Do Museums Need Disaster Plans for People?

Any museum worth its salt has a disaster plan somewhere (hopefully somewhere easy to find).  It probably has information about contacting emergency services;  what happens to objects in collections storage and the safe evacuation of staff and visitors.  But over the last year, I've been paying attention to a number of conversations, in person and in the online world, about the ways we, as museums, can be more responsive to community needs in times of disaster.

I watched my colleagues in Ukraine step up during the protests on Maidan and the country's ongoing changes;  Gretchen Jennings has focused on empathetic museums in her blog Museum Commons; Elaine Gurian's writings continue to inspire; my colleague and friend Rainey Tisdale curated this year's Dear Boston exhibit on the anniversary of the bombing; and David Fleming's talk on the Social Justice Alliance of Museums at AAM provided new inspiration. All evidence of a more people-focused shift for museums. But much of it seems ad hoc.  Committed folks in museums react on the fly as disasters--political, social, natural, environmental--happen.

This September, at the Museums and Politics conference in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, Russia, I'll be presenting on this topic--the idea that a museum's disaster plans should include a focus on community, not just buildings and collections.  I proposed the session not because I'm an expert, but because it's an issue I'm interested in exploring, particularly from a wide range of global perspectives.   I'm looking to hear from you with your thoughts on any of the questions below.

• What would a disaster plan that focused on the people in a community look like?
• Can we plan for it?  What kinds of disasters do we need to think about?
• What resources can we provide?  emotional?  physical?  technical?  (see the bike-powered charging station at the top of this post)
• How do we balance human access and needs with responsibility to our collection?
• What can we provide that no other type of organization can?
• How can we begin conversations before a disaster about community needs?
• And for how long does our disaster assistance last?
• How does contemporary collecting fit into this process?
• Should our assistance and commitment be limited to local disasters?  What about ones that happen in other places around the world?  What's our responsibility?
• If we can be of service to our community during a disaster, how might that reshape our ongoing missions?
• And of course, what examples can you share--from anywhere?

Images:  

• Ryan Nelsen (R) and Fields Harrington (2nd R, white shirt) ride a tandem bicycle to generate power as people wait for their cell phones to recharge on Avenue C in the East Village on November 1, 2012 in New York as the city recovers from the effects of Hurricane Sandy. This neighborhood is in the area of Manhattan without any electrical power. (STAN HONDA - AFP/Getty Images)
• Child's artwork from a event at the National Art Museum of Ukraine.
• Dear Boston exhibit image via Metro
• Detail from Spray for Justice, on the first floor of the Museum of Liverpool, is a tribute and memorial to the people who lost their lives at Hillsborough at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forrest on 15 April 1989.

Why Even Ask the Question if You're Not Listening?

On crime shows like Law and Order, it’s accepted wisdom that a prosecuting attorney should never ask a question of a witness that she or he doesn’t already know the answer to.  But in planning, it’s exactly the opposite.  A few weeks ago, I was asked to participate in a planning focus group, as somewhat of an outside stakeholder,  for a largish organization.  We received materials in advance including a set of four goals.  “Hmm, I thought, I guess they’re farther along in the process than I thought.  They  already have goals in place.”  I go to the meeting, sit in a room with a group of immensely talented people from various arts and humanities disciplines.  We’re introduced to the process by the organization’s outside facilitator who says, in passing, that the organization hasn’t had a strategic plan in almost ten years; but they’re required to by a source of funding support, so now they’re doing it.   I thought, “Hmmm, a bit of a red flag. As a grant reviewer, a statement like this always caused me to look hard at an application.”  The facilitator and the director talk about these focus groups, about an upcoming survey, about delivering a draft, and so on.

The conversation begins, with a note-taker taking notes projected on the screen.  As we near the end of the meeting, we’re asked to react to the four goals.  There’s a silence, and finally I say (they asked for my opinion, right?) that I thought the four goals were old-fashioned, that they sounded like they could have been written ten years ago.   There’s another silence, when I wonder whether I should have spoken up, but then all of sudden the conversation blooms, with questions and lively talk from everyone around the table:   why are goals are already in place at the start of the process?   Do these goals reflect current realities and thinking?  How can the process should be a more open one? 

Great, right?  We were asked for our opinions and perspectives and we delivered them.  I left the meeting thinking that those opinions and perspectives had been recorded, noted (I could seen them projected on the screen)  and perhaps even appreciated.  After all, it was a great, thoughtful group of people in the room.

But, a week or so later, the notes of the meeting were distributed. I’m astonished to see that the entire discussion about the goals has been deleted.  Because we were critical and questioning about the process, it feels like it was taken as a direct challenge to the organization.  Rather than think about the questions we raised, it was easier to just erase them and pretend they didn’t exist.

