One of the best-attended and well-received sessions at the Museums Association's (MA) annual conference in October involved a game of Museum Fantasy Funding. The premise was that the chancellor, Gordon Brown, had promised the museum world an unfeasibly large amount of new money.
Within an hour we had to decide what single project we would spend it on. Ideas abounded, from the delusional (a pay rise for all) to the fanciful (shoes) to the more prosaic and sensible (diversifying audiences; a national programme of touring exhibitions).
The winner was a proposal for a nationwide programme of professionally-run, properly-funded, secondments. Aside from the clear desire of many of the delegates to get that key secondment to the Seychelles, why did this prove to be the most popular?
Because there is a growing recognition that we must do more to develop the profession and widen the individual and collective experience of those who work in museums.
Collections remain the issue du jour, but it isn't collections that make a museum. Objects can't interpret themselves, bid for new funding or run outreach programmes.
It's people that enable museums to fulfil their potential; people that raise money; people who galvanise other people, people who have the expertise and skill to research and interpret collections.
So, why is this sector so poor at investing time and resources in developing people? In most other industries, staff development and training are as much part of the core budget as office cleaning, paperclips and light bulbs.
In the museum community, it seems to be desirable but not essential. Despite the efforts of the MA and its professional development schemes, there is still an insufficient culture of career progression.
This is compounded by some museum professionals' unwillingness to get out more. To use Disraeli's political metaphor - too many museum professionals, confronted by the greasy pole he or she should climb to reach fulfilment and wider horizons, would pass up the chance to make the ascent and would be more likely to examine it, conserve it, document it to Spectrum standard and then put it in off-site storage.
There is insufficient fluidity within the sector. What museum professionals must do is gain wider experience, see more people, take in different work environments, understand more, learn more, make more contacts.
To do this, we need to make real efforts to get them out of their workplaces into fresh and challenging places where they can contribute and then bring back what they have learned and apply it to their own museum.
This should not be restricted to museums, because so many of the skills we need to learn are in the private, voluntary, charitable and higher education sectors. We also want people from all these sectors to come and spend some time with us, in order that we can learn from them.
Many will remember the Sharing Museum Skills Millennium Awards scheme, which ran from 2000 to 2003. I was involved with the scheme, and it was a joy to see how the perspectives of 250 museum professionals were transformed by as little as six weeks working in a different museum on a fresh project.
Evaluation showed that many of them felt that, on their return, they had more to offer to their museum and felt more confident about their abilities. Imagine the benefits of such a scheme on a nationwide scale.
So, how would the scheme work? Here is my (fantasy) version:
grants, on a 50 per cent matching funds basis, would be available
for museums that apply for key staff to go on secondments of up to
three months
it would only be open to museums who can prove they have spent 2 per cent of their salary bill on training and development each year for the previous three years
total funding per secondment would not exceed £10,000 - the money to cover travel and accommodation and 'backfilling' for the secondee
a ringfenced part of the scheme would be made available to bring in secondees from outside the museum sector
successful applicants must set out how they would use and disseminate the new skills/knowledge that they have acquired to their colleagues and the wider museum community.
So, there we are. Secondments for all. How much would it cost? Who cares? What would it do? It would provide one of the biggest boosts to effectiveness, morale and skills development the museum world has ever seen.
Many more than the hundreds of individuals concerned would feel the benefit as we transformed the culture and perspective of the profession giving a return worth many times the original, paltry investment. So, if you happen to see Gordon, tell him to send the money.
Mark Taylor is the director of the Museums Association
Within an hour we had to decide what single project we would spend it on. Ideas abounded, from the delusional (a pay rise for all) to the fanciful (shoes) to the more prosaic and sensible (diversifying audiences; a national programme of touring exhibitions).
The winner was a proposal for a nationwide programme of professionally-run, properly-funded, secondments. Aside from the clear desire of many of the delegates to get that key secondment to the Seychelles, why did this prove to be the most popular?
Because there is a growing recognition that we must do more to develop the profession and widen the individual and collective experience of those who work in museums.
Collections remain the issue du jour, but it isn't collections that make a museum. Objects can't interpret themselves, bid for new funding or run outreach programmes.
It's people that enable museums to fulfil their potential; people that raise money; people who galvanise other people, people who have the expertise and skill to research and interpret collections.
So, why is this sector so poor at investing time and resources in developing people? In most other industries, staff development and training are as much part of the core budget as office cleaning, paperclips and light bulbs.
In the museum community, it seems to be desirable but not essential. Despite the efforts of the MA and its professional development schemes, there is still an insufficient culture of career progression.
This is compounded by some museum professionals' unwillingness to get out more. To use Disraeli's political metaphor - too many museum professionals, confronted by the greasy pole he or she should climb to reach fulfilment and wider horizons, would pass up the chance to make the ascent and would be more likely to examine it, conserve it, document it to Spectrum standard and then put it in off-site storage.
There is insufficient fluidity within the sector. What museum professionals must do is gain wider experience, see more people, take in different work environments, understand more, learn more, make more contacts.
To do this, we need to make real efforts to get them out of their workplaces into fresh and challenging places where they can contribute and then bring back what they have learned and apply it to their own museum.
This should not be restricted to museums, because so many of the skills we need to learn are in the private, voluntary, charitable and higher education sectors. We also want people from all these sectors to come and spend some time with us, in order that we can learn from them.
Many will remember the Sharing Museum Skills Millennium Awards scheme, which ran from 2000 to 2003. I was involved with the scheme, and it was a joy to see how the perspectives of 250 museum professionals were transformed by as little as six weeks working in a different museum on a fresh project.
Evaluation showed that many of them felt that, on their return, they had more to offer to their museum and felt more confident about their abilities. Imagine the benefits of such a scheme on a nationwide scale.
So, how would the scheme work? Here is my (fantasy) version:
grants, on a 50 per cent matching funds basis, would be available
for museums that apply for key staff to go on secondments of up to
three months
it would only be open to museums who can prove they have spent 2 per cent of their salary bill on training and development each year for the previous three years
total funding per secondment would not exceed £10,000 - the money to cover travel and accommodation and 'backfilling' for the secondee
a ringfenced part of the scheme would be made available to bring in secondees from outside the museum sector
successful applicants must set out how they would use and disseminate the new skills/knowledge that they have acquired to their colleagues and the wider museum community.
So, there we are. Secondments for all. How much would it cost? Who cares? What would it do? It would provide one of the biggest boosts to effectiveness, morale and skills development the museum world has ever seen.
Many more than the hundreds of individuals concerned would feel the benefit as we transformed the culture and perspective of the profession giving a return worth many times the original, paltry investment. So, if you happen to see Gordon, tell him to send the money.
Mark Taylor is the director of the Museums Association
