Roaming with RAMM

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Project Outline

Roaming with RAMM was an exciting historic treasure hunt created by our engagement team in June 2020. It followed our hugely successful RAMM at Home project, which was developed in response to the Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020. As restrictions eased and the summer holidays approached, we wanted to develop an activity aimed at encouraging and inspiring people to get out and about and enjoy some fresh air after the long months of lockdown. A key aim of this project was to help people to reconnect with RAMM’s wonderful collections despite the museums continued closure due to the pandemic.

Roaming with RAMM took the form of a series of weekly challenges aimed at encouraging families to explore the city on foot, unravelling riddles and discovering fascinating, and often hidden, historic treasures. Each challenge started directly outside the museum, with six clues released weekly via our social media channels and RAMM’s website. As well as providing an opportunity to explore the beautiful city of Exeter, Roaming with RAMM was also an opportunity for people to find out about how some of RAMM’s fascinating objects are intrinsically link to the City’s long history.

The Challenge

Starting on Friday 24th July 2020, Roaming with RAMM was a six week summer activity aimed primarily at children and families. Our biggest challenge was how to keep people connected and interested in the museum despite the fact that its doors had been closed since March. Although RAMM, and indeed many other cultural organisations, had been offering online home activities during the height of lockdown, we felt that the timing was right to encourage people to begin to be to get outside again and explore their local area with a fun history focused activity with direct links to various objects in the museum’s collections.

How people engaged with this project

In the six week period (24 July – 5 September) when Roaming with RAMM was functioning as a ‘live’ project we had 426 page views on the website. 37% of these views were new visitors and 63% were returning visitors. The average time on the page was 02:59. This was higher for returning visitors with an average time on the page of 04:00. 54% viewed on desktop, 36% on mobile, 10% on tablet. Visitors can still access Roaming with RAMM and take part in the activity by visiting our website.

Feedback

It was difficult to assess people’s experience of Roaming with RAMM as it was a self-directed activity but we did have some lovely tweets from people who had taken part such as this one:

Lovely stroll this afternoon following the clues from @RAMMuseum #Exeter
Week 1 done ✔        Looking forward to more over the summer 😃👍