Can you share with me one of your irrational fears? Mike Coe: Oh, cool. That's a good one. Actually, mine is always I would say it's about people letting people down. So I think when you sort of move up and you're in leadership roles, you're aware of what you can do. But it's always that sense of or fear of, have I done something? Have I let other people down? I can let myself down, but it's that letting other people down. So I do think I take great pride and passion in supporting teams, and if I feel I've let them down, I think that's the thing that hits me the hardest, if I'm honest.Kelly Molson: Would you say, because this is one of my biggest challenges, because I think I'm like a certified people pleaser. So one of the things that took at the beginning of this year was I need to be careful about things that I say yes to, because I put myself under a massive amount of pressure when I do that, because I don't want to let people down all the time. So I've started to kind of just take a bit of a step back and go, “Can I do this? I really want to do this. But do I have the capacity for this? What pressure is this going to put on me this year?” But that is one of my biggest things, is a fear of letting people down because of that. Mike Coe: Yeah, and I'm the same. And you do have to end up setting boundaries, and it's only you have to set those boundaries because by saying yes too much and doing too much, ultimately you are going to let people down. You just don't have the capacity to do a good job. And I think we're all guilty, everyone's guilty of taking too much on because you just want to do a good job. But actually, it's that setting those boundaries and actually understand that it's okay to say no as long as there's a reason for that. Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. Boundary is the word of the year, I think. Thank you for sharing that. Right. What is your unpopular opinion that you've prepared for us? Mike Coe: I know, and I didn't know where to go with this one, to be honest, because I've got quite a few. And this one, and I'm going to apologise now because I've got many Parisian friends. We work with some here as well. But I just think that Paris is a little bit overrated, Kelly. And I know, like I said, I've got so many friends from France and Parisians, and they've tried to convince me. I've been there a few times, but for me, it's just expensive. I always seem to end up with bad service there. I had my wallet stolen there once. I suppose that set me off on a bad foot. Mike Coe: And then seeing some of those sort of images, the sites that you've been expecting, and reading books when you're younger, and then when you get there, they're just not quite for me and for me, just wasn't quite what I had expected. So, yeah, it's going to be an unpopular decision and an popular thing to say, but I just don't get Paris and the romanticism around Paris, and maybe I'll be convinced as I go in later into life, and somebody will take me there and I'll see it for what I should. But, yeah, Paris is overrated, Kelly.Kelly Molson: Paris is overrated, statement. I really like this one. I don't know how unpopular this is going to be. Interesting. I just got back from a conference, actually, where there was a Parisian speaker who was really funny. He does a comedy show in Paris about Parisians and their culture. And he said, “Yeah, we are rude. We are openly rude, and we celebrate in being rude.” And I thought, “Well, okay, yeah, at least own it.” Mike Coe: Yeah, maybe I don't get that. Maybe I should just accept that they are rude and just live with that. Kelly Molson: Yeah, go with that expectation. Again, that's a very sweeping statement, and that may not be my opinion. Just putting that out there. That was what the comedian was telling me. Mike Coe: I will add to it to any Parisian friends of mine watching this, I love you all. Kelly Molson: Mirabelle from Convius will be listening to this, I'm sure. And I adore you. This is, again, not my unpopular opinion. Thank you. That was a good one. Well, let me know what you think, listeners. Let me know if you're sharing Mike's, how do we get Mike's unsatisfactory opinion of Paris? Mike Coe: Yeah, my one star TripAdvisor review of Paris. Kelly Molson: Okay. Right. I'm really glad that you've come on the podcast today, Mike, because we are going to talk about something that we've never talked about on the podcast before and that's about actually the decision to close an attraction. Sometimes we're talking about attractions opening and all of the amazing things that they're doing, but this time we're going to talk about an attraction closing. So tell us a little bit about your background and then we can start to talk about what your current role entails and how you got to that decision. Mike Coe: Yeah, I've been in visitor attractions now since around about 2010 and then earlier through my studies, I studied leisure and tourism as well, but really got back into visitor attractions after a break, actually, with BP in their graduate scheme for a while. And I launched or relaunched Bristol, well, what was then Blue Reef Aquarium, but rebranded and relaunched Bristol Aquarium in Bristol, which was a great one for me, to be honest with you, launching a new product, new brand and a really nice new attraction for Bristol. So, yeah, growing and developing new attractions, certainly for me. And then on there, I was brought in chief executive of Arnos Vale, which is actually a cemetery in Bristol, but we was scheduled to close and we got some Heritage Lottery funding to reopen that as a heritage site, events as well going on there. Mike Coe: So were the first people doing events in a cemetery as a heritage site, as a museum, and we found a sustainable model for it financially to actually make it pay for itself. So this heritage site would save, secured, rebuilt with the Heritage Lottery Fund money and really a great success story of developing another new visitor attraction in Bristol as well. Then over to Westonbirt the National Arboretum, supporting Forestry England in the development and growth of Westonbirt the National Arboretum and some great new developments there. So always growing new commercial opportunities within visitor attractions. And then this opportunity with Bristol Zoological Society, which is very different, of course, because I hadn't closed a visitor attraction before. Mike Coe: But, yeah, that was what I moved over to Bristol Zoological Society to which, although I say it's about closing Bristol Zoo, it was a lot more than that, of course. So it's the closure of Bristol Zoo Gardens after 186 years, but actually the future and the positivity for the society that brings, because we also own an attraction called Wild Place Project. And the sale of the proceeds from the sale of Bristol Zoo Gardens that's going to be moved into, ploughed into the Wild Place Project with a brand new zoo for Bristol in effect and really reimagining what the zoo of the future should be. So, yeah, that's where it's gone from growing new visitor attractions to closing one and developing another one. Kelly Molson: Yes. So it's come full circle, isn't it? We started off that quite negatively, didn't we? But actually there's some really incredible opportunities that are coming from this experience. So we're going to start kind of at the beginning part of it, though. So, like you said, Bristol Zoo closed in September 2022 after 186 years. Got absolutely phenomenal. What was the decision behind it? What was the reason for that happening? Mike Coe: Yeah, it's one of those decisions, I think if you were to ask the Trust now, they probably should have taken earlier, in my view. So for a number of years, Bristol Zoo Gardens had been its revenues have been reducing and then in decline. So it had been losing money for a number of years over the decade before it. And it's a bit like that Region Beta Paradox. Have you heard of that?  And actually, what the Region Beta Paradox says is essentially a theory that sometimes the worse things are, the better the final outcome will be because you actually act on it and you actually make a change and you do something about it. So the recovery can be a lot quicker from a much worse situation. That worse situation, of course, was COVID. Mike Coe: So that really hits the charity reserves, in effect. And really, at that point, that decision had to be taken that they could no longer take the losses from Bristol Zoo Gardens and the site itself was crumbling. So the amount of investment that would have been required to restore Bristol Gardens as a visitor attraction, that wasn't falling effectively, the infrastructure was crumbling, so it would have taken a huge amount of investment to keep the site going in a space that had reduced visitor numbers year after year after year. So that was kind of the financial and commercial decision to close it. But the other thing, of course, is that Bristol Zoo Gardens was a twelve acre site, so quite a small inner city zoo. Mike Coe: Welfare standards amongst animals have changed from where they were 186 years ago into what size enclosures animals need for their welfare now. And Bristol Zoo Gardens, great space, but unfortunately just was too small to be able to provide the levels of welfare standards that are required now in zoology. So we're over here at Wild Place, ten times bigger than the sites at Bristol Zoo Gardens and the ability to develop enclosures far bigger than we were able to be, able to do at Bristol Zoo Gardens. So it wasn't just this commercial decision that we had to close the zoo. It's also, quite rightly, an animal welfare situation. Mike Coe: And what we can offer here is much better space and the chance with the money from that, the chance to develop a brand new type of zoo over here at Wild Place, a zoo of the future, where animals that we work with are involved in our conservation projects around the world. So it's not just about putting animals in for entertainment, it's about actually the purpose of those animals in terms of conservation and their conservation status. Kelly Molson: Let's talk about that then, because I'd love to know kind of what the vision is for what you're now kind of building on and that kind of positive aspect of it. Mike Coe: Yeah. And I think we start off it is about the animals that we have in the New Bristol Zoo. And the New Bristol Zoo will be developed with the sale of Bristol Zoo Gardens over the course of the next five to ten years. And the enclosures that will be here at first are much bigger, so the animals are in a more natural environment. So almost as you're walking through the gates, you're arriving somewhere other that you're almost on an on foot safari. So, you know, the traditional type of zoo. And another controversial thing I'll say is I'm not a big fan of traditional zoos, so I'm not a massive zoo fan. Certainly the modern zoos and the way we look at it is certainly the way to move. Mike Coe: And that's making sure that there's much bigger enclosures, that you're stumbling on those animals, you're not just looking from fence to fence that you actually have to do a bit of work while you're here to see those animals on foot. So this “on foot safari”, that's going to be a theme that sort of overrides what goes on here. The species of animals that we have here are going to be involved in the conservation projects that we have around the world, be that Africa, Philippines, we have a number of projects around the world and we're going to have the species here are the species that we're involved in those conservation projects. So actually, this is just going to be an insight into the world of field conservation, our in situ work. Mike Coe: So in situ means the work you do out in the field on those projects. So this is going to be an extension of those in situ field projects that we have out there, working with the same species of animals. We're also going to have a conservation campus. So within that campus, we're going to have university students who are involved in direct conservation work. They're going to be here on site, so our visitors are going to be able to walk through that campus as part of the visitor journey. So those students are going to be there interacting with our visitors. It's going to have a breeding centre, so they're going to see the breeding work that we do both here that supports the conservation work around the world. Mike Coe: So it's that whole what we do in the field, what we do here, and the breeding centre, linking that all together on this on foot safari. So something completely different to a standard zoo, I would like to think. Kelly Molson: What a phenomenal experience for the guests that's coming along as well. Because the opportunity that they could bump into students that they can talk to about their education path and what they're doing and the conservation aspects of there, that makes that visit even better than it would be just if you are just going to visit a standard zoo. Mike Coe: Exactly that. And what we realise is that if we want to save wildlife, and our vision at Bristol Zoological Society is to save wildlife together, we realise that we can't do that in isolation on our own. It has to be together, it has to be changing behaviours of the people that come onto the site. And a large proportion of those people that come on site are young people. We attract young people. So it's changing the behaviours of those young people for them to make correct, positive conservation decisions. And you're right, you talk about them engaging with those students as they're on site. We want them to become adventurers for the day when they walk in, so they almost become a conservation hero as they leave the gates. They come in as a visitor, become an adventurer and leave the gates as a conservation hero. Mike Coe: And that's what we want to do. We want everyone to come away with this impression of what they can do at home to make real world changes. You're going to come and visit. Kelly Molson: You absolutely sold that into me. Like, I'm there. I want to be an adventurer. Mike Coe: We'll get everyone wearing those Indiana Jones style hats as they come in, so they feel the part. We'll get our public engagement team coming up with some really exciting ways to make them feel like they're suddenly out on their in situ adventure. Kelly Molson:  Perfect. I can absolutely rock that hat. And I'm sorry I interrupted you mid flow, but I was like, “Gosh, yes, I'm really feeling this”. And I was like, the buzz that there is around this is quite tantalising. Mike Coe: Exactly. And it all relies once we get the sale of Bristol Zoo Gardens, then we can really start to make this vision and become a reality. And it's much bigger than just Bristol. It's this global conservation emergency that we're in that we'll feel like we're a part of and it's great that it's in our city. Bristol is known for being quite different in the way it looks at things. We're a great city, we're an ingenious city, and it's going to be great to have a zoo that does things a little bit differently, a bit like Bristol tends to like to do. Kelly Molson: Definitely, yeah. The ethos of Bristol is definitely different. This is amazing. So an incredible vision that you have there. Genuinely, there is an excitement there. I can feel it as you talk about it and the passion for it. I just want to go back a little bit, though, because I guess it's been quite a difficult decision to make from a financial perspective, anyway. And from a heart perspective, you're going to have a lot of team that have worked at Bristol Zoo for many years. And I know you weren't there from the start of this decision making process. But how did you go about communicating these decisions to the team and what was their reaction? Mike Coe: Yeah, like I said, I wasn't there when the initial announcement that the zoo would be closing. I know that it was an incredibly difficult decision, both making that decision, but also how that was communicated with staff. And the staff are clearly the first to be told before it was made public. And you think you've got a number of staff who have been there 30, nearly 40 years at that time. So it's dealing really sensitively with all the staff, especially those that have been there that time. And then you've also, unlike, I guess, other attractions, where you probably don't have as much attachment to the product, not that I'm calling the animals a product in a museum, you don't quite have that same attachment. Mike Coe: You've got keepers that have been working, say, with the gorillas for a decade, so they've seen them grow up and work with those. So you can understand how gut wrenching it must have been at the time for those stuff and how sensitively this had to be dealt with, because it was a decision that clearly nobody wanted to take, but ultimately had to take. And it was communicating that now. I was there when the actual final dates of a date closure for Bristol Zoo Gardens was announced, the 3rd of September being the last day. So I was there and we brought everybody into a big town hall and told all the staff that 3rd of September was going to be the final day. Mike Coe: And you go through this curve of emotion, this acceptance cycle, and that first stage is real despair amongst a number of the staff there and working and developing those through that, then there's that acceptance and then realisation of how we do that. Clearly there are as we move from two zoos to one zoo, there were some people that had to move on, unfortunately. But the good thing is we managed to do most of that through voluntary redundancies. So there's very talking ones or two where people were actually made redundant. The voluntary scheme meant that a lot of people made those decisions themselves, luckily. I guess we're kind of still just on the rise of that curve now. Mike Coe: So even now, although there's this great positivity around the future, there's still people still trying to get used to having moved over from Bristol Zoo Gardens and over to the Wild Place. And we'll continue to work with those people as well to make them see the vision of the new Bristol Zoo in effect. Kelly Molson: Yeah, because my next question is general public and what their reaction was, and I guess it's a very similar reaction.Mike Coe: I think, absolutely. When you're a zoo which is at the heart of a city or a society that's a heart of a city, then you're right. It's not just that the staff that work there. Visitors have been visiting the zoo. I remember I was there throughout the final closing weeks and we had people travelling from not just around the country, literally from around the world, to say their goodbyes from Bristol Zoo Gardens, people that have been visiting for 70 years. I had one talking to and just, I guess, more stoic understanding the reasons why it was closing. But still that sense of nostalgia, and that's what came out in those last few weeks, that sense of nostalgia, what the zoo had done for the city, really, and these people as well. Mike Coe: But actually what I did get was this overwhelming sense of people understanding actually what it is time for Bristol Zoo Gardens to close. It is too