Museum Makers up for national museum and heritage awards

Museum Makers – which uses our Volunteer Makers volunteer management platform – has been shortlisted for the Best Marketing Campaign in the 2015 Museums and Heritage Awards for their Luton Happy video campaign.

Museum Makers – a team of volunteers set up by Luton Culture to support Wardown Park Museum – are listed with the likes of The Natural History Museum, Imperial War Museums and National Maritime Museum for the prestigious award which will be announced on 29th April.

The team are being recognised for their viral video Luton Happy, which showcased their museum and the people of Luton to the sounds of Pharrell Williams’ hit “Happy”. As well as engaging well over a hundred thousands viewers online, the video came to the attention of the singer who promoted it to his own followers.

Museum Makers manages museum volunteers through their website which runs on our Volunteer Makers platform – an interactive challenge database for growing, managing and engaging volunteers. The Luton Happy video project was one of the challenges put out on the database, and performers, crew, film-makers and editors were recruited via the platform to make the video a reality.

The platform, created by Luton Culture and built on our technology, has helped the team grow their volunteer base from around 40 to well over 1000 in two years, and as well as helping secure the museum’s future has allowed them to pull off a number of impressive engagement coups from the Luton Happy video to a place in the Guinness Book of Records for hat wearing!

The Volunteer Makers platform allows organisations that rely on volunteers to manage their engagement from matching skills with needs, to social promotion and recruitment – all in a user-friendly way that allows volunteers to get involved at a level that suits them, whether that’s a few minutes now and again or a regular commitment.

We’re delighted to be supporting our client and joining them at the event in London.