The Natural History Museum’s Georgie Britton reveals what makes tonies a perfect partner

Georgie Britton, thanks for making time. Tell me… What is it that you do for the Natural History Museum?
Thanks, Deej… I’m the Creative Development Manager in the museum’s licensing department. I manage the product development for our licensing programme as well as the creation of new visual assets such as our style guides and trend packs.

Excellent, thank you! One of the recent projects caught my eye: your partnership with tonies. For the uninitiated, who are they?
Well, tonies is a fantastic company that creates a screen-free audio experience for kids via their legendary toniebox. The toniebox allows children to immerse themselves in storytelling, stimulating their imaginations while also being educational.

And we’ve interviewed Liz Peters from tonies about their products last year… I’ll put a link to that here. In terms of the Natural History Museum partnership, who approached whom?
In fact, tonies approached us! They were planning to launch a new series of Clever Pocket Tonies. These have been created to inspire a love of learning through the magic of audio – and they felt that the NHM brand would be a good fit.

And who could argue with that?! From your perspective, what made made them a great partner for you?
As a world-leading science centre, education is a key part of everything we do. Within the licensing department, we always seek to develop innovative products that inspire a love of the natural world, so – well, you can imagine! To be able to develop a Natural History Museum Tonie that immerses children and families in nature-based adventures and bring out their inner natural explorer was a no brainer!

What did you want to achieve? And how did you make it happen?
This was quite an intense project actually, Deej! We worked very closely with some of our 370 world-leading scientists to make sure that all four scripts were factually accurate – while still remaining engaging and entertaining for audiences. The Natural History Museum: Discovery Crew Clever Pocket Tonies feature four individual stories… They’re themed to Dinosaurs, Oceans, British Wildlife and – lastly – the Museum at Night.

In this last one, three young explorers spend a night at the museum where the exhibits come to life around them. With such varied topics, we worked with an array of different experts including those from our palaeontology, entomology and zoology departments. They were fantastic in helping us to verify all the facts.

Which, I suppose, would be a fantastically important consideration for you!
Oh, absolutely. It was very important to us that this product was authentic and accurate – but also exciting and engaging! Especially since – for many listeners – this would be their first introduction into the world of natural sciences… We wanted to ensure that the fascinating work of our scientists was captured in a realistic way.

Fantastic, thank you! And creatively speaking, Georgie, what was the greatest challenge on this?
Probably managing the wide array of people that were involved! For the British Wildlife story, we included so many different species… From newts and badgers to blackbirds, moths, bees, hedgehogs and many more. This meant involving multiple scientists to develop the script from the start. With so many voices involved, it could easily have become quite difficult to juggle.

You know, I hadn’t given that any thought at all – but yes, that would’ve been very complicated. How did you overcome it?
I have to say that everyone was fantastic and really understood what it was we were trying to achieve… Their feedback was so insightful; it really helped us steer the story in the right direction. In fact, one of our scientists even helped us write the rap that the children perform at the end of one of the stories!

Ha! Hidden talents! What’s next for you at NHM, Georgie?
The next big milestone is – of course. – BLE. We’re now busy preparing for that. I’ve also just delivered a new style guide and have another due for delivery in just over a week’s time – so I’ll be busy making sure that our licensees are aware of these new assets and use them in the most creative way.

Well, it’s enormously good of you to join us for a chat, Georgie, because I know it was quite short notice and that you’re terribly busy. Let’s wrap it up with this question… What’s one thing I could’ve asked you today that I didn’t?
Maybe what’s next for the programme in terms of our licensed children’s products?

Fabulous. And what’s the answer?
In addition to our work with tonies, we have a series of new launches including our first collaboration with My 1st Years, which is a gender-neutral personalised childrenswear collection… This includes raincoats and rain boots, denim jackets, sweatshirts, t-shirts and accessories – all developed with sustainability in mind.

We’re also working with new partners like Seed Pantry and Playpress Toys to develop products to inspire a love of nature in young children. We’re really excited about what’s coming up for our children’s licensing programme, both in terms of new partners onboarding but also new development with our existing licensees. There’s plenty more to come!

Terrific. Thank you so much, Georgie. Looking forward to seeing you in BLE.