How to harness the unique history of a heritage site into multiple revenue streams for commercial and community benefit.
Richard Morsley is the CEO of Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust. It's a vast site with a unique history. Although no longer in active service, this heritage site has managed to embrace its challenges (a vast footprint containing many unique buildings in need of preservation) and turned them into commercial opportunities.
For example, its iconic rope-making facility, which not only keeps a local craft alive... but also provides sellable products that end up everywhere from movie sets to gyms.
In this episode Richard shares his advice on building a multi-revenue stream model, harnessing enterprise opportunities from property to filming locations and TV fan tours to partnerships with outside IP like Lego.
Tom Dawson: [00:00:00] Hello, I'm Tom Dawson and welcome to the Arts and Culture Podcast from the Association for Cultural Enterprises, the go-to podcast for thought leadership in the cultural sector. In this episode, I'm talking to Richard Morsley, chief Exec of the Historic Dockyard, Chatham. We talk about what it takes to turn a liability into an asset, how 80 acres of historic buildings have become a thriving, fiercely proud independent museum with a diverse income model and a strategy rooted in community from being a landlord, a working rope maker, and a sort after film location to fulfilling the huge potential of culture as a driver for local pride and economic growth.
This is about more than preserving history. It's about putting heritage right back at the heart of the place. It helped to build. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.
Richard, really lovely to meet you. Thank you for joining me today to talk about what I think [00:01:00] is one of the really unique and interesting cultural attractions we've had on the podcast. I mean, and there's a high bar there when you're talking about the kind of cultural sector in the UK.
Can you describe Historic Dockyard Chatham to people? Who've never been before. Before we go any further.
Richard Morsley: Okay. Well look, firstly, thank, thank you for having me on the podcast. Like, what, what, what a privilege. And it's literally my, my favourite subject to talk about is the historic dockyard, Chatham 'cause. It is a truly remarkable place, and as you say, for those who've never visited this place before, I think it kind of blows people away almost when they first come here.
The size, the scale, both of the place, the buildings, but also the breadth and the complexity of our work as well. To give it some sense of scale, we're an 80 acre site. Within our site, we are custodians. Really, we care for a hundred buildings and structures, this incredible collection of hugely significant [00:02:00] historic buildings.
So on our estate we've got 52, grade one and grade two stylistic buildings, 48 scheduled ancient monuments. And it's this group value almost of these buildings that truly add to that significance. And. In this place, we then tell the story of the Royal Navy's 400 year connection with Chatham and the Medway towns.
And we do that through a range of museum galleries, through historic ships, through a working rope walk, through an amazing program of, of different events and activities that happen across the place.
Tom Dawson: As you say, it's the scale and breadth is quite remarkable and quite unique and I think there's a history graduate and a bit of a kind of.
I’m a nerd when it comes to maritime history, I think most people won't realize how central places like Chatham were to the history of this country, and I think it's fantastic that it's being preserved in such a way. In terms of how you got to where you are now, how does someone become the chief exec of. A historic dockyard.
What's your career been like in getting into our sector?
Richard Morsley: I ended [00:03:00] up here by chance, I guess to a large extent. So for me, really the way I, I got into the cultural sector was I was working for the local authority, Kent County Council. I joined them back in 2005 on a graduate scheme, and I was working with the cabinet member responsible for the various different community services.
And I got involved in what I thought was just the most fascinating and interesting project, which was Turner Contemporary in Margate. So the establishment of this amazing new world class contemporary art gallery in a very socially deprived seaside location. Then I. Through chance and opportunity became the project manager on Turner Contemporary, subsequently became the deputy director.
Turner Contemporary. My career, I, I, I guess, really started in that way. And then after that I was heading up another regeneration [00:04:00] project in East Kent based on a former army site, which had a mixture of heritage, had a mixture of property, had an element of development involved in that. So I was heading up that team for a number of years.
And then the former CEO at Chatham Bill Ferris, who I knew through the Heritage Fund that brought me into Chatham as Assistant Chief Executive back in 2019. Bill subsequently retired Summer 20, and I've been CEO here since. Is it what you expected it to be? I will answer that question, but I'll take a slightly backward step.
