Museum-iD magazine, Issue 21

Museum MUSEUMS GALLERIES HERITAGE ARCHIVES CULTURE Issue 21 • museum-id.com

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11 Museum Ideas 2017 Explore the ideas shaping the future of museums around the world. 3 days, 30+ speakers, workshops, seminars and global conference

46 V&A Exhibition Road Quarter The V&A’s largest architectural intervention in over 100 years creates a dramatic new entrance and vast new gallery space

76 National Army Museum Transformation of National Army Museum aims to focus on public engagement and giving visitors the opportunity to voice their opinions

23 #FutureMuseum Project Cabinet of curiosity reboot for the 21st Century, talking to strangers, and finding new perspectives and relevance

51 Everything Anywhere Jonas Heide Smith on why museums need to be more reductionist yet more disorganized in order to succeed in the digital world

81 Habemus: Let’s Hack the Museums Christian Diaz on how a radio programme jointly constructed with listeners is helping to create new connections with the public

28 Collecting Refugee Stories Bryan Sitch on collecting and displaying a refugee’s life jacket to engage visitors with one of the major challenges of our time, migration

56 Frost Science Frost Science in Miami combines planetarium, aquarium and museum to create a sophisticated science and technology campus

87 The Fight for LGBT+ Rights Catherine O’Donnell on telling the stories of diverse lived experience and embedding coproduction within core strategic work

31 Activism and a New Kind of Museum Jess and Matt Turtle on founding a museum on the basis of a social need rather than to preserve an inherited collection of objects

61 The Right to Remember Bonita Bennett on how the museum can be a place of healing and hope, of restitution, celebration, and the re-energising of resilience

92 The Garden Museum Cleverly housed within the church of St Mary’sat-Lambeth, the Garden Museum re-opens after £7.5 million re-development project

35 Museum as Host in a Polarised World Tony Butler on why museums must use their unique qualities to bridge divisions and become conveners in a contested world

66 Musée d’arts de Nantes Extension and transformation of the Musée d’arts de Nantes creates an exquisite and welcoming contemporary space

111 Art Fund Museum of the Year Winner and finalists of the £100,000 Museum of the Year - the largest arts award in Britain and the biggest museum prize in the world

39 Should Museums Have a Personality?

Russell Dornan on why tone and voice are crucial online and funnelling a museum’s online presence through a unique filter: ourselves

71 The Migration Museum Project Emily Miller on establishing a national cultural institution exploring the role that migration has played in shaping the UK

114 Randomly Opening Up Archaeology Adam Corsini on using social media to open up collections and challenging staff to find new methods of engagement 3

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Museum MUSEUMS GALLERIES HERITAGE ARCHIVES CULTURE Issue 21 • museum-id.com

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Editor Gregory Chamberlain Creative Director Emma Dawes Design & Production NewEra Media Cover image: V&A Exhibition Road Quarter © Hufton+Crow © Museum Identity Ltd 2009-2017. All rights reserved ISSN: 2040-736X Online: museum-id.com Email: info@museum-id.com Twitter: @MuseumID Join 36,000+ followers

“Explore the ideas shaping the future of museums around the world”

#MuseumIdeas

Editorial statement With a progressive attitude and international approach, Museum-iD publishes a mix of ideas from leading museum innovators.

Views expressed are those of the writers and not necessarily those of Museum-iD Advertising Promote your company to decision-makers in museums. To discuss how we can help you reach the global museum community email info@museum-id.com Subscriptions Museum-iD magazine is published 3 times a year. The publication is free - subscribers just cover postage costs. Additional fees apply to back issues. Order subscriptions and back issues online: museum-id.com Copyright Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of research no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted without the prior permission of the publisher Image notice All images are published by kind permission of the copyright holders Conference Our annual Museum Ideas conference takes place in early October each year in London.

Further details: museum-id.com

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In early October we are excited to be taking up residence at the Museum of London to bring you Museum Ideas 2017. This year our annual live event takes place over 3 days and features 30+ speakers contributing to 8 workshops, 2 seminars and the main international conference.

With speakers from Africa, Asia, South America, North America and Europe sharing creative thinking about digital, collections, audiences and social impact, it’s a valuable opportunity to explore the ideas shaping the future of museums around the world.

Our pre-conference activism seminar will discuss why risk-taking and radical inclusion are crucial for museums, while our digital engagement seminar looks at the rewards of embracing uniqueness, unpredictability and improvisation.

There will also be a wide range of practical, participatory workshops including how to develop an effective digital strategy, how to script, build and test a multimedia tour, how to create cultural experiences that are unique to your own institution, and how to make accessible exhibits and democratise the museum environment.

Talking with the speakers while putting the programme together for this year’s event, a persuasive picture emerged of museums eager to be more collaborative, responsive and relevant. There is an enthusiasm and resolve to have a strong sense of social purpose and to do things differently. More than ever, museums are looking to connect with audiences in new and distinctive ways and to work alongside them to create and share remarkable experiences.

We look forward to continuing to play our part in the future of museums - sharing ideas and exploring the ways ahead. I hope you can join us at Museum Ideas 2017 to continue the discussion.

Gregory Chamberlain

CO I N C A B I N E T, ROYA L PA L AC E D R E S D E N D I S P L AY C A S E C O N S T R U C T I O N , E X H I B I T I O N C O N S T R U C T I O N , O B J E C T M O U N T I N G

W W W. ARTEX . AT Photo: David-Brandt.de

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© Meyvaert

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One of our most recent project completions in the UK is Winchester College Treasury & Museum.

Meyvaert’s showcase solutions have enabled Winchester College to beautifully present a range of treasures, including a vast collection of Greek vases and classical sculpture. Some of our display cases were installed high up within the structural beams, creating spectacular eye-catchers that complement the impressive architecture.

This project completion is another testimony to Meyvaert’s ability to successfully work in listed buildings, as the Warden’s Stables building in which the collection is exhibited dates back to 1391!

For additional information on our current and concluded museum installations, please feel free to contact us.

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Museum Ideas 2017 - Venue Museum Ideas 2017 takes up residence at the Museum of London for 3 days in early October

Museum Ideas 2017 takes up residence at the Museum of London from Tuesday 3 October to Thursday 5 October. Workshops take place in the Garden Room, seminars in the Terrace Gallery, and the conference itself in the Weston Theatre and Clore Learning Centre. Informal preconference and post event drinks will be in the London Wall Bar & Kitchen - just above the Terrace Gallery. The Museum of London charts the history of one of the world’s greatest, most influential and most cosmopolitan cities. It cares for more than two million objects in its collections and holds the largest archaeological archive in Europe. At the time of the conference, the Museum will be in the middle of their year-long City Now City Future season exploring urban change in London and around the world. Like many other cities around the world, London is a place of great contrasts and complexities. The city is made up of millions of individuals, each with their own identity, style and culture, taken from both global and local influences and histories.

City Now City Future celebrates that diversity, making visible the voices, stories and faces of people living and working in the city today. To explore these citizen stories, the Museum is hosting the groundbreaking exhibition The City is Ours. Created by the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie in Paris, this interactive dual language exhibition, spread across three of the museum’s galleries, focuses on how and why cities are transforming, and what urban communities around the world are doing to improve city life.

Museum of London, 150 London Wall, EC2Y 5HN

Museum Ideas 2017 3-5 October, London: International conference exploring the ideas shaping the future of museums around the world

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Bonita Bennett, Director, District Six Museum, Cape Town, South Africa

Whitney Donhauser, Director and President, Museum of the City of New York

Adam Rozan, Adjunct Professor, Harvard University Extension School (Museum Studies)

“Clever, delightful and thought provoking.

Great collection of people thinking innovatively and with passion” - Helen Divjak, London Transport Museum

ith fresh insights you can take directly back to your organistion, the Museum Ideas 2017 conference will add tremendous value to your current work and is an active investment in the future and what you choose to do next.

Museum Ideas gives you a wider perspective on the ideas shaping the future of museums around the world with a particular focus on progressive public engagement, new digital initiatives, participatory practice, plus pioneering ideas about collections, audiences and social impact. Speakers working on museum projects in 5 continents are contributing to the 2017 conference. Delegates from 24 countries attended the event last year.

Museum Ideas Hosted by the Museum of London, Museum Ideas 2017 takes place over 3 days, Tuesday 3 - Thursday 5 October. For delegates who are stretched for time and want an intensive and inspirational day of ideas, the main flagship conference takes place over one day Thursday 5 October - and is designed so it can be attended as a standalone event. Conference registration starts at 8.30am with the first speaker at 9.30am. The conference closes at 5pm followed by drinks at the nearby London Wall Bar & Kitchen Conference speakers Each year Museum Ideas brings together a group of fascinating speakers and challenges them to share innovative ideas in concise, powerful talks. The aim is for delegates to be inspired by perspectives outside their own specialism and locality. What unites the conference is the quality and enthusiasm of contributors along with their desire to share valuable expertise and experience.

Speakers this year include Bonita Bennett, Director of the District Six Museum in Cape Town, South Africa; Whitney Donhauser, Director and President of the Museum of the City of New York; Jonas Heide Smith, Head of Digital at the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen; Adam Rozan, Adjunct Professor, Harvard University Extension continued on page 15 11

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Museum Ideas - Vols 1 & 2 Discover 974 pages of creative ideas, fresh thinking and valuable experience - order now free worldwide shipping Benefit from the ideas of over 150 leading museum innovators based in 16 countries across 6 continents. These two substantial and authoritative 487 page volumes bring together the best in contemporary museum thinking and practice globally. Packed with in-depth and insightful essays from highly-respected museum leaders, the two volumes explore the latest developments and concepts from museums across the world.

Comprehensive and compelling, the books contain a wealth of information in key areas such participatory practice, leading-edge digital projects, original storytelling, interpretation and exhibition design, groundbreaking public engagement with inventive and inclusive programming, integrated visitor experiences, plus fresh thinking for audience development, sustainability, collections, leadership, curatorial practices and the future of museums.

From opinion pieces and expository essays to in-depth articles and practical case studies, over the course of 974 pages you’ll discover a host of exciting new ideas and be introduced to the wide-ranging opportunities available to you and your organisation.

Order both volumes now to save over 10% and get free worldwide shipping: museum-id.com/books “A go-to collection of essays for the creative, forward-thinking museum professional” - Adam Corsini, Museum of London Volume 3 is currently in production and we are accepting proposals for Volume 4.

Email info@museum-id.com

Winnie Lai, Assistant Curator, Learning and Interpretation, M+ Museum, Hong Kong

Christian Díaz, coordinator of HABEMUS// Let’s Hack the Museums, Argentina

Jonas Heide Smith, Head of Digital, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen

“Museum Ideas is the place to be inspired, renewed and come away enthused and ready to steal lots of great ideas!”

- Theresa Nicolson, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

School (Museum Studies); Winnie Lai, Assistant Curator, Learning and Interpretation, M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Christian Díaz, coordinator of Habemus in Argentina; Kat Medill, Audience Experience Coordinator, ASU Art Museum, Arizona; Sara Wajid, Head of Interpretation, Birmingham Museums Trust; Rosie Stanbury, Head of Live Programmes, Wellcome Collection, London; Tonya Nelson, Head of University College London Museums and Collections; Anaïs Aguerre, Head of International Initiatives, V&A; and Joanna Salter, Senior Manager - Participation, National Maritime Museum. The conference will be chaired by Tony Butler, Executive Director of Derby Museums, and founder of the Happy Museum Project.

Seminars: Activism and Social Change / Digital Engagement and Participation In addition to the main conference there are special pre-conference seminars dedicated to Activism and Social Change, and Digital Engagement and Participation. Speakers at the seminars include Jess Turtle and Matt Turtle, co-founders of the Museum of Homelessness; Catherine O’Donnell, Programme Manager, People’s History Museum; Andrew Lewis, Data and Insights Architect, Natural History Museum; Adam Corsini, Archaeology Collections Manager, Museum of London; and Sharna Jackson, an award-winning curator working across digital, arts and entertainment.

Seminars take place on Wednesday afternoon.

Workshops An extensive series of workshops will take place all day on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. A comprehensive list of workshops will be shared nearer to the conference but events will include: • New Thinking for New Museums: We are currently living through a boom in museumbuilding not seen since the 19th century. From vast, new national museums to smaller venues housing private collections, an estimated 1000 new museums open each year. This workshop takes a global perspective to consider questions pertinent to cultural practitioners, policy-makers and citizens: why do we create museums, what are they for, and what different forms might they take in the 21st century?

Using case studies from around the world and audience input, the session will look at regional and international variety and uniformity, in continued on page 19 15

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Museum Ideas - Delegates Join hundreds of museum colleagues from around the world to share ideas about the future of museums The annual Museum Ideas event always attracts a friendly, varied and international audience. Earlybird tickets with multiple delegate discount are available from as little as £157 each. Tickets include access to all conference sessions, lunch and refreshments, printed conference guide and delegate bag.

Book your ticket and join delegates from National Galleries of Scotland; British Museum; Victoria & Albert Museum; Sharjah Museums, UAE; Royal Pavilion & Museums; English Heritage; National Trust; V&A Museum of Childhood; London Transport Museum; Württemberg State Museum, Germany; King’s College London; Bank of England Museum; Shakespeare Birthplace Trust; National Postal Museum; National Museums Liverpool; Science Museum; Ashmolean Museum; Manchester Museum; National Maritime Museum; Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford; Museums Sheffield; Royal Academy; ss Great Britain, Bristol; Waddesdon Manor; National Museums Northern Ireland; Design Museum; Historic Royal Palaces; Kew Gardens; Nottingham City Museums & Galleries; Maritime Museum, Finland; Wellcome Collection; Living History Forum, Stockholm; and the Natural History Museum.

Reserve your ticket online at museum-id.com or email info@museum-id.com

the context of the increasing globalisation and localisation of culture. How can museum professionals adopt international best-practice while still creating cultural experiences that are unique to their own institutions, locations and audiences? And if new museums often face the same challenges as existing museums, how can we think differently and create not just new museum buildings but new museum models?

Tonya Nelson, Head of University College London Museums and Collections

Anaïs Aguerre, Head of International Initiatives, Victoria & Albert Museum

• Digital Strategy for Museums - An elegant route to a better result: How can you develop a practical and useful digital strategy without taking forever or spending a fortune? This workshop is based on experience working with leading international museums on strategic digital programmes for more than twenty five years. Delegates will come away with a range of case studies, a wealth of practical ideas and a simple but effective - and well tested - digital strategy canvas specifically designed for museums.

Access to the pre-conference workshops and seminars is free for conference delegates but space is limited. Full details of the additional events will be sent to conference delegates in advance so they can reserve seats at the events they would like to atend - places will be allocated on a first-respond, first-reserved basis.

Joanna Salter, Senior Manager - Participation, National Maritime Museum

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Explore the ideas shaping the future of museums.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

Museum Ideas - Sponsors The world-leading companies supporting the sharing of ideas in museums globally

Booking your ticket Early-bird conference tickets are available from just £157 each. Tickets include access to all conference sessions, lunch and refreshments on the conference day, printed conference guide and delegate bag. Tickets are limited and can be reserved online at museum-id.com or by emailing info@museum-id.com Museum Ideas 2017 presents a valuable opportunity for professional inquiry and development with a packed schedule of progressive sessions from leading thinkers in the global museum community.

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ISO were the interactive media designers for the project and created 26 installations. These include Notorious Irish and Storybook which used infra-red motion sensors to track visitor movement and gestures to trigger media and Conflict, a pair of multi-user interactive tables that uses an innovative dynamic graphical interface to interweave stories and animated content.

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Future Museum: Cabinet of Curiosity Reboot for the 21st Century Tonya Nelson on how museums of the future can use digital technology to reach a public with an appetite for knowledge and information, and a real craving for social, political and economic change Tonya Nelson is currently Head of Museums and Collections at University College London (UCL) where she oversees the operations of four museums: Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL Art Museum and UCL Pathology Museum.

Prior to entering the cultural sector, Tonya was a corporate lawyer in Washington, DC where she grew up. Tonya started her career in management consulting, working with companies such as Coca-Cola, Intel and IBM. She is a former Clore Leadership Fellow and British Council Cultural Leadership Fellow.

Tonya is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

“The museum of the future brings people from different walks of life into its space for discussion and problem-solving through creative engagement with collections”

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n my mind, museums are sitting at a critical point of convergence where the true power of collections can be discovered and amplified. What is converging? Innovations in digital technology that enable museums to engage with the world outside their doors; a public with a seemingly insatiable appetite for new information and knowledge; and communities with a real craving for social, political and economic change.

The modern museum evolved from the concept of the cabinet of curiosity: a private space where monarchs and men of means amassed exotic objects for contemplation and study. These early collectors believed that all things were connected through either visible or invisible similarities. They thought that by uncovering the connections between objects, they would understand how nature functioned, and where humanity stood within it. Ultimately, cabinets of curiosity were used by a small circle of privileged men to make meaning and espouse a view about how the world works.

The rise of the public museum has widened the circle of people involved in making meaning. Social media and other online platforms have broken that circle completely – now anyone can take part in the process. Augmented reality, virtual worlds and gaming give museum visitors richer context through which objects can be interpreted and connected.

And finally, over the past 30 or so years, museums have evolved from dusty store rooms to inspiring civic spaces where people can engage with collections and with each other. It has never been as easy to make connections between objects, people and the way the world operates.