small in terms of welfare and these animals and these enclosures that ultimately were just too small for them. And people got the sense that actually time moves on. And what was right for a city centre zoo back in the 18 hundreds is now not what's right for the modern world. So there was that great sense of acceptance at the end. The good thing is that Bristol Zoo Gardens will, within our plans, be reopened as a development, which will still have the parks and gardens open, so people will still be able to come and enjoy the parks and gardens. I think that's the most important thing is what people said. Mike Coe: "We still want to be able to see some of the old monuments, we still want to be able to see some of the old park." Well, they were going to be able to do that, which is really exciting. They'd be able to see the old monkey temple. A number of those items are listed. The entrance building itself is listed as well. So the entrance building is going to be turned into something called the Clifton Conservation Hub. So there'll still be conservation work. We do a lot of conservation work around the Avon Gorge and Downs wildlife project. So Avon Gorge and Downs is a site of scientific and conservation interest, while the hub of that is going to be within the entrance building when the developments finish. Mike Coe: So conservation work and wildlife conservation will still go on at Bristol Zoo Gardens, in parks and gardens, and then in the wider Avon Gorge and Downs. Kelly Molson: It's really good to hear that as well. And I guess one of the things that we always talk about from an attraction perspective is how many memories are made at a visitor attraction, regardless of whether it's a zoo or a heritage, a park, et cetera. So it's lovely that the reaction from people is we still want to be able to see these places because they've got great memories for us. We've taken our children there, we'd love to be able to go back there ourselves, and that's wonderful. And I think, on the other hand, as well, what's really good is that the message around conservation and welfare of animals is obviously a very positive one and very clear one that you've been pushing out, because that's what people have accepted about the change that's going to happen now. Kelly Molson: So that's a real positive that feeds into the vision for the new attraction. Mike Coe: Absolutely. Like I said, we ran a campaign at the end called The Zoo and You or You and the Zoo, I think it was, and it was really just people sharing all those memories and all those pictures. Like I said, understanding that actually walking with an elephant or whatever they used to do is not something they can do now, but celebrating that as something that was done in our past and being a part of that, but understanding that actually we do have to move on. Kelly Molson: Yeah, talking about moving, actually, while we're on that subject. So we've talked about the kind of the financial and the emotional decisions that have gone around this, and we've talked about communicating to the people and how from a team perspective and from the general public, let's talk about the animals, because I can only imagine that this is a logistical nightmare. How do you move a zoo? How do you move a giraffe down the road? How does it even happen? Mike Coe: Yeah, we'll come back to how do you move a giraffe, I guess. But the first off, there are literally thousands of individuals at Bristol Zoo Gardens and a number of those animals are coming with us, but the majority of those are going to other institutions. So I think the first thing to explain, and I get this asked a lot, I'm still relatively new to zoo, so it's something that I'm still learning and it's that we don't actually within zoological societies around the country, in Europe and the world, we don't own our animals, they don't belong to us. They're coordinated through a network of institutions, European Institute of Zoos and Erza have EP coordinators. Those coordinators coordinate those animals all the time between institutions because they're involved in breeding programmes. Mike Coe: So you'll get breeding recommendations and the animals will be coordinated by those coordinators from the receiving donating Zoo to the receiving zoo because of breeding recommendations that have been flagged up. So animals are always moving in between institutions anyway, those member institutions, so we don't own those animals. That said, of course, this was a number of animals moving all in one go, or a lot of animals moving won't go. Some of those animals are still remaining at Bristol Zoo Gardens while we build their new enclosures at Wild Place, and we'll move directly from Bristol Zoo Gardens over to Wild Place. So the gorillas, for instance, will be at the Bristol Zoo Gardens for a little while longer yet, and so we've built their enclosures. Mike Coe: So once those coordinators have got those recommendations of where those animals go there's, then the paperwork has to be done, those medical inspections, certain animals, depending on the size. Have to be trained for a move. So we have to train those animals before they can move, to be able to go, if they're going into crates, to be able to comfortably go into those crates and the trains to be able to do that. So there's actually, arguably, at the closure of a zoo, there was more work for the keepers than ever before. And the coordinators doing all of that work, moving them on. And we've moved on a large proportion, literally thousands of individuals. Admittedly, some of those thousands of individuals are insects and fish and things like that. That kind of bumps the numbers up a bit. Mike Coe: But you can understand there's still an incredible amount of work that has to go on between both the society giving and the one receiving the animal, between those. So all of that work goes on in the background of paperwork. Brexit god love it. Does mean that if you're moving something over to Europe, instead of having just to do one piece of documentation and paperwork, each country around Europe would require its own documentation.  So the paperwork minefield that we now have to do if we're moving them out of the UK. So a lot of ours we've tried to keep within the UK, just for those reasons as well. Mike Coe: And then, obviously, the medical checks on those animals, you can't move them if they're not healthy to move as well, the medical stuff. So I guess when you say, how do you move a giraffe? I guess then that adds even more logistical implications. What are a giraffe? About five metres tall. So I guess avoiding low bridges on a giraffe would be the most important one. But also, again, even with a giraffe, that same process of the coordinators finding the right breeding recommendations, you've also then got to have the right transport. So specially licensed transport companies that are licensed to move animals would have to be found, I guess. I've seen the crates that they moved. I think our giraffes here at Wild Place, they came from Amsterdam, I think. And the crates that they obviously move in, especially designed crates for giraffes. Mike Coe: There's probably not many of those out there that you have to try and coordinate as well. So, yeah, those big crates and the animals have to be trained to go into those crates comfortably and those moves happen. One of our animal team does have a presentation on how to move a hippo, and it is the most interesting presentation of logistics that you can possibly imagine. Kelly Molson: We need to see this presentation, pop it in the show notes. Mike Coe: How to move a hippo. Kelly Molson: That blew my mind. I've got so many thoughts about that. I hadn't actually considered how many animals would be involved in breeding programmes. So I think my mind always goes to Pandas, because it's one that's talked about quite a lot on the news. We always talk about panda breeding programmes, but yeah, I hadn't really considered the fact that the zoo, it cares for those animals, but they're not the owners of those animals and there's so many different places and variables involved in where they go and what they do next. It's crazy. Mike Coe: Yeah, and we also, obviously, I mean, our keepers have to visit those institutions that those animals are going to make sure that they're happy as well, so it's not just the coordinator. So we visit all of those centres and we review and check and make sure everything is right for those moves as well. We wouldn't let animal go unless were absolutely confident that the receiving institution had everything in place for them. Kelly Molson: Percentage wise, how many animals are coming across to the Wild Place and how many are kind of going off and going to different places. Mike Coe: So as a percentage, it's quite high, but that's because within our breeding centre, a lot of the ectotherms, insects, lizards, fish are coming across into the breeding centre, so obviously that makes a large proportion of those. And it's interesting when people think of animals, they always think of the large, cute, those iconic, charismatic animals, but actually that's a very small proportion of the numbers that are held in zoo. So of those animals so we've really only got the gorillas, I guess you would say, moving across immediately over to Wild Place. And largely because, as I said right at the start, we want to be working with those species that were involved in our conservation projects around the world. Mike Coe: So a lot of the animals that come to Wild Place will be from other institutions where they're animals that we're working in, those areas that are critically endangered, that actually have a conservation value to be in zoos. They're not just there for entertainment purposes, like I said. So very few of the animals, the gorillas being the prime example of one where we are working with those in the field and endangered, so we are bringing those across. So a lot of them will not come from Bristol Zoo, but from elsewhere. Kelly Molson: I guess you need the time to be able to build the enclosures as well for them in a responsible way. And this is the final kind of piece of the puzzle, is planning for the development, like, how are you kind of developing the existing Wild Place site to accommodate all of the new things that you want to do? Mike Coe: And it is like a massive jigsaw with 100,000 moving parts of trying to make sure that we move the right things at the right time, open up the right areas at the right time to make sure that the visitor flows work. That the infrastructure that's required because obviously, as we open up large areas of Wild Place, we know there'll be an influx of visitors. You need things like car parking, toilets, cafes, all of those sort of secondary things that make sure that the visitor can have a great day. It's not just about building enclosures as well. So it's been a really big piece of work. We're currently doing some master planning work. We're into more detailed design on that master plan now, which really starts to map out all of these sorts of things, visitor flows, the conservation model of where everything's going. Mike Coe: Our species list has already been defined, so we know which species are coming across and we've published those. So things like within the Central African Forest, which will be our first area. The reason we clearly need to put the Central African Forest area in first is because we got the gorillas that we need to move across. They need a home to go to. Conservation campus is something we really want to get in the early stages as well, because we want to get those students here and engaging and with the breeding centre in there as well, to get those animals all off site from Bristol Zoo Gardens as well. So some of this is dictated by the logistics of it and some of it is dictated by the need to improve the infrastructure to deliver the visitors. Mike Coe: One of our core visions is to be sustainable, revenue sustainable, so we have to be able to have the secondary spends from the visitors coming through, because that's the money that's ploughed back into the conservation work in the field. And we do give a proportion of that money to our direct conservation in those countries and our native work as well. One of the big pieces of work we do is native conservation. So crayfish is a big part of the work. We're doing invasive species another one. So a lot of native work. And the great thing about Wild Place, unlike Bristol Zoo, it has semi ancient woodland, it's got wetlands, so we've got the chance to talk about native woodland and communicate native woodland in a way that we didn't maybe we didn't know so much of it at Bristol Zoo Gardens. Kelly Molson: It's such an exciting opportunity. I was thinking earlier when you were talking about the animals and the logistics and the paperwork and all of those things, I was thinking, there's going to be attractions, professionals that are listening to this going, "I don't want Mike's job. I'm going to stick to my theme park. I'm going to stick to my heritage site. I'm going to stick with my museum artefacts, because that all seems a lot simpler." But actually, when you started to talk about the planning and the master planning and how you're having to plan things, you have to think about things now that might not be developed for like five or ten years down the line and how that all works together. That's really exciting. Mike Coe: It is exciting. I was brought in to work on the commercials of closing the zoo and looking at some of the future stuff. And I'm sure there'll be the more detailed planning paperwork stuff. We've got teams working on that, so it's definitely not me. There's a number of people, the animal teams, they've done an incredible job with these animal movements. I wouldn't even know where to start with some of the things that they've been doing. They've been absolutely incredible, the whole team. So, yeah, I'm a very small cog in a very big machine here.Kelly Molson: A very important cog, though, Mike, for sure. Don't play it down. Thank you. I've loved understanding about this process and I feel real, genuine excitement about what you're developing down there at The Wild Place. I think that's going to be an absolutely phenomenal opportunity for the whole of the region to come and get involved, and I'll definitely be travelling down and seeing how that's developing over you. So thank you for coming on to sharing on the podcast today, we always ask our guests if they have a book that they'd like to recommend our listeners.  Kelly Molson: It can be anything, it can be something that you love from a personal aspect. We've had all sorts of suggestions recently from marketing books. We had a marketing book on the last podcast and we had cook books from Abbey at Castle Howard. So, yeah, what have you got for us? Mike Coe: Yeah, it's funny you asked this question. I'm not a massive reader of books, so I was doing my MBA about three, four years ago and I was thinking, when you asked that question, which management book? And even when I was doing the management course, all the management books and theories that are out there, porter's theory, you got 1 minute manager how to influence people. And whilst I was doing that, I was thinking of the book whilst I was doing the MBA that I read and thought to my child, Charlie, who was about six or seven at the time, and I remember reading it and thinking, "You know what, this is possibly the best management advice that I've ever given."Mike Coe: And I'm reading it from a children's book to my seven year old child, and that's a book that we'll all know, and it's over Oh, The Places You'll Go, which is a Doctor Seuss book. Do you remember it? Yeah. And I was just thinking, like even when I was reading out some of the quotes to Charlie and thinking," Actually, this is what management books are trying to summarise, but never seem to do it." Try 300 words to do it. Quotes like, you're on your own and you know what you know, and you are the one who will decide where you'll go, that you're in charge of your destiny. And things about that tells you to make mistakes, except you don't, because sometimes you won't. Mike Coe: I'm afraid that sometimes you'll play lonely games too, games you can't win because you'll play against you, but actually you're going to be the one holding you back in that as well. So there's loads of amazing management advice in other places you'll go, and it's something that I recommend that everybody gives to their child when they're going off to secondary school or even off to university as well, because there's some incredible quotes in there. You've got brains in your head, you've got feet in your shoes, you can steer yourself in any direction you'll choose. And I think that's kind of how I've lived my career up to date, is through the advice of other places you'll go and making those decisions yourself and sticking by those decisions, and the world is there to explore. Mike Coe: So it comes back to your thing about, where would I like to spend a month while Africa and going back there? Because that's the place I'd love to go again. Kelly Molson: But you're not taking Charlie with you? Mike Coe: No, he'll have read the book and be on his own journey by then, bless him. Kelly Molson: What I really liked is that you were quoting that book, so I know how many times you've reread that book to your son, which is lovely, and I was smiling. It's actually brought a little bit of a tears while because one of my really good friends has bought that book. She bought that book for my daughter when she was born. We've not read my daughter's 18 months old, it's not going to go in so much. Sitting on her shelf next to her bed, and I look at it every night. It's kind of the last thing that catches my eye before she goes in the cot. And when you said that book, I was like, “Oh, yes, that's just such a great book.”Kelly Molson: Listeners, as ever, we give a copy of this book away, so if you would like to win a copy of it, head over to our Twitter account, retweet Twitter this episode announcement and you could be in with a chance of winning. Mike's, fantastic book. Mike Coe:  That could be my controversial opinion that, Oh, The Places You'll Go! is the greatest management book ever written. Kelly Molson: I think maybe more people who would agree with you that on a pat than Paris one a slightly less controversial. Thank you for coming on and sharing that. It's been wonderful to talk to you. Where's the best place to find out all about what's happening? Mike Coe: Yeah. So if you go on to either our websites for Wild Place and the Old Bristol Zoo Gardens website is still there, and look at our vision and our future, and all of the information on the master planning work that's going on there and the vision in the future are there, and please come and visit us and see us here. We're right at the start of the journey, but over the next five to ten years, we're going to really transform this place.Kelly Molson: I don't think you're going to have any problem getting any of our listeners to come and visit. Mike, thanks again for joining us. Mike Coe: Thanks, Kelly.Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

