"It explored how processes of organisational change can help organisations to embed community engagement and participatory ways of working into the core of their work."
Regis Cochefert: Our Museum Project Summary
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| Regis Coquefert : Director, Grants and Programmes : Paul Hamelyn Foundation |
Regis spoke about the key areas for participatory practice
- Governance
- Staff Professional Development (important to democratise decision making)
- How to engage with community partners
- Evaluation
He spoke about the importance of voices from outside the museum, in terms of deciding perameters for evaluation and for evaluation.
He pointed us towards the Our Museums journey planner document on their website as a method for evaluating. The Maritime Museum has been using this framework for their evaluation, as has Hackney Museum. (I've actually struggled to find this online).
There are two more partd of this trilogy of publications to follow. One is an evaluation of the programme by Paul Hamelyn Foundation and the other is an evaluation of Paul Hamelyn Foundation's Management of the Our Museums Project!
Iain Watson: Museum Temporality
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| Iain Watson : Director : Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums |
Iain opened with TWAMS' Mission: To help people determine their place in the world and define their identities, so enhancing their self-respect
He is not dissatisfied with how well they are fulfilling their mission, but he talks about the challenge of moving from a resource-led to a needs-led programme.
Museums have log time-frames. It is important to change with the times, but also to keep an eye on the longer term.
He brought up the latest news of cuts to museum funding and emphasized that those who can't adapt won't survive.
He spoke about museum 3.0
Peter Latchford:
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| Peter Latchford : Chief Executive : Black Radley |
Peter discussed the perceived binary of Income Generation vs Widening Participation.
He said that there is a tension and that that isn't a problem. He asked, 'If there are conflicting priorities, must we solve them? Must we reach agreement?'. His emphatic asnwer was No! That tension is necessary to bring energy to a situation, but that they do need to be balanced.
If either drive takes full priority, things start to go wrong. His example was social housing. The tension is public funds vs public needs. If too much focus on economy is allowed, the end housing may not help social problems. If too mush emphasis is on the needs of people then we might go way over budget. (I think this was his point, it's been a while since I took these notes..)
Museum people come from the public sector, so they are driven by a desire to please the whole public. This will never work as you can't please everyone and you'll end up with a grey offer.
A focus on differing audience segments involves different costs and different incomes. It may be that to reach a difficult goupr of people, costs are high and cash income low. Some secments of society bring in lots of money by buying coffee in the cafe, some by attracting specific funding. The total profit from all these visitors determines whether we stay in business.
Austerity has meant that the more costly customers show more, a normal business would simply stop serving those who bring in less cash. Obviously museums judge on more than income, so hopefully we can continue to be a service for all types of people.
If you can't be clear about why a pound we spend on disadvantaged groups can do more than if it were given to a care home to spend (or a hospital or a breakfast club etc etc), you won't get it, and you shouldn't either.
He talked a bit about the relationship between business goals and social goals and how they interrelate. By having both types we end with a better product.
We must also make efforts not to be self-serving. We shouldn't be trying to do good in order to make people grateful or to make ourselves feel good.
He said that the most successful museums seem to be those in working class settings.
John Orna-Ornstein
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| John Orna-Ornstein : Director Museums : Arts Council England |
He questioned what we mean by the word community. He said there is no consensus and that it seems to mean
"Those people out there"
"Those who we want to get hold of and make their lives better"
His own definition is 'Users and non-users of a museum in line with the purpose of the museum'
He asked 'Who are we doing it for?' Why work with communities?' and He suggested that the drive to do so doesn't come from within those communities. He said he only knows of one survey that has been done with members of the public in town centres where they were asked what they thought the job of museums should be. The overwhelming response was that museums should provide for school trips and that they should quietly look after the old stuff. They WEREN'T wanting to participate.
So that drive for audience participation comes from the top - from the Labour government via HLF.
Museum people are in general agreement that we should widen audiences, but why should we? Does the use of public money have to mean that we do stuff for the WHOLE public? He pointed out that many public services only work for a narrow segment of society.
Then he told us about his idea of the museum of the future.
It was a place with a fundamental focus on audience and needs NOT assuming what the public want. It involved being brave and doing things differently and being different from other museums.
He spoke about brave leaders in small museums being the future of the sector and that it is those people's job to make the rest of us feel uncomfortable.
Q&A
Someone asked how these future leaders would be found. John said they will discover themselves, particularly through brave funders like PHF. It will help if managers value and nurture difference.
Peter pointed out that leadership requires a set of skills rarely found all in one person, so he siggested that future leadership might be dispersed.
The panel settled on the term heretics to describe these bottom-up, unique leaders. They said that they need protecting as they are often seen as the enemy within. Apparently we need to be knowledgable and ready to fight our corner.
Overall I found a lot of the day quite combative and awkward. Personally, I don't feel that success has to be an overcoming of something or that we need to fight some higher power that is stifling everyone below. Perhaps this is a result of having a manager who isn't a nurb and working in a small museum where everyone is quite well listened to. Or maybe it's to do with lots of us being girls slowly working together to get places instead of trying to bash away at winning the whole time. I think that the whole idea of listening to people in the community to take on board their ideas of need and success and objectives is in direct opposition to the idea of leaders who aggressively innovate. If we are to respect communities then we shouldn't encourage leaders who stick up for them, we should evolve into organisations which are open and gentle with our audiences and potential audiences. moan over.
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