At University College London, we recently staged an exhibition called Cabinets of Consequence which explored the interplay between human, environmental and technological activity

by using collections to reference current research in geology, neuroscience, literature, computer science and archaeology. We supplemented the exhibition with a series of salon-style events aimed increasing the knowledge of participants through conversation, rather than instruction. The objective was to reveal global connections in order to enable audiences to understand the impact of their daily activities and empower them to make change.

The museum of the future utilises modern tools in achieving its original purpose: to use objects to understand the place of humanity in world. It capitalises on digital technology to connect people, makes more content available through traditional and non-traditional channels, and creates immersive experiences that extend and elevate thinking. Finally, the museum of the future brings people from different walks of life into its space for discussion and problem-solving through creative engagement with collections. We have never needed museums more than we do now.

Tonya Nelson Head of Museums and Collections, University College London

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Tonya Nelson is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

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Future Museum: Talking to strangers and challenging the echo chamber Rosie Stanbury on how museums of the future should enable people from different walks of life to talk about the big stuff - human endeavour, discovery, nature, history and the future

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ost of us have a natural desire to meet with like-minded people. It’s one of the reasons that lots of us work in museums, because of a shared fascination in objects, people and history. These days, we can tune-in to the things we like, and switch-off from the things we don’t more than ever before.

The danger of this seductive state has revealed itself acutely this year. In the wake of Brexit and Trump we need to challenge the social media echo chamber we find ourselves in.

We urgently need to create lots of opportunities for people from different walks of life to talk about the big stuff: Human endeavour, discovery, nature, history and the future. Museums offer the perfect space. Objects can provide provocations and can act as social levellers. Of course, there is a danger that museums are echo chambers for their own ideas and their own audiences. We need to open ourselves up to new perspectives and possibilities. As the people that run the spaces, we can seed ideas, invite in new groups with different agendas and provoke new conversations.

But these conversations need careful support and direction to grow. Skills in facilitation and education need to be nurtured and developed. We need to learn from other sectors that are developing innovative engagement techniques, from performance and education to social justice and training.

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Rosie Stanbury is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

Rosie Stanbury is Head of Live Programmes at Wellcome Collection, the free museum and library exploring health and humanity in London.

In this role she leads a team of producers programming public events, youth and community activities. Joining Wellcome in 2006 as an events producer, she played a pivotal role in the inaugural and ongoing programme of events for Wellcome Collection. She took a brief break from the programme in 2010 when she oversaw Wellcome’s Arts Awards for a year. Prior to joining Wellcome, she worked in community arts. Rosie is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

“We need to open up to new perspectives” Over the last year we’ve invited our audience to propose their own ideas for events through Open Platform. This is an invitation to create small-scale pop-up events in our Reading Room. We offer expenses and facilitation training for those that would like it. The emphasis is on participation, and we don’t advertise the events beyond our building, so the audience for the event stumbles across the activities in the building on the day.

People sometimes pop in for a cup of coffee, then end up taking part in an event that lasts an hour. Events have explored a vast range of subjects from intersex and death to monkey poo and cancer. It’s been a joy to watch the programme evolve and I’m excited to see even more strangers making connections and challenging one another in the future.

Rosie Stanbury Head of Live Programme Wellcome Collection

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Important Shared Experiences Kaywin Feldman, Director & President, Minneapolis Institute of Arts Museums in the future will be extremely crowded. They will be open longer hours because they will have become an even more integral part of our daily lives. As community gathering centers, they will offer a wider range of program and audience engagement.

Our understandings of the meaning of culture, collaboration, and participation will all become more expansive, thereby broadening the ways in which institutions can connect with our diverse communities. I’m one of those people who believe that museums have become increasingly important in our chaotic, stress- and distraction-filled world. Since museums offer experiences, memories, and the self-directed exploration of content, they will beckon as a necessary respite from our often isolated, digital and virtual lives. Besides, in a world where we can fake anything, from art, to the news, to genetically manufactured food, the need to experience the real thing will only become greater. Ultimately, museums matter because they are filled with wondrous things that remind us of what it is to be human. Our shared experience is expressed in so many interesting, exciting, and impactful ways. As the philosopher Alan Watts said, “the meaning of life is life itself ”. Museums are full of life: past, present, and future. Kaywin was a keynote speaker at Museum Ideas 2015 The Future is Now Adam Rozan, Adjunct Professor, Harvard University Extension School Museums now believe thinking and acting younger is better, and reinvention is key.

This trend started several years ago, and is easily spotted in marketing departments, which are now re-titled with fancy descriptors like audience development.

New to this mix is engagement, a role/ function which stems from the need to further align curatorial, marketing, and education in an effort to capture the attention of today’s visitors. The future is a working relationship in which collections become the ‘all-stars’, used as entry points for visitors, including those who may only participate online. By using collections creatively, engaging in the dialogue

and activity of today’s culture, while presenting our institutions as thought leaders is a glimpse of a hopeful future.

Adam spoke at Museum Ideas 2012 and is returning to speak at the 2017 conference.

Comfort, Meaning and Delight Peter Gorgels, Internet Manager, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam With the huge range of leisure activities on offer, museums face increasing competition. Busy people can choose between spending a day out at an amusement park, zoo, cinema, out in the woods, at the seaside, or simply stay at home with their smartphone or game console for entertainment. At the same time, a new trend is taking shape: a return to authenticity, to things that have real meaning and that might demand extra effort but also offer a genuine experience.

This trend opens up new opportunities for museums. To flourish amidst these competing forces, the museum of the future must excel on several crucial fronts. The museum of the future should be comfortable: Visitors expect museums to offer perfect service and all facilities should be fast and flawless.

The museum of the future should offer meaning: People today are increasingly seeking authentic experiences that give meaning to their lives. With their wealth of quintessentially authentic objects, museums are in an unparalleled position to offer such experiences. But no longer as authoritarian institutions: modern museum visitors want to follow their own interests and form their own opinions.

The museum of the future will therefore function more as a ‘meaning platform’ and the digital domain has a logical role to play in this development. The museum of the future should delight: Visitors want to see fresh and modern exhibits in an open environment that offers surprises. Artworks and objects should be juxtaposed with playful accents that bring a smile to visitors’ faces. Highbrow and lowbrow displays alternated in a natural ebb and flow. People should not feel ‘drained’ by a visit to the museum, but delighted. Peter spoke at Museum Ideas 2013 Join the #FutureMuseum project: www.museum-id.com

Future Museum: Finding New Perspectives and Relevance Ros Croker on how museums of the future will have to listen better to their audiences, be open to challenge and change, and become better conversationalists and collaborators

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ow many of us have walked into a museum recently and been confronted with a load of dusty old stuff that you struggle to find the meaning of in relation to your own life and identity? I feel this way on a regular basis and I’m a white middle-class woman working in the cultural sector – I have the privilege of ‘my history’ being told frequently (though often through the collections of the original male collectors).

Museums still have a way to go for me, and no doubt an even further leap for others whose histories have not been so readily represented. We need to better jump the gap between using the histories of the objects we already have to tell stories of the past, to finding new perspectives to enable people to feel connected to it.

At the National Maritime Museum I’m working on a museum-wide project, Endeavour, which seeks to create better relevance for wide ranging audiences. We have drawn on and understood the value of finding a sense of shared identity - in the UK we are all dwellers of an island nation. We have been asking audiences what they care about, how they want their museum to serve them and how they relate to the sea today. We’ve taken time to integrate these multiple perspectives into new volunteering programmes, skills development opportunities, displays and programmes. Co-curation, communityled research and collaboration form the basis of our work on a range of new initiatives and four new permanent galleries. This is our step towards being a museum of the future.

So for me, museums of the future will not only listen better to their communities, but be better conversationalists and collaborators. They will shape their interpretation, programming, and collecting around these interactions so that everyone can find relevance.

Bigger museums will have become more nimble to accommodate the changing nature of their communities and be more

Ros Croker is the Endeavour Learning Project Manager at the National Maritime Museum where her role focuses on leading transformational change through developing new approaches to working with potential audiences. Ros was instrumental in securing HLF funding to develop new partnerships and programmes with communities and four new permanent galleries, increasing the National Maritime Museum’s public space by 40%. She has worked in learning and participation across the arts, architecture, heritage and museum sectors for the last twelve years. Ros is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

“Take risks, be brave and learn from mistakes” open to challenge. Museums will value traditionally documented history and lived history equally and will endeavour to make space for this, challenging existing processes and thinking to achieve this. They will take risks, be brave and learn from mistakes.

Ros Croker Endeavour Learning Project Manager, National Maritime Museum, London

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Ros Croker is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

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Future Museum: Generating Debate and Offering Paths Forward Whitney Donhauser on how museums can generate discussion and debate about the present and future of our society and offer paths forward based on innovative local and global solutions Whitney Donhauser has enjoyed a twenty-three year career in museum management. She was appointed the Ronay Menschel Director and President of the Museum of the City of New York in 2016. Previously, Whitney was Senior Advisor to the President and Deputy Chief Officer for Development and External Affairs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Whitney is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

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“Visitors learn about the city’s energy, inventiveness, and creativity, and its diverse, tumultuous, complex traditions of experience”

t the Museum of the City of New York we aim to be at the forefront of what a vibrant urban history museum is today and can be in the future.

Ideally museums such as ours should not be seen as austere institutions that are isolated from everyday life. Rather, in order to engage and expand its audiences, a city history museum can help generate spirited discussion and debate about the present and future of our society, in addition to being venues for the display and preservation of art and artifacts. With their expertise, curators, historians, and educators act as the essential guides who help illuminate the Museum’s mission to its diverse audiences.

We opened in November 2016 New York at Its Core - an unprecedented survey of 400 years of New York City history that employs the latest in interactive technology, inspired storytelling, and a selection of hundreds of objects drawn from the Museum’s collections as well as important loans. In this permanent installation we devote two galleries to the past, as would be expected in a history museum, where visitors learn about the city’s energy, inventiveness, and creativity, and its diverse, tumultuous, yet complex traditions of experience.

It is a third gallery, the Future City Lab, that deals with the challenges the city will face if it is to continue to survive and thrive as a world capital. This installation engages our visitors with current issues

- affordability, housing, environmental sustainability, transportation, cultural and economic - in relation to the past and offers paths forward based on innovative local as well as global solutions. The Museum shows how the city has confronted and overcome obstacles before and can continue to meet similar as well as new challenges in the years to come.

New York at Its Core, expansive as it is, can encompass only a portion of the stories the Museum has to tell. A robust schedule of temporary exhibitions, public programs, special events, educational programs, and a growing body of online content provide us with other opportunities to expand this conversation about New York’s past, present, and future within - and beyond - the walls of the Museum.

Whitney Donhauser Director and President, Museum of the City of New York

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Whitney Donhauser is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

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Collecting and Displaying a Refugee’s Life Jacket Bryan Sitch on why collecting and displaying a refugee’s life jacket helps promote understanding between different cultures and how it is part of a project to reinvigorate collecting

“Displaying a life jacket helps promote understanding between different cultures”

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Bryan Sitch (pictured with the refugee’s life jacket display) is Curator of Archaeology and Deputy Head of Collections at Manchester Museum. Bryan was a speaker at the Museum Ideas 2016 conference.

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s Curator of Archaeology and Deputy Head of Collections at Manchester Museum, I travelled to the Greek island of Lesvos in early December 2016 in order to collect a refugee’s life jacket. This was just one of hundreds of thousands of life jackets abandoned by refugees after crossing the narrow but dangerous straits between Turkey and Lesvos. In 2015 up to 10,000 refugees were arriving on Lesvos every day and the island’s population was doubling every ten days. Many of the refugees were fleeing the civil war in Syria. Some 500,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict and eleven million people have been forced to leave their homes. Nearly one hundred people drowned off the coast of Lesvos in just one week early in 2016. Even more people have lost their lives trying to cross to Italy from North Africa.

In collecting and displaying a refugee’s life jacket, Manchester Museum is actively engaging with visitors and the wider public about one of the major challenges of our time, migration. Migration is very important politically, and has been cited as a major factor in the outcome of the referendum about the UK’s membership of the European Union and of the presidential elections in the United States and the general election in the UK. Acquiring a refugee’s life jacket was particularly relevant to us because migration is one of the themes of Manchester Museum’s Collecting Life project, which is intended to reinvigorate collecting here and in other museums.

Displaying a life jacket also helps promote understanding between different cultures, which is one of the twin aims of the Museum’s vision statement.

Whilst I was on the island, I also filmed a number of short interviews with aid workers, academics, and volunteers trying to help refugees. Interviewing a refugee on the island was simply too sensitive and so on my return to Manchester I filmed an interview with Delvan Ibrahim, a Syrian who made the journey to Lesvos from Turkey by sea, and who now lives in Manchester.

The life jacket and the interviews are now on display in the entrance to the Museum. The display also features several bags made from recycled life jackets. Huge numbers of plastic life jackets have been abandoned on Lesvos and other Greek islands. They represent an unprecedented environmental challenge. Many of the lifejackets have been gathered from the beaches by the island authorities and some are being recycled to make into bags. The two bags displayed in the Museum were made in the Mosaik workshop in Mytilene on Lesvos. The proceeds from the sale of the bags are used to help refugees.

Since its installation on 3rd March 2017, the life jacket has drawn a hugely positive response from visitors and researchers, and has stimulated lots of comments on social media. We are encouraging people to share their comments and responses to the display on social media using #MMLifeJacket Manchester Museum’s work on the theme of migration has, more recently, received fresh impetus with the opening of an innovative and thought-provoking installation by Syrian artist Zahed Tajeddin.

Bryan Sitch Curator of Archaeology and Deputy Head of Collections, Manchester Museum

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“We feel that a museum of homelessness must create social change”

Jess Turtle and Matt Turtle are the co-founders of the UK’s first Museum of Homelessness, which is being developed by people from all walks of life, including – and in particular – those who have been homeless. As well as developing the Museum of Homelessness (MoH), Jess works on the Policy and Programmes team at the Museums Association, is the Chair of Trustees for the Simon Community and also sits on Battersea Arts Centre’s heritage committee. Matt currently works full-time on the MoH but has previously worked in programming roles for organisations such as the Design Museum, Crafts Council and the Royal Academy of Arts. Jess and Matt are speaking at the Museum Ideas 2017 conference in London.

Activism, Homelessness and a New Kind of Museum Jess Turtle and Matt Turtle on founding a museum on the basis of a social need rather than to preserve an inherited collection of objects

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ur museum - the Museum of Homelessness - has been called an activist museum, and there are indeed many ways our work might be viewed as activist. For example; by saying that people without academic qualifications or experience who have been homeless can be curators of museums; by founding a museum on a housing estate in the UK; by saying that the primary purpose of our collection and archive is to enable people to make social change or work through trauma or both; by founding a museum on the basis of a social need rather than to preserve an inherited collection of objects. But to us and our colleagues, none of this is really activism. It is simply common sense. It would be unethical to address homelessness without putting lived experience at its core. We feel that a museum of homelessness must create social change and we therefore need to take a particular stance in our work.

The word activism is becoming increasingly prominent in the museum field. There is increasing recognition that museums must respond in some way to current challenges. But there is no consensus about what activist museums should do: inspire activism in others, back a particular cause or just programme in a particular way. This lack of consensus is hardly surprising, given that activists don’t tend to work on five year strategic plans— activism is week-to-week, responsive and very direct. There isn’t much that is institutional about it. So for museums, the word activism tends to be thought about in relation to something else. It surfaces when the museum’s interface with social justice or other real-world issues is framed in contrast to the ‘core’ work of museum – collecting, preservation, and display.

Being a new museum, the Museum of Homelessness is in the privileged position of being unencumbered by the baggage that comes with institutional history.

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The Museum of Homelessness is being developed by people from all walks of life, including those who have been homeless.

Their community explores the art, history and culture of homelessness to make a difference for homeless people today. The first museum of its kind in the UK, they make the invisible visible through collecting, research, events and exhibitions. They do not yet have a building, so are working with partners to produce their public programme.

Top: The Groundswell exhibition; Middle: A recent visit to the Simon Community just one of many locations around the UK where the Museum is gathering objects and stories © Museum of Homelessness. Above: The Museum of Homelessness teamed up with the Home Truths festival in London and Cardboard Citizens to present a series of nine plays exploring housing and homelessness © Home Truths

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Jess and Matt are speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

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Whether you think my colleagues and I are activists or not, homelessness is on the rise. Our museum explored this set of conditions in our very first public programme – State of the Nation – at Tate Exchange (April 8 and 9 2017) and at Tate Liverpool in July. This free weekend explored homelessness by bringing together people from all walks of life to ask the questions that matter in 2017. During this weekend we worked with artist David Tovey, an outrageously creative formerly homeless artist who in a few short years has gone from death’s door to being name checked by Tate director Nicholas Serota. We heard from homelessness sector leaders and we shared objects and stories that have existed on the margins of society but through our event found a home in one of the world’s premier art galleries.

Do events such as this signal the end of museum neutrality? Can the Museum of Homelessness honestly say it’s presenting objects and stories at State of the Nation in a balanced and objective way? We certainly intend to, but when you work with and for marginalised people the terms of engagement are a little different. You present a particular set of truths – those that are often hidden or ignored.

Some people object to museum activism, contending organizations in our field should not take a political standpoint or promote a particular agenda. Museums are highly trusted institutions, they point out, and neutrality, as one foundation of that trust, is not to be trifled with. We believe this argument ignores the fact that museums are inherently political institutions already and that the idea of

activism needs greater exploration in general. At the Museum of Homelessness, we are setting out to rebalance the power relations and shift representations.