Jayanti Shah in conversation with Natalie Barrass (Part One) (Unity 101). The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record afd resource for people in the future.

Chandrakant Joshi in conversation with  Kamla Sharma (Unity 101). The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record afd resource for people in the future.

Jayanti Shah in conversation with Natalie Barrass (Part One) (Unity 101).The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record afd resource for people in the future.

Chandrakant Joshi in conversation with  Kamla Sharma (Unity 101).  The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record afd resource for people in the future.

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.Download the Rubber Cheese 2022 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the first digital benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends July 31st 2023. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikwyness/https://tankmuseum.org/https://tankmuseumshop.org/https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTankMuseumhttps://www.tiktok.com/@famthetankman Nik Wyness is Head of Marketing and Engagement at The Tank Museum in Dorset.He has led the digital transformation of this rural regimental Museum and registered charity, creating an industry-leading strategy in the development and monetisation of a global online community.The Tank Museum tells the story of the tank and the people that served in them, with a collection of over 300 vehicles dating from World War One to the present day, displayed in modern awe-inspiring exhibitions.But the Museum's rural location poses an ever-present challenge – how to make people aware it exists?With the simple objective of “Being more famous” and a passion for powerful historical stories, Nik used social media channels like Facebook and YouTube to begin building a niche following worldwide.This laid the foundations for a base of advocacy and support that would lead to 27% of the Museum's total 2022 turnover generated online in 2022 – albeit somewhat inadvertently at first! Transcriptions: Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. In today's episode, I speak with Nik Wyness, Head of Marketing and Engagement at The Tank Museum. Nick developed a genius strategy to grow audiences and communities online, which has been phenomenally successful. Listen along to hear how The Tank Museum earned around 25% of a total 6 million turnover from online sources. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on itunes, spotify and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue. Kelly Molson: Nick, I am very excited to have you on the podcast today. Welcome to Skip the Queue. Nik Wyness: Thank you very much for having me.Kelly Molson: As ever, I'm going to start with some ice breakers, though, and I've got a topical one for you. Nik Wyness: Okay. Kelly Molson: So, last week, the BBC reported that a visitor had broken Jeff Koons iconic balloon dog sculpture. I know its  awful, isn't it? At a high end art fair in Miami. I want to know, have you ever been told off by security for touching a museum exhibit that you weren't supposed to touch? Nik Wyness: Oh, that's a good one, actually. I obviously work at The Tank Museum. That's why we're talking about. But I first visited The Tank Museum when I was about eight years old and I was a cub scout, and this was obviously quite a long time ago. Different decade, probably the 80's. Nik Wyness: They used to have a little arcade machine in there. I know it's kind of weird, like arcade machines in a museum, but they used to have one of those little kind of like, penny pushes. Kelly Molson: Oh, yeah, I love that. Nik Wyness: Yeah. I mean, it's a h*** of a way to lose money. And that's what happened. We were getting a bit frustrated with this thing. It kind of like, hangs over the edge, doesn't it? A really sort of tempting way. So my friend and I, we couldn't resist giving a little bit of encouragement, a little bit of a rock, and this guy came out and he told us off. And when I started working at The Tank Museum in 2004, I met the same guy. How funny is that? Kelly Molson: Wow. I mean, one, that's lovely. Very high rate of retention of staff at The Tank Museum. So that's a plus. Oh, my God. Did he actually recognise you? Nik Wyness: No, thankfully not. Otherwise things could have got different. But I definitely recognise him, that kind of ferocious look in his eye.Kelly Molson: That is a brilliant story. My Nan just while we're on the subject of penny machines, because I really like those penny machines, they are a very good way of losing a load of money, but only go for the 2p ones. Right. And then it doesn't feel as bad. Nik Wyness: High roller. Kelly Molson: High roller. My Nan had a bit of an obsession with those and the grabber machine, so they had a caravan in Walton-on-the-Naze, and she used to spend a lot of time on the old penny slot machines in her day. And I reckon that she might have had a little bit of a nudge of some of those because she used to win a lot. And you don't win that much on them, do you? I reckon she did a little hip bash, grandma. Nik Wyness: I think everyone must do that from time, so how could you not? It's so tempting. But I think the trouble is, if you go too far, that alarm goes off and a man comes out and tells, “you off”. Kelly Molson: Especially at The Tank Museum. Nik Wyness: Especially at The Tank Museum. Kelly Molson: That is excellent. Thank you for sharing that story. Right, okay, next one. I was going to ask you what your favourite tank is, but I think that'd be quite boring. Nik Wyness: You're like choosing a favourite child. You can't do that. Kelly Molson: I know. Unless you just have one and then it's easy. What one thing would you make a law that isn't already? Nik Wyness: Well, I think it should be law that everyone should visit The Tank Museum more than once a month. More than once a month. There you go. Kelly Molson: More than once a month. That's a lot of tanks. Okay, good one. All right, last one. I'm always intrigued by this. I think I'm going to start making this a regular question. I want to know if you now, or if you did when you were younger, if you had a collection of something?Nik Wyness: I've never really been one to collect things. I'm a bit sort of rubbish and a bit lazy. I get really into it and then I kind of lose interest in what I do. I used to collect stickers and that kind of thing. I remember my sister used to collect key rings, but, yeah, I'm not much of a collector. But I know you collect. Is it rubbers?Kelly Molson: Oh, you've done your research. Nik Wyness: One of the first things you told me about yourself when we first met, grew up at that Edinburgh conference. I thought it was an interesting thing to go in with early, but you did it and I respect that. So I'm sure we have a Tank Museum rubber and I kind of feel that I should maybe send you one. Kelly Molson: I would love that. Nik Wyness: It might even be tank shaped. Kelly Molson: Wow. Also, just for anyone that does meet me in the future, I'm really sorry. That is what my starting lines is, "Hey, I've got an 80s rubber collection". Excellent. Well done, me. Okay, let's move on to your unpopular opinion, Nik. Nik Wyness: Okay, so I thought long and hard about this because I have many unpopular opinions, so I'm going to go with this one. And that is I do not like Twitter. I can't stand Twitter, which is quite ironic, given what we're going to be talking about. I know, the shock, the despondency on your face. But hear me out. I've got three reasons why I really don't like Twitter. So the first reason is that Twitter, in my opinion, just seems to bring out the absolute worst in people. It's kind of like golf. If you've been on a golf course and a normally perfectly rational person can just turn into this kind of like snarling clubs, napping. Kelly Molson: Yeah, you've met my husband. Nik Wyness: There's plenty like him. There's plenty like him. I'm probably one of them myself, which is why I don't play golf. But, yeah, I don't know. On Twitter, you can see normal people, what appeared to be at first sight, normal people, anyway, kind of turn into vacuous, narcissists, all trying to show how clever they are or how virtuous they are or how much funnier they are than the other guys. It's kind of like a playground one upmanship, but it's quite derogatory and quite negative as well, isn't it, really? It's all sort of a bit sort of unpleasant. And I'm just amazed there are so many people out there who are willing to spend time arguing with people they've never met on the internet. Surely there has to be more to life. Nik Wyness: But the second reason is that, and this is the one which is always probably wound me up the most, is that lazy journalists mistaking what happens on Twitter for actual news, or worse, for actual public opinion, when it's actually neither. And so the fact that journalists do that is it kind of gives all of this rubbish a bigger platform and gives it greater credibility than I think some of it actually deserves. But the third reason, I just like Twitter, and there are many reasons why I think they have an increasingly polarised society, but Twitter is definitely not helping. And one of those general things that we worry about is what you see on Twitter being kind of manifested in just the greater public discourse. It's just like we've forgotten how to have a disagreement, respectfully, do you know what I mean? Nik Wyness: Nobody can have an argument these days without having to play the man or kind of take the other person out on every level. There's no, well, I respectfully agree with the opinion, but I will agree to disagree. There's none of that on Twitter, really, is there? Everyone's basically hacking the other person to death verbally until somebody gets bored and has to get off the bus or something. So for those three reasons yeah, and I hate all that abuse of public figures as well, whether it's just general hate or misogyny or racism, all that kind of stuff. Interesting, none of these people well, hopefully none of these people would have the courage to say the things that they'd say on Twitter to another person's face. Nik Wyness: And I always think that you should never say something in writing on Twitter, on social media that you wouldn't want to say to their face, because you've got to accept the consequences, right. Of the things that you say. And I think people hide behind the anonymity of the Internet. I don't think that's healthy. Gosh, that was quite a moralistic rant, but, my God, do I feel better. Kelly Molson: It really was. But, wow, what a great one. And I really love how in depth you went with your unpopular opinion. I was nodding along there, because I think that point 3, there is a dark side to Twitter, and I was agreeing with you on point 3. Kelly Molson: I like Twitter and I enjoy it, but I think that I'm probably in my lovely, happy, safe, kind of comfortable bubble there, because I follow really nice people and I engage with lovely people. And actually, there is quite a big kind of attractions and heritage and cultural community on Twitter that I feel quite part of. So that all feels very nice, but I absolutely agree with you that there is a dark and destructive side of it which isn't healthy for anybody to be involved. Nik Wyness: I respectfully disagree with your opinion. There you go. See, it is possible. Kelly Molson: Absolutely. We're still friends. You're still going to send me a rubber. I'm still going to start our conversations in strange and weird ways whenever we see each other. Let me know, listeners, what you think about Nik's unpopular opinion. I know a lot of you talk to me on Twitter, so it'd be interesting to hear if you agree. I think you probably agree with both of us. Good place, bad place, brings out good in some bad in some. Nik Wyness: Absolutely. I mean, sure. Just tweet me. Kelly Molson: Tweet Nik. Oh, God, please. Go, tweet Nik. Go tweet him. Make him respond on the platform that he finds appalling. Nik Wyness: Yeah, exactly. I'll just kind of go straight for the abuse. Kelly Molson: Great. Okay, Nik, you work at The Tank Museum. Tell us about your role there and what you do. Nik Wyness: Okay, so I, as you've heard, my association with The Tank Museum goes back an awfully long way from trying to rob arcade machines until when I first became a paid member of staff, which was in 2004, which was a very long time ago, almost 20 years, which is absolutely terrifying. So I first started working there as the PR officer, and this was at the beginning of a very transformational period for The Tank Museum. We applied for Heritage Lottery funding. There was this big redevelopment project in the office. And so it was very exciting, it was a very exciting time. And it was great to see the organisation go through this kind of great arc of transformation, which was supported by public money. But what was particularly good about that is it was really successful. Nik Wyness: And we achieved, with that Heritage Lottery funding, all of the things that we said were going to do. So we're bringing more people in, really making the subject a lot more accessible to a wider audience, all of those things absolutely fantastic. So it's been a big part of my career. I did leave The Tank Museum back in 2012, 2013, and I went to work at a very well established visitor attraction in another location. But I missed my tanks. I missed my tanks. And the First World War centenaries were coming up as well. I am quite into my military history. So the opportunity came to go back to The Tank Museum in a very different role, a much more senior role. And I took that opportunity back in 2016, and I haven't looked back. Nik Wyness: So my role at The Tank Museum, my job title is the Head of Marketing and Engagement, which means I'm head of marketing and engaging things. But in English, what that means is obviously I'm responsible for ensuring that the visitors show up. So The Tank Museum is a medium sized visitor attraction. We have about 200,000 visitors a year. When there isn't a pandemic. We have a portfolio of special events. Our big fundraising event every