Attenborough Arts Centre is pleased to announce that our Marketing Team has been shortlisted for Team of the Year for the Museums + Heritage Awards 2026.

The global awards celebrate excellence across museums, galleries and heritage visitor attractions worldwide, with the ceremony to reveal the winners taking place on the evening of Wednesday 13 May 2026 in London.

This year’s shortlist was selected by independent judges who were selected for their extensive experience across the sector. They seek to reward well-informed and effective public benefit outcomes, rooted in long term preservation and analysis of material culture. The shortlist reflects the diversity of the Museum and Heritage sector featuring organisations such as the Victoria and Albert Museum for ‘Design and Disability’, the Wellcome Collection for visitor experience and engagement, and Culture Leicestershire, Leicestershire County Council for ‘Villiers Revealed: We Have Always Been Here’.

Attenborough Art Centre’s Marketing Team have been nominated for their exceptional achievements over and above their day-to-day work, successfully delivering a significant brand refresh which led to a range of innovations, enabling Attenborough Arts Centre to fulfil its core objective to raise national profile and reputation.

The team comprises of Paige Manning, Marketing Officer, and Sunita Tailor, Digital Marketing Assistant, who work alongside Sam Clay, Marketing Manager (Corporate and Research) at the University of Leicester. The nomination also acknowledges the work of Sean Masters and Paul Bradley from Brand Clear, who over the course of 2025 the team worked closely with to develop a new website for the centre.

Over the course of the past year our Marketing team had led a on range of projects including:

• Launching a refreshed visual identity and new brand guidelines for the organisation alongside a fresh new website.

• Commissioned a new suite of hero images, enabling a new more contemporary and look and feel to better represent the diversity of our audiences.

• Developed the accessibility of our website, championing ease of use for visitors and collectively communicating all core elements of each programme that happens within the centre straight to our local communities.

• Oversaw the implementation of the Recite Me accessibility toolbar, with a range of accessibility features for website users including changing font size, style and colour on any page, magnifying areas of a page and set a reading ruler or mask, adjusting the colour contrast of a page, reading sections of text aloud and downloading audio files and translating text into different languages.

• Developed a regular, impressive range of news stories on our website to build audience interest and engagement. In 2025 this included news stories about our new Cafe, our £1m capital fundraising application developed in consultation with 288 stakeholders and about how our SEND programmes are influencing national policy.

• Delivered campaigns and assets around our environmental commitments with a ‘Creativity with a Conscience’ campaign, a focus on student programmes and film to promote our significant ‘A Decade of Exhibitions’ celebration which looked back at 10 years of our art galleries.

• Developed a range of video content this year, providing fresh new takes on regular events such as our popular Attenborough Lates, with a new promotional film made of our late-night exhibition opening and building takeover during Leicester artist Tim Fowler’s landmark exhibition ‘The Ground’.

• Led on a significant new partnership for the organisation with Bloomberg Philanthropies this year, launching a new digital visitor guide for Attenborough Arts Centre on Bloomberg Connects – taking our programmes to a global audience. This was in addition to joining Art Fund this year, increasing AAC’s national profile among Art Fund’s 142,000 members.

All of these significant achievements were made on top of our team’s everyday work of managing and maintaining the website and CRM systems, seasonal programming across multiple departments, social media and digital communications, in-person events, design of physical assets such as flyers and brochures, and more.

Our Marketing team work closely together and inclusively and collaboratively with the whole organisation to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard. They work consistently to evolve the look and feel of Attenborough Arts Centre to deliver our mission of ‘Art For All’.

Congratulations and best of luck at the awards ceremony!

For more information, please visit www.awards.museumsandheritage.com