Andy Povey is joined by Andrew Given, CEO of Queer Britain, to discuss how the UK's national LGBTQ+ museum tripled visitor donations by introducing a Pay What You Can admission model. They explore museum fundraising, accessibility, visitor engagement, donor psychology, storytelling, innovation, and practical lessons that visitor attractions can apply to create more inclusive and financially sustainable experiences.
How can museums increase revenue without charging mandatory admission? Andy Povey is joined by Andrew Given, CEO of Queer Britain, who shares how Queer Britain's Pay What You Can model generated more than three times the previous donation income while making the museum more accessible to visitors. The discussion covers fundraising strategies, donor psychology, visitor data, inclusive storytelling, partnerships, and why cultural organisations should embrace experimentation and innovation.
Show references:
Andrew Given - Chief Executive at Queer Britain Museum
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Credits:
Written by Emily Burrows (Plaster)
Edited by Steve Folland
Produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle (Plaster)
Andrew Given: 75% Of our income has to be fundraised. It needs to be diverse. You can't be reliant one or two big donors because things can change at any time.
Andy Povey: Today I'm joined by Andrew Given, CEO of the Queer Brick Museum. This is one of the newest museums in the UK and as a relatively new attraction, Andrew and the team are doing a few new, interesting and for some, possibly off the wall things in the museum's world. Of particular interest to me as a ticketing geek is the recent introduction of a donate what you can model in place of charged entry.
Andrew Given: There are these small community groups that are running pay what you can events. Why can't a national museum do the same? Be as accessible as the small groups?
Andy Povey: Facing the challenge of operating without core public funding, Queer Britain introduced a new approach designed to remove barriers for visitors whilst encouraging voluntary support.
Andrew Given: The result, we have gone from £18,000 a year in visitor donations to £64,000 a year. So it's more than tripled that donation income.
Andy Povey: Andrew shares the thinking behind the change, the psychology of giving, and what other museums and attractions can learn about creating a more inclusive and sustainable visitor experience.
Andrew Given: Just be brave, try it, see if it works.
Andy Povey: Hello and welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast for people working in and with visitor attractions, brought to you by Merrick. I'm your host for today. Andy Povey.
Andrew Given: Was founded in 2018 by our two co founders, Ian and Joel. They went to an exhibition at, shall we say, an unnamed national institution. The exhibition was called Queer British Art. It was advertised as a commemoration of 50 years since decriminalisation in the UK. However, if anyone LGBT had actually been involved with it, they would have pointed out that decriminalisation didn't happen until 2003. It was a partial decriminalisation in 1967. So they kind of felt, why are other people telling our stories and getting them wrong? So why, why isn't our community able to tell its own story? So they looked around thinking there must be an LGBT history museum in the UK and there isn't one.
Andrew Given: So they looked to San Francisco, which has the one of the first from 1978 and there are a few of them popping up, but yeah, nothing in the uk. So they did what any sane, normal person does and that's found the museum.
Andy Povey: Don't sit and complain about it. Get off your backside and do something.
Andrew Given: Absolutely. I love it.
Andy Povey: Love it.
Andrew Given: Yeah. They spent around four years doing pop up exhibitions around London in the southeast to build a bit of a following and A supporter base. And then they took on the lease of a building in King's Cross as part of the Granary Square regeneration project. And it's a great building. It's quite small for now, but, yeah. So it's been. The doors opened in 2022. I joined as chief exec in October 24, so I've now got to stop calling myself the new CEO. It's two years now. We are the national LGBTQ museum in the uk, and we're actually one of only ten in the entire world.
Andy Povey: Wow.
Andrew Given: So we are very unique. We have a bit of a disruptor mentality and a challenger mentality, because the museum sector has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, and there's amazing work happening in the museum sector, but they sometimes get things a little wrong when they're telling stories. Whitewashing or colonial interpretations of stories, which, you know, a lot of people are not happy with. So we wanted to make sure we don't make all those mistakes. And it's not very often you get the opportunity to start a museum brand new, fresh, doing everything properly in a way that suits your audience.
Andy Povey: You must be the only museum that can have national in the title and also aim for the disruptive upstart mentality.