year is Tank fest, which if you haven't been, you absolutely must. Kelly Molson: Top of my list. Nik Wyness: Top of that. I'm sure it is. Although I'm surprised you haven't been already. Kelly Molson: I haven't been to The Tank Museum. Nik Wyness: You have the rubber if you did. Kelly Molson: Right, exactly. It's not in my collection.Nik Wyness: There you go. We'll have to put that, right. So that's The Tank Museum. Responsible for making sure the visitors show up and all of that kind of external communication, whether that's stakeholder communications, the public relations activity, the media relations activity, and the social media activity and the ecommerce activity. And a big part of what I've been doing, particularly since I returned, was basically building up these online audiences and building this online community. And latterly of sort of successfully monetising that, really. And what we've done is create an entirely almost distinct business from, if you like, our visitor onsite income. We've created this separate, sort of almost separate moneymaking enterprise, which is all about our online audiences that are online followers and supporters. Kelly Molson: This is what I want to talk about today, Nik. I have heard Nik talk about this. Well, the last time I heard you speak was up in Scotland at the Tourism Associations Conference, which is incredible. What you've achieved is pretty phenomenal, I have to say, and just so incredibly impressive. And I'm so glad that you've been able to come on and share it with our listeners today. So I think I'm not sure if I've got the date right, but was it in 2020 that you started to develop this strategy, or was it pre pandemic? Nik Wyness: It was pre pandemic, yeah. So it's kind of what I've been working on since I came back in 2016. Kelly Molson: Right, okay. Nik Wyness: I wouldn't say what I started working on is where we've ended up. So what we started doing, it was all about basically building up these online audiences. And it was all really about if I just wind back a bit, one of the problems with The Tank Museum, I'd say problems, I mean, it's a fantastic location, being endorsed as we are, but we are absolutely in the middle of nowhere. We are in a tiny garrison village of Bovington. The nearest big town is like Bournemouth, that's an hour away by car. So we are absolutely in the middle of nowhere. If it wasn't for the fact that Dorset, sorry, was a successful domestic tourist destination, there's no way The Tank Museum could have survived at all, really, because lots of people come to Dorset on holiday. August has always been our busiest month, for example. Nik Wyness: So the fact we're out there in the middle of nowhere means we have a real sort of challenge to get people's attention. And so this whole strategy came out of our requirement and our desire to just kind of let people know we existed. And the objectives that I set myself was we just needed to be more famous. So everything we did was about making The Tank Museum more famous. Kelly Molson: That was it. That was the key objective for the whole strategy. Love it. Nik Wyness: That was literally it, be more famous. Because if people don't know you exist, they're not going to come and visit you. And so, like I said, I'm kind of from the sort of more PR end of the marketing spectrum. I did like a journalism degree and I've always been really interested in storytelling. And The Tank Museum, as you can imagine, we tell stories and we tell some amazing stories, and warfare is one of those bits of history where you get to see the very best in humanity, but you also get to see the very worst. And some of the stories we deal with are just absolutely fascinating. Sometimes there's goodies, there's baddies and there's loss and love and all of that kind of thing. Really good story. Nik Wyness: So it's always been, in my view, the case that storytelling, PR, those kind of traditional ways of reaching an audience with stories, was going to be the way that we can to achieve that cut through making The Tank Museum more famous, making our objects speak for themselves, if you'd like, and the stories that we tell. And so the strategy really grew out of that PR strategy. And when social media kind of came around and we started to take things like Facebook more seriously back in, I don't know, 2010 or something like that, it was about using social media as a means to reach people without the filter of the media, if you like. There were specialist magazines and there were national newspapers that we could get the occasional story in, but it would always be heavily edited to be more in their voice. Nik Wyness: But social media allowed us to sort of speak with our own voice and get our stories out directly, unfiltered to a much bigger audience. And we started to see that audience online grow. And basically what we're doing at that point was very much alongside what we're doing offline, as it were. We started to see that audience grow and as it grew, it started to become clear that actually, the majority of people that were actually hitting with this weren't British, as in they weren't resident in the UK, and so they were therefore quite unlikely to be able to visit The Tank Museum. Nik Wyness: And that in itself did pose a bit of a kind of intellectual dilemma, really, because it's like, if you're putting all that time and effort into reaching people, you want them to visit, but if they're not actually going to visit, well, what's the point of actually reaching them then? You're just kind of making a lot of noise and it's unsustainable. And so the whole monetisation piece came out of this sort of really, I think, for me, being challenged by the trustees of The Tank Museum to say, well, this has got to pay for itself somehow. How are you going to do it? And if you don't do it, you got to stop. And so I like a challenge, so I stuck in. Kelly Molson: You really got stuck in, so I love this. So you achieved your objective, right, so we go back to 2016. You said the objective would be more famous. You drive that objective and you achieve it over the next few years. But actually, in achieving that objective, it's not bringing any more revenue to the organisation because your audience is.Nik Wyness: Lot of PR activity, it can be quite difficult to sort of measure. It can be quite difficult to track that back to source. Nik Wyness: I think the big change for us came when we introduced YouTube to our sort of social media marketing mix. And again, we've got a very visual subject matter. Tanks are big objects and they move so they look good on camera. And I launched the YouTube channel originally, I don't know, it's been about 2010, I bought a little rubbishy sort of digital camera and basically, for me, the idea of making videos for YouTube was I just had this idea of doing like, visual press releases, basically, because it might make them a bit more interesting. And were starting to see at that point, other people were coming to The Tank Museum, with camcorders and making little videos, and they were doing quite well. So we thought there was clearly a bit of potential in this. Nik Wyness: And then as time went on and we kind of introduced what is our sort of flagship YouTube series, which is The Tank Chats, where we have one of our experts literally standing in front of a tank, just talking about that object, the history of that object, how it was developed, blah, blah. And that's what really set our YouTube channel off. YouTube is quite a labour intensive. You need to have the kit, you need to have the people to make films, then they need to have spent time editing those things as well. So I think at that point, were getting really great views, really great engagement, but the reality was, we're a charity, we have to be careful how we spend our money. We're not rich like, say, we're in the middle of nowhere. Nik Wyness: This all has to go back to some kind of important box ticking objective and that has to be sort of financial in some way or other. We have to make sure it's washing its face. And whilst we could see, as the YouTube channel started to grow, 2014, 2015, we could see that were starting to see more international businesses, for example, rocking up our special events like Tank Fest. And we could see that our experts that were putting in front of the camera were bizarrely starting to get, like, people coming up and asking for autographs, which is kind of adorable in many ways, so we could see that, but you can't really put a figure on that. So, like, I say, like, a lot of PR activities, just really difficult to quantify in that way. Nik Wyness: And we've got a very switched on group of trustees and they were basically challenging to say, well, put value on this and it's very difficult unless you find another way of literally making it clear how it's performing for you. Kelly Molson: Okay, so we get to that point and trustees challenge you. What did you then start to do and how did you start to develop the monetisation strategy that you've put in place? Nik Wyness: Yeah, so there was this trustee meeting and I was very pleased with these massive numbers because it's all about on social media, the bigger the numbers, the more successful you are. So I think we're all feeling quite pleased with ourselves about that and say, "Look at all these people in America watching us. People have never heard of The Tank Museum, have now heard of The Tank Museum. Isn't that great?" And in a way it is great, but they were absolutely right to sort of say, well, hang on a minute, because actually that intervention has just led to things being better, really.Nik Wyness: And that's what you want from your trustees. At the time, it probably felt like a little bit deflating. Yeah, because my first thought was, goodness me, how on earth are we going to do this? Because there's no model in our sector for doing this at all. And normally, if you're short of a good idea or two, there's plenty of other people in our sector, bigger organisations, more established museums. You can just help yourself to an idea from really or talk to them and say, well, how have you done it? And what ideas can we basically steal and reform? But this one, there was nothing. So it was a real challenge, but actually, that's what made it fun in a way. Nik Wyness: And so what I did is, because I was then, and I still am now, a bit of a YouTube addict, I definitely think I probably watch more YouTube than Netflix and certainly much more than terrestrial television. I just like the variety and the randomness of the things you can see in my son, who's only eight years old, is much too my disappointment. Equally addicted to me, which is you spend hours watching people play minecraft and what is that about, how is that enjoyable? And they're all quite irritating as well, but that's why this isn't a therapy session, I must remind myself. Kelly Molson: Get it all out.Nik Wyness: Anyway, back to monetisation. So, yeah, so what I did is I had to look at YouTubers and how they were making a living effectively from just running a YouTube channel. And that became a thing, if you like, sort of 2012, 2013, 2014. And it was just literally a case of saying, right, how are they making their money? And identified there was four key ways in which they were making their money. The first thing was through advertising revenue. So when you are on YouTube and you're playing your videos, google basically puts ads at the beginning of those videos and I'm sure you've seen them, I'm sure you've skipped many of them as well. And basically they do operate a revenue share scheme with their creators. So you basically get a percentage of every ad that's played. So the second thing is memberships. Nik Wyness: So Patreon had just launched at that time and Patreon is like an online modern membership platform which allows you to facilitate an online modern membership scheme and it's very closely linked to YouTube. At that time, YouTube kind of endorsed it. A lot of YouTubers were using it, as well as a means to provide sort of tiered memberships where people could give monthly micro donations, whether it was one dollar a month, $3 a month, $5 a month or more in exchange for a tiered set of benefits, whether that's additional access to the creator, early access, that sort of thing. The third way was through sponsorships. Nik Wyness: And I'm sure we've all seen YouTube videos where at the very beginning of the video, no matter what it's about, there might be somebody who's promoting a product, whether that's like a VPN service or a pair of gaming headphones or whatnot. And the final way was merchandise sales. And even people with modest merchandise, YouTube channels will be using Printly or something like that to print their own T shirts with their like channel logo on it. So basically, using those methods, that's how we sort of built the strategy around kind of making it happen. And ad revenue is all about the more views you get, the more ads get served to your content and the more money you can make. So to give you an example, last year we had about 22 million views and we earned £90,000 from ads. Nik Wyness: And it's not an immaterial sum of money, it's completely passive as well. Once it's out there, you don't have to do anything apart from just kind of take the payment every month. And the other thing about that was really interesting to us as well, was that what we saw is that the overseas audience, particularly the American based viewers, were actually a lot more lucrative than the UK based viewers. So last year, about 30% of our viewers were based in the USA and basically 45% of our total ad revenue originated from those American viewers, because the ad market is much more developed on YouTube in the USA than it is in the UK. So the UK viewers contributed just 20% of our total views, which is, of course, a lot lower as a proportion than the USA, but just 23% of our ad revenue. Nik Wyness: So you can see it was actually a benefit all of a sudden to having these American based viewers. And you can see how in the future, it might beneficial for us to actually aim our content a little bit more at the American audience for that very reason. Kelly Molson: Gosh, that's fascinating. I can't believe the numbers on that as well. For passive income. That's incredible. Nik Wyness: Yeah, and that's from what you can that's not particularly stellar either, I have to say. There are people who do much more kind of commercial content than we do, because ours is very much educational, who would probably do a lot better than that, like the guys who make those Minecraft, but here that my son watches are probably absolutely pointing it in. So it really makes you question your life choices, doesn't it, really? Kelly Molson: Yeah, if it does. Nik Wyness: And then we launched our Patreon, and again, that was just a case of setting up the platform and then sign posting it in all of our videos, basically saying, if you want to support the town, it's easy for us, we're a charity. So if you like the ask is a lot more straightforward, you know, support our work, help us keep the channel going. We were able to eventually fund an internship using the earnings from Patreon. It built up such I think it was just over £20,000 after the first couple of years. So went to our local arts university and brought in a graduate placement, who had just graduated from the Film Study schools to help us make more content. So it became beautifully self fulfilling. Kelly Molson: That's wonderful that you could do that as well. Nik Wyness: Yeah, and it was all funded by the patrons and then yeah, we work with partners to generate sponsorship income. I think because we're a charity and because we're a museum, we're not going to just accept any old sponsorship opportunity that wanders by. We have to be a bit careful about our brand and who will work with and that sort of thing, but we're already working with a video games company called War Gaming. They make a video game called World of Tanks, which I'm sure you're an avid player of yourself and I need to introduce it any further. But basically it's one of those massively multiplayer. It's free to play online. Nik Wyness: And basically what you do is you kind of drive around in a tank and you sort of shoot at other people who are driving around online in their tank, played by literally millions of people worldwide. And they're already sponsoring like exhibitions and events at The Tank Museum. So it wasn't really a big leap for them to start sponsoring our online content as well. And a really good example of how their sort of support and sponsorship for our online content on our YouTube channel in particular could be found in 2020 during the pandemic. Because I'm sure you can remember all too well, weren't able that summer to hold our Tank Fest event because obviously everything was shut down, which left us with a real big problem because of course, Tank Fest is our biggest fundraising event of the year. Nik Wyness: So were able to use our YouTube channel and a bunch of edited footage to bring a Tank Fest 2020 live stream to the Internet with World of Tanks' financial support. So they basically gave us the sponsorship to kind of bring in the technology to live stream this stuff that we'd edited together, which was sort of live hosted and create a live stream. And that video did really well. It's had over a million views and still growing now, which is quite remarkable. From that live stream gained £50,000 worth of additional donations from the viewer base and it led to an additional £20,000 of sales in our online shop that weekend as well. So it was staggeringly successful for us, but we wouldn't have been able to do it without World of Tanks to support. Kelly Molson: That is an amazing achievement. So just thinking about what you said about the Pandemic there and not being able to do certain things because of it, but then being able to do this quite transformative project. Did the Pandemic speed up some of the things that you were going to do? Or were these things kind of naturally in progress anyway as the pandemic hit? Nik Wyness: I think were lucky in the sense that a lot of this stuff was just starting to get rolling when the pandemic hit. The fact existed when the pandemic hit. No question about it. I think it saved jobs at the time. No question about it. Nik Wyness: And I think that's really good news story, isn't it? At the end of the day. We were already in a place where we built these really big online audiences into a sort of a loyal community of almost advocates. And so when we were asking them for help, they were happy to support us. So we saw an increase in our Patreon age. Nik Wyness: During the pandemic, we saw an increase in ad revenue as well, because across the board, more people will have more time to sit and watch YouTube videos. And obviously, we work with a lot of tanks on that occasion to do this kind of big set piece, live stream, special event, which yielded great results. But probably for us, the most important thing, and the biggest chunk of our online income comes from e commerce. And so the fact that when the pandemic hit, we actually had the time, for the first time ever, to really focus in on e commerce and make it work, get it sorted out, get the website sorted out, sort out our logistics and yeah, I mean, in 2019, we took £120,000 in our online shop, which were quite happy with. In 2020, we took £1.2 million. Kelly Molson: Oh, wow. Nik Wyness: Exactly. And we wouldn't have been able to take that if we hadn't already built this enormous online audience organically. So, sure, were using, were advertising the products and that kind of stuff online during 2020, but the fact is that we kind of went in from a sort of a running start, because the audience was there, the product selection was there, we knew what were doing and what we wanted to achieve. We just actually had times to get on with it and actually, there's nothing like a crisis of that sort to really focus the mind and for everyone to be pulling out the stops. It was a fantastic team effort.Kelly Molson: Oh, absolutely. It's amazing what you can achieve when you're under that kind of pressure. And you've got nothing to lose, right? There's no barriers there. You've got absolutely nothing to lose by doing it.Nik Wyness: Nothing else to interfere with. Kelly Molson: There's no people, we don't have to worry about them. So was that a one off or has that continued since this big increase in your online sales? Nik Wyness: So, I think for us, that was always the concern, wasn't it? And I'm sure a lot of e commerce, of course, are a massive boom because there was literally nothing to do all day apart from watch YouTube and buy stuff on the internet. We were obviously worried that, how will things be in 2021? Is this just a blip? Is this just a bit of anomaly? So we did 1.2 million in 2020. In 2021, we did the same, I think 2.1 million again. So were like, well, that's interesting, but it's been a funny year, there's still lots of covered hangover. We locked down at the beginning of the year. So for us, 2022, the year just gone was a real test for us. This is going to tell us whether or not we managed to create sustainable growth. Nik Wyness: Actually, last year we did 1.4 million, so it was a huge effort. We had to work really hard for it, but we're far better set up for that. We've increased the size of the team to cope with this. But actually what we've shown is that we've got some really good foundations here and some really good foundations for future growth as well. So it wasn't just I mean, that was the concern. It could have all fallen away last year and we've been sort of sat wondering what we're going to do with all these people who were sat on their hands. But fortunately, so far at least, knock on wood has shown to be holding up. Kelly Molson: And is that the same with some of the other things as well? So is that the same with, like, your YouTube views? And has everything stayed the same or increased since then? Nik Wyness: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, that was for us. I think the big thing in 2022 was about basically kind of stepping back and letting your hands off and going, "Right, is this still, is it still there? Is it still happening?" So we didn't set, like, massively ambitious targets for 2022. It was all just about zero. Okay. But, yeah, we still continued. We had, I think, 22 million views last year, which was 2 million more than the one before. The membership income was £2000 more than it was the previous year. So what we saw is a lot of people who signed up to support us during the pandemic, when the pandemic was over, kind of fell away, but that's fine. Nik Wyness: We also know that people have been hit by the upheaval in financial uncertainty, so we've certainly lost a few, but we've had to work hard to gain a few as well. And our sponsors, War Gaming, have sort of stuck by us as well. And the e commerce, as I've just said, has continued to work really well. We had an incredibly strong Christmas season and we've continued to do some of the things that we started doing in 2020 as well. Like these self published books. We've got the audience we can sell directly to them. Nik Wyness: So what we do is we'll take a book that's out of print that we've got the rights to, you know, we know we can be relatively comfortable that we'll be able to shift 3 to 4000 of those based on the fact that we've got this really loyal audience in a real niche. We don't have a great deal of competition for that niche, and those have been really good for us as well. Really good things to drive sales and bring in the customers here. Kelly Molson: Are your Trustees happy? That's what I want to know. Are they happy? Nik Wyness: They're never happy. And I don't want them to be happy either, because if they're happy, that just makes life easier. They're always pushing us to try new things and just try and push it a little bit further. But that's why I believe The Tank Museum is very successful. We get the finger in the back, you can't get comfortable, you can't get complacent, and that's the way I like it. That's why I like working in The Tank Musuem. Kelly Molson: Yes, that's a good place to be, isn't it, where you're always challenged, so there's always more that you can do. You said earlier about.. The attraction sector is one that is incredibly supportive of each other, and you mentioned earlier that there's normally a model or someone's done what you're trying to achieve, and you can often go and ask people, but in this case, you are the model, right? You have developed the model. So what would be your tips for other museums that are looking to implement a really similar strategy to this? Nik Wyness: That's a good question. I guess part of the issue is we never really set out to implement the model. It kind of just awkwardly fell in this way. But I'm always looking at what other, whether it's attractions or museums in particular, really are doing in this space and how they're trying to do it. And I often wonder why there are much bigger, more established organisations than ours that aren't doing better than us. And I kind of feel like they arguably could be. I do think there's an issue with that. I have made the same museum because I've always had a lot of support from particularly my director, who's just kind of let me get on with it. And it's a bit of a smaller organisation as well, so working cross functionally is a little bit labyrinth. Nik Wyness: It's easier to get things done in a smaller organisation. You can be a bit more nimble. But I think a lot of the reason for our success really goes down to this obsession with really getting to know the audience and really sort of cherishing them, so you can really understand what they want and then you give them what they want. So it's not really rocket science at that point, if you know the audience. We've got a niche audience, obviously. People who are into tanks, they're quite easily defined, aren't they? "Is it a tank? Yes. I like it. It is not a tank. No, google don't like that", so we'd know when to talk about sharks or fish or anything like that. Nik Wyness: But the other thing I think that's made us successful is we throughout the course of this journey, because we didn't set out to achieve everything all in one go. We didn't realise were doing it at the time, but we've got these really strong and consistent online brand values. So I've always thought that the content we produce, anything we put on social media, has to be useful. It's got to give the audience something interesting, something they actually want, it's got to satisfy a need and we give them, hopefully, interesting stories and engaging facts. You've got to lay off on the sales on your social media, really, haven't you? It's a long game. You've got to earn the right to sell to people by giving them lots of useful, sort of free stuff. Nik Wyness: I think it's really important that organisations on social media are authentic to their own sort of organisational voice and not trying to be something else, not trying to follow what other people are doing necessarily. You've got to kind of cut your own path. I think being original is really important. There's no point trying to imitate what others are doing. I don't think it would be seemly for The Tank Museum to be trying to sort of imitate other online influences with the kind of things that they do, because that's not us, we're The Tank Museum. We're trying to be serious content creators and we've got a serious message. Nik Wyness: I think simplicity is important. And I mean simplicity in terms of sustainability to create, because we're not a massive team, but we have this requirement now to put a video out on YouTube every week and actually that can be quite labour intensive. So you need to make sure that you're not trying to achieve more than you actually can. And of course, the content needs to be good, simple. And what I mean by that really is easy for the audience to consume. Those would be my tips really. Gosh, there's quite a few. There's a lot there. Nik Wyness: I don't even know. I have no idea what happened. Kelly Molson: This has happened. They're really good tips, though, and if I'm honest, so they're tips that I took away. So I have heard you talk about this a couple of times, Nik and I've taken those tips away and I've