I grew up four miles down the road from the Dockyard, so I've kind of had a lifetime connection with Chatham and the Medway towns. So I've always known this place. I've seen its growth and I've seen its development over 40 years of my life. And it's the first museum actually I ever really remembered coming to.
So there was a sense of. It made a lot of [00:05:00] sense to me. The connection to the place made a lot of sense to me. The connection to the communities made a lot of sense to me. Did I know at that point that this was this mad, complicated organization that does so many different things simultaneously at that point?
Absolutely not. I had no real sense of the complexity of this organization when I joined, and I had really no real sense of the importance of property to the underlying and the reuse of property and the how you turn a heritage. Liability in some sense into these amazing heritage assets and kind of how central that is to our overall charitable model,
Tom Dawson: I noticed your phrase liability into assets.
I feel like that's something that a lot of cultural leaders might, might recognize. Let's sort of talk a bit about that then. So it's just over 40 years since the Trust was founded and the place stopped being a a working dockyard, and I, I sort of [00:06:00] understand you releasing a new 10 year strategy. What's your ambition for the Dockyard over the next 10 year.
Richard Morsley: So if you think for 400 years this place was central to Chatham and the Medway towns, it was. Economically vital, really to the place that is Medway. And just to put Medway into context, it's a conation of towns in, it's about 320,000 people in total. It's the largest conation in the southeast outside of London.
This place that is Medway is the size, the scale, the shape that it is today because of this dockyard. It was literally shaped. By this place, this Dockyard that we now call the historic dockyard chatter. But it was actually kind of socially and culturally vital as well to the nature of the place really.
And even at that point of closure, there were still, what, six and a half thousand people [00:07:00] employed. At the Dockyard. So he put on all of those result in supply chains and all of the kind of interconnectivities within the wider community economically. It was devastating to the place and, and that was very much the Medway that I grew up up in.
And, but it was also that. It gave the place a sense of purpose and identity and value as well, which once again, that closure really impacted Medway as a place and thinking where we are today and where we want to be in the future. I want this organization. We want this organization to be. Absolutely central and connected once again into the place that is chatter and into the place that are is Medway.
And I think we're making some great steps in that. It's taken us 40 years to get to this point and. The Dockyard, the place that we are today is fundamentally different to the place that would've been 40 years ago, A CEO. 40 years ago. Sitting here and [00:08:00] having this conversation with you would've faced fundamentally different challenges to what we have now, and that's a dockyard, that a place that was really poorly maintained financial challenges.
In some respects, the organization was set up. Within sufficient money. So really the first 15 years of this place of, of this organization, it was insufficiently funded to enable it, to fulfill that potential I guess, that we all know existed. So our 40 year story, I think's been one of evolution and development and as I say, turning.
Amazing historic buildings, liabilities in many sense, into this incredible suite of assets that we have here today. And here we are, 80 million pounds of capital, thereabouts. So over many years, a, a variety of revenue and other funding coming from a variety of different sources o over, over that period of time.
And we're at this [00:09:00] amazing point today where this organization is just. Poised to thrive and really poised to achieve. It's a remarkable place to be. So in setting a strategy, I think with the ability to be quite ambitious, we've done an awful lot of work to establish a financial and operating model.
That's really sound. We've had a really long running strategy that we call preservation through reuse. So effectively the adaptive reuse of our historic buildings and our historic estate to turn those liabilities into assets that's been principally led through museum reuse. And today, this place is absolutely thriving, right?
We're a museum that welcomes about 180,000 people. We're a mixed use state that's got about 200 organizations there or thereabout that operate out the place. Two higher education partners in the University of Kent and Mid Kent Colleges. Midway School of Arts. It employs about a thousand [00:10:00] people, work out of the site on a daily basis, and it generates about 28 million pounds annually into the Midway and Kent economies.
We're a film location. We are a rope maker. We're all these different things. We're a residential. State and you put all of these things together and where do we go from here? And I think strategy wise, our vision is, is ultimately to be a world leading maritime heritage destination. And I think we're really, as I say, we're really well poised to achieve that in this, this really mixed, diverse operating model that we have here today.
