Outreach and experience with TNMOC digital

The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) used the forced closures of Covid-19 lockdowns as an opportunity to review the way it engaged with visitors.

The museum had three goals: help its family of volunteers stay connected with the community by offering remote access to its collection; introduce a wider audience to its unique archive of 50,000+ working historic computers and expert volunteer staff; and finally, generate new income.

I worked with TNMOC to bring digital and web from the periphery to the centre of its visitor experience and to unify its social media channels. This enabled me to deliver a programme of aligned digital content serving the museum’s goals within the practical and resource constraints of lockdown.

The programme included commissioned videos across social media and speaker events that shed new light on parts of the collection and put TNMOC’s expert volunteers in the spotlight – while also introducing new voices.

The highlight was an ambitious, interactive, online experience taking visitors on an exciting – and live – 3-D tour of the museum in the company of one of its volunteer guides. Working with TNMOC collections experts and its interactive tour technology partner, I wove together text, images and video, allowing virtual visitors to click on hotspots at strategic points in the tour for an enhanced experience.

TNMOC’s paid-for virtual tour have been a hit across all visitor groups – the public, experts, families and schools – helping quickly establish itself as one of the museum’s most popular online offerings. Social media traffic, meanwhile, grew by nearly a fifth.

Jacqui Garrad, TNMOC director, said: “Gavin has taken our digital programmes to a new level and made sure that our unique collection remained in the public eye while the museum was closed. As a result, we now interact with our audiences in so many different ways, have significantly increased our social following and attracted new categories of supporter.”