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This very practical book guides museums on how to create the highest quality experience possible for their visitors. Creating an environment that supports visitor engagement with collections means examining every stage of the visit, from the initial impetus to go to a particular institution, to front-of-house management, interpretive approach and qualitative analysis afterwards. This holistic approach will be immensely helpful to museums in meeting the needs and expectations of visitors and building their audience. This book features: includes chapter introductions and discussion sections supporting case studies to show how ideas are put into practice a lavish selection of tables, figures and plates to support and illustrate the discussion boxes showing ideas, models and planning suggestions to guide development an up-to-date bibliography of landmark research. The Engaging Museum offers a set of principles that can be adapted to any museum in any location and will be a valuable resource for institutions of every shape and size, as well as a vital addition to the reading lists of museum studies students.

I am both an academic and a practitioner and believe this symbiotic combination enriches both fields. For the last twenty years I have sought to place museum exhibition practice within an academic context and, in turn, to apply academic rigour to practice. Combining the roles, I have produced two books that have a continuing impact on the museums profession, evidenced through sales (for example, both have reached number one in the Amazon UK museology bestsellers list), through citations in both practitioner and non-practitioner publications, and through the range of invites I receive to give keynote papers. By April 2014, The Engaging Museum (2005) had sold over 6400 copies in English, and was in its 11th reprint. It is used by both practitioners and museum studies students, and has been translated into Chinese and Greek. According to Google Scholar it had received 224 citations. Meanwhile, Transforming Museums (2012) had sold over 2000 copies in English and was in its 3rd reprint. It has been translated into Turkish.Exhibitions in which I have acted as Interpretive Consultant, which are the physical representation of my discourse, have twice won the UK £100,000 Art Fund Prize (Galleries of Justice, 2003 and Royal Albert Memorial Museum 2012) and been on the final shortlist for the Prize (Weston Park Museum, 2007), as well as winning its predecessor the Gulbenkian Prize (Galleries of Justice, 1996), the Guardian Family Friendly Museum Award (Weston Park Museum, 2008), the Special Judges Prize at the Interpret Britain Awards (Thackray Museum, 1997) and the English Tourist Board’s “England for Excellence” Tourist Attraction of the Year Award (Galleries of Justice, 1999). Two of the museums reached the final shortlist for the European Museum of the Year Award (Galleries of Justice 2000, Thackray Museum, 1997). Combining the two roles, I was selected to provide an Impact Case Study for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework submission for History by Nottingham Trent University.This introductory chapter re-visits a fundamental part of my research and practice, namely the development of an audience-centred approach to museum display that enhances the role of the exhibition as a tool for informal learning. I have been fortunate in my career to be part of a wider movement within the museum and heritage profession that favours such an audience-centred approach. In commenting on my own work, I would highlight my relentless focus on the holistic nature of the museum experience and on museum audiences being in control of their visit and their own learning. This is primarily about a conceptual and practical shift from an approach to museum display that focuses on the transmission of knowledge in a didactic manner to what is seen as primarily a passive audience (Black, 2005: 130), to one where the museum creates a participatory learning environment which visitors engage with for themselves – audience driven, with the museum as enabler and supporter. The creation of such a learning environment influences every aspect of the museum visit – but it begins with the museum developing a much greater understanding of its audiences. My first book, The Engaging Museum (2005), provided both the theoretical underpinning to such a museum and an exploration of its creation in practice, reflected in the strapline to the title: ‘Developing museums for visitor involvement’.The corollary of this is that museum personnel must be constantly aware of the impact of their actions on visitors. Placing the audience first means planning for choice. It also means recognising the rapid changes taking place in contemporary society and responding equally rapidly to these. This, in turn, has led me to reimagine the museum of the future as a multiple-level experience. Theoretical background and approach are explored in my second book, Transforming Museums for the 21st Century (2012), while the model was first published in a more recent book chapter (Black, 2014). It is these publications that have led to so many organisations asking me to give keynote papers.I discuss my work in three phases, which reflect a coherent, chronological progression in both my practice and my writing. First, I explore the importance of planning, through what I have called ‘Focus on the Concept: adapting the interpretive planning process to museum display’. Secondly, I examine the switch from the object-focused, didactic museum to one that is centred on audiences, which I have called ‘Focus on the Audience: the engaging museum’. Finally, I look to my concerns for the future relevance of museums, which I have called ‘Focus on the Future: museums in the Age of Participation’.