Borrowing from a long tradition in the homelessness world, we also create spaces where people can be political, have their voices heard and learn from each other.

When viewed in this context museum activism starts to look a lot more like being an active citizen and in times like

“when you work with and for marginalised people the terms of engagement are a little different” this that is a very important thing. So with State of the Nation, our museum is tackling a pressing issue immediate to our time. Some of it will be loud and some of it will be quiet and it’ll be very far from neutral. But ultimately, it’ll be about people learning, establishing the facts, and sharing stories. And ultimately, isn’t that is what museums are all about?

Jess Turtle and Matt Turtle, co-founders, the Museum of Homelessness This article was adapted from a recent piece for the American Alliance of Museum Future of Museums blog

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The Museum as Host in a Polarised World Tony Butler on why museums must use their unique qualities to bridge divisions and become conveners in a contested world Tony Butler is a social history curator at heart and has been Executive Director of Derby Museums Trust since January 2014. Derby Museums includes Derby Silk Mill, the site of the world’s first factory and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Derby Museum and Art Gallery which contains the world’s finest collection of works by the 18th century artist Joseph Wright. Tony is a Fellow of the Clore Leadership Programme and from 2004 - 2013 was Director of the Museum of East Anglian Life. In 2011, he founded the Happy Museum Project to create an international community of practice to explore how museums could contribute to a society in which well-being and environmental sustainability were its principle values.

Happy Museum has already supported 22 UK museums to develop projects which build mutual relationships with audiences and ‘steward the future as well as the past.’ Reprising his role from last year, Tony is chairing the Museum Ideas 2017 conference.

“The event sought to transcend the Referendum and understand competing values within society”

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n February 2017, nearly eight months after the Referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, the Happy Museum project held an event to understand why people chose to vote the way they did and to explore the kind of role a museum could play in a society which seems so polarised.

Rather than rerun the wherefores of the vote, the event sought to transcend the Referendum and understand competing values within society. Neuroscientist, Kris de Meyer spoke of how the more our beliefs become entrenched, the less able we are to see others’ perspectives.

He likened this to a pyramid – at the top, two views held may be consensual, but the further external events and factors influence opinions, the further those holding the views drift apart. In the 1990s those on both political right and left held consensual views on issues such as immigration and multinational, pooled sovereignty. By 2016 these policy areas were the most sharply divisive.

Kris explored the notion of cognitive dissonance, a term coined in 1957 by Leon Festinger to explain the mental stress (discomfort) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.

He said:

“It has become shorthand for the inconsistencies we perceive in other people’s views – but rarely in our own.

What people are less aware of is that dissonance drives opinion change. Festinger proposed that the inconsistencies we experience in our beliefs create an emotional discomfort that acts as a force to reduce the inconsistency, by changing our beliefs or adding new ones. … and thousands of experiments have shown that dissonance most strongly operates when events impact our core beliefs, especially the beliefs we have about ourselves as smart, good and competent people” Tom Crompton is working closely with the Manchester Museum. His organisation, Common Cause, promotes the notion of values and frames for ethical development and used the Schwartz Values Model to illustrate the beliefs people hold. He noted that the divisions highlighted in the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump can be explained by two opposing value systems - Cosmopolitan Universalists on one side and more Authoritarian Traditionalists on the other. Examples of important beliefs for the Universalists were social 35

“Museums must use their unique qualities as hosts of well-liked civic spaces, and their ability to use the long view of history to explain our current position, to show where we’ve come from and where we might go” Launched in April 2011, the Happy Museum Project provides a leadership framework for museums to develop a holistic approach to wellbeing and sustainability. The project re-imagines the museum’s purpose as steward of people, place and planet, supporting institutional and community resilience in the face of global financial and environmental challenges. Whilst many museums appreciate their position at the heart of their community and combine scholarship, stewardship, learning and a desire for greater participation, the project shows that the context is now different. Climate change, pressures on the planet’s finite resources and awareness that a good, happy society need not set economic growth as it most meaningful measure offer a chance to re-imagine the purpose of the museums. The project takes a view of sustainability which looks beyond financial and resource management and considers a museum’s role as steward of people, place and planet, supporting institutional and community wellbeing and resilience in the face of global financial and environmental challenges. Museums are well placed to play an active part in this transformation, but grasping the opportunity will require re-imagining key aspects of their role, both in terms of the kinds of experience they provide to their visitors and the way they relate to their collections, to their communities and to the pressing issues of the day. http://happymuseumproject.org

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Tony Butler is chairing Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

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justice and equality, for the Traditionalists things like family security, social order and honouring of elders was paramount.

Tom noted that although these differences seem wide in Schwartz’s model, there is another set of values which both cosmopolitans and traditionalist feel are important. This is expressed as Benevolence and includes qualities such as honesty, a desire for true friendship and meaning in life.

Amidst this polarisation museums have a significant role to play. Museums enjoy high levels of public trust. Through our collections and programmes we can take the long view of history, exploring the complex identities of local, national and global citizenship. Museums can be the bridge between opposing value systems, exploring difference but promoting those qualities humans have in common.

Yet even the suggestion of that museums should search for common ground elicits cries of sell-out or even appeasing illiberalism. To some, this might legitimise the tactics of those on the far or ‘alt’ right’ who have no shame in using violence, fake news and displacement tactics.

Museums are essentially social spaces, where people of all sorts can congregate.

They are not neutral spaces, nor can they absolve themselves from complicity in colonialism or embedding privilege. They can however act as a starting point and stand for values which are non-negotiable such as religious tolerance, respect for the rule of law, the rights of minorities.

These are the British Values taught in every English primary school.

Museums can be activist organisations and (to paraphrase Berthold Brecht) be both a mirror to society, and a hammer with which to shape it. But if there is a reluctance to explore values at odds with a dominant cosmopolitan perspective, they will forever preach to the choir.

An English museum director of a large city museum once told me of the tensions of collecting a banner belonging

to the far-right English Defence League (EDL) following a rally. A leading local politician (and by association custodian of the museum) had stated that the EDL were “not welcome in the city”, and baulked at marking their presence within the museums collections.

Rufus Norris and Carol Ann-Duffy’s current play at the National Theatre ‘My Country – a work in progress’ drew on interviews of people from all regions of the UK following the Brexit vote . It seems that the theatre is well-placed to take the temperature of the country; to show where it’s at.

Museums must use their unique qualities as hosts of well-liked civic spaces, their ability to use the long view of history to explain our current position; to show where we’ve come from and where we might go.

Back in 2011 the paper Happy Museum – a tale of how it could turn out all right noted: ‘With recent trends seeing city space being increasingly transferred to private ownership museums are an important bulwark against the erosion of the public realm.’

The role of museums as conveners in a contested world is more vital than ever – as places to bridge divisions, if not here, where?

Tony Butler, Executive Director, Derby Museums Trust and Founder, Happy Museum Project

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CLARIT Y

Russell Dornan is Digital Producer at V&A Museum of Design, Dundee.

Until recently he was Web Editor for Wellcome Collection, looking after their website, blog and social media channels. This article is based on his experience at Wellcome Collection.

Russell will be speaking at the Museum Ideas 2017 conference in London.

T

hink about some of your favourite museums on Twitter. How about Instagram? What is it about how they present themselves across social media that you enjoy or relate to? Beyond the subject matter or the expertise, it’s the people behind the accounts that bring museums to life online.

“Our use of words is the handwriting of our personalities, so it’s impossible for me not to come through” Kirsten Riley, Wellcome Collection (formerly London Transport Museum)

Museums, once seen as stuffy and elite institutions, exclusive, imperious and didactic, have generally become more and more inclusive, accessible and dynamic; places where humanity’s tangible and intangible heritage can be explored by all. I posit that a large part of this transformation (or personality overhaul, if you will) is thanks to how digital technology has opened up the cultural sector beyond the walls of our institutions. Museums and their audiences can have a more direct, personal and informal relationship with each other thanks to social media. And when that relationship works, well, it’s thanks to the social media managers.

“For me, the whole point of social media is to show that these big institutions have personality. And that they are made up of people. Those people are what make them so great.

As a visitor, a personalised visit will usually be a more positive one. And I approach social media as that: a personal interaction” Lexie Buchanan, Art Gallery of Ontario

Should Museums Have a Personality?

Russell Dornan on why tone and voice are crucial online and what it means to funnel a museum’s online presence through a unique filter: ourselves

I was in charge of the social channels at Wellcome Collection for three years.

During that time, I met many social media managers (SMMs) from other institutions as we collaborated, shared experiences and reflected on good practice. Here and there this idea of personality came up. Whereas the overall personality of an institution may be set by the museum’s mission, branding, subject matter and general approach, on social media all of that is channelled through a SMM. Inevitably, the personalities mix, inform and change each other, leading me to the topic of this article: how do our personalities influence our organisation’s online presence?

SMMs (humans) run social accounts for their organisations (definitely not human). This presents us with the challenge of deciding how the organisation should sound, act and exist online. Should I say “we” instead of “I”? Am I pretending the museum is actually speaking? What would it say? How would it say it? Can I make jokes? How funny is my museum?

Is my museum sarcastic, staid, sombre, sassy? Some of the answers to these questions are found in the history, themes and approach of the institution. But social media has a range of functions and a certain tone; it offers museums a chance to sidestep outdated perceptions or subvert expectations.

Some of the answers to these questions may get defined by other people in the organisation with perhaps a more limited idea of how a museum should act online. This can be difficult, as it means the SMM is constantly tempering their own personality.

But this can work well. W. Ryan Dodge at the Royal Ontario Museum has freedom to develop the museum’s voice and tone online (and it’s great), but he deliberately limits how much of him comes through. In fact, although Ryan has made the museum’s social media snappy and challenging, he prefers to use his personal Twitter to emphasise there’s a person involved, rather than overtly serving his personality via the official account.

Drew Mandinach, formerly from Balboa Park Online Collaborative, was able to develop their online tone and tried to make it an experience of exploration as he roamed and shared the park via social media. He was not the sole representative or voice, rather he worked to share many voices and to expand the dialogue to include the community around topics like Black Lives Matter. Some people don’t have that kind of freedom. Even if you can get used to slipping into the “institution’s voice”, if it’s quite different to your own it can be challenging.

“Because of the nature of our collection, people could easily associate us with an antiquated Victorian cabinet of curiosities. Instead, we try to have a light tone of voice which embraces all things fun, exciting and inspiring”

“The museum is relatively conservative in its messaging. I don’t feel that I can use my own voice as much because maybe the way I write could be misinterpreted by an audience I perceive to be a little bit more serious”

Polly Heffer, Royal Museums Greenwich (formerly Horniman Museum and Gardens)

Anon

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Being able to have more control is an asset. It lets you be more responsive and evolve your organisation’s tone according to your audience and what they engage with best. Lucille Carver at the Field Museum in Chicago developed the Field’s social media away from only re-posting other accounts and using content sent to her by helpful staff, to being proactive and creating engaging content herself. Along with a change in tone and personality, this adds so much more: you’re not just a conduit, but a content creator.

Wellcome Collection‘s unhealthy Beyonce obsession

“People react to a human voice much more than a sterile, anonymous one, so showing that an actual person is running the show is important because it increases peoples’ trust in the institution and it’s just more fun” Steve Boyd, Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Dorothy Howard wrote an article recently called “The Social-Mediafication of Museums”, in which she lambasts the way museums have stepped into social media. Howard is uncomfortable with, among other things, what she perceives as museums lacking confidence about being authorities on culture as we hand that job over to the public. More than that, Howard suggests that the way museums and galleries are doing this is insincere and contrived; a way to appear human and fool our audiences.

“Museums and galleries worldwide increasingly…[post] institutional announcements on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram using a kind of doublespeak that mimics human speech and personality” Dorothy Howard 40

I can’t vouch for Howard, but I am certain that people running social media for museums and galleries don’t have to mimic human speech; they are in fact human beings using those tools to speak to others. I’m not a machine trying to simulate an ersatz personality online. I already have one (such as it is) and it fed into running Wellcome Collection’s social channels.

Don’t get me wrong: Howard raises several points in her article that will make for fascinating discussions within the #musesocial network. It’s just a shame they’re delivered with such derision and cynicism, ignoring the rich and meaningful exchanges museums and their audiences enjoy thanks to social media.

“This Usership of art institutions falls in a long chain of corporations coopting modes of interaction and economic exchange more commonly enjoyed by individuals, when doing so is advantageous” Dorothy Howard

Oh, the shade of it all! I’m unclear why speaking to our audience human-tohuman irks Howard; it makes me wonder that she might not care about why we do what we do. We project personalities onto all sorts of things, including museums, and I think it would be strange for their online presence to lack any kind of personality.

Letting our own character come through as we run organisational accounts can only humanise our museums and galleries, bringing us closer to our audiences and (critically) them to us.

“People don’t want to feel like they’re talking to a robot. Knowing that you’re speaking to a person and not just canned responses is vital in today’s well-connected world” Alie Cline, formerly Blanton Museum of Art

People who manage social accounts for museums are those organisations. They’re the ones speaking to the public and with whom everyone shares things. A human is behind the accounts, even when they’re acting on behalf of an institution. Being able to funnel the museum through your own personality is a great asset and, when done well, can set that place apart.

Wellcome Collection and Royal Academy in a Twitter exchange

It’s not just that our personality can come through. The form that takes and the other dimensions of who we are also shape the accounts we manage. Our own interests and skills affect how we talk about the museum activities, the aspects we choose to focus on and the way we decide to interrogate or interpret them.

“If I were to ignore who I am as member of the arts community and resident of the city, I wouldn’t be as engaging. I believe that we can mediate our own voice - and I do - but if we took it out completely then our jobs on social media would be very empty” Nicole Rademacher, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs

From speaking to other SMMs, the kinds of things many of us want to represent on our channels involve social justice and equality (e.g. Black Lives Matter or LGBTQ+ solidarity, or perspectives from people with disabilities) and providing a platform for discussions around these topics. Sadly, this is usually seen as political and “taking a stance”, so not everyone can do it, but some of us try to push this through when we can.

“I want to use my soapbox for diversity and inclusive content. I want more takeovers and more inclusive-

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driven posts that share and reflect the diversity of our community and those who visit our museums; not just the dead white guy mentality that has persevered since the ‘60s.”

Adrianna Prosser, City of Toronto

Similarly, the way we interact with other museums depends on who we are and what we think our audience will enjoy. For some, it’s a very formal relationship. For me, some of the best fun I had “as Wellcome Collection” was sending Rupaul GIFs to the Royal Academy or wishing our museum friends a merry Christmas using subject-specific GIFs.

It’s a finely tuned relationship and always in flux. Developing a personality for your organisation is a big responsibility and the amount of flexibility or freedom a SMM has to do that depends on the museum. In the same way the front of house or visitor services teams are often the most direct representation of a museum for visitors, so the SMM is online.

“My supervisor made it clear that I was trusted to be the voice of the institution online” Alie Cline, formerly Blanton Museum of Art

Trust is vital, both in terms of the trust between SMM and the wider museum, as well as the trust between us and our audiences.

“The channels are my babies and I’ve gotten to know people who regularly interact with us and I care about them”

Wellcome Collection is a thoughtful Xmas GIF giver

There is of course a balance. When I ran Wellcome Collection’s channels, I sometimes caught myself posting more as “me” than I perhaps should have.

Occasionally, that can work really well and gets a good response; sometimes it’s less wise. But almost everything I posted on social media for my museum had a bit of me in it.

The beauty of social media is that it’s just that: social. I reacted to Wellcome Collection’s audience and how they responded. Now and again I pushed things a bit more than I usually did and I didn’t always know how it would be received; overall I think I judged things pretty well. Very occasionally there was a comment about a photo we’d tweeted (e.g. of naked men putting their dildos in a dishwasher or of a “tart card” depicting light S&M). But it was my job to understand our audience and judge how far I could push them; it was also my responsibility to recognise an outlier and know that although we may get comments questioning our approach it shouldn’t stop me from sharing that kind of content if most of our audience gets it.

Lorraine Gouin, Canada Agriculture and Food Museum

Considering how careful I was when posting as Wellcome Collection, I’m surprised when an organisation or brand’s social media massively fails. We all make mistakes, but I’m talking about disasters, the kind people are quick to point out and share across social media, sometimes causing it go viral (normally something you’d be quite happy about in other circumstances). A recent example is the London Dungeon’s Valentine’s day faux pas.

Twitter fail by the London Dungeons on Valentine’s day

When you develop an organisation’s presence online, over time and through trial and error you get a real sense of the boundaries: your own and your audiences’.

A lot of museums try to show they have a sense of humour online.

Sometimes they’re sassy, sometimes they’re bold. It’s about judging what’s right for your institution. Museums like the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia have collections that could gratuitously shock or disturb if given that kind of spin, but Gillian Ladley ensures this is not the approach they take. Dealing with human remains demands respect and needs a sensitivity that some museums may not have to worry about in the same way. It’s an interesting dichotomy: the Mütter doesn’t “spin” their approach to social media in the same way as, say, the Horniman does (to actively step away from dusty preconceptions), because the material they cover is by definition highly unusual and unexpected to most of the public. They can’t be sassy or irreverent about their collection, but (or because) their collection is provocative by default. “ I have a very real loyalty to the public that follow and engage with LTM and I want to make sure that I don’t let them down. Whether all this matters to the public, or whether they even notice, is another matter” Kirsten Riley, Wellcome Collection (formerly London Transport Museum)

Meltdowns like the one caused by the London Dungeon’s tone deaf Valentine’s Day misstep (new band name, called it!) are a good reminder of why we work so hard to understand our respective missions and audiences: the last thing we want to do is upset or disappoint people who love our museum. I think it’s difficult for some of us to do this effectively without fully immersing ourselves. It’s no surprise, then, that our personalities mingle and fuse with those of our institution.

