IF you build a playpark, they will come.
New figures have shown the overwhelming success of Scottish heritage venues building play facilities for children, with one site in East Lothian seeing a increase in visitors of more than 1000%. last year.
The new, annual statistics from the the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) show that Scotland, boosted also by the new Dundee V&A and the popularity of the Outlander television series, has outperformed the rest of the UK in the league table of galleries, museums, heritage sites and gardens.
Visitor attractions saw average increases of 8.68% in the UK in 2018, but Scotland saw an overall increase of 19.07%.
Overall, 138,823,297 visits were made to the top 249 ALVA sites in the UK.
The opening of the Weehailes children’s playpark at Newhailes, near Musselburgh, East Lothian resulted in an “phenomenal” increase of 1168.7% to 68,360 visits.
Newhailes is a National Trust for Scotland property, a Palladian villa on the outskirts of the town.
Similarly, the new Wa-Hey play facility at the Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway, Ayr saw the site boosted by a 62% increase to 266,369 visits.
Doune Castle in Stirlingshire, which was a location for Outlander, saw a 14% increase to 142,091 and the Highland Wildlife Park in Inverness-shire saw a 51.5% increase 205,930, which was due, ALVA said, to the popularity of Hamish the Polar Bear, who was born in 2017.
Hamish shares an enclosure with his mother Victoria at the park at Kincraig, near Aviemore, in the Cairngorms.
Bernard Donoghue, the director of ALVA, said: “Attractions across the UK have shown that by investing in their buildings, gardens and staff, presenting globally significant exhibitions, and working together to bring iconic artefacts – whether poppies or dinosaurs - to more people, has been hugely successful.”
Glasgow saw a reduction in visitors to some of its key sites last year, with museum leaders putting some of the reduction down to last year’s hot summer.
The hot summer, by contrast, is credited with boosting Culzean Castle’s numbers by 56% to more than 382,000.
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is in 33rd place in the list, with 1,054m visitors, down 19% from 2017, which was a record year.
The Riverside Museum was visited by 1.25m people, and is in 26th position, down 7.4%.
However, Scotland Street School Museum, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, saw an increase of 21% with 61,846 visits, in a celebration of the architect and designers 150th birthday.
The most visited garden in Scotland was the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh which saw 929,140 visits and a 2.5% increase.
The top ten most visited sites in the UK are all in London, which saw more than 67m visits to its attractions.
London also had the most visited attraction: Tate Modern with 5,868,562 visits.
However for the second year, the most visited attractions outside London were north of the border: in 11th place in the UK was the National Museum of Scotland, with a 3% increase and 2.23m visits.
Next, in 12th position, was Edinburgh Castle, with a 2% increase up to 2.11m.
The castle is also the most visited paid-for attraction in Scotland.
The Scottish National Gallery, also in Edinburgh, saw a 9% increase to 1,739,128 and 16th place.
The V&A Dundee opened in September and had already received 341,265 visits by the end of 2018.
Four of the top 7 ALVA sites with the most growth in the whole of the UK were National Trust for Scotland sites.
Councillor David McDonald, chair of Glasgow Life, which runs the city’s museums and galleries, said: “Glasgow Museums welcomed over 3.5m visits to our 9 world class museums during the last year.
“This follows what was a record year for visitors in 2017.
“The exceptionally good weather [last] summer seems to have led to a slight decrease in overall museum attendances this year, but as the ALVA report confirms we are delighted Riverside and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum remain the most popular attractions in Glasgow, welcoming more than 1 million people each through their doors in 2018.”
He added: “The arrival of Dippy [the dinosaur] at Kelvingrove Museum has created a stir. In his first six weeks we smashed the record for the highest number of visitors to date. Over 375,000 people have marvelled at this massive creature, getting Glasgow Museums off to an amazing start in 2019.”
Mr Donoghue added: “It’s also clear that the bad weather at the beginning of 2018, the very hot summer and the impact of the World Cup resulted in some of our members experiencing a fall in visitor numbers.”
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