Every museum evaluator I’ve ever worked with has always reminded me at the beginning of the process of the essential need to embrace the data, to be ready to really listen and be prepared to make change.  That doesn’t mean making every change a focus group suggests;  but to be serious about the process and the learning that occurs.  This organization demonstrated, from start to finish in this part of the process, that these focus groups were just a dog and pony show;  that decisions had already been made.  

Think about your own work.  Are you prepared to listen to the answers, or, like those Law and Order folks, only asking the questions you know the answers to? We’re not district attorneys,  we are, at our best, explorers of arts, of life, of new ideas.  So be prepared to listen.  Otherwise, why even bother to ask the question?

Do You Need Every Single Thing?

Often when conversations about new museum initiatives come up,  the reason for inaction is that there’s too much to do and not enough funding.  I won’t argue with the fact that right now is a really stressful financial time for every organization, but I do want to propose that perhaps, local history museums own too many meaningless objects--and that paying attention to meaningful objects will give us more time, more money, and more connections to our community.  After all,  consider the BBC/British Museum collaborative project, A History of the World in 100 Objects, a connection my colleague Christopher Clarke made at the WNYAHA meeting last month at the same time I was working my way through the BBC audio.

A couple months ago, I was working on a planning report for a museum looking to be more targeted about their contemporary collecting efforts.  A tweet looking for other models sent me to the McLean County (Illinois) County Historical Society and Susan Hartzhold, their curator, was good enough to chat with me about their efforts.

This historical society is an old one, founded in 1892, and a relatively large one,  with 9 full-time staffers.  When collecting started, in 1892,  all the objects were collected with provenance—a way of enhancing and reinforcing a sort of ancestor worship, I suspect. Susan’s been on staff for 20 years and she describes the issue as “stuff vs. meaningful stuff.”  As an organization, they were facing decades of collecting from curators who, for whatever reason, didn’t ask the questions that would provide the context for the object.

Some historical societies and museums might just shrug their collective shoulders at that issue—but McLean County chose another direction.  For the last ten years, the staff has gone back and looked at every single object,  trying to find, through research,  what meanings there are for each object—who owned, who used it,  how it compares to others.   They have looked at 18000 objects and deaccessioned 6000 of them.

There was not a collecting policy until the 1970s and now, Susan says, they have become, as a staff, hard-nosed about the collections they hold.  They have gotten rid of things that qualify as a “cabinet of curiousities,”  had no provenance or were in poor condition.  They have established benchmarks (i.e. limitations on the number of something—like wedding dresses from the same period) and objects with provenance always trump objects with no provenance.

It’s taken ten years and is part of a larger strategic plan—but what’s equally important, the size of the collection still stands at 18,000 because the society has continued to collect, but have been much more focused and strategic in their collecting.

What is that new collecting like?

Much of it has happened through partnerships with community organizations.  A local Black History Project grew from a teachers’ project and the museum became a repository for materials that were collected documenting the African American community in the county. 

There is an active South Asian community and the museum worked for five years to more fully engage with them—a task that was helped substantially by bringing in a traveling exhibit on Asian Games and inviting groups to support the exhibit.  But the engagement didn’t end with the traveling exhibit, the museum continues to work with the South Asian community.

There is a growing Hispanic community in the county and the museum has begun efforts to engage with it.  Susan admits that it’s a challenging effort as the museum is located in a courthouse, which makes many new immigrants fearful. They are currently working towards a partnership with a community’s Hispanic group to develop programming  for an upcoming exhibit about traditional Mexican arts.

Susan makes the point that these community efforts take a long time, take patience.   She says, “We have to go to them, we have to say, what can we do for you?’   

And that’s a great take-away from this story.  Collecting and caring for collections is a time-consuming process—but a wasted one unless we really approach the process in a thoughtful way—both in terms of what we have and in terms of how we engage with our communities today.

Images and captions courtesy of the McLean County Historical Society, and many thanks to Susan for taking time to share her work.

Top: 

The nightgown was donated by a local woman, Jean, who was born in 1916.  When asked about the nightgown, Jean had a wonderful story -- She said that she was surprised by the gift, that it really wasn't her style.  She felt that her husband had purchased it for one of two reasons:

             1) He didn't know what to get her, so he let a sales clerk in the lingerie department at the local department store  "convince him that it was exactly what she wanted."  During that time period lingerie departments always had female sales clerks who helped both male and female customers. It wasn't unusual for clerks to help male customers pick out gifts for their wives or girlfriends.

             2) "He'd seen way too many Jean Harlow movies"

Jean said she only wore the nightgown once, but the story and the nightgown tells us so much about  the culture of the time period.

 Bottom:

The pottery was brought to America by  the Alvarez's family; purchased in Zacatecas, Mexico. The donor’s father came to Bloomington in 1972, her mother and 2 brothers followed in 1974.  She joined them in 1975.  Her parents returned to Mexico in 1995, but the rest of the family stayed.

