Teacher Art Pass: Connecting museums with local schools and teachers
The Teacher Art Pass is a new membership programme offering all the benefits of a National Art Pass at a highly subsidised price for teachers.
Teachers are a priority audience for Art Fund because we want to reach the next generation of museum visitors, professionals and donors. Many children today do not have the opportunity to access museums and galleries, but teachers have the power to influence this – with the right support.
From just £25 a year, Teacher Art Pass members will get free entry to 250+ museums, galleries and historic houses across the UK, 50% off major exhibitions, fortnightly updates on what to see with our Art in Your Inbox newsletter, a subscription to Art Quarterly magazine, and Art Map, our annual guidebook on using the pass.
You can use Teacher Art Pass to engage local schools and teachers with your museum and others. Find out more below.
What do teachers want from museums?
In 2021 we set out to find out what support UK teachers needed to use museums and galleries more often in their teaching practice.
Thanks to the generous support of the Clore Duffield Foundation, we were able to give 1,000 teachers a National Art Pass for one year to find out if the benefits would positively impact both their personal levels of inspiration and their teaching practice. Participating teachers also took part in surveys and research workshops exploring what wider support we could offer them in addition to the pass.
Our research revealed a big communications gap between museum learning teams and teachers; as a result, while many teachers have an interest in museums, and many museums have a great schools offer, teachers sometimes have a very low awareness of that offer.
The good news is that our research also demonstrated that Teacher Art Pass membership resulted in teachers using museums more often; 89% agreed that Teacher Art Pass increased their desire to visit or digitally engage with museums, and 85% found the benefits useful to their teaching practice.
Raising awareness of the offer
Teacher Art Pass is a step towards supporting teachers and museums to be more connected and aims to enrich the personal and professional lives of teachers, spark creativity and innovation in the classroom and positively influence the next generation.
To accelerate our impact, we’d love your support in raising awareness of Teacher Art Pass among your teacher networks. If you’d like to help spread the word to raise awareness of this new offer, and support teachers in your network to engage with your museum and others, you can download our promotional messaging guide, which includes messaging and images to use across social, websites, email and more.
Article: New research from Art Fund finds that pupils are missing out on museum visits