Success Guides

AIM Success Guides are a series of publications giving museums access to relevant and expert advice. The extensive range covers a whole variety of aspects of running a museum, from setting up a museum, to running a café, securing tax reliefs or appealing business rates decisions. See the full series below.

Research into admissions pricing policy in museums and its impact: Success Guide

AIM and partners Arts Council England (ACE), Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS), the Welsh Government, the National Museum Directors’ Council (NMDC), and the Art Fund ‘Research into admissions pricing policy in museums and its impact’. As part of this research, this Good Practice Guide is designed to be used to help museums and galleries decide admissions strategies that maximise income from those able to pay, put the museum in the right pricing bracket in the market, and still offer pricing options that make it accessible and welcoming to all.

Authors: Stephen Connolly, DC Research and Jonathan Durnin, Durnin Research.

Click here for the Success Guide in English>>

Click here for the Success Guide in Welsh>>

Museum Displays and Interpretation

Interpretation is the way that we connect visitors or audiences to our historic places and collections, it is how we communicate stories and ideas about our heritage. But how do we do it and how can we make it better?

Author: Ruth McKew, Director, Headland Design.

Click here for Museum Displays and Interpretation>>

Successful Fundraising at Museums

This fundraising guide is intended to help small and medium-sized museums to fundraise as successfully as possible.

Author: Judy Niner, Director, Development Partners.

Click here for Successful Fundraising at Museums>>

Successfully Setting up a New Museum

This success guide aims to help groups or individuals in the UK who are thinking about setting up a new museum to make some informed choices.

Authors: Emma Chaplin and Heather Lomas.

Click here for Setting up a New Museum>>

Successful Governance for Museums

This guide is designed to be of practical help to Boards of independent museums throughout the UK.

Authors: Hilary Barnard and Ruth Lesirge, HBRL Consulting.

Click here to read Successful Governance for Museums>>

Successful Retailing for Smaller Museums

Whatever the size of your museum it is important for your shop to be profitable and managed in a professional way. This guide is designed to help with this, whether reviewing and improving an existing shop or establishing a new shop at a small museum.

Author: Peter Holloway, Retail Thinking.

Click here for Successful Retailing for Smaller Museums>>

Successfully Negotiating Business Rates

This guide on ‘Successfully Negotiating Business Rates’ covers the basics required to understand Business Rates and, importantly, how the related appeal systems work in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Author: Colin Hunter, Director, Lambert Smith Hampton.

Click here for Successfully Negotiating Business Rates>>

Successful Museum Cafes

Cafes are rather like good exhibitions – the best have real passion, plus good organisation, to come alive and make money. But what does it take to make a cafe work in a museum?

Author: Chris Brown, Director, Turpin Smale Catering Consultants.

Click here for Successful Museum Cafes>>

Understanding Your Audiences

This guide will help you to consider what you know about your audiences both current and potential, why it would be worthwhile
improving this, and how you might go about doing it. Crucially, it looks at how you can then use this knowledge and insight to deliver
your strategic goals and make your organisation more resilient.

Author: Emma Parsons, arts and heritage consultant.

Click here for Understanding Your Audiences>>

Successful Marketing for Museums

This guide aims to demystify marketing for small and medium-sized museums, providing an overview of what marketing is, a framework for developing a strategy and a template for an action plan.

Author: Christina Lister, marketing and audience development consultant.

Click here for Successful Marketing for Museums>>

Successfully taking over your local museum

Taking over a museum using community asset transfer is a huge undertaking but it can be enormously rewarding. It is a long-term commitment and a complex process. We have compiled this guide for people who are considering taking part in museum asset transfer and aim to make that process a bit easier to understand and to encourage groups to consider the viability of their plans in the long-term to ensure the best chance of success.

Author: Bethany Rex.

Click here for Successfully taking over your local museum>>

Successfully Managing Privacy and Data Regulations

This guide is intended for museums and other cultural organisations wanting to understand how they should be responding to current data protection regulation.

Authors: Helen Shone (2017) and Faye Clew (updated 2019), Development Partners.

Click here for Successfully Managing Privacy and Data Regulations>>

Successful Visitor Experience

Getting the visitor experience right is vital. It will ensure your collection or your site is better appreciated and understood, is properly valued and that more people visit.

Author: Victoria Wallace.

Click here for Successful Visitor Experience>>

Successful Venue Hire and Corporate Hospitality

With amazing collections, often housed in stunning historic buildings, museums are in a unique position not only to generate much-needed income, but also to increase the value and importance of the venues by using them for meetings, conferences, functions, weddings and events. This guide is aimed at those just beginning to develop this business area and those who already offer such services but want to grow them further.

Authors: Tim Bryan and Gary Hall.

Click here for Successful Venue Hire and Corporate Hospitality>>

Successfully Managing Archives in Museums

This Success Guide aims to provide an introduction to managing archives in museums. It will help you to assess which aspects of your collection could be managed as an archive and support you in your work to meet any legal requirements. It is an introductory, rather
than in-depth guide to managing archives in museums.

Author: Janice Tullock for The National Archives.

Click here for Successfully Managing Archives in Museums>>

Successful Collections Care

Successful Basic Conservation and Successful Collections Care are companion guides. Together they provide a practical foundation to understanding ‘preventive’ and ‘interventive’ conservation to our collections.

Click here for Successful Basic Interventive Conservation in English>>

Click here for Successful Basic Interventive Conservation in Welsh>>

Click here for Successful Collections Care in English>>

Click here for Successful Collections Care in Welsh>>

Successful Business Planning

This guide will take you through the process of business planning in logical steps, show you what information you will need and who should be involved in formulating the plan.

Authors: A Different View

Click here for Successful Business Planning>>