But what happens when you leave that museum? How do you untangle yourself from it? And how do you take over a different museum’s online presence?

“In some ways it terrifies me to 43

hand over the Hammer’s voice to someone else, but in other ways I look forward to seeing how it develops. My voice isn’t perfect; no one’s voice is” Arielle Sherman, Hammer Museum

So after putting all this work in and pouring yourself into the institution’s online persona, what happens when you move on? I’m very sad to have handed over Wellcome Collection’s social channels and I’ll watch closely to see how it changes.

Having recently given up the channels at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford when Adam Koszary moved jobs, he and his team discussed these same issues.

“We accepted that the voice of the Bodleian will change, but that it would still remain uncorporate and informal.

What I had done was to show that if the next person chose to take a sarcastic, sassy and humorous tone then our audiences enjoyed it. I’m very curious as to how it will develop and I hope that it will be better. I’m sure that the vast majority of our audience won’t have noticed that I’ve gone” Adam Koszary, Museum of English Rural Life and Museum of Reading

A small part of me would like to think the person who has taken over Wellcome Collection’s channels won’t do as good a job as me. They won’t be as cheeky; they won’t take the same (calculated) risks; they won’t gauge the appropriateness of the content correctly (how can they, they don’t know our audience like I do), either being too risqué or too bland; they won’t have the same sense of humour through which to funnel Wellcome Collection.

But before we collectively choke on my arrogance, a much bigger part of me understands those fears are unfounded.

Reflecting on this with colleagues at other museums, for some there’s the similarly unfounded notion that their successors might not do quite as good a job, but the fear that the next generation are likely to be much better was far more keenly felt amongst the group. Of course, anyone following in someone else’s footsteps should be better, building on what came before and taking it further.

“Running a museum’s account for 44

a period of time gives you a sense of ownership; you want to protect the experience the audience receives.

But it’s still very important to push the organisation forward and new perspectives can do that” Alie Cline, formerly Blanton Museum of Art

Having just written about why it’s important to let someone’s personality come through on an institutional account, I obviously don’t think a new person should be bound to an existing tone and approach. It should flex and adapt as they naturally become more entwined with it.

And, ultimately, how much will the public notice that gradual change in personality?

I think the real worry about handing over your museum’s social accounts to someone else is focus. We can be confident that our organisations will appoint people with the required skills to be a good communicator, to have an imagination and to think creatively. But there’s more to being human than that. The next person will have different interests, letting the museum present slightly different sides of itself. Great! But what if the shift in focus includes moving away from approaches you feel are important or even vital? Social media/digital content may be one of the few areas of your institution that can try new approaches and act boldly. What if the next person is: “…someone who won’t work as hard to share voices of experiences that aren’t ours - quotes and images of people of colour, focus on celebrating women in collections or LGBTQ+ history - whatever it is” Drew Mandinach, formerly from Balboa Park Online Collaborative

Before I left, Wellcome Collection had their Twitter account taken over in an attempt to decolonise our collections.

It was a challenging few days for the museum, but amazing and necessary (and hopefully just the beginning). If the next person in my position were less keen to explore this, they may not have felt comfortable to hand over the keys. I hope that soon these sorts of conversations will spread through organisations and society, meaning we won’t need to worry about how we as SMMs can provide a

Russell’s proudest moment on Twitter

platform for hidden voices, but until that happens, we need SMMs who are willing to demonstrate the power social media can have in this and other areas.

Allowing the personality of the person behind a museum’s digital presence to come through is only a problem if their personality is…inappropriate. For many reasons, it’s a massive asset. It’s also easy to tell when someone is faking it; being genuine is important for the audience and giving your own personality space to breathe makes it so much easier to be real.

So the next time you see a museum share something on social media, have a think about the person behind the account: a human being reaching out to the same.

Russell Dornan, Digital Producer, V&A Museum of Design, Dundee (and past Web Editor for Wellcome Collection)

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Russell Dornan is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

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The V&A Exhibition Road Quarter took six years to realise and transforms how visitors experience and discover the V&A and its collections. The project creates a dramatic new entrance and public courtyard and is home to a vast new space for temporary exhibitions © Hufton+Crow

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he V&A Exhibition Road Quarter presents a 21st Century vision and interpretation of the V&A’s founding principles - to make works of art and design available to all; to educate; and to inspire designers and manufacturers today and in the future.

It is the largest architectural intervention by the V&A in over 100 years.

Designed by Stirling Prize-winning architect Amanda Levete and her practice AL_A, the V&A Exhibition Road Quarter opened to the public on 30 June and creates a beautiful and unique new civic space for London and a world-class gallery space for the V&A’s exhibition programme.

The project took six years to realise and transforms the V&A’s former boilerhouse yard on London’s great cultural artery, Exhibition Road. Visitors now enter from the street through the 11 openings of a newly created colonnade formed from the 1909 Aston Webb Screen.

The imaginative new entrance now allows the V&A to properly connect with its neighbours the Science Museum and 46

Natural History Museum and leads on to a sequence of major new spaces.

The Sackler Courtyard is the world’s first all-porcelain public courtyard, and comprises over 11,000 handmade porcelain tiles, inspired by the rich tradition of ceramics at the V&A. The new courtyard reveals architecturally significant façades and details that have never previously been seen by the public.

These include sgraffito decoration on the side of the Henry Cole Wing – a decorative Renaissance technique using multiple layers of coloured plaster created by the first art students at the V&A, in the late 19th century. The stonework of the Aston Webb Screen retains the damage that World War II inflicted on the Museum, which is reflected in 11 sets of new metal gates, designed by AL_A. The gates have been manufactured with a pattern of perforations tracing the imprint of the shrapnel damage on the stonework as well as the Royal Crest in the central gate. This courtyard also houses a café with furniture designed for the space by AL_A and manufactured by Moroso.

V&A Exhibition Road Quarter The V&A’s largest architectural intervention in over 100 years creates dramatic new entrance and vast gallery space

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Designed by Stirling Prize-winning architect Amanda Levete and her practice AL_A, the Exhibition Road Quarter creates a beautiful and unique new civic space for London and a world-class gallery space for the V&A’s exhibition programme © Hufton+Crow

“With its mix of ingenuity and imagination, the V&A has always been a meeting point for historicism and modernity”

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The Blavatnik Hall is a new space that transforms how visitors experience and discover the V&A and its collections.

Connecting the newly displayed Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Galleries of Buddhist Art and the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Sculpture Galleries, The Blavatnik Hall gives views through to The John Madejski Garden, leads to a new shop, and connects to the historic Ceramic Staircase as well as the Sackler Centre for arts education, which reopens featuring the new John Lyon’s Charity Community Gallery.

The versatile, 1,100m sq column-free Sainsbury Gallery is one of the largest temporary exhibition galleries in the UK. This flexible exhibition space sits above a floor dedicated to art handling, conservation and preparation space.

The new spaces reach as far as 18 metres below ground, directly beneath the Western Range of the V&A’s Grade I listed buildings: a daring engineering and construction challenge that is made visible to the public by steel columns and a vividly painted beam that are literally holding the weight of history and the V&A’s priceless collections above.

Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A said: “This is a landmark moment in our history. The V&A Exhibition Road Quarter is both the Museum’s largest architectural intervention in over one hundred years and the start of a new chapter of expansion, returning to our original mission at the same time as opening up the V&A for the future. With its mix of ingenuity and imagination, the V&A has always been a meeting point for historicism and modernity. The V&A Exhibition Road Quarter bridges the two by offering fresh insights into our historic building with pioneering new architecture, creating London’s leading exhibition space.”

Project: V&A Exhibition Road Quarter Opened: June, 2017 Budget: £55 million Architects: AL_A Principal: Amanda Levete Project director: Alice Dietsch Project architect: Matt Wilkinson Consultants: ARUP Construction: Wates Construction

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Museums are abandoning the museum-as-building paradigm and even stepping beyond the museum-asbuilding + website “tiny addendum model” to embrace the idea of the museum as platform © SMK - The National Gallery of Denmark

“The interface to our collections is now a myriad different views through a myriad different screens over which we have very little control” Everything Anywhere: Welcome to Your New Life as a Platform Jonas Heide Smith on why museums need to be more reductionist yet more disorganized in order to succeed in the digital world Jonas Heide Smith is Head of Digital at SMK, The National Gallery of Denmark.

He heads up the museum’s digital steering committee, aiming for a unified approach to services and userexperience. Jonas has a PhD in Games has taught Digital Communication at Danish universities for several years. He has worked on digital project for both the public and the private sector. Jonas is speaking at the Museum Ideas 2017 conference in London.

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he signs are all around us: Museums are abandoning the museum-as-building paradigm and even stepping beyond the museum-as-building + website “tiny addendum model” to embrace the idea of the museum as platform. Not in a coordinated rush, and certainly not at similar speeds but as an audible rumble fueled by the affordances of digital technologies.

If I may very briefly summarize, the idea is this: The interface to our collections is now a myriad different views through a myriad different screens over which we have very little control. The museum, in other words, has become increasingly distributed (see also Bautista & Balsamo, 2011) and strictly prioritizing one interface over another is non-trivial. Or as Nancy Proctor exemplarily notes “a bricks-andmortar museum is an analog platform” (Proctor, 2010).

Now, while this new model may be increasingly accepted in some variation it often remains largely metaphorical. While digitizing one’s collection, surrendering control, and making files accessible through third party platforms is brave, commendable, and challenging in itself it does not fulfil the digital potential of most museums. Let me explain why I believe we need to be more reductionist yet more disorganized in order to succeed.

Towards a thick connection You may have accepted that the internet is the prime repository for shared knowledge (or ‘information’ if you insist) in our societies. For any knowledge institution we are long past the point where choosing not to have a strong impact online is the choice in need of an explanation.

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Don’t worry too much what’s inside as long as they stack well.

Digital material is somewhat like a shipping container

“We need to do what we are trained not to do: We need to ignore context” Many institutions have material online in some form and thus have at least some connection to the web. But the usefulness of these connections runs the gamut. A “thin” connection is one where very little material is published and/or where this material is unorganized. It’s what you get if you, say, place a collection of photos for download on your website. The very dedicated, the very knowledgable, or the very lucky can find them and use them but the downloaded photo will typically have very little associated information.

Your museum may know a lot about the object but the user will be able to find out very little. In a sense, then, your collection will be connected to the shared knowledge bank though a very thin connection.

At the other end of the spectrum, a “thick” connection is one where the museum’s knowledge resources are published far more systematically than the occasional JPG image file. It’s one where material is both accessible and 52

useful to individuals and to systems. And it’s one where ideally all of the museum’s relevant knowledge comes packaged with the object. It’s also one that requires a leap into reductionism and disorder.

The case for reductionism To the computer on your desk and the phone in your pocket, everything is data.

Your device can run mind-numbing accounting software, play Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, or display your flight schedule and in an important sense it will do it all equally well. It won’t care about specifics - it’s a platform, and a wildly important one due to rampant reductionism.

Think of the standard shipping container (that probably contained your device at one point) as a similar mechanism. It’s context-free blandness is its very strength: It’s highly flexible and can pretty much contain anything and everything.

Museums have digital content. But in order to make this content flexible enough to be truly useful we need to see not videos, research articles, blog entries, nor exhibition websites but content blocks.

In a sense, then, we need to do what we are trained not to do: We need to ignore context.

Does this sound disturbing? If so, the notion may have made you think of the disreputable practice of cross-platform publishing; the (often problematic) idea that the same content can work well in many different formats. But the reductionism we’re looking for here is not this, but rather that of a library: To be useful, a library defines any book as “simply” an instance of books, thus ignoring typography, quality of writing, the mental state of the author, the imagined reactions of the reader etc.

But, emphatically, the library does not reformat books on purchase to look the same and museums have no good reason to do this either.

In other words: We need to forget the properties of our materials that are irrelevant to organization without, of course, destroying these properties.

Order through disorder Which is the best way to organize our digital content blocks? If you’ve ever tried to draw up a sitemap for a complex website you know that this is dangerous territory. But in an important sense the answer is “in every way”. Organizing digital content is decidedly not the same as organizing physical objects. A physical object can be in one place at a time. In an art museum, you can organize your exhibition chronologically, by theme, by style, or by painter but you can only choose one. On the museum’s website, while you cannot have the physical artworks themselves, you can have all your representations and all your material in every way at once and this requires a footnote: We need to leave behind the shipping container metaphor - despite all their flexibility shipping containers can only be in one place at a time. Let’s refer to our material instead as elements.

A sitemap has its uses but it’s a strangely physical exercise as it imposes a particular hierarchical structure on elements that really don’t need it and

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The refurbished Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, Wirral

Architects & Designers Heritage Leaders Consultants

will necessarily correspond to the logical structure of only very few users (on deeper levels it’s likely that no one user will find the structure fully logical).

What we need is a way to let users choose their own structure based on their own definition of relevance. And for that, we need to establish connections between our elements by introducing what we could call associators. Associators are labels used to form relationships, in other words they are ‘metadata’.

Of course, the more common name for such metadata is “tag” or even “keyword” but those may give the wrong impression as an associator is better thought of as anything that defines a relationship between elements. On this view, we can identify at least four types of associators: · Organic. Keywords contributed by someone, whether museum staff or uses · Machine-based. Keywords contributed by computer analysis of image content (for instance) · Found. Properties of the file itself such as camera metadata, document length, color distribution of an image. · Implied. Relations gleaned from user behaviour. For instance, a relationship can be established between two objects that are often seen by the same user.

Using a scheme such as this, rich relationships can be built between objects in a collection. No all-encompassing authoritative taxonomy is needed.

The price, of course, is a certain unpredictability. But the advantages are legion as you (and your users) will now have a much more versatile way of organizing everything based on any requirement.

Towards thicker connections To successfully be a platform - in the very concrete and somewhat technical sense described here - museums must not just publish their material online but meaningfully connect their materials to each other and to the web. I’ve left out the technical specifications on purpose since the whole point here is to think beyond concrete platforms but in outline, it’s a model we’ll be pursuing at SMK as part

Nicolai Abildgaard’s The Wounded Philoctetes from 1775. Artwork placed by SMK in the public domain. Technically available but hard to find and use without specified relationships to other material © SMK - The National Gallery of Denmark

“We may just be pushing our relevance into a whole different league” of the SMK Open project (www.smk.dk/ smkopen) in the years to come.

The idea of the distributed museum is by no means new but if we can establish much more powerful “thick” connections between museums and the web we may just be pushing our relevance into a whole different league.

Jonas Heide Smith Head of Digital, SMK - The National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen Bibliography Proctor, Nancy. “Digital: Museum As Platform, Curator As Champion, in the Age of Social Media.” Curator: The Museum Journal 53, no. 1 (2010): 35-43.

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Jonas Heide Smith is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

Bautista, S, and Anne Balsamo. “Understanding the Distributed Museum: Mapping the Spaces of Museology in Contemporary Culture.” Museums and the Web 2011. 2011.

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Main image: The one-of-a-kind, 31-foot-wide oculus lens and viewing portal into the Gulf Stream Aquarium habitat. Above, top: Feathers to the Stars exhibition - from feathered dinosaurs to the future of space travel - an interactive space about the biology and evolution of flight, aerospace engineering, astronomy and physics. Middle: LASERsHOW: Lights, Color and Geometry brings visitors on an immersive experience of the wonders of lasers and the physics of light itself. Above: Interactive learning stations and underwater views in Aquarium Deep @ Frost Science / Photos by Ra-Haus

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Frost Science The Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami’s Museum Park combines a planetarium, aquarium and museum to create a sophisticated science and technology campus

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he Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science (Frost Science) has opened in its new home in Downtown Miami’s Museum Park. Designed by Grimshaw Architects, the 250,000 square foot, $305 million facility combines a planetarium, aquarium and museum on one campus and is one of the most sophisticated science and technology museums in the United States.

The museum is divided into four buildings, the Frost Planetarium, Aquarium, and North and West Wings, where visitors can learn about the core science behind living systems, the solar system and known universe, the physics of flight, light and lasers, the biology of the human body and mind, and much more. It’s one of the few museums to house a planetarium, aquarium and science museum on one campus. Visitors explore the world of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in an experiential setting with interactive exhibitions and unique shows.

Highlights of the new Frost Science include: • Frost Planetarium: One of only thirteen 3-D 8K-projection planetariums in the world, the cutting edge, 250 seat planetarium takes visitors on virtual journeys that both thrill and educate.

The ultra-real immersive experience is the result of a 16 million color visual system using six projectors and surround sound inside the 67-foot dome.

• Aquarium: From Gulf Stream sharks to tiny organisms found within coral, the three level Aquarium is a trip through the water habitats of South Florida while exploring marine biology. Guests begin their journey on the ‘Vista’ level where they can see fish close up and touch a stingray. They then descend to the ‘Dive’ and ‘Deep’ levels for interactive learning stations and underwater views, including a one-of-a-kind, 31-foot-wide oculus lens and viewing portal into the Gulf Stream Aquarium habitat.