Tom Dawson: It’s a really empowering vision and it, it's, I have to tell you, Richard, it's really lovely to hear a sort of positive and ambitious taking the cultural sector when I think I know a lot of organisations are struggling. I think it's really interesting to hear that in terms of, let's definitely talk about the kind of the film and the rope making all those really kind of unique and interesting things that, that make the dark yard.
But in terms of the kind of practical day to day to, to make that vision happen. How are you funded? What does it take to kind of keep the doors open and keep the [00:11:00] lights on? What's your funding model like?
Richard Morsley: Don't get me wrong. Yes, it's positive. It's also really hard if you think of an estate with the complexity of historic buildings and assets that we've got, this is not a cheap place to keep those doors operating and running.
We are a truly. And proudly independent museum. We are a proudly independent charity. Everything that we do, 90, about 99% of what we do is self generated. We receive very, very little core funding. So everything that we do is then generated through that. Diverse range of kind of revenue sources. There's a lot of moving parts in a place like this, right?
It's keeping those different things moving. The ability for us to use those assets, use these buildings, these estate, to actually self generate revenue is really important. So in terms of our overall operating model, we are [00:12:00] about eight and a half million pounds there, or thereabouts, charitable revenue.
And as a charity, we're a preservation and learning charity, so about eight and a half million pounds combined. Turnover of that, about 60% comes directly through the preservation and the reuse of our historic buildings and our historic estate. About 20% is then generated directly through being a chargeable museum visitor attraction.
And then the remaining 20% there, or thereabouts, comes through a diverse range of revenue sources. So it might be hospitality, it might be events, it might be selling rope, it might be fundraising, for example. We generate a range through a diverse set of income streams, but we are really fortunate in that we have this core.
Estate income that we've been able to develop over the course of the last 40 years
Tom Dawson: as a in effect [00:13:00] landlord in a way, if you would use that term. Really interested in that balance between preserving heritage, but the commercialism of what you have to do. How do you. Manage those relationships with those 200 organizations you were talking about on site and the thousand employers.
Are there any tensions between that landlord and then Heritage Preservation?
Richard Morsley: First and foremost, we are a preservation charity as well as being a learning charity, so preservation and learning, so. Whilst we're generating revenue from the buildings and from the estate, we are preserving those buildings by being able to have a current modern day reuse of them.
Historic buildings, historic estate, do not like being left empty, so having an amazing. Reuse of the buildings from, and that could be anything from, I don't know, universities, as I mentioned, we've got a gaming company, dovetail games on our site. We've still got a working shipyard. It's really about finding the right, reuse, the right [00:14:00] tenant for the reuse of that building.
When we are looking at a building, for example, in our estate, we always very much start from the principle of preserving the building. So I'm sitting today in an amazing building called the Fitter Rigging House. This building was subject to, in total, about 11 million pound project. SP spread in two parts, secured a range of public funding including heritage lottery funds, heritage enterprise funding actually.
And this building I think really sums up what this organization's about. So we've got a range of public benefit uses, say on the on the ground floor. So we've got a fantastic gallery that tells our 19th and 20th century story. We've got a reading room, we've got conservation facilities, we've got volunteer facilities.
Got archive storage, but it's also got 80,000 square foot of commercial space that we generate that commercial revenue from. That supports our overall charitable financial model. [00:15:00] Yes, there can be a tension, but I think we always come at it from that charitable position of, firstly, we need to preserve.
The estate and we need to find the appropriate reuse for it. I think it's also fair to say that our 40 year story has very much been a museum led reuse of our estate as well. So how do we take a building that's in dire, dire need of. Of long-term preservation, really significant historic buildings and actually putting, then a museum reuse into that has really driven much of the kind of the estate development, certainly over the last 30 years.
I think the other thing that. We think of certainly in the running of the place, is that it can be a really complicated place as well. There's a lot of things happening and a lot of moving parts can happen across it all of the time, and we just need to be super mindful really, of this ecosystem that exists within the dockyard and how things can.
[00:16:00] Quite quickly get out of kilter. Our role as a a senior leadership team here is to kind of manage those uses to make sure that we keep things in balance. On the one hand, we love filming, right? We've got good margins. It's great profile. We've got all the secondary benefits around visitation that that can come alongside it.