implemented them, or I've tried to implement them for Rubber Cheese ourselves. So I think that there were a few things that were already doing, but I think just coming back to those every time to be useful, that everything that you push out has to be useful, is so vital. And that's the one takeaway that I took from your talk, is that if you are trying anything that you're trying to do on social media, whether you're trying to grow your audience or grow your presence or your brand or sell something, but not in a salesy way, it's just about being useful. Kelly Molson: What can we do? What do we know that would really be helpful for our audience? Just share that stuff. And that, for me, is the biggest takeaway from the things that you do, is about being useful. Nik Wyness: Absolutely, yeah. And it's sure, it's not useful to anybody, is it? But we're not after anybody online. We're particularly after that niche audience of enthusiasts. But because it's online, there's lots and lots of them scattered all around the world. The Tank Museum itself, and this is one of the really key things that I really kind of really grasp, and it's difficult to get other people to understand, is that the online audience, particularly for The Tank Museum, is totally different to the onsite audience. And that's how I want it to be. So the onsite audience is all about being accessible to the widest possible group of people who are endorsed and able to visit. We want families to visit, we want older people to visit, we want younger people to visit, we want schools to visit. Nik Wyness: But online, we're just going for those sort of military history aficionados. And you can see that, if you like, in the actual demographics of the audience. So I think on site, our gender split is 60% men and 40% female, which actually, I think we need to do better on. If I'm being honest. Kelly Molson: That's not bad, though I wouldn't have said that was too bad for what seems quite stereotypically male. Nik Wyness: Absolutely. Yeah. And it has got better. But the reality is actually, for me, is actually the subject matter The Tank Museum really is, particularly the way it is presented in recent times, because we've completely redone the entire museum. There is no reason why anybody couldn't come to The Tank Museum. There was nothing in here for me, because we just tell really good, fascinating stories, really. So you don't have to be someone who cares a great deal about tanks to get something out of The Tank Museum, but you do have to be someone who cares about tanks to get something about online content, and that's the way you want it. So online, our audience is 90% male, maybe more, probably more. And it's also very international. We probably struggle to get 10, 12 percent international visitors onto The Tank Museum site. Nik Wyness: It goes up during our special events, but not by much, probably to 20%. And we know that our online audience is probably 20, 25% UK. The biggest single segment would be North America, so that's USA and Canada. And what's left is everywhere else. And we've got Europeans, Australians, South Americans. Nik Wyness: It's a very global audience. And that's the thing with niche audiences. A niche audience in the UK is not so small when you take it to a global scale. And that's why this strategy is able to succeed at scale financially. Kelly Molson: It all comes back to what you said right at the beginning. Know your audience. Nik Wyness: Know your audience. Absolutely. And care about them.Kelly Molson: Good advice. Yeah, not just no care. Exactly. Okay, what is next for The Tank Museum? What can you share with us that's coming up? What other ideas have you got in the Tank?Nik Wyness: I like it. Kelly Molson: You're welcome. Nik Wyness: Well, I think for us, the biggest thing is we have to focus on COVID recovery. Last year wasn't horrendous, but we know that there are further headwinds. We know that there's a bit of an economic uncertainty at the moment. We're not quite sure how that's going to affect us on the door. We are very heavily dependent on The Tank Museum site, at least on the vagaries of UK domestic tourism. So there is a bit of wait and see. This year, we'll see the first normal Tank Fest since 2019, you know, because we've had to reduce the numbers or we've had to operate it in a very different way. And that event is so very important for us. But I think on the online side, I think there's still so much that I'd love to do.Nik Wyness: If only there was the time and the resource to do it. We want to get better at doing this stuff. We want to get better at the community development side of things. I think that's obviously going to be the future. And I mean, that niche broad is sent from starting with growing the amount of emails, engaged email subscribers that we have and kind of nudging them up that fabled ladder of loyalty. We want to increase the output of our content. So one of the big things that we did last year was launch a TikTok channel because TikTok is where the younger people are. Nik Wyness: And you've got to think about the future in terms of getting your brand in front of the younger audience because just because they're young and they're on TikTok doesn't mean that among that will be people who are interested in military history. It's not all about sort of funny dances and twerking. Although that's a good time, I'm sure. Yeah, if you're on TikTok. Nik Wyness: Check out famthetankman, who is our in house TikTok, he did really well last year. He only launched the channel in late April and he's accumulated 271,000 followers and 51 million views last year, which I think is pretty impressive. He's doing really well. Kelly Molson: That is phenomenal. I'm not on TikTok because it's another thing that I've got to learn and understand and to find time for. So I'm not on it yet. I need to be I do need to understand it. But that is a really big achievement in such a short space of time. Nik Wyness: Yeah, absolutely. And it shows that there is an appetite for serious military history content. And of course, we change, if you like, the tone of voice that we're using and we change the conventions that we're using in the kind of presentational sense. But the messages are still the same, the stories are still the same. Do you know what I mean? So there's still that consistency of authority and kind of our authenticity coming out through TikTok. Even though it's a very different approach and a very different audience to our YouTube channel, which is, you know, 45 plus, I suppose it's biggest continuing with TikTok, we know that the biggest audience is 18 to 25. So it's really important, isn't it, to find a different avenue and a different way of communicating with different generations. I mean, that's basically marketing, isn't it, really? Nik Wyness: But the other thing we really want to do, and I really hope we get to do it this year, is launch a second YouTube channel. And the reason we want to do that, again, it's part of this audience diversification piece we've done really well targeting that really hard core of sort of armoured warfare, history and enthusiasts. But we want to go a little bit broader than that. We want to sort of almost use a second YouTube channel as like a funnel to the main one, if you like, by telling more broader stories about people and events. Whereas our current main YouTube channel is very much focused on objects and things and stuff, if you know what I mean. Kelly Molson: So why set up the second one out of interest? Do you feel like you would dilute the first one if you put those kind of stories on there? Nik Wyness: Yeah, I think it's about when you because we've got some 477,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel at the moment, and so since the channel is launched, particularly in the last sort of seven years, we've really given them a very strict diet of very strict, kind of very in depth tanky information. So that's that audience, that's what that audience likes. It really is that kind of granularity they like, and they do prefer, generally speaking, those stories about the stuff like the objects. It's more, perhaps more engineering, more development, less about human history. Perhaps at times, we go there, but not very much. This is mainly about the kind of the machines and the objects, really. So with this second channel, we are looking to tell more interesting stories about what happened, when, and the artefacts are obviously a big part of that. Nik Wyness: But this is more about the human story. Kelly Molson: That's the kind of stuff that would appeal more to me than the real kind of specifics. So, again, it's looking at broadening that audience online, too. Got you. Brilliant. Great advice, great achievements. I'm so glad that you've been able to come on and share this with us today. Thank you. Nik Wyness: No, thank you very much for having me. It's always great to get out The Tank Museum and have a chat with people. Kelly Molson: Well, before you go, we always ask our listeners if they've got a book that they love that they'd like to share. Nik Wyness: So I had a look at what your other guests had recommended. I thought, my goodness me, there's lots of really worthy choices in there. I'm not really one of those people who particularly enjoys reading those, like, management strategy books, because I was like, in my own free time, I want to read for fun and obviously a bit of a nerd of military history. And there's interestingly a bit of an overlap, I suppose you could say, between sort of like military and marketing. We use a lot of the same terminology, like strategy and tactics and deployment and cut through all of that sort of thing. So I'm going to recommend a book which kind of overlaps a little bit with a professional, with the military history. That book is quite an old book, actually. It's called Hal Moore on Leadership: Winning When Outgunned and Outmanned. Nik Wyness: And basically Hal Moore was an officer in the US Army. He died a few years ago, I think. But I don't know if you've ever seen the movie. The Mel Gibson movie came out in 2002 called Weaver Soldiers. Have you ever come across that one? Okay, it's quite a good film but basically it's a Vietnam War movie and basically the star was this Hal Moore guy. It was biopic and it was about the first major engagement in the Vietnam War between the US army and the North Vietnamese Army. And basically his unit, 400 blokes were dropped in the jungle by helicopter. They quickly found themselves surrounded by like 4000 north, the emission soldiers and they found themselves cut off and basically having to fight off the determined and repeated attacks. Nik Wyness: And basically Hal Moore keeps his unit together through this tremendous series of challenges. And so that book is all about his perspective on leadership and what he learned during his military career. And actually I've worked with several ex soldiers and actually what you learn from soldiers is that the military is one thing that they're really good at and they're very good at many things is training leadership, if you know what I mean, and training people how to be a good leader. And I don't think that's something that the civilian world and the business world is actually very good in. Nik Wyness: But what's interesting as well that I've learned from these former soldiers that I've worked with is you get a completely different perspective from them, particularly those who have seen sort of action or any form of operational deployment on things like resilience and what tenacity is and what courage is and even what stress is and what a bad day in the office is like. Because of course a bad day in the office at The Tank Museum is nothing like a bad day in the office on a front line somewhere unpleasant in the world. So that perspective I think is really useful. But Hal Moore comes up with these four kind of principles of leadership, which is a book. The first one is something like, "The battle only stops when you stop fighting". Which basically means don't give up. Nik Wyness: Doesn't matter what you're facing, you've got to keep going. A bit like Winston Churchill said, "When you're going through h***, keep going". And the second one was that, "When you're in a tight spot there's always one more thing you can do to influence the situation positively in your favour". And that's about being proactive, right? Because when you're in a tough spot the worst thing you can do is nothing is freeze. You've got to be proactive and you've got to keep going. And the third thing was, "If there's nothing wrong, there's something wrong". So basically what that means is don't be complacent. Keep your garden up, be alert. And I think there are times when you're running marketing campaigns when you almost think, “well, everything's going all right". But actually, that's probably when you need to check in on things the most. Nik Wyness: And the last one was, "To trust your instincts". Basically, he argues that you're well trained, you've got plenty of experience, and so is your gut, so you should listen to it. And the other thing, of course, is your subconscious is much more observant than you will ever be. As marketers, we're very analytical. We like to look at our data and that kind of thing. But your gut can tell you if you're interpreting that data correctly or if you need to look at it again. Kelly Molson: Gosh, what a book. Wow, I've never heard of that book. Nik Wyness: That's pretty old. Kelly Molson:  Never been recommended before as well, so that's a great one. As ever if you would like to win a copy of Nik's book, if you head over to our Twitter account and retweet this episode announcement with the words, "I want Nik's book", then you'll be in with a chance of winning it. Maybe you'll come back on in a year from now and tell us how 2023 went and how the first Tank Fest since pre pandemic went. Nik Wyness: Yeah, I'd be delighted if my hair has gone completely grave at that point. You'll know, it wasn't a great year. Kelly Molson: I'm sure it's going to be a good year. Thanks ever so much for coming on, Nik. It's been a pleasure. Nik Wyness: Thank you. Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