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Top left: Aquarium Vista Level, photo by World Red Eye; Left: Mangroves Exhibit, photo by Ra-Haus @ Frost Science; Above: Interactive Media Wall in Aquarium Deep @ Frost Science Photo by Patty Nash Photography

• Feathers to the Stars: Visitors are invited to follow the astounding story of flight - from feathered dinosaurs to the future of space travel - in an interactive space as they learn about the biology and evolution of flight, aerospace engineering, astronomy and physics. Visitors come face to face with a 30-foot feathered dinosaur; meet the inventors who pioneered human aviation; build and launch their own air rockets; and try on wing sleeves in a wind tunnel.

• River of Grass: Designed for younger visitors, the River of Grass experience is about the Everglades carries guests through two spaces: a hands-on outdoor area, and an indoor virtual Everglades where digital animals frolic and interact, communicating a fun storyline of biodiversity, hydrology and environmental science.

• LASERsHOW: Launching in the museum’s largest gallery, LASERsHOW: Lights, Color and Geometry brings visitors on an immersive experience of the wonders of lasers and the physics of light itself.

• MeLaß: Visitors can challenge their brain, stop a virus, dance or just chill out as part of the MeLaß experience, which explores behavioral science and neuroscience research, medical technology and public health.

• Solar and Lunar Rooftop Terraces: The museum’s living rooftop terraces give visitors access to the power of the elements - sun, wind and rain - while collecting data that helps identify patterns in the natural systems around us.

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• Learning Center – A home base for the museum’s educational programs - including youth and professional development, family engagement, innovative technologies and learning research - the Learning Center features a suite of four classrooms.

Visitors will engage with STEM programming and the Inventorsin-Residence, a residency program for scientists developing innovative solutions in the health and environmental sectors.

Frost Science has also launched a mobile app. Visitors enhance their museum experience by participating in interactive scavenger hunts across the campus and earn digital badges. The app also unlocks curated exhibit content, including science stories, audio and video clips, research and more. Using iBeacon technology, visitors can also access descriptive audio of selected tactile exhibits and locate themselves on the map of the museum.

Project: Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science Opened: May 2017 Budget: $305 million Design Architect: Grimshaw Architects Executive Architect: Rodriguez and Quiroga Architects Selected contractors: Ralph Appelbaum Associates; Casson Mann; DHA Design; Formula D Interactive; Interspectral The Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science opened to the public in May 2017. Tickets $20-$28 - concessions available.

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The Stories We Tell and the Right to Remember

The District Six Museum in Cape Town has been able to tap into the regenerative and community-building aspects of storytelling @ District Six Museum. Photo

by Paul Grendon

Bonita Bennett on how the museum can be a place of healing and hope, of restitution, celebration, and the re-energising of resilience ‘It is the storyteller who makes us who we are, who creates history.

The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have – otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.’ 1

Bonita Bennett is Director of the District Six Museum in Cape Town, South Africa.

Bonita’s background is as an educator and anti-apartheid and human rights activist.

After teaching at schools in impoverished areas of Cape Town, Bonita gained an MPhil from the University of Cape Town and has a particular research interest in narrative and memory. Bonita is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017 in London.

1. Chinua Achebe, quoted by Biyi Bandele, in the introduction to Things Fall Apart (2001)

S

torytelling has frequently been hailed as the panacea for trauma.

Processes such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa have done much to reinforce the association between storytelling and healing, but often it has not sufficiently taken into account that telling their stories has sometimes had the opposite effect on people as they are required to dig into the deep recesses of their minds, into memories which have been intentionally or subconsciously buried because they are so painful. In addition, there are a number of other components to healing that include economic redress, and storytelling cannot stand apart from the other things that need to happen.

Notwithstanding its limitations, District Six Museum has been able to tap into the regenerative and communitybuilding aspects of storytelling which has been at its core since it started as a

movement in the late 1980s and launched formally as a museum in 1994. Before there was a Museum, there were stories.

Stories that fulfilled many functions: they comforted, they asserted the right to remember as well as the right to claim restitution, they educated, they contributed to healing, even disturbed and contested some narratives.

Traditionally, museums are known for their collection of tangible objects and their exhibitions. A museum inspired by absence and loss of homes - such as the District Six Museum is - has made for many interesting experiences of exploring new ground, pulling together strands from the past and forging a pathway towards the future. A commitment to always upholding a people-centric approach has kept us grounded, and kept us focused on asserting that people who have very little by way of material possessions (based on a history of dispossession and 61

The District Six Museum is a space for the telling of stories of life that pre-date the Apartheid experience of racialised living, and tells stories of the diverse and coherent communities such as District Six. @ District Six Museum. Photo by Paul Grendon

“Storytelling continues to be an important pathway for asserting the right to remember and to reclaim what was lost”

2. Apartheid’ was the name given to the system of government in South Africa, which was based on the Nationalist Party’s ideology of racial classification and segregation when it came to power in 1948.

3. South Africans speak of the ‘new South Africa’ when referring to the post-Apartheid period, which was heralded by the country’s first democratic elections on 27 April, 1994.

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exclusion under Apartheid2 in South Africa) have much to contribute to our understanding of how to build a better humanity. Storytelling continues to be an important pathway for asserting the right to remember and to reclaim what was lost.

District Six is in Cape Town, South Africa, at the southern tip of Africa.

It is from here that the largest urban displacement in the Cape took place under Apartheid. Cape Town being a port city and District Six being very close to the port, it became known as a welcoming place to those arriving from all over. It was home to early immigrants coming from Western Europe, to Eastern European Jews fleeing the pogroms, home to locals working in the harbour, to the freed enslaved people of the Cape who came from Indonesia, Java, Mozambique, indentured labourers from India. Having been a diverse area which by all accounts thrived on the different orientations of its residents – linguistic, religious, cultural – it became one of the targets of the Apartheid government, which needed people to believe that difference was not desirable and could not co-exist.

When racial classification laws assigned racialised identities to people in the 1950s and also assigned racially defined areas of residence for each group so classified, District Six was declared a ‘whites only’ area and those not fitting into that category were forcibly removed.

Homes and most of the material traces of the community were destroyed including the street grid. Save for a few buildings blotted on the empty landscape, there was no tangible evidence of the community that once lived and flourished there. The land for the most part remained bare and barren and served as a mocking reminder to former residents of the senseless destruction of their homes.

The Apartheid government proceeded to build a ‘whites only’ university on a large part of the land and this building has in a concrete way stood as a tangible symbol of pain and exclusion. Echoing the physical erasure, the written history was silent about the quality of life experienced by residents of that community and the subsequent horror of having a coherent community destroyed right before their eyes.

With written records glossing over the removals, new generations were born into racialised communities, tacitly learning and accepting their families had lived in no other place. The District Six Museum became that space for the telling of stories of life that pre-dated the Apartheid experience of racialised living, and that told of diverse and coherent communities such as District Six. In the early days there were stories that inspired the birth of the Museum and supported the case for a return to the land in the new South Africa3. Current stories retain

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Traditionally, museums are known for their collection of tangible objects and their exhibitions. A museum inspired by absence and loss of homes - such as the District Six Museum is - has made for many interesting experiences of exploring new ground, pulling together strands from the past and forging a pathway towards the future. @ District Six Museum. Photo by Paul Grendon

the continuity with this, but are focused much more strongly on foregrounding meaning for current generations, and on building a robust and engaged citizenry.

The following are some of the current storytelling initiatives (although much of the storytelling in the Museum still happens organically and is not all programmatised):

• A project called ‘Huis Kombuis’5 consists of a number of storytelling workshops focused on the importance of food, cooking and dishes linked to certain community rituals and traditions.

It has resulted in a number of tangible products such as recipe cards, a book of stories and recipes, as well as practical textile products.

• ‘Tell your story to a born free’4 is an intergenerational dialogue programme where the elders of District Six are encouraged to take on the role of educator, and to cast light on the past through the telling of their personal stories to a young researcher. This programme has proved to be inspiring for both young and old, and much is learnt by the youth engaged in this way both about the content of people’s lives but also about active listening, engaging sensitively with traumatic memory, and a valuing of the past and its impact on the present.

‘Memory heals, it regenerates. It is an affirming god, a transcendent guide in the ritual of continuity. But when spurned, when repressed, memory mutates into a trickster imp and seduces the wayfarer to the precipice and beyond.’6

• ‘Memory Design Labs’ is a collective descriptor used to describe a series of initiatives resulting in public art installations or public memorials at different times. It involves members of the community working with artists, immersing themselves in a series of engagements which include storytelling, site engagements and archival explorations.

The District Six Museum takes seriously the self-imposed injunction to be a place of healing and hope, of restitution, celebration, and the re-energising of the resilience that formed the backbone of the community. We are ever mindful of the dangers resulting from the loss of continuity through memory alluded to in the above quotation. We are all too aware of the dangers to our social coherence which could result from the spurning and repression of memory. As a nation, we have much to lose if we do not nurture our collective memory which is given life through the telling of stories.

Bonita Bennett Director, District Six Museum

“The Museum takes seriously the selfimposed injunction to be a place of healing and hope, of restitution, celebration, and the re-energising of resilience”

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Bonita Bennett is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

4. The ‘born-free’ generation in South Africa are those who were born either after 1994, or on the cusp of the transition, and who have no lived experience of legal Apartheid.

5. Loosely translated from Afrikaans as ‘home kitchen’ 6. Biyi Bandili in the Introduction to ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe (2001) 65

The €48.8m renovation and and extension of the Musée d’arts de Nantes has created a vibrant, democratic and welcoming contemporary space, increasing exhibition spaces by 30% and offering a broader display of the museum’s rich collections. © Nantes Métropole - Musée d’arts de Nantes. Photo: C. CLOS

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he €48.8 million transformation and extension of the Musée d’arts de Nantes opened to the public in June 2017. For this landmark cultural project, London-based architects Stanton Williams has updated the historical site – an exemplary expression of the city’s civic and cultural pride and one of the largest Fine Arts Museums in France outside Paris - adding a contemporary layer to an exceptional accumulation of historical monuments.

The new design blends a finely tailored museography around the collection with contemporary architecture - transforming the introverted image of the former Musée des Beaux-Arts into a vibrant, democratic and welcoming contemporary space that is open to the city and its people.

The project incorporates several key extension buildings to the original 19th Century ‘Palais’, and 17th Century Oratory Chapel, with the addition of a 4,000 square metre contemporary art exhibition space. An auditorium, library, new educational facilities, archive, and external sculpture court have also been 66

created. A fully integrated landscape design leads the way to the museum from the surrounding Place de Oratoire and Botanical Gardens, creating new access routes and enhancing the museum’s renewed central role in the urban fabric of the surrounding area.

The extension is divided into four levels of art galleries. Layered one above the other, each level is linked by broad clefts that convey natural light throughout. These bridges and landings are new public routes that allow visitors to navigate the complex trajectory of the collections, spanning from ancient art to contemporary installations. The project has made it possible to increase exhibition spaces by 30%, to meet current conservation standards, and offer a broader display of the museum’s rich collections.

In keeping with the grand Beaux-Arts architecture of the Museum, a consistent palette of materials has been applied through the renovated spaces. This creates the impression that the museum is one monolithic volume - carved out of

Musée d’arts de Nantes Extension and transformation of the Musée d’arts de Nantes creates an exquisite and welcoming contemporary space

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Above: A 2000 sqm building dedicated to contemporary art is connected to the Palais by a suspended walkway. Left: The excavation of the Palais basement has created new public spaces, including an exhibition hall known as the “white room”. © Nantes Métropole - Musée d’arts de Nantes.

Photo: C. CLOS

“The project has made it possible to increase exhibition spaces by 30% and offer a broader display of the museum’s rich collections”

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a single block of stone. The entire south elevation of the new extension is glazed with a translucent laminated marble - a reference to the time when alabaster and marble were used in order to draw natural light into Medieval churches whilst protecting precious artworks within.

The new 2000 square-metre building dedicated to contemporary art is connected to the Palais by a suspended walkway. Here, architecture is at the service of art, without the desire for domination. The connection to the Palais is deliberately treated as an exhibition space in order not to interrupt the museum tour for visitors.

The excavation of the Palais basement has created new public spaces, including educational workshops, the auditorium and an exhibition hall known as the “white room”, as well as storage areas and workshops for treatment of artworks. The museum layout of this space was designed to be flexible and different picture rail configurations were studied to meet the varied demands of contemporary art.

The natural light of the nearby Atlantic is integral to the redesign, and the new museum experience. The existing glass

roof that used to light the galleries has been replaced by complex superimposed layers of glass, innovative stretched fabrics and modular stores. The result is a ‘passing clouds’ effect that retains and optimises natural light and emphasises the new focus on openness and connects the visitors with their environment.

In response to an all-encompassing brief, Stanton Williams collaborated with Cartlidge Levene to redesign and develop Musée d’arts de Nantes’ overall visual identity. This includes bespoke design of the lobby, café, museum shop, cloakroom and reception, and the overall formulation of a clear visual identity, which unites the museum’s exterior and interior, and creates a holistic museum experience that will have a lasting impression on visitors.

Project: Musée d’arts de Nantes Opened: June 2017 Budget: €48.8 million Architects: Stanton Williams Visual identity: Cartlidge Levene

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The Migration Museum Project stage an adventurous programme of exhibitions, events and education workshops at their new museum, housed in The Workshop, an arts and community space just off Albert Embankment in London. The Migration Museum is open Wednesday– Sunday from 11am–5pm. migrationmuseum.org

The Migration Museum Project Emily Miller on establishing a national cultural institution exploring the role that migration has played in shaping the UK Emily Miller is Head of Learning and Partnerships at the Migration Museum Project (MMP). Emily has a background in education and youth development work and since joining MMP in 2013 she has overseen the creation and development of its education programme. Emily is currently coordinating an Arts Council England-funded Migration Museums Network, a knowledgesharing network bringing together museums and galleries across the UK to share knowledge and increase outputs related to migration. Emily is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

R “This is a project where relevance to young people is considered in every decision”

ecently we opened the doors of the Migration Museum at The Workshop, a major step towards our goal of creating a permanent, dedicated museum of migration for Britain. For me, this feels like a big achievement in and of itself. I came on board with the Migration Museum Project (MMP) right at the start, the second paid employee after our director. I remember seeing the job description for my post in early 2013 and feeling inspired. Just one year before that, researching for my Masters, I had stepped out of the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris where I had secured an informal tour by a member of staff. I asked him ‘How is it that we do not have an equivalent museum in the UK?!’ He, in reply, mentioned the beginnings of MMP and a year later the role that so inspired me came up. For whilst Britain has distinguished and vibrant museums, many of which address aspects of migration, there has been no institution devoted solely to this theme, unlike other countries such as the USA, Australia and the museum I learnt from in Paris.

With my background in teaching and youth development work, I value a project where education is one of the key priorities, and not an afterthought. MMP is a project where relevance to young people is considered in every decision. We have worked with over 4000 pupils in different ways over the last four years and consistently find that the wide topic we work with inspires them, challenges them and most importantly includes them. We are continually learning from this work.

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It is a privilege to finally have our own venue to welcome schools and universities to, and we are certainly making the most of this opportunity. Currently we have workshops focussed on our two exhibitions displayed in the space: Call Me By My Name: Stories from Calais and Beyond and 100 Images of Migration.

Both have proven very effective with visitors overall, and particularly with our schools.

Pupils of all ages and backgrounds have a deep ability to empathise with those whose lives and stories are depicted in Call Me By My Name.

For example, in one of the most powerful installations in the exhibition, Wanderers, by Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen, hundreds of faceless plasticine figures seem to be staggering through the exhibition space in a huddled mass - a reflection on the dehumanising language that many politicians and media voices use about migrants. However, when invited to lean in and really ‘see’ these figures, pupils move quickly beyond those first impressions to identify the individuals within this mass, and imagined stories begin to emerge.

Our upcoming exhibition ‘No Turning Back: Seven Migration Moments that changed Britain’, our most ambitious undertaking to date, will similarly engage young people.

“This exhibition allows us to continue to test out ideas and consult with the public”

Wanderers by Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen: Hundreds of faceless plasticine figures seem to be staggering through the exhibition space in a huddled mass - a reflection on the dehumanising language that many politicians and media voices use about migrants © Kajal Nisha Patel

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And it is consciously aligned with aspects of the new migration history GCSE curricula recently introduced by OCR and AQA exam boards. In fact we are co-hosting a competition with OCR inviting pupils doing these units to submit competition entries presenting how aspects of their course could look as engaging exhibitions in a national migration museum.

If they are really good entries, we might even find ourselves employing the winners to design our next venue!

In Britain, immigration is often thought of as a late-20th century phenomenon. However, it has always been our intention to tell the long story of both immigration and emigration so that everyone learns something new from their visit. ‘No Turning Back’ will address this more explicitly than our other work to date.

Brexit and what it means for Britain’s migration policy, identity and place in the world may be the topic of the current moment, but there have been similar upheavals in the past, from the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 to the Aliens Act of 1905. This exhibition allows us to continue to test out ideas and consult with the public.

Inevitably, in selecting seven moments and the threads between them (then and now) there are thousands we are omitting. We anticipate

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this causing a productive stir: we welcome our audiences telling us their own shortlist and reasoning.

Learning from our audiences in this way is important. We also learn from our extensive partnerships with other museums, galleries, archives, arts organisations and academic partners. Only through these collaborations have we achieved our progress so far, and they are integral to our future success. The importance of these partnerships and crosssector working has been acknowledged by Arts Council England, with a grant to support our establishment of a network of museums working on migration themes. Having assessed different options, it is our intention to have a permanent London presence but an equally valued national reach: how can we hope to tell national stories of migration history without learning from and working with institutions across the country? The network has uncovered a thirst to do more to respond to the topic of migration, but a lack of confidence to wade into what can be considered contentious waters. We are mapping what is happening and planned across the sector, connecting efforts and hosting events where people can share best practice and learn from others’ experiences.