Andrew Given: Yeah. There are advantages and disadvantages to being the only one. So, yeah, we're able to claim the national title because the building we're in at the moment is temporary for us. We're there. Yeah, we're there until January 2030. And I'm currently working with property developers and local authorities and lots of stakeholders to find the next iteration, which is a very exciting project, but I can imagine.
Andy Povey: I can imagine. So it's not like you've been in place long enough to become institutionalised in that space. And you're up and out again.
Andrew Given: Yeah. So what we have at the moment are three galleries and the first gallery. I like to think of that as our kind of agile and responsive space. So it's a. It's a popup display. And earlier this year, we're celebrating the 40th anniversary of BFI Flair. It's a film festival. LGBT Film festival started off 40 years ago as two short films at the National Film Theatre, as it was called then, and now it's the biggest LGBT film festival in all of Europe.
Andy Povey: Fantastic.
Andrew Given: So that's quite a milestone. So we celebrated that by having all 40 posters from the entire history of the festival on display. And we've just replaced that with. It's an exhibition called From Exclusion to Inclusion. And it's a. In collaboration with a partner charity, Fighting With Pride. They are the LGBT veterans charity.
Andy Povey: Okay.
Andrew Given: Yeah. And it's an interesting story that until the year 2000, it was illegal to be LGBT in the military. And this display is telling the story of just a handful of the people who were criminalised, arrested, put in jail, all sorts of horrendous things to them. And we're kind of telling that story, but also highlighting the members of Fighting With Pride that took the government to the European Court of human rights and one in the year 2000, which is an amazing achievement. But the reason for telling that story now is the government has a reparations scheme in place. Both.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Andrew Given: So it has both financial reparations, but just as importantly, the people who were criminalised and dishonourably discharged can actually have their criminal records removed and their medals returned to them and things like that. But there's a deadline of December 2026, so we wanted to keep that story visible for the community in case any veterans are unaware. It's a great small space to be able to highlight what's going on in the world today, really.
Andy Povey: It is strange, isn't it?
Andrew Given: The things that we just accept as natural today.
Andy Povey: Only 10 years ago, the situation was entirely different.
Andrew Given: Yeah. I mean, marriage equality has only been legal for, you know, just around 10 years now, which is. It's insane to think about.
Andy Povey: If you're aligning yourselves with the BFI Flyer Festival that's grown so dramatically over 40 years, then you've got to have some quite lofty ambitions for the growth of the museum in the next 35 years.
Andrew Given: Absolutely. So one of my ethos is to work with partners. We work with all different sizes of partners, but I'm very keen to have a couple of partners who are much bigger than we are and much more well known than us, so that we can tap into their audiences. And, of course, they can tap into ours as well. So. So BFI is a great one. We actually have an external exhibition on at the moment. There's a musical at the National Theater called Pride, which tells the story of lesbians and gays support the miners and their amazing story of supporting this tiny mining community in Wales during the miners strike in the 1980s.
Andrew Given: So to coincide with that, we've actually got an exhibition on in the National Theatre at the moment, which is, you know, Queer Britain Museum branded. So, you know, thousands and thousands of people that walk through the National Theatre every day are seeing our exhibition, so definitely up for playing with the Big boys, as it were.
Andy Povey: Absolutely. Go big or go home. So you've done something quite interesting, quite new in my arena of the attractions industry with your admission price or admission charges. Talk to us about that.
Andrew Given: Yeah, so we at the moment do not receive any government funding at all. So we, we have a model which is 75% fundraising, 25% earned. And for earned, we have, as you'd expect, a museum store which is all full of LGBT owned small businesses or artists. We do venue hire, all the usual things that you would expect. But 75% of our income has to be fundraised and it needs to be diverse. You can't be reliant one or two companies or one or two big donors, because things can change at any time. So we wanted to diversify the income streams were free to enter before. And one of the strengths of the museum, we only have 9.4 full time equivalent staff, but we also have 227 volunteers.
Andy Povey: Oh, my word.
Andrew Given: Yeah. The volunteers are just the absolute heart of everything because they're the front of house team. They're invigilating the galleries, running the store, helping the events. They're amazing. But when you walk into the museum as a visitor, you're greeted by a volunteer who says, welcome to the museum. And they were saying, you know, just, here's a little speech about the museum, go and explore the galleries. And if you'd like to make a donation, there are contactless boxes around. So in needing to diversify the income, I was thinking, right, do we need to become a ticketed organisation? I was initially very keen on that idea because when people buy tickets online, they give data. And with data I can do analysis, I can send surveys, I can do lots of things.
