Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding

Crowdsourcing can mean a variety of things, but it’s all about people helping you reach your goals. This is ideal for museums, because crowdsourcing can make people feel like they are contributing and engaging directly with us – because they are. Volunteer projects is a type of crowdsourcing that museums are very familiar with.

An offshoot of crowdsourcing is something called crowdfunding, which allows you to ask people for money for a specific project. It differs from donations because it usually has to relate to a specific project, making it time-bound and setting milestones and outcomes that need to be achieved. Kickstarter is a popular website for such projects, and it’s certainly the kind of thing museums should be looking into more. Earlier this year the Bowes Museum launched a Kickstarter campaign in order to re-display some artwork, for example.

This isn’t limited to exhibitions or full-sized museums, however. There’s a current project on Kickstarter in which a freelance conservator asks for funding to go to Bhutan to conserve sacred Thangkas. I genuinely hope she makes it. Conservation is engaging and interesting – there’s definitely a place for us on Kickstarter, whether we’re freelancers or companies or part of a museum. I hope to see a lot more of it in the future!

On a more quirky note: sometimes projects crop up on Kickstarter that challenge what you’d consider a museum to be. This is long since funded, but I love the concept nonetheless – the Mini Museum. Interesting!

Autism body recognises museum

I got my copy of the Museums Journal (September issue) today and I was thrilled to see the headline above in the News section. The Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon has become the first UK museum to win an Autism Access Award by the National Autistic Society.

This means that they are adapted to welcome both the autistic and their families and/or carers. They have dedicated trails, clearer signage, quiet spaces, and trained staff and volunteers. This is wonderful news to me – having many friends who are autistic themselves or have autistic children – and I sincerely hope this starts a trend amongst museums and other cultural venues in the UK (and abroad).

If you’d like to start adapting your museum to the needs of the autistic, this is a wonderful blog entry about low-cost ways to welcome people with autism to your institution. I really recommend it!

The Life of Books in Tibet and Beyond

I’ve been quiet again. This time because I’ve been working across three UCM museums (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University Cambridge Museum of Zoology, and the Fitzwilliam Museum) and amongst other things I’ve helped prepare the exhibition in the video below:

Do stop by if you find yourself in Cambridge! Hopefully I can now return to more regular blogging again. 🙂

Adventures and Discoveries

You may have noticed that I’ve been awfully quiet since November, and the reason for that is that I got a job. I’m currently a conservator at the University of Cambridge Museums, and we’ve been working on an exhibition at Two Temple Place in London. The result is (aside from the actual exhibition!) the little film you see above. Enjoy. 🙂

Hopefully I’ll now be able to carry on blogging once per week, while also continuing my work at UCM. Stay tuned!

History in colour

My partner Fox recently introduced me to something on Reddit that we both felt was a really good idea – colourised photographs from history (at r/ColorizedHistory if you’re curious).

The reason we were both appealed by the content uploaded there was quite simple. It brings history to life.

Marie Curie, colourised by Dana Keller.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Monochrome is beautiful, and black and white photography can be captivating and haunting. But in a world where everything is colour the monochrome can become too distant. Too dead.

I’ve included one of my favourites in this post. Seeing Marie Curie in colour made her so real to me. Like she was sitting in front of me, still drawing breath. As if she wanted to speak to me. And that’s how I wish I experienced photographs all the time.

If done delicately and aesthetically, I believe this could be a lovely way to exhibit photographs of the past in museums and galleries – with a dab of colour. (But we must of course be sure to tell our visitors that the photos have been altered.)

Local responsibility

There was a recent article on the BBC about how there was very little Welsh produce represented in the cafeteria of the National Museum of Wales. The issue was highlighted by Plaid Cymru, the Welsh party, and centers around the fact that the catering service used by NMW is only required to include 22-24% of Welsh produce in its range.

I hadn’t realised there was so little, but then again I also didn’t realise the catering was entirely outsourced to a French company. That’s not necessarily bad by default – I can totally see why value for money and catering expertise sometimes needs to be sought outside the local area.

But I do believe museums and heritage organisations have a certain responsibility towards their local area, especially if the organisation is regional in some fashion. It can’t be impossible to find a local caterer, or to invite locals to contribute goods. We did this sort of thing pretty extensively at Emån when I worked there, many years ago.

Admittedly this can be takes to unnecessary extremes. I often feel National Trust shops are too gimmicky with their chocolate wrapped in the manor house paper or little jars with the local name, but I support the general idea.

A Welsh museum should probably serve Welsh produce. Certainly more than 24% of it. Ask local people to contribute. It’s their museum. Local beekeepers will want their honey used. Local brewers want their beer served. Is there a nearby orchard? Farms? Butchers?

Maybe we need to try harder to involve local businesses. They get advertisement, while the museum gets produce, and everyone takes pride in their local resources. Everybody wins.

New approaches

Both the BBC and The Guardian recently wrote about the Tate’s new initiative to give visitors two very important new opportunities: to leave comments in a digital display gallery; and to add their own artwork for public display as part of a digital drawingboard at the museum.

I cannot tell you how exciting this is, and how well it ties in with my previous post about inspiring creativity in our visitors.

I look forward to seeing this in action!

Presenting with passion

Today’s entry is short and sweet. It’s really another TED talk, this time by Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It’s only 16ish minutes long, and well worth a look.

I can only agree. We need to present objects in museums with passionate scholarship – passion is what truly draws me in. A person who cares deeply about something and tells me all about it sparks my curiosity like nothing else. It makes me care.

And another piece of good advice from Thomas: avoid jargon!

What can heritage encompass?

There was an awful lot of outrage recently about a press announcement on the National Trust Press Office website. The issue was that the National Trust was opening up the Big Brother House for a weekend, and people both misunderstood this as the Trust having bought the property, and objected to popular culture being considered heritage.

But surely popular culture is as much part of our heritage and the shaping of our identities as anything else?

We may not consider it as highbrow as mansions and fine art, but that’s not all heritage is about. John Carman¹ states that heritage includes everything from landscapes, buildings and monuments to objects, but that definition is rather too narrow. Heritage can include imagery, actions (such as remembering or celebrating events)² or skills (e.g. crafting totem poles)³.

Heritage isn’t as constant as many people think – it is in fact in constant flux. Heritage can be whatever we value and whatever shapes us as a culture, as communities or as individuals. This is bound to change – and you have to admit that popular culture is something that influences us, whether we like it or not. 

The Big Brother House isn’t for everyone – but I’m kind of glad it too can be heritage.

What is a museum?

There will be a “proper” post later today, but I just thought I’d share a video with you first. Emily Graslie asks people: what is a museum? It has some beautiful answers!

Do we live up to these descriptions?