To date, existing research on the impact of museums has tended to focus heavily on social and learning impact rather than economic. Economic research has been undertaken, but this tended either to consider impact at a local level, or deliver national estimates on the size and shape of the sector combining museums with archives and libraries.

In 2013 the Arts Council published The contribution of the arts and culture to the national economy, the first national analysis of the economic contribution of the activities within the Arts Council’s remit. Whilst it had originally been intended that the museums sector would be covered by the review, methodological challenges meant that it could not be. As such, the key aim of this project has been to address the issues raised in the 2013 report and determine a methodology to estimate the direct economic impact of the museums sector in England.

This report encompasses the full range of museum types providing, for the first time, an analysis of all museums operating across England. The research also considers the full range of income-generating activities that a museum undertakes and includes all of these in the calculation of total income (and therefore also economic output), including fundraising, grants and donations. It is recognised that this varies from the methodology used in the Annual Business Survey to calculate approximate gross value added figures, where grants and donations are excluded on the grounds that they are transfers of value and not made in exchange for a good or a service. However, the view taken in this study is that grants and donations to museums are, on the whole, very much in exchange for the services they provide and as such should be included. [Executive Summary, p. 4]

In 2013 the Arts Council published The contribution of the arts and culture to the national economy, the first national analysis of the economic contribution of the activities within the Arts Council’s remit. Whilst it had originally been intended that the museums sector would be covered by the review, methodological challenges meant that it could not be. As such, the key aim of this project has been to address the issues raised in the 2013 report and determine a methodology to estimate the direct economic impact of the museums sector in England.