AMA Conference 2015 Keynote Interview Part One: Sharon Heal, Director, Museums Association of the United Kingdom

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.

Six Steps to Community Engagement

By Christine Moreland, Ontario Museum Association

The Ontario Museum Association has just released Engaging your Community: A Toolkit for Museums (EYC). This free toolkit outlines a six step process for museums to work with their communities to assess institutional relevance and create a plan to deepen the museum’s relationship with its community, in turn increasing the sustainability of the museum. The intended outcomes are to:

• Provide your museum with a process to deepen your understanding of what community engagement means to you; 
• Examine, evaluate, and articulate your current relationship with and role in your community; 
• Explore how community engagement can be part of planning and delivery, at all levels and in all aspects of the museum.

Community Engagement and Social Action

By Susan Burrows-Johnson, Galt Museum & Archives

As a museum worker, I have been confused and concerned about the entanglement of social issues and community engagement in museums. The current literature on the future of museums directs workers to participate in the community to seek remedies for injustice and troubles. Following this strategy is full of perceived risks such as mission-drift, loss of financial support, a threat to scholarship, and insulting activists while museums join an unsolvable civil society challenge. 

Tangling participation and social issues together as a strategy makes the prediction of the outcome feel difficult and dangerous. It seems easier to understand when the museums’ actions are described on two axis. A more explicit description of where a museum, exhibit, or program chooses to be can be plotted in relationship to the two choices.

Community engagement is on a continuum of “little interaction” to “a great deal of community two-way participation”. At one end, the museum is very self-contained. In the middle of the continuum, the museum seeks the community’s advice. The far end of the continuum has the museum in a two-way, power-sharing relationship with the community.

A social action continuum moves from "not being a change agent" to seeking "a particular change or justice" in the community. This museum continuum is, at one end, object-focus to the other end of social issues focus.

Demonstrating Resiliency to Maintain Relevancy

By Charleen Davidson, Operations Lead, Alberta Museums Association

At the 2015 Canadian Museums Association Conference: Public engagement… not a trend, but the future, Jack Lohman, CEO of the Royal British Columbia Museum, cautioned delegates in his keynote address that museums must engage with their increasingly diverse communities or risk becoming irrelevant. We must be flexible and adaptable in our efforts to connect with our communities, while ensuring museums continue to strive towards meeting their mandates and missions.  

Participatory Governance and Museums

By Catherine Cole, Principal Consultant, Catherine C. Cole & Associates.

As promised in the November / December 2014 issue of the Commonwealth Association of Museums (CAM) Bulletin, the report on Participatory Governance and Museums conducted by CAM in collaboration with the Galt Museum and Archives in Lethbridge, Alberta and the Musée Héritage Museum in St. Albert, Alberta is available on the CAM website at: maltwood.uvic.ca/cam/publications/new_releases.html. 

Stephen Weil noted that, “Museums have changed from organizations based on what they have to organizations defined by what they do [1].” And what they do is increasingly to address contemporary issues.

Modelling What Works: Changing the World… One Community at a Time

How can museums actively engage with their community and work towards making real change? As integrated community institutions, museums are uniquely positioned to help create vibrant and sustainable communities through a focus on programs that affect real social and environmental change. What are the first steps in planning, maintaining, and strengthening these programs and relationships?

Join us Wednesday, May 13, 2015, as we investigate these questions through a one day workshop at Fort Calgary. As the recipient of the 2014 Robert R. Janes Award for Social Responsibility, Fort Calgary provides a successful model for engaging, maintaining, and increasing corporate sponsorship, and methods for connecting with and serving at risk communities.

Museum Visitor Experience Program

The Museum Visitor Experience Program (MVEP) provides resources for museums to analyze their visitor experience, identify gaps or areas for improvement, and work towards developing and implementing innovative solutions.

MVEP combines bi-annual workshops with self-directed assessment modules that provide museums with a step-by-step approach to understanding what various visitor types look for in museums, and how to provide opportunities to engage with them.