First World War Centenary | A Great Opportunity for Museums

The First World War Centenary | A Great Opportunity for Museums

Since November 2012, when I started my role (which is funded by Arts Council England), I have visited every region of the country to explain why IWM (Imperial War Museums) and the Arts Council think that the First World War Centenary (2014-2018) is a great opportunity for museums.  There are many reasons for this including the length of the anniversary, allowing museums to experiment with programmes, the opportunities to partner with other organisations with the hope that these partnerships will last beyond the Centenary and the huge interest that the public have in this subject and therefore the potential to develop audiences. Through my work, to encourage museums in England to take part in the commemorations [see picture below], I have come across a considerable number of networks and organisations that are keen to do something to mark this important anniversary. If I went into detail on all of the projects that I have come across, this blog would run into a book rather than being a snappy update. This goes to show how little encouraging I have had to do!

Me at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in December 2012

There are probably a variety of reasons as to why everyone is so eager to take part, but I think it has a lot to do with the wide reaching effect of the war – it touched everyone’s lives -  and even if you do not have an ancestor who fought, you live in a world which was radically changed as a result.

IWM is the cultural lead for the Centenary and, in order to help other organisations, created the Partnership Programme. The aim of the Partnership is to create a high quality programme for the public through organisations working together and sharing knowledge with each other. IWM is sharing some of its own collections (which are free to download for members) and expertise through our ‘Useful Guides’. The latter have been created specifically to advise on areas such as teaching the First World War. IWM is encouraging others to share their expertise and to communicate with other organisations to make sure that the public get a coherent and varied offer during the Centenary years.

Organisations, ranging from museums, libraries, archives, schools, universities, arts groups and others, have come together to coordinate varied projects in their regions. In Wiltshire, for instance, key representatives from relevant organisations across the county have come together to form a steering group, which will coordinate their county-wide programme and advise on whether and when events should take place.

Kent and Medway have also formed a steering group after a large meeting of organisations identified the need for coordination. They will shortly be forming sub groups to advise on projects relating to education, research and more. They are going to have a shared blog and calendar for their activities in order that they can compare and avoid duplication of work and type of project – something that is key to the success of the Programme. Furthermore, they want to be able to do joint marketing for events in their region and while this will no doubt be dependent on funding, it is a great ambition to have.

In order to support these new and existing networks, I have been putting together an overview of museum-led activity in England. However, I am now turning my focus to supporting museum projects more practically – be that by bringing more organisations together to work on their ideas, or by helping identify additional support (other than funding) that we can give to certain projects.

Speaking of funding, this is obviously one of the key challenges facing us all. Fortunately, both the Arts Council and Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) have been extremely supportive of the Centenary and have already provided funding to projects. Additionally, HLF are about to launch a small grants programme specifically for Centenary projects that look at involving young people and communities. At the time of writing, the information was not available on their website, but keep checking back to www.hlf.org.uk for further information. Applications are welcome from the end of May.

The First World War Centenary is a great opportunity for museums and other arts organisations to bring together groups of people from a wide variety of backgrounds. As it is a long anniversary, there is plenty of time to try out new ideas and new plans. It is exciting to see how it is already helping organisations to work together, which will undoubtedly have long-term benefits for all.

London has already had a good take up when it comes to the Centenary. However, there have not been any large-scale meetings purely for London organisations, which is why IWM, the London Museum Development Team, HLF and others are coming together to organise one. Speakers will be sharing information and advice but the rest of the session will be for networking. The meeting is planned for the afternoon of Tuesday 25 June at the Churchill War Rooms in Westminster. The details are still being finalised but for more information and if you would like to sign up, please go to: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6461076253. Alternatively, please feel free to e-mail me to find out more or to ask me anything about the Centenary: jgale@iwm.org.uk. I look forward to hearing from you.

Author | Josie Gale Centenary Programme Museum Liaison Officer for English Regions, Imperial War Museums and LMG Member.

Golden Rules | Evaluating Evaluation

Golden Rules | Evaluating Evaluation

I’m quite new to the world of evaluation. When I went part-time at the Museums Association a few years ago, as well as becoming a partner in the Museum Consultancy, one of the people I hooked up with was Christian Heath at King’s College London. We were both surprised that in spite of the millions spent on summative evaluation, it seems to have had a rather limited impact on practice. We wanted to find out why – and we wanted to find out what evaluations could tell museums generally about making engaging visitor experiences.

