It is making hotels uneasy and sending taxi drivers round the twist – collaborative consumption, the loosely defined economic model of peer-to-peer exchange, bartering and sharing of underused skills and resources, is in the news.
If you have ever used eBay, booked a cab via Uber or stayed in an Airbnb, you are already part of it. It is a way of thinking that chimes especially well with the current age of frugality and green awareness.
The “sharing economy” prioritises:
Some would argue that collaborative consumption is the resurgence of a rather old system rather than a hip new one, but this time around it’s been driven by some very modern technology, with websites, apps and social media facilitating new connections between people and organisations.
The Centre for the Future of Museums in the US identified the sharing economy as one of its top trends for the museum and heritage sector in its 2014 Trendswatch report.
With public spaces and extensive repositories of objects – plus an ethos already based around sharing and community engagement – museums are in many ways a good fit for collaborative consumption.
Sharing and repairing
Since 2011, the National Trust in England has set aside allotments and community gardens on its properties for green-fingered members of the public via Landshare, the website started by TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to help prospective growers find homeowners who have space to spare in their gardens. The idea is that all parties share the produce.
This sustainable way of thinking lies behind other types of events. Earlier this year the Long Island Children’s Museum in Vancouver, Canada, staged hands-on workshops where children worked with replica Swiss watches to learn how to diagnose and repair faults rather than throwing items away.
Elsewhere, museums have opened their doors to facilitate different kinds of sharing activity. The Design Museum in London has hosted bike kitchens, where people can learn how to fix their own bikes, share skills or access specialist tools.
For some museums, it’s about monetising their assets. A number of museums now hire out underutilised equipment and even expertise to their peers.
Collaborative collections
As the Centre for the Future of Museums points out, it’s not likely that museums could start bartering real-life objects in this way. But with lending already at the heart of museum practice, many institutions have found ways to share their collections more widely with communities and other sectors.
The Museums Association’s Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund supported a project last year by Monmouthshire Museums Services called What is Fashion?, in which the museum lent items of historic clothing to a local social enterprise, Vintage Vision, for workshops in which women could design replicas of the garments in order to learn how to sew, construct new clothing and reuse old textiles.
The project ended with a pop-up exhibition of the replica pieces in the company’s high-street shop, while in return, the museum enriched its collections knowledge through working with Vintage Vision’s costume historian.
The sharing economy isn’t without its drawbacks – for one thing, it’s still unregulated. But it offers an exciting way forward from the old consumerist, throwaway ideology that has held sway for so long.
What Is Fashion? enabled our museums to benefit from expertise that does not exist in the service. Working with a costume historian improved our knowledge ofour costume collection.
Seeing the sewing workshop participants inspired by our collections to design their own work was both interesting and a privilege to watch.
Working with Vintage Vision meant we benefited from their community knowledge, and I hope this gave us a better ability to look at a project through the eyes of our partners, who liked the quality of the interpretation and presentation.
I think all of us would agree that it was a complex and long project, and not always plain sailing, but it has given all partners a lot of credibility and raised our profile in new areas of work. We have learned a lot, and the women involved in all parts of the project have gained a lot.
As a result we would encourage museums and third sector organisations to explore how they can work with each other.
Rachael Rogers is the heritage and culture service transformation lead at Monmouthshire County Council
If you have ever used eBay, booked a cab via Uber or stayed in an Airbnb, you are already part of it. It is a way of thinking that chimes especially well with the current age of frugality and green awareness.
The “sharing economy” prioritises:
- access over possession
- recycling over waste
- shared ownership and knowledge over individualism.
Some would argue that collaborative consumption is the resurgence of a rather old system rather than a hip new one, but this time around it’s been driven by some very modern technology, with websites, apps and social media facilitating new connections between people and organisations.
The Centre for the Future of Museums in the US identified the sharing economy as one of its top trends for the museum and heritage sector in its 2014 Trendswatch report.
With public spaces and extensive repositories of objects – plus an ethos already based around sharing and community engagement – museums are in many ways a good fit for collaborative consumption.
Sharing and repairing
Since 2011, the National Trust in England has set aside allotments and community gardens on its properties for green-fingered members of the public via Landshare, the website started by TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to help prospective growers find homeowners who have space to spare in their gardens. The idea is that all parties share the produce.
This sustainable way of thinking lies behind other types of events. Earlier this year the Long Island Children’s Museum in Vancouver, Canada, staged hands-on workshops where children worked with replica Swiss watches to learn how to diagnose and repair faults rather than throwing items away.
Elsewhere, museums have opened their doors to facilitate different kinds of sharing activity. The Design Museum in London has hosted bike kitchens, where people can learn how to fix their own bikes, share skills or access specialist tools.
For some museums, it’s about monetising their assets. A number of museums now hire out underutilised equipment and even expertise to their peers.
Collaborative collections
As the Centre for the Future of Museums points out, it’s not likely that museums could start bartering real-life objects in this way. But with lending already at the heart of museum practice, many institutions have found ways to share their collections more widely with communities and other sectors.
The Museums Association’s Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund supported a project last year by Monmouthshire Museums Services called What is Fashion?, in which the museum lent items of historic clothing to a local social enterprise, Vintage Vision, for workshops in which women could design replicas of the garments in order to learn how to sew, construct new clothing and reuse old textiles.
The project ended with a pop-up exhibition of the replica pieces in the company’s high-street shop, while in return, the museum enriched its collections knowledge through working with Vintage Vision’s costume historian.
The sharing economy isn’t without its drawbacks – for one thing, it’s still unregulated. But it offers an exciting way forward from the old consumerist, throwaway ideology that has held sway for so long.
Shared experiences
What Is Fashion? enabled our museums to benefit from expertise that does not exist in the service. Working with a costume historian improved our knowledge ofour costume collection.
Seeing the sewing workshop participants inspired by our collections to design their own work was both interesting and a privilege to watch.
Working with Vintage Vision meant we benefited from their community knowledge, and I hope this gave us a better ability to look at a project through the eyes of our partners, who liked the quality of the interpretation and presentation.
I think all of us would agree that it was a complex and long project, and not always plain sailing, but it has given all partners a lot of credibility and raised our profile in new areas of work. We have learned a lot, and the women involved in all parts of the project have gained a lot.
As a result we would encourage museums and third sector organisations to explore how they can work with each other.
Rachael Rogers is the heritage and culture service transformation lead at Monmouthshire County Council