But it's incredibly, incredibly disruptive and when you're trying to run a commercial estate with say, a thousand people working out of here with a residential estate and 400 people living out of here, and museum visitors as well, we need to keep stuff in balance and we need to keep stuff in check.
That's the other tension in there that we're always incredibly mindful of as as we are operating the place.
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Because you've got that mixed use model, diversified income streams. Did that help you survive COVID? I mean on, are there, I'm just wondering, are there lessons. Other sites can take from your model?
Richard Morsley: I think ultimately it did. But what I would say is right at the outset, it felt that we were uniquely exposed as well, because everything that we do is [00:18:00] self-generated.
So we're not sitting there on this core governmental fundings that was gonna sustain our model. It was eight of our nine revenue streams have stopped overnight. What are we going to do? But I think ultimately it was the diversity of those revenue streams that helped us and sustained us, and the property and the estate and the government support that came in both directly to us, but also to businesses and to those commercial tenants in different ways actually enabled.
Us to kind of weather the storm in that, in that respect, really well. I think like so many others, our museum, our visitor attraction has been really hard hit. We are still stubbornly below a pre pandemic visitor number, probably 10 to 15% down, or maybe we're in a pre pandemic world, and actually this year promises to be the first since the pandemic that we'll get back to a pre pandemic number.
But I think by having [00:19:00] that. Diversity of, of revenue streams, and many of which sit outside of the visitor economy actually really helped.
Tom Dawson: We've touched briefly on right making, we can't hold it off any longer. Richard. I think this is really fascinating. So you've got a rope making business within the trust, is that right?
And I'd recommend anyone go and have a look at it online. If you're not familiar with it. You supply gyms and gymnasts with your specialist equipment. Anybody can buy your e-commerce site, but there's stuff ranging from a few pounds to thousands of pounds. Is that about preserving a skill and an income stream?
How did that come about?
Richard Morsley: Our ropey is an iconic attraction, an iconic. Building an iconic space within the Dockyard. It's as close as we've got to an icon in this place, beyond the place itself. It's a remarkable story actually. So the Rotary is a building that's a quarter of a mile long dates from the late 1790s and [00:20:00] was designed to make the rope.
That supported the fleet of the Royal Navy. And to put that into context, the first rate ship of the line, like HMS victory that was built in Chatham would've required about 32 miles of rope and rigging. You apply that across the fleet, the rope was hugely, hugely significant. We make rope. Today for our learning objective primarily.
So within my team we have five rope makers and I have a sales manager who, who sells the rope, which I'll come back to. People who are skilled and trained to make rope on this Georgian rope walk who demonstrate for the benefit of our visitors that rope making process and every day use. The oldest bit of kit there dates from 1811, which is a forming machine, and they use that as part of this rope making process.
We make rope also, as you say, to preserve the skill of rope making. Rope making. Here is a 400 year tradition. Yes, we've been doing it for 200 years in this building, but it's a [00:21:00] 400 year tradition, so we preserve that skill. What you then have in demonstrating rope making. Is a load of rope at the end of it.
So it's, it is a really expensive process, right? You've got four people making it. You're buying in all the yarns, all the fibres to be able to demonstrate the making of it, and you end up with a usable product at the end of it. So within our charity, we make the. We then sell the rope to our commercial trading company who then sells that commercially.
We sell a variety of different ropes, a variety of different fibres from coia, that could be Manila, that could be synthetic hemp, and we then either sell the rope directly to. Different companies or we make products from and add value to the rope that we create. So almost using this heritage skill of our rope makers to add value to those products.
And that could be anything from [00:22:00] filmmaking, engineering, battle ropes that we make for gyms. Our right making business probably turns over in the region of about. 400,000 pound per annum. You put that back into your charitable model, and if at the end of the year you put all of that together and it equals somewhere near zero, actually what we've been able to do is achieve our charitable purpose.
Whilst underwriting and covering the costs of being able to manage that process, the idea is to balance that out.
Tom Dawson: But I think that's a, a, a wonderful example of entrepreneurialism within Heritage. And you talked about film as well, and I think one of the things that strikes me about, about the historic do is it is very much experiential.
You can submarine, you've got cricket. Is that central to the visitor experience for you that it it really is a place where you can explore and engage with things. On site as opposed to a more traditional museum experience.
