Good times in WA and less good times in the UK

The announcement in May of the redevelopment of the WA Museum is good news, but has been a long term in coming. It had a false start along the way in 2008, when under Dawn Casey's directorship the Museum's relocation to the old Swan River powerstation was announced. Although the monies were about the same for the latter project, about half was going to be eaten up by site remediation. And it seems to be generally agreed in Perth that the powerstation was not a good site being off the tourist track and difficult to access.

So the new plan sounds a whole lot better way to spend the not inconsiderable sum of $428.3 million.  

What the good citizens of WA will get for their money is 23,000 m2 of museum, including various refurbished heritage buildings with 8,500 m2 of public spaces, themed around Being Western Australian, Discovering Western Australia and Exploring Our World, and 1,000m2 of temporary exhibition space.

As Australian museum projects go it dwarfs anything we have seen of late, which admittedly has tended to be new wings ($50m at MCA in 2012,  $45m at the Australian Museum in in 2008), is almost 4 times the cost of GOMA (2006) in Brisbane, is twice the cost of the National Museum (2001) and significantly more than the Melbourne Museum (1998). The challenge will be for the director, Alec Coles, to hold onto the funds over various budget cycles. There is no doubt that Coles is a smart political operator and much of the credit for getting this over the line is due to him, but Bill Bleathman, the able director of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, saw the promise of a similar sum whittled away to a paltry $30m for their current redevelopment.

From the largesse of WA’s booming mining driven economy to the other end of the spectrum, and it's interesting to see what happens to museums in an economy that is really being hit hard, namely the UK. The raw facts are that 42% of UK Museums Association member institutions have cut staff in the past year according to their most recent survey, and a quarter have had to close all or part of their sites. Bear in mind that this is what happened in 2011, after at least 2 years prior to that of a similar picture. But the good news is that out of adversity in true British fashion there are good things evolving (and it's not just the lift to the spirits that the Olympics is bringing).  The survey is peppered with comments such as " Challenge does foster resourcefulness", 'There is a more pragmatic approach to service delivery", ' the sector will emerge more radical and responsive to the social needs of the public', and 'being more entrepreneurial has to be good for museums and galleries in the long term'.  Add to this increasing visitor numbers, and 36% of members saying the quality of their services will increase over the coming year ( up from 13% the previous) and it all sounds positively rosy. To top it all, UK public support for the return of the Elgin marbles to Greece is on the decline, because there is real concern that Greece's dire financial state would mean they will be unable to properly care for them. Not sure that view is going to hold water in the long term, but for now it will keep the British Museum’s 6 million annual visitors (and rising) happy. 

Julian Bickersteth

Managing Director

internationalconservationservices

Mobiles and museums - the next stage

The UK Museums Journal latest edition devotes its Museum Practice section to exploring mobile phone usage in museums. This comes off the back of a Fusion MA Mobile Survey which sought to assess how cultural organisations in the UK and US are using mobile technology to:

• extend audience research
• increase visitor engagement and participation
• provide potential new revenue channels

The report is a vital litmus test to my mind of where museum thinking is currently at or going to be shortly on the use of mobiles. My takeaways are:

• mobile usage in museums is going to expand commensurately with the wider take up of smartphones (90% penetration by 2015 being talked about)
• museums are managing many of their mobile programmes in house, i.e. they are being very hands-on
• that said only 5% of UK museums surveyed had a developed mobile technology strategy, i.e. nobody quite knows what they are doing
• QR codes already top the list of mobile features and are set to expand as fast as apps
• revenue opportunities through social media or by allowing purchase of online merchandise are very limited.

In summary the report reflects a very fluid situation at present with everyone feeling their way, but one where the role mobiles play in visitor access is only going to get greater and that at speed. From the feedback I get, the most sought after feature is going to be way finding, the bug bear of many a great US and European museum, i.e. visitors get lost or don't explore the museum fully through fear of getting lost. Analytical capacity of smartphones is a nice-to-have but not a driving force.