We devised a project called Evaluating Evaluation and raised some money to do it from two of the main funders of museum evaluation: the Wellcome Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund. You can read a little more here.

We’ve spent much of 2012 immersed in evaluations, mainly of permanent displays in museums and galleries, with a few from science centres and historic buildings. I soon came across Eric Jensen from Warwick University, a man on a mission running a series of seminars to encourage evaluators to use more rigorous methodologies.

And, at first, I thought that the reasons why evaluations weren’t better shared and compared was because of methodological problems. But, as the Evaluating Evaluation investigation progressed it became clear that even if all evaluations used perfect social science methods they still wouldn’t have a huge impact.

As Nicky Boyd says, there are institutional and organisational issues that prevent evaluation being shared and used to its full extent. Evaluators often come from outside the museum, or have a relatively marginal role inside it, and so do not have a big influence; project teams disperse after completing their work, their knowledge often disperses, too; few museums have proper systems for recording the findings of evaluations and feeding their lessons into future work [although some, such as the British Museum, do]; in the case of summative evaluations of permanent displays, which we focused on, it’s often simply impractical to make remedial changes to a complex gallery.

As our project got started, some evaluators got in touch and told us how dissatisfied they are with the way some museums approach evaluation. They feel museums often prepare lousy briefs, expect far too much for the available fee, have little idea what they are going to do with the evaluation once complete and confuse evaluation with advocacy.

This latter point is crucial. I think summative evaluation can be expected to play four conflicting roles. First is the role we’d all say is the most important: to help the project team learn from their work and improve their future practice.

Second, the similar but subtly different role of supporting learning beyond the project team, or in the wider sector. Here, the fear mentioned by Nicky Boyd comes into play. Project teams can be reluctant to expose their failures – sometimes even within the institution they work for.

Third, most summative evaluation comes at the end of an externally funded project and is a funder’s requirement. There’s a real risk that this confuses evaluation with the funder’s systems for monitoring and accountability. Unless the funder and the museum have a very trusting relationship, it’s likely that the evaluation will be under pressure to ‘prove’ to the funder that the museum met all its objectives.

Finally, in similar vein, some museums don’t want evaluation at all – they just want good news that they can use for advocacy.

I fear that because of the organisational issues, it will be hard for the sector to move to a position where it can realise all the potential benefits from summative evaluation. [I should stress that our focus has been on summative evaluation; the problems seem fewer, and the benefits easier to realise, in the case of front-end and formative evaluation.]

After reading dozens of summative evaluation reports I have to say that my main feeling is one of disappointment that they actually tell us rather little about what visitors actually experience. There’s lots and lots of information in summative evaluations, much of it very interesting, but little of it seems actually that useful beyond the museum that commissioned it – and in some cases it might not in fact be that useful even there.

Sorry to say, if we’re looking for ‘golden rules’ about how to create great museum displays, I don’t think we’ll find them in summative evaluations. [It may be, of course, that the golden rules in fact don’t exist.]

Some evaluators have suggested that museums might move slightly away from summative evaluation towards purer audience research. Perhaps, for example, a group of museums could jointly align all the evaluations they commission to address a consistent set of research questions. Then, over time, comparable data would build up and we might gain some solid empirical evidence about how to better engage our audiences.

Author | Maurice Davies is a visiting senior research fellow in the Department of Management at King’s College London, a partner in the Museum Consultancy and Head of Policy and Communication at the Museums Association  | maurice.davies@ntlworld.com

The Real Hustle

The Real Hustle

‘Getting into the museum sector can be tough, but small museums offer fantastic opportunities for early career professionals’, suggests Dale Copley, Museum Officer at The Fusilier Museum London.

‘LMG gets lots of enquiries from people wanting to know how they can get into the museum sector, and as I'm in the early stages of my career I've been asked to share my professional journey in the hope it will help others.

My current job at The Fusilier Museum was created three years ago as part of a Heritage Lottery Fund redevelopment project.

Picture of The Fusilier Museum London, Tower of London (c) with permission Mike Daines Photography

My role is very varied.  Now the new galleries are open, my responsibility is primarily to deliver a diverse range of outreach activities associated with the project.  These include a community curated temporary exhibition programme, an ongoing documentation and collection care improvement project and developing and managing a volunteer body. 

I’ve also had the opportunity to work on our first Accreditation bid, write numerous funding applications, oversee a collection move, answer research enquiries, give tours and write and implement a lot of policies.  Working for a small museum gives you a broad skill set and lets you develop strategic skills much earlier in your career than you would be allowed to elsewhere.  

I had realised quite early on that I might want to work in museums and this really helped. I had already done a lot of work experience whilst studying for a history degree in Cardiff.  On my first day volunteering at the National Museum of Wales, they gave me a car vac and sent me to vacuum a life size model of a woolly mammoth in the natural history gallery.  Admittedly, at the time I didn’t realise there were bonifide pest management reasons for doing it, but the reaction of the visiting public had me hooked. 

Like many people who work in museums, I believe that museums are a force for good in society.  I didn’t want a job which made the rich richer and the poor poorer.  I love history and so having the chance to use my undergraduate degree, and to get my hands on the stuff, really appealed. 

I also loved that the people at National Museum of Wales came from a variety of academic backgrounds – and I have continued to be drawn to jobs which put me in contact with people I wouldn’t otherwise meet.  I am the only person in my organisation who isn’t a Fusilier.  As the LMG Share scheme testifies museums are full of fantastically supportive people. They will help you get into the sector if they can. In my third year at University I wrote to 7 people in the sector asking how I could get a job like theirs.  All 7 wrote back.  

On their advice, I enrolled on the MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at The University of Manchester.  As I write this, the sector is evaluating the value of the Museum Studies MA and I understand that as tuition fees increase students will have to think very hard about undertaking a further degree, but I believe there is a lot of value to an MA in Museum Studies and I don't think I would be working in a museum if I hadn't done it.

Of course, my MA introduced me to core museum skills. It also made me look at museums critically and underpin my opinions with theory, but it was the practical stuff that has been the most useful in terms of getting work.  Two of my favourite bits of advice; ‘the best way to improve your own practice is to visit other people’s museums’ and ‘if you want to stay employed, you’re going to have to be prepared to move’.  I met some great contacts, but probably more importantly I made some great friends.

An important part of my MA year was the compulsory work placement which we undertook for course credit.  I did my work placement at a Contemporary Arts Centre in Manchester called Cornerhouse.  I didn’t know anything about contemporary art but I could see the placement they were offering was exciting.  I led a project with a visiting Indian artist on a commission, interviewing local women about their experiences of street harassment (Eve teasing) and then creating an installation for the café/bar area of the Arts Centre.  It was a concrete project I could put on my CV.  When it comes to any sort of work experience, I think you get further if you worry less about the organisation offering the placement and more about the placement they are actually offering.   

As so often happens, the success of my placement meant Cornerhouse offered me some hours in the office. It was a foot in the door and I was soon working there full time as the Exhibitions Assistant.  Cornerhouse is a dynamic organisation with an 8 week changing exhibition programme, so in my 18 months there I saw six exhibitions from start to finish and it was a brilliant grounding in the basics of exhibition practice.

I left Cornerhouse when the organisation restructured and the equivalent job became more administrative.  I went to a HLF funded start-up at a medieval art centre in Norwich.  I had never been to Norwich, but following that advice about 'being prepared to move' I went for the interview and a month later I moved there.

This was my first experience of being the only 'museum' employee.  I worked directly for a body of Trustees and with a range of external stakeholders including Norwich Cathedral.  It was a huge learning curve.  The centre had very little money and no secure revenue.  At Cornerhouse I had been used to begging and borrowing equipment and expertise to get exhibitions delivered, but it was much harder without the name of an established gallery behind me.  Slowly, the centre became known locally, some events started to work, more people started to visit but as it got closer to the end of my contract it was clear there was not funding to continue the position. 

I never thought I would work in a Regimental museum, but when the Fusilier museum job was advertised I could see that I had relevant experience and there was a chance to expand some of the skills I had been developing.  I was so glad I was broad minded about it.  I certainly hadn’t thought about it before I got the job, but Regimental collections are, at their heart, social history collections.  Only a generation ago everyone knew someone who had served in the army in the World Wars or through National Service, which makes Regimental collections relevant to a lot of people. 

A veteran from the Korean war takes in the new museum galleries following the 2010 redevelopment (c) The Fusilier Museum London

After three years, I probably know more than most about the Fusiliers and their history -a documentation project will do that to you - but what I am most convinced about is the unique and important role that small museums play and what an asset they can be to the sector. So, young museum professionals, small museums need you! And they can offer you so much in return.’

Author, Dale Copley.

NB: This blog was written by Dale Copley as the Museum Officer at the Fusilier Museum.  Dale is now the Collections Manager at the Waterways Museum.  The Museum Officer at the Fusilier Museum is now Stephanie Killingbrook.