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Museums Association publishes annual report 2006/7
26-09-2007
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'More and more people have come to understand the importance of standing together as one community and speaking with one voice,' says Mark Taylor, the MA's director, in the introduction to the MA's annual report...
The statistic that pleases the council and staff of the Museums Association (MA) most is that individual membership has risen by 16 per cent in five years. This means that we are now representing a further 750 people in the museum sector.
The association uses this as its premiere performance indicator because it shows us that we are consistently providing the services that convince people to become or remain members.
There are many reasons for this growth. The most obvious is that the association understands and delivers what people want. Members now receive Museum Practice as well as Museums Journal and recognise the extraordinary levels attained by all our publications and online resources. The quality of our professional development and events programmes is renowned as being professional and rigorous, yet also engaging and responsive to members’ needs.
Our growing size and influence means we can be effective in lobbying and advocacy, particularly with our initiatives that reflect the concerns of the museum community. These include: the campaign to address the appalling salaries in museums; the work to create a more diverse and representative workforce; the investigation into entry into the profession; the defending of the ethical principles on which we all depend for people’s trust; and the drive, following Collections for the Future and now Effective Collections, to put objects and people’s engagement with them at the heart of what museums do.
More and more people understand the importance of standing together as one community and speaking with one voice. They see external factors that appear to be conspiring to divide and demoralise a sector that has so much more in common than it has differences. The drive to emphasise a sector called museums, libraries and archives; the lack of will of some local authorities to recognise and support museums; the increasing difficulties independent museums have in sustaining themselves; the challenges devolution poses to cross border initiatives; the threat of an unsympathetic comprehensive spending review, declining lottery funding and political change all bear down on a community that has good reason to be more fearful about the next decade than the last.
Yet there is much to be proud of and some of these concerns may not be realised. Above all we must stand together and build on the huge achievements of the past ten years. It is only the MA that can bring together all sides of our profession and it is good to see the increasing confidence that people have in us to fulfil that role.
Mark Taylor
Director, Museums Association
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