There are many possible reasons for this lack of confidence to engage with our migration heritage. But what is clear to me – and to so many people who have pledged their support to our project – is that with migration at the centre of current debates around Brexit and national identity, there has never been a more important time to act. It is time to establish a national cultural institution exploring the central role that migration has played in shaping who we are. The public discourse tends to focus on numbers and statistics. But whilst these are undeniably important, it is narratives that museums and galleries are so well positioned to share. A permanent national migration museum has huge potential to explore our history through our stories – personal stories, national stories and universal stories. Come and see what we are working on and contribute to our future at this time of great importance for us, but also for the UK. The Arts Council England-funded Migration Museums Network has uncovered a thirst across the museums sector to do more to respond to the topic of migration, but a lack of confidence about how to do this. The network is now hosting events where people can learn from others’ experiences © Migration Museum

Emily Miller Head of Learning and Partnerships, Migration Museum Project

“Migration is at the centre of current debates around Brexit and national identity - there has never been a more important time to act”

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Emily Miller is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

Migration Museum at The Workshop 26 Lambeth High Street, London SE1 7AG 75

Dramatic transformation of National Army Museum aims to encourage greater public engagement with ideas of defence and security

National Army Museum

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The National Army Museum in London has re-opened to the public following a three-year £23.75 million re-development. The project sees five new permanent thematic galleries and a focus on public engagement. Images © National Army Museum

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he National Army Museum in London has re-opened to the public following a dramatic transformation.

The three-year £23.75 million re-development project (including £11.5m from The National Lottery) sees five new permanent thematic galleries and a focus on public engagement and giving visitors the opportunity to voice their opinions.

Designed by architects BDP with exhibition design by Event Communications, the new museum aimes to maximise access and engagement with the collection to provide a more involving and powerful 21st century visitor experience. Designed to act as a bridge between the British Army and the public, the National Army Museum now encourages greater public engagement with the ideas of defence and security, openly asking questions to visitors and displaying responses on large screens inside the museum and on the website.

In the new permanent thematic galleries - Soldier, Army, Battle, Society and Insight - over 2,500 objects are on view, two thirds of which are on public display for the first time. A new 500m² temporary exhibition space has opened with War Paint: Brushes with Conflict, displaying over 130 paintings and objects. The project has also delivered a new study centre, café, shop and children’s play area.

On entering the Museum, visitors now encounter a series of large screens showcasing the history of the British Army through its campaigns and depicting the evolution of warfare.

The screens show the men and women soldiers who have fought, placing the story of the soldier at the heart of the Museum. At the centre of the atrium Anna Redwood’s Desert Rat, a 10ft tall sculpture made of metal vehicle scraps from Afghanistan, draws visitors down to Insight gallery.

The Insight gallery examines the impact the British Army has had around the world and the many different countries and

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cultures it has encountered. Intended as a regularly changing exhibition, the gallery’s opening displays look at the army’s connection with Germany, Scotland, the Punjab, Ghana and Sudan.

The ground floor Soldier gallery draws on the abundance of individual stories contained within the Museum’s collection and archive. It brings to life displays of personal and often inspiring objects that explore the physical and emotional experience of soldiering throughout the army’s history. Showing that while the army may be almost 400 years old, the thoughts, feelings and human experience of soldiers remain remarkably similar.

The Army gallery charts the history of the army as an institution. It explores its origins in the chaos of the British Civil Wars, its major role in the political development of the country and its impact on global history. It looks at the makeup of the army, the people that have served in it, and explains the hierarchy and systems it uses. Visitors are able to explore how the army has adapted and evolved in the face of political and popular policy.

Battle gallery explores the British experience of battle from the 1640s to the present day. There are four distinctive sections – the age of horse and musket (1640s-1840s), the age of rapid fire (1840s-1900s), total war (1914-1945) and modern warfare (1946-today), including drones, surveillance and counter-insurgency conflicts. The sections show how tactics have evolved and how technological development changed the course of battles fought by the British Army.

Finally, a large wall of magazines, posters and cultural ephemera mark the entrance to the Society gallery. Society uses objects, artworks and personal testimony to examine the army as a cultural as well as military force. Half of all objects

National Army Museum selected contractors: Exhibition Design: Event Communications Exhibition Fit Out: The Hub Heritage Consultancy: Purcell Miller Tritton Specialist Contractors: Clay Interactive / Squint Opera Visual Communications: Small Back Room Mannequins: H&H Sculpture & Design Showcases: Bruns 78

Visitors are able to explore how the army has adapted and evolved in the face of political and popular policy © National Army Museum

in this gallery are displayed for the first time, and reveal the army’s impact on our customs, values and choices. From films, literature, toys and music we grow up with, to how the army impacts the way we vote and our news reporting. Looking at the army’s influence on fashion and at its impact on philanthropy, medicine, technology and benevolence, the army is revealed as both recognisable and distant, both loved and loathed. The Society gallery also examines ceremony, remembrance and the moments when communities have encountered British soldiers on their streets in circumstances of conflict, natural disaster and national security.

Commenting on the redevelopment, Janice Murray, Director General of the Museum said: ‘The new galleries allow our collections to give a wider perspective on the Army. The stories are universal, they come from individual men and women. We invite visitors to come and question their British Army both past and present and find out more about its role in our lives.’

The National Army Museum re-opened to the public in March 2017. Admission is free. Address: Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, London SW3 4HT

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Christian Diaz is the coordinator of HABEMUS - a volunteer project of the Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahía Blanca, Argentina. HABEMUS is involved in the the digital transformation of museums, makes analysis of public behaviour and produces the radio program Habemus.

Let’s Hack the Museums. Christian is speaking at the Museum Ideas 2017 conference in London.

Habemus. Let’s Hack the Museums is a programme about museums constructed jointly with listeners through a popular part of the mass media - the radio

“The public are not only the visitors. The public are all those who talk about the museum” Guillermo Solana

Habemus. Let´s Hack the Museums

“The Museum has moved from being a place designed for the few - the cultural elite - to a temple for the many”

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Christian Diaz on how a radio programme jointly constructed with listeners is helping to create new connections with the public

he museum is an antique cultural institution that has gone through a great transformation since the last decades of 20th Century. The change is profound - the Museum has moved from being a place designed for the few - the cultural elite - to a temple for the many, often more popular than large shopping malls or theme parks. The museum has turned from being a closeddoor institution to one with wide open doors welcoming the public.

In this exciting new era for museums, to successful reach out to the public common sense must be applied and three basic concepts need to be followed: strategy, creativity and originality. We need strategy to think before acting. We need creativity to be seductive. And we need originality to do it in a novel way.

Habemus plan the communication of museums based on these premises.

Immersed in the new paradigm of museums, Habemus promotes the central

role of visitors and the need for strategies to get the public engaged with museum exhibitions and activities. Habemus was born as a training and assistance programme for digital communication in the museums of Bahía Blanca city, Argentina. The internet has radically changed the way in which people search and find cultural content. Museums need to undergo a digital transformation to offer an interactive and attractive experience. To help with this, Habemus developed an app, a web page and a radio programme.

A radio programme about museums Understanding the change of paradigm, we developed and lead the production, management and putting on air of the radio programme HABEMUS. Let’s hack the museums. This is a programme about museums constructed jointly with the listeners/visitors and through a popular part of the mass media - the radio.

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On 10th September 2015 the first Habemus.

Let’s Hack the Museums radio programme was broadcast, on a weekly basis on Thursdays from 7.00 to 9.00pm. The programme is broadcast by the Vorterix Bahía radio station - chosen because it is aimed at an audience of 15-35 years olds © HABEMUS

“The main aim of the radio programme is to show, transmit, and generate new connections with the public”

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The tasks prior to putting the programme on air included the selection of the radio station, the generation of the name, the specification of the general aim of the programme as well as establishing the internal structure, with fixed sections.

With regard to the radio station, it was decided to choose Vorterix Bahía, given that it is a radio station that offers an audience between 15 and 35 years old; an age range that museums often strugle to reach and communicate with. At the same time Vorterix Bahía provided streaming, which meant that the programme could be listened to over the internet, beyond just Bahía Blanca - so there was potentially a national, even worldwide, audience.

In terms of the name, we opted for HABEMUS (Latin for ‘We have’) with the sub-heading Let’s hack the museums. We understand hacking to be the action of interrupting and entering into a system and altering it. The term hacker has various meanings, but we are interested in the way it defines a person who is dedicated to programming in an enthusiastic way - that is to say, any type of expert who thinks that sharing information within the reach of everyone, constitutes an extraordinary good.

The main aim of the radio programme is to show, transmit, and generate new connections with the public with regard to the new idea of open, accessible and welcoming museums. The sections incorporated in the radio programme are the agenda of local cultural activities; on air chats shows with professionals from museums or linked to museums, and a humourous section with Valerio Marinetti, our spatial correspondent from the world of museums.

On 10th September 2015 the first programme was broadcast, on a weekly basis on Thursdays from 7.00 to 9.00pm.

A total of 45 programmes were aired during 2015 and 2016. All along the broadcast cycle, interviews were carried out in the studio and there were telephone and Skype interviews with professionals from local, national and international museums. The interviews included the participation of: · professionals from Bahía Blanca city museum and cultural institutions · professionals from Argentinean institutions, among which include: Américo Castilla, President of Fundación TyPA, and Andrés Duprat, Director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires · professionals from Spainish institutions such as the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona; the Museo Reina Sofía; the Museo Thyssen–Bornemisza, Madrid; and MUSAC - Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León. · professionals from Museo de Historia Natural de Chile Topics covered in the radio show include community museums, museums and conservation, and museums and social media. In the humourous section of the show we also included items on some non traditional museums all around the world, including the Dragon Ball Museum and the Museum of Broken Relationships.

All the programmes and interviews are available online (in Spanish).

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www.brightwhiteltd.co.uk

The broadcasting of the weekly Habemus.

Let’s Hack the Museums radio programme was complemented by sharing the contents of the programme on social networks and posting all the interviews on their website © HABEMUS

“The Museum is no longer here to tell us who we were, but to help us to announce collectively who we are going to be and in what way we are going to be able to live together. The Museum is here to show these complexities”

With the focus fixed on the new paradigms of the digital transformation of museums, we complemented the broadcasting of the weekly radio programme by sharing the contents of the programme on social networks, as well as the activities of the museums in Bahía. Other related activities and all the interviews were also posted on our website. Habemus can be found on Facebook, Twitter - @Habemuseos - and on Instagram. We also have a YouTube channel and send out a weekly email to our mailing list.

Music of and for museums A museum is not just a place where things are exhibited: it is a place where things happen. With this in mind and the aim of widening audiences, one of the actions carried out by the radio programme was a call for local bands to compose a piece of music about museums, using as the basis the 95 tesis written (in Spanish) on Twitter by the artistic director of the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum, Guillermo Solana, with whom we spoke on air.

Ten locals bands took part of the proposal, with funk , jazz, bossa nova, rock and soul rhythms. The pieces, interpreted by the local bands, are available on our Soundcloud channel; and some of them were also included by the artists in their own recitals.

New Agenda for 2017 In 2017 the project continues, with the goal now of not only bringing the public to the museum, but crucially also taking the museum to the public. We agree with Roc Laseca when he says: “The Museum is no longer here to tell us who we were, but to help us to announce collectively who we are going to be and in what way we are going to be able to live together.

The Museum is here to show these complexities”. We believe that the radio is a potent communication tools that helps us go in this important direction.

Christian Díaz Co-ordinator of HABEMUS Let’s hack the museums, Argentina

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Christian Diaz is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

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Catherine O’Donnell is Programme Manager at the People’s History Museum in Manchester.

Catherine aims to work cross-departmentally to experiment with and embed new approaches to engagement so the museum can become more relevant, responsive and resonant to its visitors and the wider world. Catherine is also a Council Member of Engage, the National Association for Gallery Education. She holds an MA in Museum Studies and is an Associate of the Museums Association.

Catherine is speaking at the Museum Ideas 2017 conference in London.

Never Going Underground: The Fight for LGBT+ Rights

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t the People’s History Museum in Manchester we are currently mid-way through a year-long season of exhibitions, events and learning programmes that explore the past, present and future of LGBT+ activism.

This landmark season marks the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially decriminalised homosexual acts in England and Wales.

Community-led, the programme aims to represent diverse LGBT+ communities and go beyond a traditional ‘gay white male’ perspective. Each strand of the programme has been co-produced with LGBT+ individuals and organisations to ensure that LGBT+ communities tell their own stories and this often marginalised history is portrayed sensitively and accurately. The season includes a schools programme developed with the Proud Trust, who work with LGBT young people and a family friendly programme co-produced with Proud 2 b Parents, who work with LGBT parents and their families. The other project partners are the LGBT Foundation and Manchester Lesbian and Gay Chorus. The project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

PHM specialise in displaying challenging and contested histories,

Catherine O’Donnell on telling the stories of diverse lived experience and embedding co-production within their core strategic work however we felt that a single ‘museum voice’ wouldn’t be adequate to tell a story that encompasses a diverse range of lived experience, a history primarily within living memory, and which LGBT+ communities and individuals feel a strong sense of ownership over. Over the past few years we have taken a communityfocused, long-term approach to telling the story of the fight for LGBT+ rights.

This approach has led to a greater understanding of LGBT+ issues across the organisation and ensured that the work is not just a one-off tokenistic project, but embedded within our core strategic work.

Activity has included the development of an LGBT+ history tour, doubling our collection of material relating to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and other gender and sexuality minority groups and updating the LGBT+ Rights section in our permanent galleries. From a very small start, we have developed our LGBT+ collections, subject specialist knowledge, relationships with communities and participatory methodologies. This gradual process has informed the approach we are taking with Never Going Underground – ensuring that as many voices will contribute to the final programme as possible.

“We felt that a single ‘museum voice’ wouldn’t be adequate to tell a story that encompasses a diverse range of lived experience”

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Above: ‘Bobby Dazzler’ police officer’s helmet used at Manchester Pride, 2016, Courtesy of Greater Manchester Police Pride Network and Brett Dearden (designer); Left: Never Going Underground banner, 1988 © People’s History Museum

“The team have a diverse range of backgrounds with a mix of sexualities, gender identities, age and experience” At the heart of the programme is Never Going Underground: The Fight for LGBT+ Rights (25 February – 3 September 2017), a major exhibition curated by a team of nine volunteer Community Curators. The Community Curators were recruited in May 2016 and we asked for a long-term commitment until the exhibition opened, with two meetings and a minimum of 10 volunteer hours per month. We offered the opportunity as a learning process, with full training and support provided.

We asked for no prior experience, just an interest in LGBT+ history and a desire to develop their knowledge and skills. The team have a diverse range of backgrounds, with a mix of sexualities, gender identities, age and experience.

The team were involved in every aspect of exhibition development from research to installation. They visited museums and archives across the country, interviewed 88

activists and ran focus groups to ensure that a range of perspectives and opinions were included. They selected objects, grouped them into themes and wrote all the exhibition text.

The final show includes loans from 53 institutions, organisations and individuals – from the V&A, to objects discovered in activists’ attics. The rich display of never-before-seen material ranges from Hayley Cropper’s iconic red anorak from Coronation Street, to small knitted ‘pluses’ created by asexual activist AceKnitaholic, which she uses to yarnbomb LGBT events that miss off the ‘+’. Archival material, including an original list of demands from the Gay Liberation Front, is displayed alongside work by artists such as David Hockney, Sadie Lee, Claude Cahun and Derek Jarman. Interviews with activists, photographs and ephemera complement quirky objects including a Campbell’s

soup can costume, used in a protest by Stonewall and a ‘Bobby Dazzler’ sparkling police helmet worn at Manchester Pride in 2016.

To ensure that the exhibition was fully embedded within the core work of the museum, the Community Curators acted as reps and liaised with staff from each department of the museum. For example, the design reps helped to write the design brief and recruited designers; the family friendly rep helped to develop interactives and family resources; and the income generation rep suggested relevant shop stock and attended meetings with potential sponsors.

Whilst the final product is high quality and well-received, the process wasn’t without its challenges. Originally we recruited a team of 11 Community Curators, however one volunteer dropped out early on due to ill health, and another

Man & Boy, at HomePlace, celebrates poet Seamus Heaney’s life, influences and words.

“I expected it to be special.

But I didn’t expect it to be so deeply moving.”

Catherine Mack, Travel Writer

Photos: © Seamus Heaney HomePlace

tandemdesign.co.uk

tandemstudio

At Tandem we create interpretive visitor and brand experiences that captivate, thrill and inspire.

We can help you tell your story: Call +44 (0) 28 9042 5590 | Email hello@tandemdesign.co.uk

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VilVite Sotra Authority Sartor Holding AS

Surface area m2 1.000 m2

Design NorthernLight

Opening 22-05-2015

Photography: Thor Brødreskift / VilVite Sotra

VilVite Sotra: A unique combination of shopping and Science Science Center VilVite Sotra is based in the Sartor Senter, the main shopping mall of Sotra Kystby. The center reflects the strong traditions of a once isolated fishing community, which is nowadays the thriving center of Norway’s high-tech deep-sea fishing industry.

We are Bruns, specialized in the development, production and installation of interactive exhibits and exhibitions.

Our contribution to project is driven by an ambitious goal: to offer visitors a complete experience and maximum educational value.