A Conversation between Divya Singh  (Unity 101) and Ravi Parmar. The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record afd resource for people in the future.

A Conversation between Divya Singh  (Unity 101) and Ravi Parmar. The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record afd resource for people in the future.

A Conversation between Divya Singh  (Unity 101) and Vinod Chopra The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record afd resource for people in the future.

The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record afd resource for people in the future.

This is a conversation between Sucith and Geesehma  Shetty (Unity 101 volunteers) and Inderjeet Kotakta. The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record and resource for people in the future.

A Conversation between Natalie Barrass (Unity 101) ad Lynette Jeevan. The Journey Project is a Heritage Lottery funded project undertaken by Unity`101, intended to show the motivation, changes and the experiences  of people that have travelled from around the world to make Hampshire their home. Consisting of Oral History Testimonies, information and other conversations that tell the stories of a changing Southampton and Hampshire.Thanks to the work of volunteers and a small staff team a resource will be created that will be held in Southampton Archives as a record afd resource for people in the future.

Made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, the project will enable all residents of our city to understand the journey from arrival to citizenship. This wonderful City has been a changing place long before The Mayflower sailed, it has welcomed and absorbed new people and families, changing its DNA in the process, becoming an international City, a fusion of faces, faiths, cultures and businesses that overlap in our every day experience. Culminating in an exhibition in Sea City Museum and a new archive collection in the City Archives, The Journey will create a series of radio programmes and podcasts, and social media, with contributors from many of the communities in the city, to tell the actual story of who these people were and who they have become, record the Testimonies (Oral histories) of those who left their home behind and became the parents and grand-parents of new generations of Saints fans. At the centre of this will be volunteers trained and given the skills to do this work.

In 1838, with the abolition of slavery at its onset, the British were in the process of transporting a million Indians out of India and into the Caribbean to take the place of the recently freed Africans (freed in 1833) in indentureship. India's population provided the British Empire with a ready source of cheap and mobile labourers.Many Indians agreed to indenture which increased dramatically after the abolition of slavery in 1834. They were sent, sometimes in large numbers, to plantation colonies producing high value crops such as sugar in Africa and the Caribbean. 

On this episode of Mouth-Off we are discussing EYE + MATTER, a Heritage Lottery Funded project that happened between February 2020 – February 2022. The project was conceived by TY GWYN SPECIAL SCHOOL in Cardiff in partnership with FORGET-ME-NOT-PRODUCTIONS. It provided multiple opportunities for meaningful assistive technology experiences - interwoven with the arts to enable individuals with the most complex needs to share their own history. This project had 13 key stakeholders: Ty Gwyn School, Maes Ebbw School, Trinity Fields School, Park Lane School, Ysgol Hen Felin, RCT Learning Curve (Gadlys Day Centre), Craig-y-Parc School, Jac Richards, Hayder Ali, Ashish Isaac, and Forget-Me-Not-Productions. In this episode we will distilling the essence of EYE + MATTER, discussing how we utilised assistive technology and the arts as effective tools for learning about the heritage of this marginalised group. Participants seamlessly integrated their own stories and skills, with the history of assistive technology and the historic Craig-Y-Parc School. The overall ethos of the project promoted local heritage, while celebrating the history of a community that has remained in the margins. Interviewees taking part in the podcast are Mel Saddler, Clare Evans-Lees, Lianne Stallard, Jac Richards, Brad Brunt, Rhys Evans, and Dr Carole Thornett. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Intro Music - music by Clary Saddler Outro Music - music by Clary Saddler

In this episode Sam is joined by Trizia Wells to explore curiosity - hear about Trizia's curious career involving therapy, heritage, and theatre, plus some fascinating stories from decades gone by. Here's all the info to on Trizia's work: History in Action -  Twitter and Instagram Avalon Clinical Hypnotherapy  - Twitter and Instagram Find Trizia's heritage work on Twitter here. 'Women's Work' - a Heritage Lottery funded project in Accrington, Lancashire, delivered through History in Action.

Hello and welcome to series three, episode seven of the podcast. I'm so happy to introduce to you today's guest, the incredibly talented land artist, Rosalind Lowry. Rosalind Lowry is an award winning artist born in Northern Ireland who attended Chelsea College of Art and Central St. Martins before returning to her native land to set up her studio. Her practice is based on environmental themes and concerns, and using art as an intervention. She works in sculpture, land art and installations. Rosalind has completed a number of residencies across the world, from Rathlin Island to a North Vietnam residency awarded by the Arts Council which focused on natural dyes, another in Quebec dedicated to derelict old buildings, and a recent residency in 2019 for the State Government of Alaska in the national parks. Rosalind lived and worked alone in a remote area of the Alaskan wilderness creating a land art trail to attract people into the state parks. In 2018 Rosalind was one of 100 female artists across the UK chosen to create an artwork for the Artichoke Trust UK to celebrate 100 years of women having the vote. In early 2020, just before lockdown, Rosalind installed a commission of a large environmental sculpture in Belfast Cathedral called The Ark created from fallen branches of local native trees. For the past 2 years Rosalind has been Artist in Residence on the boglands of County Tyrone in Ireland for the Heritage Lottery and Lough Neagh Landscape Partnership, creating a series of installations across the bogs with a view to encouraging preservation of the land and highlighting the endangered animal and plant life on the boglands. In this episode, we discuss: Rosalind's work and how she came to be a Land Artist Her and art work as funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund to raise the profile of and people engagement with the peat and bogland of Northern Ireland as well as at the Belfast Cathedral Her eventful time creating in the wilds of Alaska Her artistic process from commission to finished piece The ecological and health benefits of peat and bogland and why it needs to be protected Creating art through championing of the ‘under dog' The space in which she has felt most inspired The need for her to release attachment from her work How she stays creative, her hope for the future and what she would like to pass on Just one thing to note is that the reception was a bit touch-and-go at times but hopefully that doesn't come through too much - it's just a note for a couple of patches where Rosalind goes a bit fuzzy. You can find Rosalind stunning work over on her website: www.rosalindlowryartist.com and on Instagram @rosalindlowry As pretty much everything I put out is free, it would mean the world to me if you would rate, review, subscribe and share this episode and any others you have enjoyed so far. And if you would like to go a little deeper, my patreon community starts from £3 per month and I share extra prompts, zines, workbooks and recorded ‘write-with-me' sessions. That's over on www.patreon.com/promptedbynature Remember to come and say hello on Instagram @prompted.by.nature or pop over my my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk where you can find all of my workbooks and zines to purchase. I'm taking a bit of a break from most teaching for now but events will go up there when things start up again.