Richard Morsley: I think it's a mixture actually, as, as you say, we've got three historic ships, a World War II destroyer with the National [00:23:00] Destroyer Memorial, so to commemorate the lives lost on board ship.
Of her ilk during the Second World War. We've got a Cold War submarine, which was the last submarine built for the Royal Navy in Chatham in in 1962. And then we have a Victorian sloop essentially, which was made on the river midway, just up the road.
Tom Dawson: Uh, you see, I've made the cardinal error Richard of naval experts.
I said, you had, you don't have a frigates. You have a sloop. There you go. You see, I'm showing my ignorance there. So it's really important to get these right.
Richard Morsley: Then we have just a range of different museums and gallery spaces, some of which relate to our core story. So how we tell that 400 year story of the Royal Navy, the people that served here, the ships that were built here.
Which we do principally through two core galleries. One tells an age of sales story and one tells that second 200 years the industrialization, the Victorian era, steam, steel and submarines we call [00:24:00] it. And then we have another space, which is our, um, number one smithery. And within that we have temporary exhibition space.
So we can then use that space to tell. A wide range of different stories and they can be things that we develop ourselves or they can be exhibitions that we buy in from others. So it gives us opportunities around brand partnerships, ip, almost that why now? Why am I gonna visit in 2025? So this year we've got an amazing exhibition, which was developed by our friends and partners at National Maritime Museum of Australia called Lego Brick Wrecks using the Power of Lego ip, but telling a maritime story through 170,000 Lego bricks and eight shipwrecks, three of which have a direct Chatham connection.
You're able to have a really world class. It's an amazing exhibition. We had high expectations for the exhibition and it's, it's absolutely performing at the level that we wanted and [00:25:00] slightly above, which in a difficult year for many is a, is a really positive story.
Tom Dawson: When I talk to people in the cultural sector, it's a couple of things I'm hearing, which is. One is leveraging those external partnerships and IP, whether it be your own IP or private company's IP, to attract an audience, but also then using that to maybe attract a different audience. And I, and I'm presuming the Lego exhibitions in particular are attracting kind of family audience.
Has your audience changed much in the last five or six years. Is it predominantly Southeast England, London, or were you sort of seeing changes in your types of visitor over the last few years?
Richard Morsley: I think an exhibition like Lego and a brand and IP, like Lego, actually it's got a near universal appeal. Certainly in our peak seasons, our holidays, that exhibition is absolutely working for, we call it our focused family audience, culturally engaged family, audience.
But actually outside of those peak periods, it's, it's also working for other audience segments as well. So actually our military and naval history [00:26:00] enthusiasts, the feedback, the response that we're getting from those audiences about that exhibition are, are really positive as well in terms of audience.
That exhibition is giving us a broader geographic reach than perhaps we've had in recent years. A much greater spread into London and the home counties. About 50, 55% of our audience tends to come from within about a 60 minute drive time. Actually, what we've seen this year is as an overall proportion, our Kent and Midway audiences are slightly lower, higher in volume, but slightly lower as a percentage of proportion as we've been able to extend that geographic reach.
And I think in terms of the last five years, it's a really competitive market out there, isn't it? We've all got less money in our pockets. People are having to be much more discerning actually, in terms of. The attractions that they're choosing to visit, whereas maybe previously you might have gone to multiple in a year and help multiple annual tickets to go to different locations.
I think people are having to make [00:27:00] choices. So organizationally, we're having to. Ensure that the product and the experience that we offer is compelling and compelling enough to drive that overall visitation this year. We are really seeing that in terms of Lego as a overall proposition.
Tom Dawson: That's absolutely pre-empted my next question actually 'cause again, another thing that was a recurring conversation I have with people is that real sense of how do we as cultural heritage compete. With such a competitive landscape for our attention, whether it be in the home or for a day out, is that key, that kind of partnership, that IP as we are talking about Lego, is that one of the key levers you think people can pull to compete with all the others to experiences out there?
Richard Morsley: I think it's a key lever that we are having to pull in terms of where we are at this stage in our development. Where we need to be in bring, bringing this back to strategy actually, is we need to be in a position where we are able to invest and really [00:28:00] develop our core product as well. So in an ideal world, actually our core museum product and experience would be sufficient to be driving that volume.