Andrew Given: But it didn't feel right because there's this myth that the LGBTQ community, we're all in high paying jobs and we are all very wealthy and all of that. The community is as diverse as the rest of the world. So I didn't want us to be inaccessible to people. So we thought about, how about pay what you can ticketing. But then being a museum, we are culturally exempt from VAT on tickets, but by having a ticketing system that introduces quite a world of pain on the back end for accountants and all that type of stuff. So we decided on a pay what you can donation for admission policy. So in 2023, before we introduced this, the passive contactless donation boxes with no specific ask were was bringing in around £18,000 a year, but being a fundraiser.
Andrew Given: So my background, before I was at Queer Britain Museum, I was director of Fundraising at English National Opera. So for a very long time. So what we do is when people arrive, there's a very short welcome speech that says, do you have a ticket or a membership card? If yes. Great, check them in. If no, we say admission is by payroll. You can donation. We suggest £10 or £5 if you're under 30, but please select an amount you are comfortable with. And then the visitor is pointed to one of the many contactless donation boxes. The visitor then picks the amount they are donating. Great. They're given a little sticker and off they go.
Andrew Given: So we have gone from 18,000 pounds a year in visitor donations to this year it will be £64,000 a year. So it's more than tripled that donation income.
Andy Povey: That's incredible.
Andrew Given: Yeah. And we have people that pay the full 10 pounds, the full 5 pounds, we have people that donate 1 or 2 pounds, we have people that donate 25 pounds- all sorts of things. And at the moment, around 42% of our visitors are making a donation of some kind.
Andy Povey: Fantastic.
Andrew Given: That's the in person side of it. I use a ticketing system, an app called Out Savvy.
Andy Povey: Okay.
Andrew Given: It's an LGBT owned ticketing platform because it's important to us, the values of the museum, that in the ecosystem that we are, we try and use LGBT owned businesses as our suppliers as much as possible. But this app is brilliant. It's very simple and offers pay what you can is an option. And the tickets are treated as donations. A gift aid declaration is taken at the point of purchase, the details are collected and with those people that are pre booking, we have the partner app, it's called, we have a list of the names of everyone that's attending. They show us the tick, we check them off.
Andrew Given: So I know who's arrived, I know how much they've paid, and I can send them a segmented visitor survey based on whether they bought a full ticket or a pay what you can ticket. And that visitor survey gives me insight into what they think, what they want next, and visitor demographics, which is essential.
Andy Povey: Absolutely. The value you can obtain from analyzing that data and understanding your guests, understanding your audiences, everyone should be doing it.
Andrew Given: Absolutely.
Andy Povey: Regardless of the size of the organisation. And I think your stats and your results actually show the benefit of doing. Talk to me a little bit more about your audience. I would imagine that you got four or five different segments. Is it about celebrating the community or is it about educating the rest of society? About the struggles of the community.
Andrew Given: How's that all fit? Actually, it's all of those things.
Andy Povey: All of the above.
Yeah. But we approach it in slightly different ways. So as you would expect from a CEO, I have stats on everything imaginable.
Andy Povey: I would hope so.
Andrew Given: Yeah. So we did a little bit of analysis of our 2025 visitors and compared it to the Arts Council England's dashboard for London museums, but then also the London Census and the UK Census. So I know that 28% of my visitors are aged between 2029. Not point for my visitors are aged over 80. I know that only 73% of my visitors are white or white British. So compared to other museums, we're attracting a much more ethnically diverse audience as well. We know that 25% of our visitors have a physical or mental health issue that they deal with, which is far higher than the London museums as well. And I know that the gender identity and sexual orientation of our visitors is really does represent the full wide spectrum of the community.
Andrew Given: But my favourite statistic is 11% of our visitors identify as heterosexual.
Andy Povey: Okay.
Andrew Given: Yeah, yeah. And the reason that makes us laugh at the museum is that during the 1990s, the lobbying charity Stonewall ran this huge ad campaign all over the country on the side of buses that said, 1 in 10 people are gay. Get over it. And were able to say 1 in 10 of our visitors is straight. Brilliant.