A walk from Walworth Road to Old Kent Road through Burgess Park listening to the sounds of activity all around. The soundscape also incorporates comments from park users recorded as part of the Heritage Lottery oral history project in 2014. Close your eyes and visualise the walk, starting at the new west-end playground near Addington […]

These 4 podcasts explore the Legacy of the Endell Street Military Hospital, the only British army hospital to have been established and run by women during WW1. Opened in 1915 on the site of a former Victorian workhouse by Suffragette doctors Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, its staff of 180 women treated over 26,000 in-patients and performed over 7,000 surgical operations. In 2018 a group of local volunteers came together to learn research and recording skills as part of a Heritage Lottery funded project, and they created these podcasts to share their findings about what happened to the hospital and its female staff members after the war ended. Podcast by: Digital Drama Episode 1 :: The legacy of WWI women doctors Episode 3 :: Interview with Endell Street Military Hospital author Wendy Moore Episode 4 :: What became of the hospital building after WWI Digital Drama Projects :: Digital Drama News :: Back to Camden Community Radio :: Follow Camden Community Radio on Twitter :: File Download (14:32 min / 20 MB)

These 4 podcasts explore the Legacy of the Endell Street Military Hospital, the only British army hospital to have been established and run by women during WWI. Opened in 1915 on the site of a former Victorian workhouse by Suffragette doctors Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, its staff of 180 women treated over 26,000 in-patients and performed over 7,000 surgical operations. In 2018 a group of local volunteers came together to learn research and recording skills as part of a Heritage Lottery funded project, and they created these podcasts to share their findings about what happened to the hospital and its female staff members after the war ended. Podcast by: Digital Drama Episode 2 :: The postwar life of a nursing orderly Episode 3 :: Interview with Endell Street Military Hospital author Wendy Moore Episode 4 :: What became of the hospital building after WWI Digital Drama Projects :: Digital Drama News :: Back to Camden Community Radio :: Follow Camden Community Radio on Twitter :: File Download (28:09 min / 39 MB)

These 4 podcasts explore the Legacy of the Endell Street Military Hospital, the only British army hospital to have been established and run by women during WW1. Opened in 1915 on the site of a former Victorian workhouse by Suffragette doctors Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, its staff of 180 women treated over 26,000 in-patients and performed over 7,000 surgical operations. In 2018 a group of local volunteers came together to learn research and recording skills as part of a Heritage Lottery funded project, and they created these podcasts to share their findings about what happened to the hospital and its female staff members after the war ended. Podcast by: Digital Media Episode 1 :: The legacy of WWI women doctors Episode 2 :: The postwar life of a nursing orderly Episode 4 :: What became of the hospital building after WWI Digital Drama Projects :: Digital Drama News :: Back to Camden Community Radio :: Follow Camden Community Radio on Twitter :: File Download (21:58 min / 15 MB)

These 4 podcasts explore the Legacy of the Endell Street Military Hospital, the only British army hospital to have been established and run by women during WW1. Opened in 1915 on the site of a former Victorian workhouse by Suffragette doctors Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, its staff of 180 women treated over 26,000 in-patients and performed over 7,000 surgical operations. In 2018 a group of local volunteers came together to learn research and recording skills as part of a Heritage Lottery funded project, and they created these podcasts to share their findings about what happened to the hospital and its female staff members after the war ended. Podcast by: Digital Drama Episode 1 :: The legacy of WWI women doctors Episode 3 :: Interview with Endell Street Military Hospital author Wendy Moore Episode 4 :: What became of the hospital building after WWI Digital Drama Projects :: Digital Drama News :: Back to Camden Community Radio :: Follow Camden Community Radio on Twitter :: File Download (14:32 min / 20 MB)

These 4 podcasts explore the Legacy of the Endell Street Military Hospital, the only British army hospital to have been established and run by women during WWI. Opened in 1915 on the site of a former Victorian workhouse by Suffragette doctors Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, its staff of 180 women treated over 26,000 in-patients and performed over 7,000 surgical operations. In 2018 a group of local volunteers came together to learn research and recording skills as part of a Heritage Lottery funded project, and they created these podcasts to share their findings about what happened to the hospital and its female staff members after the war ended. Podcast by: Digital Drama Episode 1 :: The legacy of WWI women doctors Episode 2 :: The postwar life of a nursing orderly Episode 3 :: Interview with Endell Street Military Hospital author Wendy Moore Digital Drama Projects :: Digital Drama News :: Back to Camden Community Radio :: Follow Camden Community Radio on Twitter :: File Download (15:14 min / 21 MB)

These 4 podcasts explore the Legacy of the Endell Street Military Hospital, the only British army hospital to have been established and run by women during WWI. Opened in 1915 on the site of a former Victorian workhouse by Suffragette doctors Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, its staff of 180 women treated over 26,000 in-patients and performed over 7,000 surgical operations. In 2018 a group of local volunteers came together to learn research and recording skills as part of a Heritage Lottery funded project, and they created these podcasts to share their findings about what happened to the hospital and its female staff members after the war ended. Podcast by: Digital Drama Episode 1 :: The legacy of WWI women doctors Episode 2 :: The postwar life of a nursing orderly Episode 3 :: Interview with Endell Street Military Hospital author Wendy Moore Digital Drama Projects :: Digital Drama News :: Back to Camden Community Radio :: Follow Camden Community Radio on Twitter :: File Download (15:14 min / 21 MB)

These 4 podcasts explore the Legacy of the Endell Street Military Hospital, the only British army hospital to have been established and run by women during WWI. Opened in 1915 on the site of a former Victorian workhouse by Suffragette doctors Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, its staff of 180 women treated over 26,000 in-patients and performed over 7,000 surgical operations. In 2018 a group of local volunteers came together to learn research and recording skills as part of a Heritage Lottery funded project, and they created these podcasts to share their findings about what happened to the hospital and its female staff members after the war ended. Podcast by: Digital Drama Episode 2 :: The postwar life of a nursing orderly Episode 3 :: Interview with Endell Street Military Hospital author Wendy Moore Episode 4 :: What became of the hospital building after WWI Digital Drama Projects :: Digital Drama News :: Back to Camden Community Radio :: Follow Camden Community Radio on Twitter :: File Download (28:09 min / 39 MB)

These 4 podcasts explore the Legacy of the Endell Street Military Hospital, the only British army hospital to have been established and run by women during WW1. Opened in 1915 on the site of a former Victorian workhouse by Suffragette doctors Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, its staff of 180 women treated over 26,000 in-patients and performed over 7,000 surgical operations. In 2018 a group of local volunteers came together to learn research and recording skills as part of a Heritage Lottery funded project, and they created these podcasts to share their findings about what happened to the hospital and its female staff members after the war ended. Podcast by: Digital Media Episode 1 :: The legacy of WWI women doctors Episode 2 :: The postwar life of a nursing orderly Episode 4 :: What became of the hospital building after WWI Digital Drama Projects :: Digital Drama News :: Back to Camden Community Radio :: Follow Camden Community Radio on Twitter :: File Download (21:58 min / 15 MB)

Welcome to a special edition of NG Meets featuring a special live recording of the Heritage Lottery Players from Cafe Sobar.  Created in association with Double Impact and the Heritage Lottery Fund, Access to Heritage is focused on helping people in recovery from substance abuse and addiction to learn more about local heritage. Over the course of 11 weeks of workshops the participants visited local heritage sites learning about criminality, poverty and justice and the social consequences and social reforms of these and learned more about popular local outlaws of literature and pop culture. Hosted by local author, and host of NG Digital's Hood Free History series, Adam Nightingale, this event, which took place at Cafe Sobar, was the culmination of their work and features a number of performance pieces produced by the participants. For more on Double Impact check out their website here

© The Turning Tides Project Community Interest Company. Company Number: 9053146. There is a talk show beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as The Buccaneers Bar and as timeless as 11am - 3:30pm on a Tuesday. It is the middle ground between breakfast and going home, between tropical birds and wild cards, and it lies between the beginning of a month and the thesaurus of the month. This is the dimension of imagination. It is a transmission known as EPIC MW. 4 individual sections usually come together to make this Talk Show a reality.. however, this month it is one MEGA SECTION. Focusing on our Heritage Lottery funded Project and Movies in general. 1. Tropical Discussion 2. The Only Thing I Know in Swedish 3. Sounds Good 4. Wild Card A monthly talk show produced during Making Waves and released nearly on time every month... hopefully a Tuesday at midday. Rather than a Thursday at around 9pm, sort of like now. . iTunes . SoundCloud . YouTube . MixCloud .

Oral history weaving together thoughts on the recent revitalisation. In 2013/14, together with Heritage Lottery funding, Reprezent FM and FOBP recorded memories of people from the area talking about the setting up and development of the unique Burgess Park. Part of the Bridge to Nowhere project of the Friends of Burgess Park.

Oral history weaving together thoughts about the evolution of the park. In 2013/14, together with Heritage Lottery funding, Reprezent FM and FOBP recorded memories of people from the area talking about the setting up and development of the unique Burgess Park. Part of the Bridge to Nowhere project of the Friends of Burgess Park.

Oral history weaving together thoughts on the emotional impact of the development of the park. In 2013/14, together with Heritage Lottery funding, Reprezent FM and FOBP recorded memories of people from the area talking about the setting up and development of the unique Burgess Park. Part of the Bridge to Nowhere project of the Friends […]

Oral history weaving together recollections of growing up in the area, and the canal which ran through the middle of what is now the park. In 2013/14, together with Heritage Lottery funding, Reprezent FM and FOBP recorded memories of people from the area talking about the setting up and development of the unique Burgess Park. Part […]

With funding falling and pressure from the Welsh Government to do more to engage with disadvantaged communities how should the cultural and heritage sector respond? Heritage Lottery fund Chair, Manon Antoniazzi, discusses with IWA Director Lee Waters, RSPB Cymru, Director Katie Jo Luxton, and Karen Dusgate, Chief Executive of the Merthyr Tydfil Housing Association, discuss ahead of the Heritage Exchange held with the IWA in Cardiff on May 7th 2014