We are having to rely on core product. And programming to drive that overall visitation. It's probably different for each organization you talk to, but I do think the quality of that visitor experience, it's super, super competitive out there and, and when I talk about competition, I'm not only talking about other.
Museums, attractions, heritage, attractions, galleries, it's all of that competition for our spend, isn't it? It's the, everyone's got a finite budget, a finite resource. I want to take the kids swimming. I want to take the kids to the cinema. It's, we are competing with all of those different leisure attractions and leisure uses all of the time.
It's a noisy market and you've really gotta be able to stand out.
Tom Dawson: What I've enjoyed hearing so far, actually, is some of the ambitious, the positive sides. Of your role and how [00:29:00] the Dockyard was and is going to be so important to the local community. I think that's really interesting and valuable to hear.
What I still like to ask cultural leaders though is what is it that keeps you up at night? What is the challenge that you and you think your peers will recognize is the one thing that's troubling you at the moment?
Richard Morsley: I think I'd be lying if I didn't say it was finances and financial model and our ability to sustain what we do.
We work on a scale. In some respects. We work on a national scale, really the size, the scale of this place and the operation, but we certainly don't do it on those budgets. So sustaining what we do within our overall independent charitable model. Is certainly a key headache on top of that, and perhaps more unique to us is making it all works.
This is, it's a complicated place with a lot of things happening all the time, and being able to move forward on multiple fronts all [00:30:00] of the time on sometimes smaller teams is a real challenge. The other big challenge perhaps for us is realizing our ambition. Within the constraints that exist within our model.
One of the things that makes this place amazing and that makes my role amazing is the amount of opportunity is remarkable. So. It's taken us 40 years to get to this point. I could chart out the next 40 years with a range of amazing, incredible projects and developments that could happen across the place, but we are always constrained in our ability.
It feels like the future's tantalizingly out of reach. The challenge for us is how we can realize. The kind of latent opportunity that exists in this place. But if that's as bad as the challenge gets, that's pretty good going.
Tom Dawson: Yeah. And thinking about those opportunities, is there [00:31:00] anything experimental or new you are trying at the moment?
Could be ticketing, it could be retail, it could be building preservation. Is there anything you're trying at the moment that you think others would be interested to hear about?
Richard Morsley: We touched on filming filming's, part of the overall. Operating model within this place. We are blessed with space, right? There's a lot of opportunities within that space.
Filming's one of those opportunities and one of those reuses of that space and how we use that I think is really interesting. So as a place, we offer a large site, a lot of privacy. The ability to close off discrete spaces, unique spaces, Victorian street scenes, Georgian townhouses, incredible buildings.
And there's been 40 years of filmmaking tradition in this place. So film, tv, music, videos. I think what we've done is yes, we've got that opportunity, but I, I think we've also got something that's quite. I say quite unique. I believe it's unique in terms of we have a [00:32:00] partnership with Neal Street Productions because we are also the official home of Call the Midwife.
So when people think of midwife nuns riding their bike down a little Streets scene that's shot in Chatham, and we've got this longstanding relationship with Neal Street Productions where we offer an official call, the midwife location tour. So in a standard year, we probably have 15 to 20,000 visitors will come on an official call, the midwife location tour that operates in a different way.
It's a, a standalone day ticket operation as opposed to our our core annual ticket offer. So filming and how we kind of utilize that, that wider trend around jet setting I think is a real opportunity and, and one which we've got a, a great track record of, of utilizing here in Chatham. In addition to call the midwife, we've just launched a new film Locations tour that tells that story of [00:33:00] filmmaking in this place that takes you behind the scenes, that takes you to some of those incredible spaces and buildings that visitors don't otherwise have the opportunity to explore.
Those are substantial numbers as well coming to your site who presumably might not otherwise. Visit, well, the midwives, the sensation, it's incredibly popular. You see their, their numbers at Christmas and for the programs generally, it's always up there in terms of really significant viewing figures, and it's got a really dedicated audience.
And that audience in some respects, maps quite nicely against the dockyard. Core audience. We have a lot of people coming here to explore the different scenes and the, the stories contained within the TV program.