Andy Povey: Get over it.
Andrew Given: Yeah. So when we give tours of the museum, it's kind of incredible that there are quite a few younger LGBT people that didn't know about section 28, which was the UK's don't say gay law. But the number of heterosexual visitors had no idea it even existed or that it impacted their or their friends' lives. They were completely oblivious to it. And yeah, that's quite astounding when you realise that.
Andy Povey: The only other museum I'm aware of that has followed a similar example is, I think, MoMA in New York. I'm assuming you didn't get to go on field trips to understand their experiences. So where did you look for advice and support around this new policy?
Andrew Given: One of my colleagues went to the Association of Cultural Enterprises conference and they were doing a big thing on ticketing and different ticketing models. And when we were just looking at all these options, it just didn't feel right. So looking through the Out Savvy app, which is a community focused app, so you can buy tickets to nightclubs, to drag bingo to community yoga events, all sorts of things on there, and I noticed that they had this pay what you can option, and it just sparked the idea from there, really, that there are these small community groups that are running pay what you can events. Why can't a national museum do the same and be as accessible as the small groups? So, yeah, that's how it started.
Andrew Given: Because I couldn't find any museums in the UK that were offering pay what you can.
Andy Povey: No, no, I really don't think there are any. There are none that I'm aware of. Listeners, if you're sitting on a bunch of museums that are offering the same model, then please do let us know, because I'm sure Andrew and I would both be interested to understand a little bit more.
Andrew Given: Yeah.
Andy Povey: So you're obviously communicating to the guests the reason why you want them to make a donation and what it does. Are you finding that people are behaving differently once they understand why you need the money and what the money is going to do?
Andrew Given: Yeah, I think the core part of it is the big sign that we have on the wall at the entrance, which has the suggested donation amount. It has our mission statement on there, which is to reclaim, preserve and celebrate British LGBTQ history and culture. But there's a sentence on that poster that says, this museum does not receive any public funding. And one of our trustees is the great Lisa Power mp, who was the editor of the Pink Paper. She was one of Stonewall's co founders. She was the policy director of the Terrence Higgins Trust. And she says a phrase that just kind of stuck with me, which is, nobody ever does anything for the LGBTQ community. If you need something, you've got to do it yourself.
Andrew Given: And that's a kind of mentality that our community has taken on because we've had to fight, you know, for basic human rights, really. So most people are not surprised that there's no government funding. And not to decry government funding, it's not because we've been rejected. It's because we opened at the wrong time in funding cycles for Arts council funding. So we will be applying for Arts Council support in the next rounds. But that key message that this museum doesn't receive any public funding, it makes people think, how are they paying for all of this stuff? That that's the key message, because people want to feel like they're doing their bit to help preserve history, because we're the only organisation in the UK that's doing it.
Andy Povey: I love that. I mean, that's a message that's come across loud and clear a couple of times in the conversation, is, be an Activist, do something. Don't just sit and complain.
Andrew Given: Yeah.
Andy Povey: Which I think is this is a life lesson for everybody. Or it should be. One theme or one trend that goes across. All of the conversations that we have on the podcast is about storytelling. Whether you're a museum or a theme park or a gallery or a stately home, we're all telling a story. Talk to me about the story thrawn there, the museum.
Andrew Given: I like to think that the feeling that visitors leave the museum with is progress is inevitable and it's hard. It's a long struggle of fighting in activism and that's the stories that are told all the way through the galleries. So we've got things like a display about the Black Lesbian and Gay center that is in Peckham, which is a powerhouse organization working at the intersection of homophobia and racism during the 80s through to women's liberation music of the 1970s. And as I like to say that the world would be a much better place if we had more angry lesbians with guitars making music. And then we've got one of the panels, panel 23 of the AIDS UK Memorial Quilt.
Andrew Given: A really stunning thing to see up close and in person and gets, you know, quite an emotional reaction from people. I can imagine then this story of Justin Fashionu, still to date the only out top tier footballer in the uk. But then fun things like the story of Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington, who were members of the Bloomsbury Group. They had, shall we say, a slightly unusual relationship. They were the closest of best of friends, but they shared Dora's husband.
Andy Povey: Okay, yeah.
