what will the museum of the future be like?
Big themes for 2010
Our Director, Frank Howarth, has challenged us in the Australian Museum to think about nine big themes for 2010 as we go into our next strategic planning cycle:
1. Increasing the accessibility of the Museum and its programs
2. Pushing the digital envelope: doing more in the virtual world
3. Partnerships: more leverage and influence
4. Linking cultural collections and communities
5. Increasing our advocacy: taking a stance on things that matter
6. Getting more creative and lateral with what we call “exhibitions”
7. Getting more commercial without jeopardising our brand or values
8. Towards new approaches to cataloguing and understanding our biodiversity
9. Doing the things that are important and have impact, and stopping those that don’t
Frank provided some thought starters for each theme and we are discussing them here on our website.
I'm curious to know what others across our sector think - what are your big themes for 2010 and what should we as a collective do about them??
1. Increasing the accessibility of the Museum and its programs
2. Pushing the digital envelope: doing more in the virtual world
3. Partnerships: more leverage and influence
4. Linking cultural collections and communities
5. Increasing our advocacy: taking a stance on things that matter
6. Getting more creative and lateral with what we call “exhibitions”
7. Getting more commercial without jeopardising our brand or values
8. Towards new approaches to cataloguing and understanding our biodiversity
9. Doing the things that are important and have impact, and stopping those that don’t
Frank provided some thought starters for each theme and we are discussing them here on our website.
I'm curious to know what others across our sector think - what are your big themes for 2010 and what should we as a collective do about them??
Views: 18
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Erika Dicker on -
As a curator it would worry me that
7. Getting more commercial without jeopardising our brand or values
and
9. Doing the things that are important and have impact, and stopping those that don’t
may mean the collection and efforts to document it, may take second place to another idea that earns more money or has more impact.
Think number 5 about taking a stance could be brave and really exciting!
ummm and these big
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Permalink Reply by Sophie Lieberman on -
Hi LK I am looking forward to Friday. I have a question - and one that I hope the 3.0 community can contribute to:
Accessibility or Inclusion?
I strongly believe that when we talk about accessibility we need to expand our understanding of who we are providing access to the Museum for beyond those with physical and mental impairment to include those groups that are socially/culturally/economically dis-abled and therefore “handicapped” in their ability to choose participate (or not) in the cultural sphere.
To do this I think we need to replace ‘accessibility’ with ‘inclusion’ to most fully achieve our mission of inspiring the exploration of nature and cultures.
Australian cultural institutions are not great at social inclusion – a subject that has been embraced widely in the UK and Canada and at the state level in the US. A few interesting examples of this are:
The metropolitan museum’s work with Alzheimer’s patients which was recently trialled at the http://www.abc.net.au/rn/artworks/stories/2009/2741788.htm" target="_blank">AGNSW.
The Museum of London’s Social Inclusiohttp://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Learning/Community/Inclusion/" target="_blank">n program
Elaine Gurians work on the http://museum30.ning.com/forum/topics/museum-as-soup-kitchen" target="_blank">Museum as a Soup Kitchen
The Canadian model of looking at http://www.policyresearch.gc.ca/page.asp?redir=on&pagenm=rp_sc_..." target="_blank">Social Capital in Action
This year the science communication unit developed a relationship with a social services provider to trial Museum Morning Tea’s a parenting literacy program providing access to our wonderfully rich programs for under 5’s to homeless young parents and their children. Based on the Science Morning Teas project by Scitech and Museum Victoria, this provided multiple insights into how we can use our existing cultural and social capital to provide ‘services’/access/inclusion - in the form of a personally meaningful (cultural) experience - to the socially excluded (or dis-abled).
The benefits of MMT’s to the Museum included (but were not limited to)
Engagement of new audiences
Investment in potential future audience and partnerships
Widening of our understanding of our role as advocates = a form of institutional empowerment
Fulfilment of our mission = inspiring the discovery of nature and cultures
Powerful demonstration of our vales as a site and source of social capital
Grant funding
In 2000 the http://www.le.ac.uk/ms/research/Reports/GLLAM.pdf" target="_blank">GLAMM report on Museums and Social Inclusion listed the benefits to institutions as: Increased self esteem, partnerships and funding – or, in terms of Franks challenges for us for 2010:
Partnerships: more leverage and influence; Linking cultural collections and communities; and, Increasing advocacy: taking a stance on things that matter. It behoves us to explore social inclusion as framework for who we are and what we do: it has the capacity to be a powerful tool in the exploration of nature and cultures for all our audiences regardless of their ‘ability’.
What do you think?
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Permalink Reply by Des Griffin on -
In relation to the advocacy issue dealt with on the Australian Museum website and the paper by Walter G. Lehmann, it is important for the Australian situation to be taken into account. There are significant differences from the situation in the USA which Lehmann addresses. There was a discussion of this a couple of months ago on the ABC program, "In the National Interest" presented by the wonderful Peter Mares. A transcript of that is available here.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Reynolds on -
Hi Lynda
Many thanks for sharing these challenges - I think they are hugely interesting and should be distributed widely for discussion. Accordingly I have posted them on my blog - hope that was okay!
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