The Lessons in Leadership session at the Museums Association (MA) conference this year, organised by the Women Leaders in Museums Network (WLMN), brought sharply into focus the need for ongoing professional and personal support for women of all ages working in museums.
The conference session was supported by 23 members of the leadership network (more than half the membership) and we were joined by 110 interested delegates, ranging from women who were new to museums to those with considerable experience, many of whom were desperate to connect with others to talk about their work and leadership issues.
The WLMN operates on a pro bono basis and has no funding. There is a small steering group chaired by Janet Vitmayer, director of the Horniman Museum, and most of the administration is patiently undertaken by her PA, Julie Thompson.
At the moment, we don’t have the resources to open up the network more widely and regularly to emerging leaders – and one fantastic outcome of our conference session is that groups of women are now taking the initiative and starting their own informal networks.
We believe that the MA has a significant role to play in enabling people to make this kind of connection, and the conference is an ideal place for this to happen. This year, there was a tremendous spirit of support and goodwill with so many people facing tough times, both personally and organisationally.
We would therefore like to call on the MA to provide a regular forum at the conference for the WLMN to open up some of these issues which are often very challenging to share and explore in our every day working lives.
Anne Murch, consultant
I enjoyed Maev Kennedy’s exam paper on cost cutting and suspect it sails uncomfortably close to the truth for many museums.
Perhaps to lighten the economic gloom, there should be a competition for the most imaginative efficiency savings and the most ingenious “rebranding” of an existing gallery or service. The awards should be hand-crafted from all the “free admission” signs put out for recycling, of course.
Penny Ritchie Calder, museum consultant, London
The insider, Museums Journal, September 2010, page 17
If ever there was a time for radical, positive thinking by museums, it is now. At the Museums Association conference in Manchester in October, the North West Fed organised its final consultation on the North West Visioning Document, now in the last stages of preparation.
In partnership with Renaissance North West, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and National Museums Liverpool, the North West Fed has been arguing that in the wake of regional structures disappearing, museums must take bold steps to show that they have the understanding and capability to deliver the key strategic priorities of local and national government.
If museums are to survive, let alone thrive, it is no longer an option to stick with traditional ways of working. This may not be the time for a strategy, but it is the time for strategic thinking, which might eventually lead to some positives in terms of museum provision.
The visioning document is a response to the financial situation, but is not driven by the cuts. It is a way of helping museums navigate their way through changing times, being aspirational as well as offering practical support.
An explicitly radical document, it encourages a management culture that embraces change rather than accepts decline; proposes that museums must play an active part in limiting the economic and social impact of the economic downturn; and identifies new business models that limit the impact of the cuts, encourage new thinking, spread the benefits and maximise new opportunities.
The document will include case studies from the museum sector and outside that showcase innovative solutions, such as museums working as social enterprises and in effective partnerships outside the cultural sector. We invite colleagues elsewhere to share with us their radical solutions that could be showcased as case studies and help the sector look beyond cuts, redundancies and closures.
Piotr Bienkowski, chairman, North West Fed
As the UK museum sector contemplates the gloomy prospect of heavy cuts and austerity budgets in public services, we should at least celebrate the fantastic success and popularity of the British Museum and BBC’s A History of the World in 100 Objects.
This brilliant project has rippled out to embrace and enthuse people way beyond the British Museum’s visitors and Radio 4’s traditional audience.
It has benefited museums everywhere by encouraging a new look at the stories and significance that objects and collections can represent, and the creative and imaginative ways in which this can be developed using new media and the engagement of thousands of people.
The lesson to be learned from this in difficult times is surely that museums must look again at their core purpose and unique features, skills and qualities. The care, inspirational display and interpretation of collections is central to this, and is clearly what museum users everywhere want to see prioritised.
Museums need to go back to basics and move away from the fashionable trends of the past decade when they reinvented themselves as education and social services, regeneration pathfinders or heritage or science centres full of hands-on activities but no real objects. Let’s concentrate on what museums do best and find creative ways of presenting collections to growing audiences with fewer resources.
Oliver Green, London
To celebrate my birthday, I flew to Belfast. What a fantastic city. And the best thing about it? Ulster Museum. Believe the hype.
Why is it so good? In no particular order: great objects; lots of visitors, including kids and young adults; a willingness to confront contentious issues; layered interpretation; friendly, informative and hands-on staff; and a great cafe... I could go on.
If you ever need a reminder why museums matter and why they should be free, this is it. Streets crammed with police officers, hospitals full of nurses and oceans awash with aircraft carriers are important – but so are museums. So pop over to Belfast as soon as you can.
Stuart Burch, lecturer in museums studies at Nottingham Trent University
Eyes on the prize, Museums Journal November 2010, p22