Andrew Given: So that's our bisexual polyamorous story in the museum. So, you know, full spectrum of the community represented. So we're telling these unheard stories as well as celebrating major milestones or, you know, major people like Justin or the AIDS Memorial Quilt. And as you walk through those stories, you can see things about decriminalisation, partial decriminalisation, marriage equality, the Equality act, all these changes that have happened over the last 60, 70 years in the UK. And even for LGBT people at the moment, it's quite tough because there are lots of bits of legislation popping up which are deeply unfair to segments of our community and all of that. I hope that visitors come out of there feeling we've kind of done all this before and we won. So we've just got to keep going and do it again.
Andrew Given: And we know it's exhausting, but we'll get there. We always do.
Andy Povey: That's a really positive and very empowering message. I love him.
Andrew Given: Yeah. One of the things that we're very conscious of is because a lot of LGBT history is pain, activism, and trauma, we want to tell some fun stories as well. So. Yeah. That's why we've got women's liberation music on there. And there's QR codes in the gallery that you can listen to all these kind of 1980s recordings that were digitized from dodgy 8 tracks and cassette players and all sorts of stuff. Just brilliant fun storytelling.
Andy Povey: You sounded like the museum of my child in my teenage years.
Andrew Given: Yeah.
Andy Povey: Looking at the wider museums community, what do you think other museums and attractions could learn from everything that you're doing right now?
Andrew Given: I think the takeaway I would give from this process to other museums is take what you can. Might not be right for you, but there is something beyond the current model and structure and just be brave. Try it. See if it works. If it doesn't work, scrap it. Try something else a little later. The hesitancy to be innovative is. Yeah. Quite striking, really. And having come from a huge national institution, White English National Opera, they were able to be innovative and pivot so many times in so many projects. They didn't let anything strike that. I mean, during the pandemic, the whole world was going to pot and theatres were closing down. So what did we do? English National Opera. We did an outdoor drive in opera. Yeah.
Andrew Given: Just don't be afraid to try stuff because, yep, it might not work, but embrace the right to fail.
Andy Povey: One thing that we ask every one of our guests to operate attractions is really. What would be your one piece of advice that you think that anybody operating in attraction could do tomorrow to improve their guest experience?
Andrew Given: One thing I think booking tickets online can be a horrendously painful experience.
Andy Povey: Andrew, you're preaching to the converted. I rant about this on LinkedIn all the time.
Andrew Given: Oh, my. I just want to pick a date, maybe a time I want to put my name, my email address, and pay. Yeah, that's it. I don't need 50 million upsell options all the way through the checkout process. I think book the ticket, pay that, then offer the upsells. Because in that ticket booking journey, I'm clicking. No, I don't want to pre buy the souvenir mug, the T shirt, the bookmark, the badge, all that type of stuff. No, I don't want a three course champagne lunch while I'm there. Just give me the blooming ticket, then I'll think about everything else.
Andy Povey: You must have been all over my website. Beat that up. I mean, I can't tell you what I want for lunch tomorrow. So why am I going to decide whether I want the champagne breakfast on my visit next week?
Andrew Given: Absolutely.
Andy Povey: Couldn't agree more. Andrew, how do our guests find you? You're in King's Cross, in the newly redeveloped area behind the station.
Andrew Given: Yeah. So as you come out of Kings Cross, you walk past the big, shiny new Google building just across the canal and then to the right, you will see our museum. It's a number two granary square. There's signage all over the King's Cross estate pointing you to us. And, yeah, visit our website, which is quite queerbritain.org.uk and we've even got our what's three words on there to make it even easier for people to find us to get you to right to the front door.
Andy Povey: Fantastic. And listeners, we'll make sure that we include all of these tips in the. In the show notes. Andrew, I've really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you.
Andrew Given: No, thank you.
Andy Povey: I will come and see you for coffee next time I'm in London.
Andrew Given: Yeah. Please do bring all your friends.
Andy Povey: Listeners, I really hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you found it interesting or useful, then please do leave us a review or recommendation on whatever podcast platform you use. Today's episode was edited by Steve Folland, produced by Sami and Emily of Plaster, with socials and schedules by Wenalyn at Merac HQ. I've been your host, Andy Povey, and until next time, thank you and goodbye.