This blog is kindly written for Museum Freelance by Claire Adler, Heritage Consultant: Learning, Community, Development. You can find Claire on twitter, LinkedIn or via her website.

Remember that time before Covid?  When we could go where we wanted; talk to who we wanted and travel where we wanted…? As with many many other jobs in the sector and across the world my job has changed significantly in the past 4 months.

My consultancy is supporting, developing and mentoring organisations to think about how they can be more responsive to the needs and interests of their local communities as part of significant redevelopments, community development projects or to establish new heritage organisations. Usually this involves an extensive programme of consultation with potential audiences - including surveys, face-to-face focus groups and telephone interviews... well Covid-19 put a rapid stop to much of it!

In the past 4 months I have had to completely and rapidly change how I consult people.

There were two projects that I was just starting when Covid called a stop to my work.  One was interviewing young people from 13-25 years old as part of a yearly evaluation programme to measure the Institutional Change of Norfolk Museums as part of their Kick the Dust National Lottery Heritage Fund project.  The other project has been to develop an Options Appraisal for Grimsby Fishing Heritage Centre to see how they can engage with their local communities and be more relevant for the future.

As a result of Covid 19 my usual workplans have been torn up and redrawn and then torn up again!  But in the end I have been delivering plans that include a mixture of online surveys, one-to-one Zoom/ Teams calls, one-to-one telephone calls and focus groups on Zoom/ Teams.

My top tips for carrying out community consultation (when you can’t actually be with the people you’re talking to)

1.       The most important consideration: Data poverty is a significant issue for many people in this country and it is something we should all be aware of.  It has framed all my consultation plans as it is worth noting that a half hour video call each week will easily use up someone’s 2GB monthly allowance.  For more information about data poverty see here: https://migrationpartnership.org.uk/video-calls-and-mobile-data/ Therefore I decided to do the one-to-one interviews with the Grimsby residents as telephone calls rather than video calls.  The Zoom calls that I undertook with the Norfolk young people were organised through the youth workers so they could establish or pay for access to data. 

2.       One-to-one video interviews with young people can work well on Zoom - as long as they have the equipment and data.  This works particularly well for people who don’t like eye contact, as the young people I was interviewing don’t seem to find the conversations as difficult face-to-face.  However it was important that the young people were recruited by the youth worker and were ‘in the background’ with their camera and sound off.

3.       The Video Focus Group with young people was really hard and didn’t really work, particularly as some of the young people had additional needs and anxiety. I felt I got a lot less useful information than a face-to-face Focus Group.  However the one part of the session they did engage with were the interactive quizzes.  I therefore wouldn’t do a video call Focus Group again with a group of Young People I don’t know well.

4.       Budgets for incentives work well for engaging people – for Grimsby we had four £50 Tesco vouchers to be drawn for the survey and £30 Tesco vouchers to thank 10 people for one-to-one telephone interviews. This was particularly helpful for Grimsby but I am currently running a similar survey for Ipswich Museum and interestingly less people are putting their names in for the draw or for the one-to-one interviews.  This could be because there is less (not much) poverty in Ipswich.

5.       The survey has come into its own during this time – particularly in April when people were spending a lot of time staring at their phones trying to work out what on earth was going on.  As a quick survey seemed to work well as a distraction.  However also headlining it with ‘Win £50 Tesco vouchers’ definitely worked as an enticement!

6.       Using Facebook to advertise the survey was really effective: for the Grimsby survey we got over 700 responses with 50% from non users – which is a great rate.

7.       The one-to-one follow up telephone interviews worked well - I got a lot more personal information and in- depth conversations about specific issues than I would have in a group. But what I wasn’t getting was discussion and contradicting views at the same time, which usually helps to work out solutions.  I think this works better than video calls because the participants can’t be judged and you can’t judge the people you are talking to.  Therefore it is free flowing conversation.  However this takes up a lot more time than a non user Focus Group.

8.       For Grimsby I ran several community focus groups on Zoom, which I felt worked because I had restricted the number of people to 4 or 5 people.  As we are all discovering trying to hold any meeting with more than 6 people on a video call is difficult and can be counter productive.  If I had had any more people it would have taken too long and been too cumbersome.

9.       Recording interviews and focus groups on Zoom can be useful, but is often a safeguarding issue for young people.  This does make the calls harder for young people as maintaining eye contact and typing/ scribbling away can be difficult.

Finally I miss face-to-face focus groups. I miss the chats, the conversations and how you can understand a place easily by an effective Focus Group. The free flowing conversations suit me and suit the ideas that can be sparked in this type of consultation.  A combination of survey and one-to-one telephone calls and online Focus groups take up a lot more time but for me there is a counterbalance of less travel time.  However I do think that it is taking more time to analysis the results than face-to-face Focus Groups.

Basically I want my Focus Groups back!  And can’t wait to be comfortably back in a room chatting about plans for the future! 

With thanks to Claire for this blog. You can find Claire on twitter, LinkedIn or via her website.