More about the story behind VilVite Sotra and other projects at www.bruns.nl 90 Bruns B.V. • Stökskesweg 11 • 5571 TJ Bergeijk • The Netherlands • T +31 (0)497 57 70 27 • E info@bruns.nl • I www.bruns.nl

left after some disagreements and personality clashes. None of the group knew each other beforehand, and they had to get to know each other, negotiate group dynamics and develop working relationships in a relatively short amount of time. We took the team on a research trip to London, which helped them to bond and was one of the highlights of the project. The group worked really well together and are still completely engaged with the museum. Their commitment to the project shone through, and they developed their knowledge and skills and friendships with each other. They went above and beyond what was asked of them, clocking nearly 2500 volunteer hours over the course of the project. They were delighted to win the Volunteer Team of the Year at the Museum and Heritage Awards, and it is a testament to their hard work and dedication. One of the things that surprised many of the Community Curators was the level of control they had over the curation process – it was their exhibition and they had the freedom to make decisions and make a difference.

They also loved that the project gave them access to archives and collections that they felt they wouldn’t have been able to do as an ‘ordinary’ member of the public. They learnt more about LGBT+ history, but the main learning point was the process of how museums work and how exhibitions are developed.

In addition, throughout 2017 we will host a series of three community exhibitions that complement the themes and ideas of Never Going Underground.

Through an open call-out we invited proposals for exhibitions that focused on LGBT+ history, contemporary issues, or featured LGBT+ artists. A panel of PHM staff and community members selected Continuum: Framing Trans Lives in 21st Century Britain (Sat 24 June – Sun 3 September), a group show of 14 trans and non-binary artists; and Queer Noise: The History of LGBT+ Music & Club Culture in Manchester (Sat 1 July – Sun 10 September), curated by Manchester District Music Archive. We have also piloted a new way of working with communities and have co-curated Love is Not a Crime (Fri 14 April – Sun 25 June 2017) with the Lesbian Immigration Support Group.

The Community Curators team with the actor Sir Ian McKellen, who opened the Never Going Underground: The Fight for LGBT+ Rights exhibition at the People’s History Museum in Manchester

Long term, it is crucial to ensure that the legacy of Never Going Underground is embedded into the wider museum.

Learning from the project will be fed back into our collections management system, and object labels throughout our permanent galleries will be rewritten to highlight their queer history, making explicit that LGBT+ history is woven into the narrative. When we first started focusing on LGBT+ history, we realised that working with LGBT+ histories and communities could not just be a oneoff tokenistic project – it needed to be strategically embedded long-term in order to ensure that communities felt valued and LGBT+ history was fully represented within PHM’s permanent collections and galleries, and not simply ‘ghettoised’ and presented in isolation from other stories and histories.

“When we started focusing on LGBT+ history, we realised it could not just be a one-off tokenistic project – it needed to be embedded long-term to ensure communities felt valued”

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Catherine O’Donnell is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

Book your ticket: museum-id.com

Catherine O’Donnell, Programme Manager, People’s History Museum, Manchester 91

Cleverly housed within the church of St Mary’s-at-Lambeth, the Garden Museum has reopened following an 18-month, £7.5 million re-development project

Garden Museum

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With the new project completed, the ancient church is now home to a modern museum which can finally display the collection assembled over 40 years © Garden Museum

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he Garden Museum has reopened following an 18-month, £7.5million re-development project.

Britain’s only museum dedicated to the art, history and design of gardens, it is a celebration of gardens and gardening.

The Garden Museum was set up in 1977 in order to rescue from demolition the abandoned ancient church of St Mary’s on Lambeth Palace Road. The church is the burial place of John Tradescant (c1570–1638), the first great gardener and planthunter in British history. The project, supported by the Heritge Lottery Fund, has enabled the Museum to put their collection on display for the first time. St Mary’s has been restored, and inside the architects - Dow Jones - have built a playful, surprising wooden structure which contains seven new galleries.

The award winning design also includes a new courtyard extension, built without foundations due to the 20,000 bodies buried on the site, some dating back to before the Norman Conquest. Visitors can explore the 14th century tower which is open to the public for the first time, as well as The Ark Gallery, a recreation of the Tradescants’ 17th century cabinet of curiosities.

The building within a building design preserves the ancient body of the building while creating new gallery space. The innovative design means that visitors can take in the spectacle of the building whilst viewing the collections which reflect all aspects of gardening, from 1600 to the modern day.

Gardening and Museum History As the final resting place of the 17th Century plant hunters John Tradescant and his son of the same name, the deconsecrated church of St Mary’s-at-Lambeth has a significant place in both gardening and museum history. The Tradescants became famous for gardening for Charles I and scoured the world for plants and other curiosities, bringing them back to their home in Lambeth.

This collection of curiosities, bequeathed to Tradescant’s neighbour Elias Ashmole at his death, became the core of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford - the oldest public museum in Britain and the first purpose-built public museum in the world.

Now, after 350 years, some of these objects are returning to London for the first time as a loan from the Ashmolean.

Rosemary Nicholson, who was interested in the lives of the Tradescants and discovered their grave at St Mary’s, raised the money to save the building in 1977 and turn it into the first museum in the world dedicated to the history of gardening.

Since then, the Garden Museum has become a hub of learning for gardeners, amateur and professional alike. With the new project completed, the ancient church is now home to a modern museum which can finally display the collection assembled over 40 years.

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Top: The new garden of rare plants at the heart of the courtyard; Below: The building within a building design preserves the ancient body of the building while creating new gallery space © Garden Museum

The Ark The Ark Gallery is a key part of the redevelopment. The gallery was designed as a recreation of the Tradescants’ famous Ark, one of the wonders of 17th century London. It is built around artefacts now on long-term loan from the Ashmolean Museum’s Tradescant collection.

Ashmole’s Tomb This year marks the 400th anniversary of Elias Ashmole’s birth, whose collection founded the Ashmolean Museum.

Ashmole is also buried on the site of the Garden Museum and as part of the redevelopment, his tombstone has been discovered, and was unveiled at the reopening of the museum.

The Garden Wall The Garden Wall is a striking installation in the courtyard, at the heart of the museum. Over 200 people have taken part in the Garden Wall fundraising appeal, sending the museum a picture of their favourite garden which was then fired onto a tile. These have been compiled to create a spectacular installation which reflects the individuality of gardens and gardeners. With a story behind each choice, the display is a thoughtful mosaic, inviting the viewer to reflect on their own favourite garden.

The Garden A new garden is at the heart of the courtyard. Designed by Dan Pearson as an ‘Eden’ of rare plants, the garden reflects the Tradescants’ love of unusual plants.

The Tower The medieval tower is the oldest part of the church of St Mary’s-at-Lambeth.

Following the insertion of a viewing platform, the tower is now open to the public for the first time. From the top, the tower provides a unique view of London and the river Thames. Visitors can compare the current landscape with that drawn by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1647, who is believed to have stood on the tower to draw his Prospect of London and Westminster.

The Archive With the opening of the museum, the Garden Museum is unveiling the country’s first archive of garden design. Gardens are living and constantly evolving, the majority of gardens vanish with changing times and fashions. Photographs, plans, drawings and books can preserve these gardens for the future. The aim is to keep a record of how great garden-makers think, imagine and create – and to be able to show people, 20 or 100 years from now, what beautiful gardens they made.

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Learning studios The Museum has built an extension for learning which will be a unique resource in the centre of London. These include a learning space for schools, and a second space where art and cooking can take place. Two-thirds of residents in central London live in homes without gardens and green space per head is decreasing each year owing to more people, and more buildings. For many children who come to the Museum it is their first chance to plant a bulb or get their hands muddy.

Project: Garden Museum, London Opened: May 2017 Budget: £7.5 million Architects: Dow Jones Architects Exhibition Design: GuM Studio

www.exponatec.com

cooperation partners

International Business Media Services 42 Christchurch Road | Ringwood BH24 1DN | United Kingdom Tel. +44 1425 48 68 30 | Fax +44 1425 48 68 31 | info@koelnmesse.co.uk

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Event Communications

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Creating worldclass destinations

vent is a world-leading experience design agency, recognised internationally for its consistent ingenuity, design and storytelling excellence and exemplary project management.

Event produce masterplans for museums, heritage attractions and cultural quarters. They create interpretive and interactive design concepts, along with full technical specification and creative direction of permanent and temporary exhibitions.

They provide integrated programme and cost management for many of the world’s largest experience projects.

Event’s strapline - Excellence, Innovation, Involvement - sums up their strategy. Their goal is to provide innovative and excellent design solutions for the museum and visitor attraction sectors through involvement with and commitment to their clients’ goals.

A key foundation of their business is that Event has always invested in permanent full-time staff. This has enabled them to build on a learning curve of intellectual capital and have resource available to meet the unexpected. The variety of approach evident in Event displays springs directly from the diversity of their clients’ briefs and their insights into the audiences for which they are intended.

It also comes from processes and systems developed over twenty eight years to ensure that each of Event’s projects expresses a distinctive story and sense of place, opportunities for involvement and a welcome of its own - that it is, in short, a destination.

This is a retrospective of just some of Event’s remarkable and award-winning projects over the years.

Event India House, 45 Curlew Street London SE1 2ND T: +44(0)2073789900 E: info@eventcomm.com W: www.eventcomm.com 96

National Army Museum- London, UK: London’s National Army Museum is the only museum in the United Kingdom to tell the story of the British National Army from the medieval period to today. In 2012 Event delivered a Masterplan radically reenvisioning the new museum. Drawing from the blueprint set out in the Masterplan, Event’s interpretive design responds to the Museum’s desire to tell the story of the British Army in insightful and dynamic ways and to stimulate active debate about its wider role in society. Spectacular displays combine with intimate encounters to paint a rich, coherent and comprehensive portrait of the British Army. The National Army Museum was opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in May 2017.

Riverside Museum - Glasgow, Scotland: The vision for the Riverside Museum was to create a pioneering transport museum centred on experience based displays, designed to accommodate change. The metamorphosis of Glasgow’s hugely popular transport museum exemplifies design “from the inside out” around collections and their stories. Zaha Hadid’s signature building, expressing movement and fluidity, matches these needs. Event’s contribution to the success of Riverside centred on their ability to fully embrace and deliver their client’s vision – the creation of a unique open environment for unlocking the multiple stories of travel and transport in the lives of the people of Glasgow. Riverside Museum has been awarded both European Museum of the Year and the Luigi Micheletti Award for Best Science

and Technology Museum in Europe - the only museum ever to capture both major awards which are open to all museums across Europe.

Awards • European Museum of the Year Award 2013 • Luigi Michletti Award, Best Science and Technology Museum in Europe 2012 • Best Permanent Exhibition, Museums + Heritage Awards for Excellence 2012

Titanic Belfast - Belfast, Northern Ireland: When Event embarked on designing Titanic Belfast the objectives of Belfast City Council, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board and Titanic Quarter Ltd were to develop a landmark visitor attraction that would attract a global audience and contribute to the reimagining of Belfast as an energetic and creative 21st century city. Event’s interpretive vision for Titanic Belfast emerged through treating the site itself as artefact. To make these stories compelling, Event incorporated a full spectrum of interpretive techniques and interactive technologies in spaces and exhibits that shift from soaring to constraining, elegant to edgy. Titanic Belfast is the second most successful paid visitor attraction on the island of Ireland. It has been the subject of academic research on the use of public space in post-conflict areas and won numerous awards. Event’s exhibition and Eric Kuhne’s landmark building have become the cultural nucleus of one of the world’s largest waterfront regeneration projects.

Awards • World’s Leading Tourist Attraction, World Travel Awards 2016 • Europe’s Leading Tourist Attraction, World Travel Awards 2016 • Outstanding Visitor Experience, NI Tourism Awards 2015 • THEA award for Outstanding Achievement 2014 • Best Permanent Exhibition, Museums + Heritage Awards for Excellence 2013 97

Hans Christian Anderen House of Fairytales Museum - Odense, Denmark: In 2015 the City of Odense, Denmark, organised a competition to identify an interpretive design concept for the new Hans Christian Andersen House of Fairytales Museum.

Event’s winning concept - lauded for its creation of a beautifully imagined, coherent fairytale world - provided the brief for an international architectural competition for the Museum. The winner, Kengo Kuma, conceived a proposal that wraps the architectural structure around the exhibition concept, creating an elegant and magical symbiosis.

Strandingmuseum St George - Thorsminde, Denmark: Strandingsmuseum is situated on one of the most dangerous stretches of coastline in Europe. Since 1800, more than 1200 ships have wrecked off this coast. Appointed to work with the Museum on its expansion and redesign, Event’s first output was a concept report which the Museum used to secure funding. Taking the overarching theme of ‘stories from the sea’, the Museum broadened its focus to consider the extraordinary cultural meetings that arose because of the wrecks, as well as continuing to interpret the remarkable collection that the sea has, literally, brought to its door. The message of the Museum is introduced in an entrance experience consisting of an installation of bottles with messages inside. A community art project, the installation is inspired by a unique collection of historical messages, which were placed in bottles and launched from ships and beaches all over Europe. At the beginning or end of their visit, people are invited to add their own message to a bottle and continue the cultural exchange.

Bletchley Park - Buckinghamshire, UK: Event delivered the interpretive design for Project Neptune, which responds to the importance of Bletchley Park as a place where history was made. Drawing on the stories of the people who worked there, it presents the dynamism of the site in its most intense period of intelligence, code-breaking and discovery. The accent is as much on preserving Bletchley Park’s palpable sense of place as on the interpretation of the objects, be they the diaries if the scientists and the analysts or the dramatic Enigma or Bombe machines. Alongside Project Neptune, Bletchley Park commissioned Event to produce Secrecy and Security.

This exhibition focuses on the parallels between the historic Bletchley Park code breakers and present day Cybersecurity experts. The exhibition is designed to be easily modified to keep pace with the frenetic developments in technology and cybersecurity around the world Awards • Best Attraction for Groups, Group Travel Awards 2016 • Best New Discovery, Hudson’s Heritage Awards 2016 • Most InAVative Visitor Attraction, InAVative Awards 2015 • Best Attraction for Groups, Group Travel Awards 2015 • Large Visitor Attraction of the Year, the Beautiful South Awards for Excellence 2015 98

Burrell Collection - Glasgow, Scotland: In 2014 Event delivered a comprehensive Masterplan for the redevelopment of Glasgow’s Burrell Collection. Following a further international competition, Event was appointed to realise the reinterpretation and re-display of the collection. The Museum’s holdings include rare examples of medieval stained glass, tapestries and sculptures, ancient Chinese ceramics, bronzes and jades, Islamic pile carpets and Early Reneaissance paintings.

Two new floors of gallery space will enable 90% of the collection to be accessible to the public. Sir William Burrell and his role as collector will serve as an interpretive thread running through the new displays.

Meet Vincent Van Gogh Experience - International Travelling Exhibition: This award-winning exhibition takes audiences on an interactive journey through the life and art of Vincent van Gogh. Devised in collaboration with The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam the experience combines floor-to-ceiling high resolution imagery with Van Gogh’s correspondence, voiced narratives and setworks. The Museum wanted to take Van Gogh’s story around the world and reach new audiences.

Awards • Immersive Museum Exhibit: Touring, THEA Award for Outstanding Achievement 2017 Roman Baths - Bath, UK: The complex is a National Monument and one of the UK’s most important ancient sites. The brief for the project required an interpretive designer to develop solutions that would regenerate the complex as a visitor attraction, address difficult access to the historic spaces and – crucially – enable the Roman Baths to remain open to visitors throughout a six year period of development. Event’s approach to displaying and interpreting the Roman Baths is predicated on bringing the historic environment, in situ remains, and their assocaited collections to life. The reversal of the visitor route has streamlined the experience and removed bottlenecks. Visitor numbers have increased dramatically and visitor satisfaction has been transformed.

Awards • Gold - Large Visitor Attraction of the Year, South West Tourism Awards 2017 • Best International Visitor Experience, Bristol, Bath and Somerset Tourism Awards 2016 • The Art Fund Prize 2011, finalist • Museum + Heritage Awards for Excellence, Classic Award 2010 99

POLIN: Museum of the History of Polish Jews - Warsaw, Poland Set in the heart of Warsaw’s former Jewish district and the wartime ghetto site, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews commemorates the extraordinary contribution of Jews to Polish life over ten centuries, and of Polish Jews to the evolution of Judaism. Event was initially appointed to prepare a Masterplan for the proposed Museum, working with an international team of over a hundred and twenty scholars and curators, to respond to the site, articulate a vision for development and produce a reference plan for the project. The Masterplan formed the basis of an international architectural competition which resulted in the Finnish partnership of Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma being appointed to design a landmark building. Event continued its close collaboration with content and curatorial experts to develop the display concept, its underlying principles and educational values and the master narrative, while working closely with Mahlamäki and Lahdelma to heighten the impact of the interior spaces. The Museum has been lauded for the successful symbiosis of these elements, the Financial Times describing it as being as bold in its intellectual conception as in its architectural design.

Awards • European Museum Academy Prize 2016 • European Museum of the Year Award 2016

Aerospace Bristol - Filton, UK: Filton Airfield is one of the few centres in the world with a history of excellence in aerospace production dating back over a century. Numerous aerospace-related companies which make an enormous contribution to the UK’s economy are based there. Importantly, Bristol is home to the UK’s most iconic aircraft, Concorde, which was designed and built at Filton, with the first British flight taking off in 1969 and the fleet’s final supersonic flight landing at the airfield in 2003. The vision for Aerospace Bristol is to develop a major aviation heritage museum that inspires and entertains through the presentation of the science, technology and engineering excellence of Bristol’s aerospace industry. Event’s design approach draws on Filton’s rich archival collections, creating exhibitions informed by the language of the former factory and its workforce. The Museum opens in July 2017.

