Estimated economic impact of over £8 million upon local economy by the Museum of Free Derry

The Museum of Free Derry had an estimated economic impact of over £8 million upon the local economy, according to new figures.

Figures obtained from a survey in conjunction with North West Enterprise.

The survey sought to discover where people were coming from, if the museum was the reason they were visiting Derry, and the overall economic impact the museum had upon the city. 

Director of the Bloody Sunday Trust, Maeve McLaughlin, said she was pleasantly surprised by the figures obtained by the survey of 80 people. 

She said: “We knew we were having an impact; we knew with our social enterprise model, as we are bringing visitors in, employing local people, being in the heart of the Bogside.

“The museum, from its opening (2007), has exceeded its expectations and everybody's expectations.”

The Museum of Free Derry posted the figures from their survey in a Facebook post. 

It discovered that an estimated £8,099,493 was the economic impact of the museum, as the average spend of the people surveyed was £191.50, with the total number of visitors in this period equalling 42,295. 

The museum found that 62 percent of those questioned cited the Museum of Free Derry as their primary reason for visiting the city. 

Ms. McLaughlin said: “That spend is in relation to spending in the city when they are here, on accommodation, generally on restaurants and cafes. 

“You can see in our small sample just how much was being spent on our local economy.

“Those are huge visitor numbers, and I have no doubt that we will exceed that this year. Even as an example, on Monday, August 19, we had 405 people visit through the doors.

“£8 million into the local economy because they came to visit this museum, and they spent their money in the shops, restaurants, pubs, and accommodation. It is a statistic that cannot be ignored.”

The museum is the people’s story of government oppression, the struggle for civil rights, the descent into conflict, Free Derry, and Bloody Sunday.

Political tourism is a form of tourism that attracts people with a political purpose, politically arranged journeys, or those interested in journeys to political destinations.

Ms. McLaughlin feels vindicated in her support in this form of tourism, believing the Museum of Free Derry is proving to be the perfect example of its potential success across Northern Ireland. 

She said: “The minister Conor Murphy brought the tourism officials to the museum, and he has taken a strong notion on political tourism, where others previously had stayed away from it.

“He has set up a ministerial working group to look at how political tourism can be defined and be included in tourism strategies moving forward. I have been appointed to this group. 

“There is now more of an open door to tell this story from Tourism NI and Tourism Ireland.

“People want to understand the stories around Northern Ireland, particularly in areas in west Belfast and south Armagh.

“I think the concept of political tourism and the contested narrative in the north of Ireland. It more people moved to the space of accepting that we have a contested narrative, with that narrative including the role of a British state, that it can no longer be ignored and it needs to be packaged and marketed.”

The story told by the Museum of Free Derry is not an isolated one, as there are many stories of struggles of inequality across the globe. 

Ms. McLaughlin believes tourists are coming to the museum to see Derry’s story and learn from the events in this period.

She said: “There is no doubt people want to understand this story. We have set ourselves about telling the story of the city in that period about putting it in the contexts of the modern day. This has to be about what we did wrong as well as what we did right so that there are lessons too.

“There is a section of the museum that looks at the emergence of the Civil Rights campaign, and we were influenced by Martin Luther King and what was happening in the United States. Now what is happening is people from the United States and other places are looking in at us and saying, ‘How did you do that, and what can we learn from your experience?’

“It is a critically important story, and in my view, I think that story has been ignored for too long. The story has been ignored from official systems in and around Tourism NI and Tourism Ireland. I think that the world is changing and the figures speak for themselves.

“The museum is clearly a key economic driver, and I think the organisations and the system need to stand up and support that. It is clear that it is a reason why people are coming. People want to understand the emergence of the Civil Rights campaign and Bloody Sunday, and they want it in the context of the current day and what remains unresolved.”