Dinosaur Isle and Tourism on the Isle of Wight

Martin Munt
Curator of geology
Dinosaur Isle Museum

http://www.dinosaurisle.com/

Introduction

The Lower Cretaceous to Paleogene sequence found on the Isle of Wight is rich in fossil remains and makes the Isle of Wight one of England 's top fossil sites. The Isle of Wight is the richest source for dinosaur remains in Europe, and a primary source of late Paleogene vertebrates in the UK. It is also known for the large heteromorphic ammonites that can be found here.

Several museums and centres provide geological interpretation, including the Dinosaur Isle museum, which has a history dating back to the 1850s. In addition the Dinosaur Farm Museum was opened in 1993, and there are fossil shops, a field studies centre and a coastal visitors centre.

Dinosaur Isle museum

The Dinosaur Isle Museum receives about 60,000 visitors per year. 10,000 of these are children in organised groups such as school parties, and a further 2000 are other types of organised groups, such as geological societies. Of the visitors, approximately 84% are tourists or visitors to the Isle of Wight rather than locals.

The museum runs a number of activities for its visitors, including talks, handling sessions, field trips, specialist groups, festivals, arts activities, Lifelong Learning and Flexible Learning programmes, and schools and societies outreach programmes.

The museum is staffed by a curator, assistant curator, a conservator, a community learning office a general manager and a retail manager full-time. Part-time staff include a museum assistant and retail assistants.

Issues

A number of issues are beginning to affect the museum and the events it holds, including the site sustainability of fieldtrip sites; health and safety issues, especially related to fieldtrips; a concentrated demand for events, mainly in the summer months and also the seasonality of some of the activities; funding for the museum; local support; and pricing.

What Works

• Standard visits, talks and fieldtrips for schools
• Free public talks and field trips
• Paying public talks and field trips in the holiday season.

What Struggles

• Family and lifelong learning (but is generally cost covering and politically worthwhile)
• Initiatives which rely on outside individuals (i.e. collectors, but can work to build bridges).

What Does Not Work

• Large public trade shows.
• Out of season paying field trips.
• Public lectures.

The Future

The musem is now looking into diversification and the possibility of partnership-based events, in particular the possibility of building links with other areas of natural history and archaeology. It is also recognising the need to be opportunistic and to pick up on national themes and topics in order to continue to generate interest.

Challenges for the future include

• Changes to off-site learning legislation, which may make it harder to run fieldtrips
• The general insecurity and vagaries of the tourist trade
• Funding
• Site sustainability
• Fossil collecting.