So what comes out of the Museums Journal articles?

On apps versus mobile friendly sites, each have their benefits, with apps having the advantage of operating independently without an internet connection, but mobile sites are generally much cheaper to develop as they can draw on the website framework, and they don't need Apple store approval or cross platform (Android, iOS etc) development.

On the role of audio guides, it is clear that  buying and maintaining devices is a thing of the past, and that visitors are going to use their own phones or tablets.

On strategically approaching mobile projects, key themes are keeping it simple, involving cross departmental teams (especially curatorial, education, visitor services and digital media) and developing a marketing strategy to encourage visitor use.

This is going to be a subject that is going to take up an increasing amount of museum magazine column inches.

Julian Bickersteth

Managing Director

internationalconservationservices

UK museum cuts and the broader context

I may have spoken a little too optimistically in my last blog about the likely effects of the UK budget cuts on the museum sector. Certainly the cuts at a national level have not proven to be as severe as was widely feared (and planned for). But the reality of post budget life in Britain is already beginning to hit home, particularly at a regional level, where there are thousands of museums which do not receive DCMS (Department of Culture Media and Sport) funding. Local museums are almost universally funded by local councils and that is where the cuts are really going to bite, with local council funding reduced by 28% as compared to 15% for national museums. The UK Museums Association is running a ‘Cuts Monitor’ which details the reality of this situation - an example already of an award winning local museum having to cut staff from 70 to 15. Meanwhile universities have seen an even bigger cut of 40% to all but research programs and science and technology teaching, which is bound to have a direct effect on university funded museums. English Heritage, which at one stage looked as though it might be abolished and its operations amalgamated into another body, has survived but been hit with cuts of 32%, resulting in pay cuts, and the loss of 8 directors, and this after a 3 year pay freeze.

So are they going to be able to do about it? English Heritage currently generates 25% of its’ income from commercial activities mostly at their 400 historic sites and properties, and they are going to have to look to ways to expand these. I am indebted to my colleague Sarah Jane Rennie of the Museums and Galleries NSW for drawing my attention to some of the other proactive ways in which the sector is looking to help. Sarah Jane has recently been in Scotland and came across a toolkit that Museums Galleries Scotland recently released to guide museums and galleries practitioners through times of drastic funding cuts, Choices for Change. It is aimed at local council museums that need to look at alternative ways of governance and operation to survive, and will have resonance with similar organisations in Australia.

And at another level, there is an interesting article in the latest Museum Practice on how to make loans more economically sustainable, which also has the advantage of their being more environmentally sustainable. Where this is coming from is that loans per se are expensive, and that therefore as the budget cuts hit so loans will fall, as loaning institutions attempt to recover the full cost of making loans (typically an administration fee is charged which in reality does not cover the full costs). The UK Museums Association is reviewing its key principles for loans through its Smarter Loans initiative. This is aimed at reducing costs in areas such as packing and transport by adopting a ‘common sense’ attitude. Not sure what that means but it always sounds like an excellent idea to me.

What I like about this review also is that it is helping to feed into the work that the Eu EGOR group (Environmental Guidelines Opportunities and Risks) are undertaking in looking at how environmental guidelines can be relaxed within certain parameters. This of course has a direct effect on energy costs which are typically 70% of a museum’s costs after salaries have been paid. And that is going to help lead worldwide to a new approach to environmental guidelines. AICCM has currently a taskforce in place which I am chairing to look at exactly that issue, the fundamentals as articulated by the National Museums Directors’ Conference guiding principles for reducing carbon footprints being:

• Environmental standards to become intelligent and better tailored to needs. No longer use blanket conditions for entire buildings
• Care of collections should not assume air conditioning
• Natural and sustainable environmental controls to be explored and exploited
• New or renovated museum buildings should aim to reduce carbon footprint as their primary objective

So at least out of the adversity that our UK colleagues are experiencing some good may come.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices