Take your partners

• David Barrie is the chairman of Make Justice Work
• Paul Camic is a professor of psychology and public health at the Canterbury Christ Church University Chris Large is the director of sustainable business at Global Action Plan
• Bridget McKenzie (pictured above, in the centre) is a co-founder of Flow Associates 
• Zoe Partington-Sollinger (pictured above, on the left) is a consultant and arts development officer at the Royal National Institute of Blind People. 
• Amanda Peters is the chairwoman and co-founder of Vintage Vision, a social enterprise for excluded women
• Sam Smethers is the chief executive of Grandparents Plus
• Laura Stoll is a researcher at the New economics Foundation, an independent thinktank that promotes economic wellbeing
  

Paul Camic: The work I’ve done with museums has mostly been research in the area of social inclusion for people with mental health problems and dementia, and the people who care for them.

The project we’ve recently completed at Dulwich Picture Gallery and Nottingham Contemporary was looking at the impact of traditional European art and contemporary conceptual art to see if one artform or the other produced different reactions. We discovered that there were absolutely no differences in the level of enthusiasm; the engagement was nearly identical.

Zoe Partington-Sollinger: I’ve worked with many museums and over the past few years, including venues across the West Midlands looking at how they interpret their collections to blind and partially sighted people.

We’ve done that through intensive training with staff and also bringing blind and partially sighted people to galleries so that they were involved in workshops with artists to look at the stuff that is in the collections.

Sam Smethers: We’ve been engaging with others in the museum sector who focus on family. It’s about access and inclusivity, particularly around generations.

We’d like to do more, particularly around health and wellbeing, thinking about older people and the mutually beneficial areas of getting older people to have a positive experience for themselves in the museum.

But [there is] also the positive experience for the children and the family, and the importance of supporting those relationships.

Amanda Peters: We’re a very small, quite new, organisation, so our experience has been working with our local museum.

We work with a lot of different groups of women and the museum has used us as a resource. When they’ve been doing exhibitions or social history stuff, they’ve come to us to see if we can get people to contribute.

The project that we’re working on now is called What is Fashion?, which is about bringing older and younger women together.

Abergavenny and Chepstow museums are cataloguing their collections then identifying themes and bringing a group of women together to look at the collections more closely and to see what they create.

Chris Large: Global Action Plan runs temporary interactive exhibitions that help people understand environmental issues and make their own conclusions.

These have been in dozens of museums around the country. We also work with some specific museums to help them cut their carbon footprints, improve their efficiency and save their energy bills.

Laura Stoll: The Centre for Wellbeing did a project for Happy Museums about what the challenges would be for the museum sector in terms of wellbeing and sustainability, and what some of the potential was.

In addition, we do work valuing wellbeing so we can compare across projects. We also work on wellbeing policy and with a parliamentary group who are keen to think about what implications there might be for policy at government level.

Bridget McKenzie: I’d like to mention the power of collaborative museum projects. One example is a project I set up called Campaign! Make an Impact, which developed the skills of young people to campaign.

They were learning from archived materials in museums and archives across the country, and then working with creative professionals to learn how to communicate effectively, and then running their own campaigns. It created toolkits and training materials that could be rolled out.


Laura Stoll: With really limited resources, it becomes even more essential to be clear about your impacts and to measure them and demonstrate the value that you are then returning to the public.

Amanda Peters: It would be quite interesting to look across the country because I’m guessing that some museums will be in the forefront of partnership working.

Others can still get funding, but that will partly be because they are new. So it’s constantly about new projects. But sadly the core work is probably the stuff that’s going to get hit.

Bridget McKenzie: Funds are less and you see fewer big projects, but you also see more projects that are a little bit slower and more cautious. We’ve been working more on projects that are more reflective. For example, collections reviews in museums are generating quite strategic reflection on digital access.

I’m not saying that funding cuts are good, it’s just that there is at least a shift towards an impact focused and reflective approach. And we’re doing a lot more impact evaluation than we used to do.