Oh, Planning Does Work!

As any consultant knows,  there's a point when you can just hope for the best--you've worked with the client,  you've facilitated community conversations, and you've written the report.  And then...it's like waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Has the organization really embraced the process?  Are there the skills and the drive to move a plan forward?  And the bottom line...did your work make a difference?

This past week or two I've had two experiences that reinforced my belief in the importance of planning, but they also helped cement my understanding that sometimes it takes a while for the results of the process, much less the plan itself, to be fully known.

Almost two years ago,  my colleague Anne Ackerson and I led the strategic planning process for a volunteer committee of a small town in Massachusetts as they worked to save a historic building for use as a heritage center.  Focus groups, space planning, conversations with other stakeholders,  benchmarking,  committee meetings, budget development--the whole process.  No word for a while, as sometimes happens with clients as we and they head off to the next steps.  But this week an email that read, "there have been many twists and turns to get us here but it finally is a happening thing!  Your study proved very valuable to us as we went before numerous committees, radio, TV and finally a special town meeting to appeal for the last chunk of funding."   That's what a good plan does--it helps convince others to join in, to help accomplish the goals.

Yesterday I went to a meeting with a client that had had a number of staff changes throughout a long interpretive planning process (mostly completed some time ago)  and met with senior staff,  three of four of whom were new (although not necessarily new to the organization).  To my surprise and delight, these four women embraced the knowledge gained in evaluations along the way;  over a long lunch we had a lively conversation about the meaning of community engagement and community anchor;  discussed the real needs of the organization to accomplish the interpretive goals;  and overall, made a substantive commitment to work together as a team to lead the way.  Tremendously gratifying.

What made the difference?  It's hard to say.  In the first case, it was a long-standing committee that remained united and committed to the project.  In the second, it took some staff changes to make that commitment happen.  But, like almost all of my work, it's about the people involved--and the need to be ready, to have a plan in place when the time is right.  Planning is best done when you're not under the gun but when your organization takes the time to slow down and think collaboratively with your community.  "Too busy!" you say?  Find the people; find the time.

Planning by J'Roo on Flickr

Charting A Course

This past week, five colleagues, all independent museum professionals, sat down to talk about our futures.  We had discovered that despite doing a significant amount of planning with organizations, none of us had a strategic plan, or even any sort of plan.  And, we discovered, all of us wanted to think about, for various reasons, some shift in what we do or how we do it.   So we all came together at my house, to eat fresh peaches and tomatoes,  taste freshly-infused vodka,  laugh, ask hard questions and consider the future.

The process was exceptionally informal and designed collaboratively before we all came together.  Like every process, we tweaked it a bit as we went along.   We began by devoting a half hour each to a career review.   How each of us designed that review was up to us--and the results were fascinating.  We had a mind map,  a statistical analysis of income vs. satisfaction,  graphs analyzing sources of project funding, a pie chart of activities,  and for all of us, narratives about how we got to where we are (not a single straight line in the bunch!).   We asked each other questions, delving deeper into the ways in which our businesses operated (made easier by the agreement that the details of our conversations would stay within the group).

Just like the career paths, the business models were widely different.  One limited liability corporation, two bloggers and tweeters,  two relatively avoidant of social media,  one with project subcontractors,  one with employees.   One with a foot outside of the museum world currently;  another with former foot outside in the hospitality industry.   But we all agreed that our business models were pretty accidental as well.

The next day we re-convened and did a SWOT analysis for each of us, again devoting a half hour or so to each person.  It probably worked best after we'd had part of a day and a long talky dinner together.  Although we all knew each other before gathering, it was in different ways, to different degrees.  I think a level of trust was really important in this conversation.  It's hard to hear people talk honestly about you--and I will say I think we were all harder on our individual weaknesses than anyone else.

Lunch break and then we split up, spending about an hour creating, in whatever fashion, some sort of a plan.  Big sheets of paper, on the computer, sketched out as a map--everyone designed it in their own fashion.  Then of course, back together to share the plans for comment and final thoughts.  And among those final thoughts?  Some plans to work together in several different ways--an unexpected but not surprising outcome of our time together.

What made this process work?

Abundance
Anne Ackerson, who blogs over at Leading by Design, mentioned the idea of abundant organizations to us:   that by sharing our time and talents, we create something that has more than enough--more energy, more creativity,  more enthusiasm, more deep thinking.   The sum was definitely greater than the parts.

Familiar, not too familiar
We all knew each other, but all of us didn't know each other intimately.  We didn't know the inside details of each other's business, nor in any great way, of our personal lives.  This meant that we could approach something like a SWOT analysis with a degree of thoughtful distance.   We had about a ten- year age range between us,  and I think the fact that we all thought of ourselves as mid-career meant that we related to each other's issues.

