Medwen Roberts

Medwen has overall responsibility for the quality of the quantitative data that Morris Hargreaves McIntyre collects. She provides guidance on sampling, questionnaire design, weighting, analysis, interpretation and reporting of data on client projects. She also leads the implementation of new technologies in our quantitative research.

Medwen was the data director and lead consultant on MHM’s Visitor 360° benchmarking project which provided ongoing visitor data for the London national museums and galleries (including Tate, the British Museum, the National Gallery and the V&A). Medwen designed the question bank for the project (now the international gold standard in visitor surveying) and defined the specification for Audience Analyser, the group’s interactive benchmarking tool. She also developed MHM’s triple-weighting and data quality checking processes, which ensure unrivalled representativeness of data and complete reliability of results.

Medwen led the analysis of the national museums’ benchmarking data, identifying significant internal and group-wide trends, contextualising these with external trends and statistics, and explaining short- and long-term patterns in visitation.

Medwen was also involved in developing the key performance indicators for UK Government-funded national museums in 2010, and authored the accompanying guidance. In 2019, she led MHM’s large-scale research project for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), building on our benchmarking analysis to explore, explain and predict museum visitor trends.

Beyond visitor surveying, Medwen specialises in complex programme evaluations and market appraisals (often to inform large-scale capital projects and high-value funding bids). Between 2014 and 2019, she was the lead consultant on MHM’s evaluation of 14-18 NOW, the UK Government’s official nationwide cultural programme marking the centenary of the First World War. Her published evaluation reports have been instrumental in evidencing 14-18 NOW’s nationwide impact.

Medwen led the feasibility studies and market appraisals that resulted in the highly-successful openings of the brand-new V&A Dundee in 2018, the redeveloped London Design Museum in 2016, and Chester Zoo’s multi-million pound ‘Islands’ development in 2015. In 2018, she completed the V&A East project, which will create a brand-new museum and research centre at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in 2023. Her robust assessments of market size and demand (including detailed visit figure projections) make the crucial difference in successful funding bids, and mean that our clients can make strategic business decisions with confidence.