AUDIENCE OUTSIDE THE MUSEUM

Polish museums are increasingly conductingresearch into their audiences. Results of statistical analysesand evaluations of educational activities help museumprofessionals to learn more about the people visiting theirmuseums. However, it is essential to broaden the scope ofresearch, to differentiate the methods and tools used, andabove all to systematise the work and adapt it to the requirementsand reality of how institutions with various profilesfunction. Therefore, the question arises: how can such researchbe carried out on a national scale? What is the bestway to support museums which function daily in differentsurroundings so that their audience research translates tothe programme they offer, and thus help them broaden therange of their visitors in the future? At the stage of the initiallong-term programme for researching museum audienceswhich the National Institute for Museums and PublicCollections conducted in 2017, it was already possible togather material which allows for the determination of directionsof activities which, in turn, will help answer the above--mentioned questions in the following years. On the basisof this programme, we can conclude that having introducedthe idea of a museum which is open and accessible to variousgroups, it is now time to turn theory into practice. Apartfrom keeping statistics, museums should broaden their scopeof research in terms of their audiences, and look at theaudience in a broader perspective, not just in terms of theirpresence and the diversity of activities. Only then, after theyhave repeated the question “who constitutes the museum’saudience, and who is absent from them?”, would it be possibleto determine what is indispensable to deepen the relationbetween a museum and its audience. Nevertheless,it will be clear whether museum professionals opt for suchsteps and try to learn whom they still have not met in themuseum once broader research has been carried out