Culture24’s Museums at Night festival saw museums, galleries, libraries, archives and historic houses across the UK open their doors for exciting evening events and spectacular night-time displays
For 10 years between 2009 and 2019, the festival supported museum staff and volunteers in developing the skills and confidence necessary to plan and promote successful Lates. Across the festival’s lifespan 1,273 venues took part, running more than 5,000 events.
With after-hours programming becoming normalised all year, after careful consideration we made to decision to stop producing the festival in 2019. Read more about why here.
Resources
During the festival we created and commissioned a series of resources and case studies to support museums in running events.
Reports
In 2021 Culture24 published the report Rap Under The Rubens: How after-hours events can help break down barriers to museum participation exploring how Lates programmes can help museums to reach underrepresented communities.
Published in 2018, our three-part study into the role that museum Lates play in the night-time economy was the first of its kind.
The future of Lates
Lates programming in cultural venues has huge potential to broaden audiences and to generate income. We look forward to watching more and more Lates events happening across the sector in years to come.