David Barrie: A lot depends on how energetic and creative museum professionals are. If they’re prepared to go out and develop projects and pitch for funding, the money’s still available. Certainly it’s not a zero-sum game. It’s very, very important that people don’t become too despondent and give up.

Zoe Partington-Sollinger: There’s a perception with the public that maybe we’re spending too much on the cultural sector and other things are more important.

I think organisations are reducing some of those departments that have been working in that way, but actually we do still need them. All the museums and galleries that we want to work with want to work with us in a collaborative way.

Chris Large: Museums need to look at non-traditional funders. When money gets a bit tight, look outside the usual networks and align what you already do with a challenge that someone else has.

If you can show that you are a trusted source, you’re a place where people can come and learn in a very friendly and accessible environment, then that’s a valuable commodity.

Sam Smethers: When money’s tight you have to be transparent about how you’re spending it and what you’re delivering. Accountability to the public is really important.

I think if we could know more about what our museums do with the resources they get, I’m sure we’d all be very impressed, but it’s not something they really shout about. It would be good if they could be more proactive about demonstrating how they’re delivering for the public.


Chris Large: We’ve seen from research that museums are trusted places. Coming from an environmental organisation and from a scientific background, we’re dealing with an issue that’s been very politicised and there are lots of different lobby groups with lots of vested interests, but there is undisputed science and we don’t hear about it in the media.

There’s a role for inspiring people about sustainability and what a sustainable society and a sustainable lifestyle looks like. It’s not going back to living in caves without electricity. Actually, it’s a more attractive lifestyle than the one we’ve got at the minute.

Zoe Partington-Sollinger: For me, working with blind and partially sighted people, it’s about reducing isolation, having social contact with other people, having an interest in life, and being able to find something else.

Sam Smethers: We’re concerned with ensuring that the role of grandparents is recognised, valued and supported, and grandparents taking children to museums is part of the fabric of what a lot of museums do. I think there’s more they could do to understand the value of that, in terms of family relationships.

And also to think about the benefits, particularly for older people, and to think about it in the context of an ageing population, tackling issues like dementia and making sure that older people feel valued and that their experience and expertise are recognised.

David Barrie: I’ve been doing a lot of work in the criminal justice sector, which may not seem the most obvious area in which museums and galleries could be active, but I suspect there is more that could be done.

There are a lot of organisations like the Koestler Trust that are very active working with offenders in prison. There is also a lot of scope for museums and galleries to do some work with ex-offenders. There are some quite revolutionary changes taking place right now in the criminal justice world.

One important element of which is the proposal that every ex-offender should have a mentor. Many offenders and ex-offenders have disabilities, psychiatric problems, and drug and alcohol dependency problems, and they need help.

They need support, they need safe places to go. And it may well be that museums and galleries could do a lot more in that area.


Sam Smethers: They open your mind. They have a wealth of knowledge and information, often presented in a very creative and inspiring way. You can’t get that anywhere else. It’s something about that creativity combined with the depth of the information. It’s a very rich experience going into a museum.

Paul Camic: I would agree they stimulate you – cognitively, emotionally perhaps, with memory as well as new learning. I don’t know if there’s any place in our society that does it quite that way.

David Barrie: One thing we haven’t touched on is the significance of the developing relationship with a museum.

Going once is one thing, but going repeatedly and developing a relationship is something that a lot of people who have the good fortune to be able to do so, find extraordinarily enriching.

Chris Large: Museums have a physical place that lots of third-sector organisations don’t have, particularly new community organisations that are trying to solve a particular local issue. And they have a grounding. Museums have been a part of the community that they’re in for a long time in a lot of cases.

Zoe Partington-Sollinger: For many disabled people who are constantly having to go into clinical environments, being in museums and galleries lifts their spirit.

Paul Camic: Museums have the potential to be socially inclusive. They could be intimidating; Tate Britain with its neoclassical structure might intimidate people. It’s not just the objects but it’s the staff in museums that can help people make those connections.

