The Annual Museum Survey 2024 will open on Monday 20 May
The purpose of the Annual Museum Survey 2024
The purpose of the Annual Museum Survey is to gather evidence to help demonstrate the social and economic importance of museums to funders and stakeholders – locally, regionally, and nationally – and to provide museums with data to enable them to benchmark their performance.
What’s in it for museums?
- Advocacy – evidence to make the case for your social and economic value in order to sustain investment
- Performance benchmarking – consistent data to compare your museum’s operational context
- Informing strategy – knowing your operational context will support your business planning
- Fundraising – the data can be used as evidence to support funding applications or to express your value with the public
The process
Registered museums will be invited to participate in the survey by email. The email will include a direct link to an online survey tool called SmartSurvey.
The survey will open on Monday 20 May at midday and will close on Tuesday 2 July at 5pm.
We have provided the survey questions offline below to assist you in preparing your return.
Please note, the offline surveys will differ depending on whether you are a single-site or a multi-site organisation.
The online survey uses logic to apply only relevant questions. Therefore, some of the offline survey questions listed below may not apply and will result in fewer questions and a shorter survey process.
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Annual Museum Survey 2024 - Questions for single-site museums PDF
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Annual Museum Survey 2024 - Questions for single-site museums Microsoft Word Document
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Annual Museum Survey 2024 - Questions for multi-site museums PDF
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Annual Museum Survey 2024 - Questions for multi-site museums Microsoft Word Document
The above documents are not a submission form and will not be considered as such – please use the survey link to complete the survey.
If you have any accessibility needs and would like to submit your survey responses in a different format, please e-mail [email protected]
The definitions will help to provide added clarity on the terminology used within the survey questions.
If you require any further support, please contact us on [email protected].
Data and privacy statements
Museum Development South West (Bristol City Council) is commissioned by Museum Development England to deliver the Annual Museum Survey 2024 data collection.
As the contractor for the Annual Museum Survey 2024, we operate as the Data Processor for Museum Development England. Survey responses are stored and processed in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulations (2018).
No personal information will be published in publicly available reports or datasets or shared beyond Museum Development England and Arts Council England. As the Data Processor, on behalf of Museum Development England, we supply the data generated through the survey along with the contact details of the individual providing the data survey return to each respective Museum Development provider and Arts Council England. Links to your Museum Development area privacy policies are provided below:
Museum Development South West (Data controller and processor for the South West)
Arts Council England is a Data Processor also for the purposes of research analysis and its privacy policy can be found the below webpage:
Arts Council England Privacy Policy
Data sharing and open source data
Reports based on this survey will be published and made available on this webpage and Arts Council England. Data provided via the survey will be analysed and used to produce publicly available reports by Museum Development England and Arts Council England. The data will support sector advocacy, benchmarking, inform Museum Development business planning and sector wide strategic planning.
The dataset will be published as open-source data on Museum Development websites from January 2026 – approximately one year after the reports are published to support further research. The datasets will not include financial information, or any personal information generated by the survey process. The raw data set generated by the survey in 2024 will be shared with the Data Processor and our main funder, Arts Council England.