Ahmad Al Jaber Oil and Gas Exhibition, Kuwait Oil Company Visitor Centre - Al Ahamdi, Kuwait: Housed in a landmark building in Al Ahmadi and using the latest multimedia, interactive and special effects technologies, the Event-designed exhibition aims to excite and inform local families and school groups as well as VIP visitors about the extraordinary world of oil and gas and the wider role of Kuwait within the world economy.

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HERITAGE, ARTS & LEISURE “We work in partnership with our clients to help preserve the past for future generations” • Programme & Project Management • Cost & Risk Management • Contract Administration / Employers Agent

• Technology Consultancy • BIM Management • Principal Designer

Peter Chana: Regional Director, Consulting Europe Peter Chana:599335 Head| E: ofpeter.chana@lendlease.com Heritage, Arts & Leisure, Consulting Europe T: +44 (0)7720

T: +44 (0)7720 599335 | E: peter.chana@lendlease.com

Stuart Project Director, Heritage, BarryHenniker-Smith: Taylor: Director, Consulting Europe Arts and Education, Consulting Europe T: +44 (0)7860 711615 | E: stuart.henniker-smith@lendlease.com T: +44 (0)7802 931881 | E: barry.taylor@lendlease.com 102

Wonderlab: Science Museum Parliamentary Estate Directorate

Victoria & Albert Museum Royal Collection Trust

Tate Britain Maths Gallery: Science Museum

Lendlease

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he Heritage and Arts team at Lendlease is renowned for its positive, proactive and solution orientated approach to its clients’ property and construction needs.

Lendlease has an established reputation as the consultant of choice for a number of outstanding organisations across the UK, delivering complex capital projects for clients including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Science Museum, Parliamentary Estates Directorate, King’s College, Royal Collection Trust and Petersfield Museum.

Providing consultancy and construction services for projects from conception to completion, Lendlease has a proven ability and excellent reputation to provide the following in the heritage and arts sector; Project and Programme Management; Exhibition Management; Development Planning; Logistics Planning; Employers Agent, Project Monitoring and Due Diligence; Construction Management; Cost Management; Principal Designer.

Consultant of choice for arts and heritage Lendlease’ core values of Respect, Integrity, Innovation, Collaboration, Excellence and Trust are at the forefront of everything they do, driving the strong partnerships developed over the years with a number of long-term clients. Its longstanding and successful relationship with the Victoria and Albert Museum began in 2000, with Lendlease’ expert Heritage and Arts team now acting as sole Project Management providers on the museum’s FuturePlan capital works programme. The complex programme has seen Lendlease involved in excess of 30 gallery refurbishments and large capital works projects to date, including the Medieval & Renaissance galleries, Clothworkers centre for Fashion and new Europe 1600-1815 galleries and the Exhibition Road scheme.

Similarly Lendlease continues to build upon an excellent client relationship at the Science Museum, having been appointed as sole provider of project and programme management services on its major masterplan capital work

programme. Recently completed projects include the Maths Galleries and much acclaimed interactive Wonderlab. In addition the team is currently progressing work on the Medicine Galleries, which will house one of the most significant medicine collections in the world, as well as a new corporate entertainment space and the London science city gallery.

Throughout all projects being delivered across the Heritage and Arts sector, a key focus for Lendlease is ensuring the balance between maintaining the historic integrity of the buildings whilst integrating modern demands for reduction in energy consumption and sustainability, as well as ever increasing visitor capacities. From restoring modern design and innovation to the heart of world renowned visitor attractions such as the Tate Britain and National Museum of Scotland, to current projects being delivered, Lendlease continues to apply its extensive knowledge in the Heritage and Arts sector, ensuring the past is preserved for years to come.

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Musée d’art et d’histoire, Fribourg Dedicated largely to the collection of artworks from the Swiss canton in which it is based, the Musee d’art et d’histoire began in 2015 to redevelop one of its repositories, to make room for 48,000 objects previously stored in over 30 locations across the district. Decant continued until early 2017. Bruynzeel created bespoke systems for the repository, including mobile shelving with perforated end panels and a black glass-fronted cabinet to store delicate artworks. Capable of housing material at AO size and above, the cabinet forms part of a state-of-the-art repository preserving the history of the canton for current and future study. Photo: Bruynzeel Storage Systems Lapworth Museum of Geology, Birmingham Lapworth Museum of Geology reopened in June 2016 following a £2.7m redevelopment to make it accessible for the general public. Central to the rebuild has been the creation of open storage in a tightly constrained, semi-circular repository space.

Bruynzeel worked with the Lapworth to declutter the cramped stores, reuse and recycle existing historic cabinets, incorporating them into modern, space-saving mobile bases. By introducing a range of glass-fronted mobile shelving systems and drawers the repository is now accessible to the general public and researchers alike, offering vastly improved access to 250,000 specimens, from dinosaur skeletons to volcanic rocks. Photo: Simon Hadley 104

Bruynzeel Storage Systems The storage solution your collection deserves Kelvin Hall, Glasgow Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall, built in 1927 as an exhibition space, reopened to the public in August 2016 after a three-year development led by architects Page/Park. The building has been transformed into a multi-use cultural and sports centre, with two of the city’s leading museums moving in as tenants.

Between them, Glasgow Museums and the University of Glasgow’s Hunterian brought with them more than 1.5 million items, stored on a range of systems from vast double decker mobile shelving to wall mounts for animal skulls. Bruynzeel supplied a 4m high display for the Orientation Space (pictured), reflecting the soaring ambition of this leading-edge cultural and educational destination. Photo: Andrew Lee Bruynzeel Storage Systems As a producer, consultant and installer, Bruynzeel Storage Systems is a market leader in the development of space-saving archiving and storage systems. The company’s head office and factory are located in Panningen, Netherlands. Bruynzeel sells in nine European countries through dedicated sales offices and globally via a network of distributors in 43 countries.

Specialists in Museum and Archive Storage For more information please visit www.bruynzeel.co.uk/expert

Freephone 0800 220 989 enquiries@bruynzeel.co.uk

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Mather & Co

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Global design consultancy

ather & Co - the global design consultancy behind some of the world’s most visited museums and visitor attractions - has designed Downton Abbey: The Exhibition.

Opened to the public on June 17th 2017 at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, the new global exhibition created for NBCUniversal International Studios and in partnership with Imagine Exhibitions offers visitors the first-ever fully immersive experience into the world of the global television phenomenon, Downton Abbey.

Taking visitors on an extraordinary journey through the grand home of the Crawleys and those that waited on them, fans will get the chance to walk through Mrs Patmore’s hectic kitchen and the gossip-fuelled servants’ quarters as well as the glamorous Crawley dwellings putting visitors at the heart of the show.

The exhibition covers nine different zones where visitors can explore key rooms in the house – some of them replicas of the original sets, others fully immersive audio visual experiences.

Visitors explore everything from the servants’ roles to the key fashions and history from the time.

Key design points of the exhibition include: • The downstairs servants’ quarters sets including the servants’ hall, Carson’s pantry, the kitchen and the servants’ stairs.

• State of the art holographic technology allows visitors to meet Mrs Hughes and Carson • Over 50 iconic costumes from the series • Immersive multi projection spaces recreate the library and drawing room of Downton revealing details about the family and exploring the surrounding estate.

Over 15,000 square foot of the exhibition offers an in-depth insight into the remarkable time period in which the show is set.

Spanning World War I and the post-war years to the Roaring Twenties, visitors learn about society, culture and fashion and the historical events of the era which would go on to shape the world.

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© Maryland Department of Natural Resources

Haley Sharpe Design

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he life, impact and achievements of Harriet Tubman, the well-known African American humanitarian, abolitionist and woman of action, has been commemorated in the new Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center, near Cambridge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, in the US. Haley Sharpe Design (hsd) designed the exhibitions in the new visitor centre which opened to the public this year.

Harriet Tubman is an American icon and to help visitors appreciate all of her accomplishments hsd has created an emotive experience in collaboration with the National Park Service, Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Maryland Tourism, GWWO Inc. Architects, and the local community.

The visitor centre is located on a 17-acre plot and is surrounded by Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. There are very few structures remaining from Tubman’s time in Maryland therefore the landscape, which has only changed a little, is a vital interpretive tool. Tubman knew the natural environment of the Eastern Shore intimately and used her knowledge of the landscape to help her lead approximately 70 people out of slavery.

The story-based interpretative scheme fills the entire exhibition space in the new visitor centre through contemporary illustrations of her life and deeds, supported by photographs of the current landscape of the Choptank River Region, art, models, dramatic sculptural reconstructions, physical and audio-visual interactives, interpretative films, soundscapes and immersive multimedia environments.

Dave Maddocks, Senior Project Designer at hsd and creative lead on the Harriet Tubman project, commented, “Our design 108

World-leading exhibition designers approach seeks to give visitors a taste of the landscapes in which Tubman toiled and later travelled through when making her bid for freedom from slavery.

“Visitors will experience the sounds and sensations of hiding overnight in the marshes, and the constellations in the night sky which helped Tubman to navigate her way north and to freedom. These landscape-focussed components will consolidate information available at the, more than, 30-points of interest along the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, which runs some 125-miles through Maryland.”

The beauty of rural Maryland where Tubman grew up looks largely the same, yet the ‘ugliness’ of slavery is gone. By layering harshness and cruelty of Tubman’s world over what visitors can still see when they drive around the area, hsd is encouraging people to reinterpret the landscape and imagine what Tubman endured.

“This woman of action and success, despite her social status, physical stature, disability, poverty and illiteracy is an inspiring role model for visitors of all ages, abilities and backgrounds,” continues Dave. “In response, our design team has developed a universally accessible and relevant exhibition in which the client and Tubman’s community can take pride.”

The official opening for the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center was on 10th March 2017, also known as Harriet Tubman Day, a US holiday in honour of the antislavery activist who died on that date in 1913. hsd is currently working on several new projects including the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St Louis, and Norwich Castle in the UK.

hsd offers masterplanning, interpretation, exhibition design and implementation solutions for museums, visitor attractions and cultural projects worldwide.

National Music Centre, Calgary, Canada © Leblond Studio

We have a passion for creating inspirational environments, content-rich exhibitions and memorable visitor experiences.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center, Maryland, USA © Maryland Department of Natural Resources

Current projects include:

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Postal Museum and Mail Rail Experience, London, UK

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Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C., USA East Galleries at Penn Museum, Philadelphia, USA Charter House Coventry, Historic Coventry Trust, UK

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Oman Botanic Garden, Al Khoud, Oman

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Kurdistan Museum, Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan

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American Battle Monuments Commission, UK and France

info@haleysharpe.com Haley Sharpe Design

National Music Centre, Calgary, Canada © Leblond Studio

www.haleysharpe.com @haleysharpe

Armoury in Action, White Tower, Tower of London, UK © Royal Armouries

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Museum of the Year 2017 Hepworth Wakefield wins £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year - the largest arts award in Britain and the biggest museum prize in the world

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The Hepworth Wakefield, winner of the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2017 © Marc Atkins

he Hepworth Wakefield has been crowned Art Fund Museum of the Year 2017 - the largest and most prestigious museum prize in the world. The £100,000 prize was presented on the 5 July at a ceremony in the spectacular setting of the Great Court at the British Museum, London.

The four other finalists this year were Lapworth Museum of Geology (Birmingham), National Heritage Centre for Horseracing & Sporting Art (Newmarket), Sir John Soane’s Museum (London), and Tate Modern (London).

For the first time, this year each of the other finalist museums received a £10,000 prize in recognition of their achievements.

Art Fund awards the Art Fund Museum of the Year annually to one outstanding museum, which, in the opinion of the judges, has shown exceptional imagination, innovation

and achievement across the preceding 12 months. It is the largest arts award in Britain and the biggest museum prize in the world. This year it recognised that, though these are difficult times for many museums, facing a perpetual challenge to secure the funding they need, this is also a moment for mass celebration of the extraordinary diversity of UK museums and all they are doing.

The Hepworth Wakefield Set in a David Chipperfield designed building overlooking the River Calder, The Hepworth Wakefield is an art gallery, museum and creative space as unique as the artist who inspired it – Barbara Hepworth (1903-75). 2016 saw an ambitious programme to celebrate their fifth birthday. Visitors increased by 21% and 26,000 people took part in learning and outreach programmes.

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The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture was launched to ignite debate and engagement with contemporary sculpture and reaffirm Yorkshire’s position as the home of modern British sculpture. The Hepworth Wakefield has also announced their plans to create an inspiring and free public garden.

Stephen Deuchar, Art Fund director and chair of the judges, commented: ‘The Hepworth Wakefield was a powerful force of energy from the moment it opened in 2011, but it has just kept growing in reach and impact ever since. It’s the museum everyone would dream of having on their doorstep.’

The 2017 Prize Finalists • Lapworth Museum of Geology, Birmingham.

Last year saw the completion of an ambitious expansion project, transforming Lapworth Museum of Geology from a niche academic institution into a dynamic, public-facing museum telling the story of the world’s four billion-year history.

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• National Heritage Centre for Horseracing & Sporting Art, Newmarket.

2016 saw the re-opening of the museum after adding new galleries, exhibition spaces and a centre for the retraining of racehorses.

• Sir John Soane’s Museum, London.

Following a major restoration, the museum now looks like it did when Soane died in 1837 and has opened up numerous new spaces, expanding their displays, increasing access and strengthening their contemporary exhibition programme.

• Tate Modern, London.

Last year saw the opening of the Switch House, hugely expanding the gallery’s exhibition space and education programme, while welcoming more than six million visitors.

Art Fund Museum of the Year 2017 judges: Richard Deacon, artist; Stephen Deuchar, Director, Art Fund; Hartwig Fischer, Director, British Museum; Munira Mirza, arts and philanthropy advisor; Jo Whiley, Radio DJ and television presenter.

The other four finalists for Art Fund Museum of the Year 2017. Main image: The Lapworth Museum of Geology. Above, from top: Sir John Soane’s Museum, London; The National Heritage Centre for Horseracing & Sporting Art, Newmarket; Tate Modern.

All images © Marc Atkins

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#ArchiveLottery: Randomly Opening Up Archaeology Adam Corsini on using social media to open up collections and challenge staff to find new methods of engagement Adam Corsini is the Museum of London’s Archaeology Collections Manager. Adam worked as a field archaeologist before moving to the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive, where he has worked over a decade. In 2008 he was co-creator of the Volunteer Inclusion Programme; a multi award winning scheme that centres on training an inclusive mix of people in collections care practices, to improve the accessibility of archaeological material. In recent years, his focus has turned towards public engagement, adding public presentation training to volunteer projects.

His most recent volunteer programme, ‘Unearthing Outer London’, has explored the possibilities of public participation, fusing collections work with public engagement, resulting in sector-leading models of best practice for both museum volunteering and visitor involvement.

“The museum has used social media to interrogate its store, opening its collection to wider audiences”

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useums can easily fall into the trap of using the same artefacts for public engagement, returning to our comfort zone: the best known objects, the easiest to explain, or designated handling collections. The consequences of this can lead to much of the collection being unexplored and a loss of enthusiasm for explainers. In recent years the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive has used social media to interrogate its store, opening its collection to wider audiences and challenging its staff into finding new methods of engagement.

The origins of #ArchiveLottery go back to 2012 and the Day of Archaeology1. It works by people tweeting random numbers to the Archive, these numbers represent a shelf which we then go to and select one item located there. The object is quickly photographed and tweeted back with a brief description and link to the Museum’s excavation catalogue. A new section of the store is explored each hour; with each section having their own numbered shelf range. Tweeters enjoy both the unpredictability of the game and the fact that each person ‘wins’ a personal object (many retweet their wins); The Archive benefits from rediscovering our collection and promoting public engagement in a fun way. Tweeted artefacts are logged and potentially used in future events and store tours. Indeed, this led to the next stage in #ArchiveLottery’s development.

Whilst the Twitter version of #ArchiveLottery returned for future Days of Archaeology, in 2015 the Archive began to incorporate the scheme into our regular Archive tours. When reaching the finds area, a visitor is invited to select a random shelf and the tour guide proceeds to select a box and talk a little about its contents. This section of the tour is well received, with visitors particularly enjoying

its unpredictability and the tour guide’s challenge to explain an unprepared object at random.

The most recent development of #ArchiveLottery saw its transfer to the Museum of London’s foyer. Here, numbers are generated by visitors selecting three numbered, mystery boxes; the digits form a shelf number whilst the boxes’ contents form an object handling session. As the object handling takes place, an item is selected in the store, photographed and tweeted. The tweeted artefact appears on a screen alongside the object handling and forms the final item for discussion.

A second screen features a live skype feed so that events can unfold in realtime. #ArchiveLottery has been a way to showcase our archaeology in the digital age. In essence it is an interactive online activity that embraces unpredictability, improvisation and fun with artefacts.

Its result has produced a fresh approach to engagement exploring the benefits of using social media. Recent #ArchiveLottery days have resulted in over 34.6k Twitter impressions and other organisations such as the Wimbledon Tennis Championship Museum have been inspired to run similar schemes using Facebook Live.

Adam Corsini Archaeology Collections Manager, Museum of London

Museum Ideas 2017, London

Adam Corsini is speaking at Museum Ideas 2017.

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