Nominations open for Family Friendly Museum Award – UK

They are an award-winning charity dedicated to making museums open and welcoming to all children, young people and families. They support and champion family friendly organisations through wide-ranging initiatives, including the Family Friendly Museum Award and Takeover Day.

They want to recognise the museums that are the most welcoming, accessible and fun for families over the past 12 months. Their new category, Best Museum Youth Group, celebrates projects that offer young people long-term engagement with a museum or museum programme, enabling them to develop new skills, have enjoyable experiences and deliver meaningful long-lasting change.

Award Categories

• There are five categories of the Family Friendly Museum Award 2024:
  • Best Small Museum: up to 100k visits
  • Best Medium Museum: 100k-400k visits
  • Best Large Museum: 400k+ visits
  • Best Accessible Museum: Their dedicated accessibility category
  • Best Museum Youth Group: New youth group category

NOTE: The size categories are based on your visitor numbers from 2023. They’ll check all museums are in the right category before shortlisting.

Why should you enter?

• Since Kids in Museums was founded in 2003, they have led significant change in the way museums and heritage sites welcome and include children, young people and families. Their Family Friendly Museum Award has become a sector benchmark for ambition and quality in work with these audiences.
• Being shortlisted for the award can raise your profile and increase your family visitor numbers. It boosts staff morale by recognising your work on a national level. Former finalists have told them that the award has changed perceptions about their venue, acted as a ‘quality mark’ for their work and provided the motivation and backing to develop their family offer further.
• Previous winners have been invited to speak at their training and at conferences in the UK and overseas, as well to participate in their partnerships, which has included features on Priority from O2 and their publisher museum trails. Their aim is to work together with their shortlist to reinforce the message that museums are great places for families to visit.

What do you get if you win?

• The winner will receive the Family Friendly Museum Award, as well as a winner logo to use on their website and communications.
• They will showcase the museum on their website and social media throughout the year and promote it as an example of best practice through their work and training events.
• They give all shortlisted museums a certificate to display at their museum.

Are you eligible to enter?

• They welcome applications from UK museums, galleries and heritage attractions of all sizes, from national museums with teams of curators, to tiny local galleries run by volunteers. Your museum must have signed the Kids in Museums Manifesto. Museums do not have to be accredited and can enter in consecutive years.

Best Accessible Museum

• To highlight the importance of access for families with additional needs, they are continuing to run their dedicated Best Accessible Museum category, which was developed with SEND in Museums, Autism in Museums and VocalEyes.
• They are looking for a museum that has embedded access for families with additional needs across the whole organisation. This will include, but not be limited to: excellent facilities, supportive and knowledgeable staff, a range of flexible and engaging activities, accessible interpretation and exhibitions, responsiveness to feedback and a commitment to adapt and improve their organisation.
• They want to make sure that access for families with additional needs remains a top priority, so that museums are inclusive and relevant for all.
• There will be one winner of the Best Accessible Museum Category, which can be a UK museum of any size. Theri Undercover Family Judges and expert panel will include those with expertise in and lived experience of what makes an excellent museum for families with additional needs.
• Are you eligible to enter?
  • The eligibility criteria for this category is the same as their normal award, however your museum application must be accompanied by at least one family nomination to enter the Best Accessible Museum category.
• What are they looking for?
  • They are looking for a museum with an all-round excellent visitor experience for families and children with additional needs. Here are some examples of what this might include, but remember you do not have to do all of these things to enter:
    • Comprehensive pre-visit information on your website. The information needs to be part of an accessible website that includes contact information for families with additional needs to plan their day out.
    • Accessible facilities throughout your building that are the best you can achieve in the context of your building and budget. For example they understand that not all buildings can have a Changing Places toilet. If this is not possible for your organisation, they would want to know that your staff could signpost a family to the nearest available facility.
    • Flexible ticketing. Do you allow families to get a refund if they can’t come on the day or to transfer their ticket to another day if they have to leave part way through?
    • If you have a shop and/ or café, a commitment to accessibility in what these sell and how they are laid out. This could include menu options that cater to a wide range of dietary requirements and sensory friendly shop stock. If this is not possible, they would like to see space where families can eat their own food and get water.
    • Signage and interpretation that is available in a variety of formats to meet different needs. This could include large print, symbols, BSL, audio description or easy to read text. It’s important everyone can understand and navigate your museum well.
    • Well-trained, supportive and welcoming staff. They would like staff to have been trained to be disability confident. The welcome offered to families with additional needs can be what makes or breaks a visit.
    • A programme of activities both on site and online that are accessible to all. Although they would love to see activities, events and resources designed for families with additional needs, they also want to see flexibility in your core family offer both online and in your museum that enables all families to join in.
    • Collaboration and representation. They would like to see how your organisation is working with groups of families with additional needs from your local community to develop your facilities and programmes. It would be great to see projects and the results displayed on your website or in your museum. It is important that families with additional needs see themselves and their stories represented.
    • Evidence that the museum collects and responds to visitor feedback. They would like to see there are a range of ways that families can offer feedback and that you are committed to responding and improving your accessible offer.

Best Museum Youth Group

• They are looking for a museum that is committed to young people having a meaningful place in their organisation as audience members, participants, decision makers and employees. Your youth group should be at the centre of a wider programme of change or development in how you work with young people. They want to see young people being treated as equal partners and playing a substantive part in decision making. The young people involved should be well supported, able to both have fun and socialise, and develop skills they value.
• They strongly encourage all organisations to compensate young people appropriately for their time. They’re not making it an essential requirement to pay young people for their participation to enter this category, however they will consider this as part of their judging process. As a minimum they expect all projects to cover young people’s travel and subsistence costs.
• Are you eligible to enter? 
  • This category is open to all UK museums. You can enter a museum youth group that has run continuously for at least six months in the period from October 2022 to March 2024. The youth group can be an ongoing Youth Panel or Young Producers group, young volunteers or a group of young people that has come together to work on a particular project. The youth group must involve children and young people aged 12 – 25 and include at least five members. The group can have taken place inside or outside of school time, involve partnerships with colleges, universities, uniformed groups or other youth groups, or bring together a group of individuals.
  • You will need to include a comment of support from a youth group member as part of your application.
• What are they looking for?
  • This award category aims to celebrate museums that demonstrate an excellent holistic commitment to listening to and working in partnership with young people aged 12-25 from a range of different backgrounds on a long-term basis. The work done by the young people does not have to have high-profile public outcomes or be supported by a large budget. They could have worked with you to make an entirely internal change that was important to them and has had an impact on your organisation.
  • Your youth group doesn’t necessarily have to have been set up at the instigation of young people, but they’d hope to see young people having a voice in how the group is run. This could be in developing recruitment processes, structuring meetings and setting priorities for its work and impact. They’d like to understand how you try to make the group accessible to young people from a range of different backgrounds.
  • It’s important for them to know the participants are well-supported. This could be through peer mentoring/ mentoring from museum staff or other professionals who support the group, support with emotional wellbeing if appropriate and support to enable access and participation. They’d like to understand how young people are compensated for their involvement.
  • The category is not proscriptive about the activities the youth group has undertaken. They could have contributed to a bigger project within the museum, delivered their own project, been involved in day-to-day museum tasks or supported you to change the way your organisation works. However, they want to understand the part the youth group plays in shaping the work they are involved in from initial ideas through to programme design and delivery and evaluation. It’s important that they are contributing meaningfully throughout the process, developing skills and having fun along the way.

For more information, visit Kids in Museums.