Tom Dawson: The longevity of film tourism, I always find fascinating when I've been to Port Merion the other year and there's, you know, there's a shop for Prisoners TV series, they still get visitors coming to that. So, you know, 40 years time they could still be doing those tours.
Richard Morsley: Who knows? One can only hope. So, um, I think in [00:34:00] some respects, one, one of the things that makes us unique as a film location is. We are more stunt double perhaps than leading lady.
The site's really versatile. You've got lots of different spaces, lots of different street scenes, lots of different buildings that could be used in in, in different ways, and I think within that great opportunity in terms of film location, but in terms of that film tourism piece, having that product or having that experience, that then really shines through for us in terms of midwife.
Enables us to kind of bridge that divide as well. You'd have to know this place sometimes pretty well to see the different locations from some of the films that have been shot here.
Tom Dawson: I wanted to quickly ask you about ticketing at the site as well. Membership style ticketing model? Yeah, that's correct. We work on an annual ticket, me.
Effectively, is that relatively new? 'cause I know a lot of people are investigating that model. Some people are looking to move to it. As a cultural professional, I find it really interesting. As a consumer, I sometimes [00:35:00] have mixed feelings about it. And when I, I have a few, I've got, you know, a couple I use a lot and it's definitely worth the investment.
So how, how are you finding that? That's working for your visitors and for your income stream.
Richard Morsley: We've worked in this way for many years, significantly predating me. Much of the reason for that around gift aid as well, so maximizing that, that gift aid benefit in terms of our visitors, I think certainly for those visitors within a closer geographic reach, they really get the value and they really get the benefits out of it.
Average dwell time for a visit to the dockyard tends to be about between four and five hours anyway. And even within that, say, five hour dwell time, you'll struggle to do all of the elements of a visit here. So some are free flow, some are ticketed experiences, so rope making submarine tours, a, a ticketed timed experiences.
So I think given the, the breadth of the offer, the length of the dwell time. Actually an annual [00:36:00] ticket works really well for our visitors. The frustration sometimes and the pushback sometimes that we get from visitors is maybe when they travel from further afield and they know that they're only gonna come once and they feel that they're paying perhaps a premium price for an annual ticket.
That's a balance really. But we've made a, a choice and it's, it's a financial. Choice ultimately is a decision that sits in there around an annual ticket model, maximizing that gift aid return.
Tom Dawson: So I just wanna bring it back to the, someone living four miles away as a, as a young boy from from where you're now, chief executive, you were to give any advice to people entering the cultural sector who want to make a career out of it.
Is there anything you would recommend they do? I mean you, I think you touched earlier on, you know, a lot of people in the sector, including myself and people I talked to, chance plays a big part of it, and I know sort of saying yes to opportunities that come up is a big part of it. But I'm just wondering if there's anything else you could share.
Any words of wisdom?
Richard Morsley: I think [00:37:00] taking opportunities when they are presented to you, so being really opportunistic, actually. And that, but that's not only always relying on people to present opportunities for you, I think you have to make your own opportunities in that as well. There are moments that present themselves, so there's something quite attitudinal in that as well.
You grasp stuff when it comes your way. Um. I think for me and, and it's really boring, but I think it's, it's about work ethic as well. I have a track record of that through my career that that's then enabled me to progress. Maybe finally think the importance of relationships as well. The relationships that you build through your career and that you sort of foster through your career and not in and over.
Kind of networking sense, 'cause that's really probably not my style either. But just building strong relationships with people and having kind of mutual respect and, and being respected for the work that you do. I think that really [00:38:00] pays back in lots of ways. And I think my careers. A prime example of that.
Tom Dawson: Really good advice, Richard. Thank you. Well look for anyone who hasn't been highly recommend a visit to Chatham is, it is an incredible place, but really inspiring hearing about it and hearing about your plans. Richard. So I off to buy a coil of Chatham Hemp. What can I say? Thank you very much for talking to me.
Richard Morsley: My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me on.
Tom Dawson: Thanks for listening to the Arts and Culture podcast, and with thanks to my guest, Richard, and to our sponsors, King & McGaw. Find us on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify. Until next time, take care.