This year's Alberta
Museums Association Conference, Nurturing Organizational Resiliency, focusses
on exploring the ways museums nurture organizational health and community
engagement on their path towards resiliency.
As museums move towards a sustainable future, it is more important than
ever to have a strong sense of social purpose, and utilize intelligent
visioning and strategic foresight when engaging with communities.
Sharon Heal, Director of the Museums Association of the United Kingdom, will
deliver the Friday AMA Conference 2015 Keynote Address, Leading Change: Why Museums Can't Live in the
Past. Sharon’s presentation will
explore the core purpose of museums as it relates to public need. How can
museums broaden access to culture, and what impact
can this have on both institutions and their communities?
In anticipation of her
upcoming talk, Lucie Heins, Assistant Curator for Western Canadian History at
the Royal Alberta Museum, met with Sharon to discuss her work with “Museums
Change Lives”.
Lucie Heins: Sharon,
your various roles prior to becoming the Director of the Museums Association
(MA) of the United Kingdom were mostly program and audience-based. How has this
assisted you in your directorship role? Can you tell us a bit about your
journey to becoming the Director of the MA?
Sharon
Heal: My background is actually in journalism, in editing and writing. That’s
where my training initially was and that’s where my career developed, but I
also developed events and the conference at the Museums Association. For me,
there is a lot of commonality and crossover in journalism and museums. Museums
are all about people, about making connections between objects and stories.
Journalism is about people because when you write and edit, you consider your
audience. It’s about sharing ideas; it’s about sharing practice as a museums
association. In the wider sense, in a campaigning role as an association, it’s
about connecting people to museums and connecting politicians, stakeholders,
and funders to those really pertinent stories of the impact that museums can
have at an individual level.
Having
edited Museums Journal for a number
of years and worked on our annual conference here in the UK, I think I have
quite a good understanding of the sector and the people who work in it: what
they’re really interested in, what their passions are, and what drives them at
an individual level. But in many ways, I’m quite different from people who work
in the museum sector because I don’t have a background in museums. I’ve never
worked in a museum and I don’t have that kind of education in terms of Museum
Studies degrees, etc. that a lot of people who work in the sector have. In many
ways that’s an advantage because it makes me very grounded and enables me to
have a wider view. I have the advantage of knowing people in the sector and knowing
how the sector operates, but still being able to think about what museums do
from a public perspective, to view museums from the view of an audience member,
step back and see it through that lens.
LH: The MA’s Vision
Statement “Museums Change Lives” must be the shortest vision statement ever
developed, yet so powerful. What motivated the MA to embrace such a provocative
vision?
SH:
I don’t think it is that provocative! Museums historically have had a social
role. Many of their early creators saw the potential for museums to be
transformative and to play a social role with the public and with audiences.
But I do agree that the statement is there to challenge the sector as well. I
think a lot of museums are doing this sort of life changing work around social
impacts that we’ve described in our campaign. It’s always good for any
organization to have a succinct vision and one that people can remember -
something that’s easily encapsulated in a few words so that you know who your
audience is and you know what you’re trying to achieve. That is the short,
snappy vision. The depth comes from the principles that are attached to it: the
idea that museums can help create better places, enhance health and wellbeing,
and inspire people and ideas. It shows that underneath it there is a whole host
of positive things that museums can do for and with communities.
LH: The MA states that
“museums, however they are funded and whatever their subject matter, can
support positive social change.” We are certainly starting to witness museums
making that shift. How can we encourage others to do the same? How can museums
find ways of maximizing their social impact?
SH:
I think there has been a shift over the past few years, internationally, with
museums recognizing and celebrating the positive role they can play in society.
“Museums Change Lives” has been
translated into a number of languages. Internationally, a lot of people are
saying that this really strikes a chord with the type of practices that they’re
engaging with at the moment. There is a move in that direction. It’s very
encouraging and positive that museums around the globe are looking at what
their role is, examining their reason, their purpose, why they exist. A lot of
Western European countries [are experiencing] very challenging times
economically. It’s a good time to have a look at why museums are there. Funders
are looking at museums and wondering why they’re funding them.
At
the American Alliance of Museums Conference, the MA ran a session to share
practice, and we’ve been on the road in the UK talking to our members, people
who work in museums and galleries and to funders, politicians, and stakeholders
about Museums Change Lives and social
impact. That’s one of the ways we’re trying to encourage other museums to do the
same. As a member organization, we have members’ meetings throughout the UK
where we invite all of our members to come along. We’ve also run workshops and
had meetings with funders, stakeholders, and politicians to ensure they hear
the case about what museums are already doing and their potential to do more.
On our website we have examples of museums working in this area to inspire
others, and to show range of size and scale of museums doing this work. It’s
not just the usual suspects – there are a few at the forefront of this type of
work where you hear case studies. There’s a whole host of museums who do this
work because they’re really connected to their communities and they believe in
the value of what they are doing.
With
museums, for them to maximize their social impact, it’s about talking to and
listening to what their local communities want and need. Those conversations
are key. Working with other organizations outside of the museum sector,
charities and third sector organizations is important because they’re often the
experts in the fields that museums want to work with. If museums wanted to work
with people who have dementia or with their caregivers, then working with
charities in that field will be a really good partnership and way of maximizing
impact in that area and sharing practice and making sure that you’re working to
the best of your capacity. There’s no
need to fear this type of work. You just have to start somewhere. You just have
to begin those conversations. Begin with identifying need and talking to local
communities.
LH: One of the
principles of Museums Change Lives is
that audiences are creators as well as consumers of knowledge. Can you provide
examples of this dual role and how their insights and expertise can affect how
other visitors experience the museum?
SH: I think there are some really great examples of
this type of work out there. This type of practice becoming more and more
common: for example, a town museum in Yorkshire, Experience Barnsley[i],
has done a lot of collaborative work with community because it started with
very little in [the] way of a collection. They had to go out to communities to
create their entire museum. They asked for objects and stories, and worked in a
very collaborative way with their local community. The whole museum came out of
that, and it’s a really glorious museum as a result.
One of the exhibitions that recently came out of
their community links was the Women Against Pit Closures Exhibition, marking
the anniversary of the miners’ strike in the UK last year. They worked with
women who were involved in the campaign against pit closures, and they were
fully involved in the creation of the exhibition. There are lots of lovely
stories about women finding the trade union banners in their loft and finding
the leaflets they used and the campaigning material, and they added their own
stories and knowledge to the exhibition. The impact that had on the town was
that it helped the younger generation, who had no memory of the strike and the
role that women played in particular, understand the impact of that strike and
the destruction of a local industry. This was a great example of how
co-curation can lead to benefits with new audiences and into intergenerational
learning.
St Fagans National
History Museum[ii]
in Wales has done brilliant community work, and has a long track record of
working with communities and co-curating. Its Refugee
House Project[iii],
worked with asylum seekers to recreate the conditions they were living in. This
led to new knowledge for the museum and new relationships for that community,
but also tackled some difficult issues for visitors, and confronted prejudice
and stereotypes. It really was a challenging exhibition that dealt with some of
those contemporary issues that museums are capable of dealing with if they’re
brave enough to take them on.
Lucie
Heins
Assistant Curator for Western Canadian History
Royal Alberta Museum
Assistant Curator for Western Canadian History
Royal Alberta Museum
Check back in the following weeks to read the rest of Sharon’s interview, as well as an interview with Saturday`s keynote, Mark Holmgren, CEO, the Bissell Centre.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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