That can really change people’s lives and I don’t say that as a throwaway statement. I’ve experienced that in projects with people from a variety of different backgrounds, different social classes, with different problems, where the museum or the art gallery has made a real difference in their life.

Amanda Peters: They’re safe places, they’re unique places, they’re inspirational places. But they are only those things to some people. For me, the thing that museums have is their staff, and I include their volunteers, who are a hugely important asset.

We work with a lot of socially excluded people but they will not just turn up at the museum; something has to happen to make that happen.

We are probably better at facilitating that than the museum, but we cannot do it without the museum staff. Then what you start to get is a transference of skills because as we work together they become more comfortable at working with these particular groups and more experienced.

Bridget McKenzie: Museums are a combination of several factors. For example the Cuming and the Livesey museums in Southwark have both undergone very drastic change.

The Livesey was closed and the Cuming has burned down. And each has considered ways of continuing to operate despite the loss of space, people, collections.

I think it’s possible for a museum to still do things without one of the three. [But ideally] you need an extraordinary space, you need extraordinary collections, and you need extraordinary people, either expert about the things or expert facilitators.

When you’ve got the three things combined then it really works. The Cuming is looking at other community places that can take some of its salvaged objects, and continue doing the outreach work.


Chris Large: I’m reminded of the old government information films when there was a new thing that people didn’t get yet.

I think museums could have a role in that contemporary element of what they’re exhibiting, whether you’re the V&A or the Natural History Museum, bringing the knowledge right up-to-date about any subject.

I started thinking about that because we are coming up with more terms than ever before to describe our society and the green economy, but what is the green economy? What are the jobs in the green economy? What do they look like?

It would be wonderful for someone to explain what the green economy means. Or you let people in who might be able to explain some contemporary issues once a month. You could invite partners in to do it with you.

Amanda Peters: For me the main thing is increasing the amount of people and the type of people that get a worthwhile experience from those museums. The fundamental thing for me is to broaden the reach.

Sam Smethers: I think one of the big challenges is the challenge of the ageing population. Museums are in a perfect place to play a leading role in a positive way in terms of active ageing, how older people are engaged so they’re not seen as people with needs or as a burden on society, but people with a lot to offer and a lot to contribute.

Paul Camic: I’d like museums and galleries to be laboratories, places to do experiments. And for them to develop either on their own or in partnerships with different organisations, to try different things out and to test them.


Amanda Peters: Some museum staff are very open to partnership working and others are threatened by it. And that comes out as being “there’s a million and one things that you can’t do, and there’s a very small thing that you can do”.

When you’re working with people who look at it the other way and say, “actually, let’s see what we can do, let’s push the boundaries here”, it’s just so much more rewarding for everybody concerned.

I’m an advocate of “walking in my shoes”, seeing what it’s like and getting experience from other sectors. It is so important to see how somebody else has done it and that makes it less threatening and more possible.

Zoe Partington-Sollinger: For disabled people there are so many barriers in your life that you have to come up with creative solutions, otherwise you’d never get out. So you think like that all the time.

I think sometimes people working in museums and galleries will get a professional in to look at some of these issues and it will cost an awful lot of money. A disabled person will turn up and say: “Why didn’t you just do this? It would only cost £5.”

Chris Large: The museum is there to look after the heritage of something, breathe new life into it, make it real for a new generation, get people excited about that subject, and our organisations are there for a particular cause.

And so it’s probably us that would need to go to the museum and say: “Hey, you could do this amazing thing.”

But what museums can realise is that if they have a particular cause that they do want to work on, they can go and talk to any of our organisations and you’ll have an open door.

This roundtable discussion was developed as part of the Museums Association’s research into people’s attitudes to museums and galleries.

The findings will contribute to the MA’s Museums 2020 initiative, which is looking at the impact museums can have on individuals, communities, society and the environment