Commitment to Change
We had all experienced strategic planning processes where the organization board and staff were only doing it because they felt pressured in some way.   Those planning processes usually fail to produce real change.  For all of us,  we really wanted to think more deeply about our time and we wanted to make changes,  to have control over rapidly changing, complicated work lives with cultural organizations.

A Sense of Humor
Enough said.  The people you choose to work with really matter.

What's next?  It's up to each of us to decide what form our plan will take and I hope to get mine into shape over the next few weeks.  We've decided to meet a few times a year, to share ideas and continue providing encouragement and feedback.  We're contemplating some ways we might work together, and how we might share both this process and our hard-won knowledge with emerging museum professionals.  So many thanks to Anne, Gwen, Marianne and Christopher for a great time--and stay tuned!

Image:  pie chart from Audrey Lapierre, via Flickr

What's Next?

Not long ago, a colleague told me she had spoken at a graduate museum studies program and was astonished at how many students envisioned their future as a consultant, rather than working in an institution.  That's a big change from my own graduate school career where we imagined being directors, curators and an educator or two.   I never quite imagined the path that my career has taken,  and this summer, I'm taking the opportunity to join with several other colleagues in a consideration of what's next.

The idea for a consultants' retreat came about from a conversation where I was asked, in an overall conversation about strategic planning, if I had a plan myself.  I laughed, and despite extensive work on strategic and interpretive planning, sheepishly said no.  And then I called four other museum consultants in New York State whose work I value and admire--and guess what--none of them had a plan either.   So we decided to have a little mini-retreat where we all brought our concerns, hopes and ideas to the table to get feedback and assistance from the rest of the group.

We're still working out how our time together will work. We'll do some sort of career review--both the short-term and the long term (as one participant said, "I'm big on overarching narratives).   We'll think about the work we liked best and the work we liked least--and how to generate more of the former and less of the latter.  We'll talk about if and when collaborative consulting works, and how our various frameworks for both organizing and promoting our work serve us.  We may even come out with some frameworks for individual plans.  And I'm sure that we'll have a great time reflecting, talking and laughing over food and drink.

But I want to hear from blog readers out there.  If you're a consultant, what do you wish you had time to think about?  If you want to work as a consultant, why and what do you imagine your career will be like?  And for all of you, what's the next act in your museum life?

The Word from 8th Grade: That was Awesome!

The term focus group often seems scary or off-putting to some groups I work with--but really, it's just a term for listening to what visitors--and potential visitors--have to say.   Last week,  as part of a new IMLS-supported project at the Ontario County Historical Society,  staff members and I spent two days listening to community members talk about the museum and about the concept for the new exhibition, "Greed and Other Human Desires:  The Early History of Western New York."  You can check out the project blog here to learn more.  

Much of the visitor research work in the museum field focuses on larger institutions as those museums have the funds to commit to full-scale evaluation. The work by Reach Advisors, particularly their survey of Connecticut cultural consumers,  begins to bring audience perspectives from all kinds of museums, including small ones, into the picture.  So I was interested to see what our groups had to say both as it related to larger contexts as well as our particular project.

All the conversations were fascinating, but I was particularly struck by the comments of two groups of 8th graders.  These were students,  chosen by their social studies teacher, with a particular interest in history:  many of them were History Day participants and all were headed towards AP history courses. Here are some of their thoughts on what museums do.

 On labels

• Kids don't really like reading.   [but then some disagreement from several others who did like to read.]
• They had like the artifact and a small description—not too small, but not like a history lesson.
• I had to go on a field trip that I liked up until my teacher told me I had to be reading a lot because if I wasn’t reading I wouldn’t learn.  I’ve learned more from museums than having to read right off a wall.
• Part of a museum is seeing it, otherwise it would be a library.

On computers

• If you go somewhere with your family, you don’t want to be stuck at one computer screen, you want to be able to pass it around and talk about it.
• I don’t like them that much.
• It’s weird that it’s dirty. [this was a conversation about germs]
• I feel like with the computer—it’s only one answer you can get.
• At a museum, you clicked on a computer and read about it—it was a cartoon, Ice Age and seemed kind of boring…clicking.
• There was 100% agreement in both groups that computers were the least interesting part of a museum visit.

On Hands-On Interactives

• You could get to feel like what they were doing and how they were doing it and what went through their mind.  You get the sense of “whoa, that was hard for them!"
• Pops out more in my memory when you’re actually holding stuff
• It’s easy to forget words and pictures;  easy to remember when you’re actually doing stuff;  touching.

They all felt that the use of reproductions for interactives was critical, as it was important to touch and feel.

On the Power of Imagination, Immersion and the Individual Story

•  Like with the Holocaust, you know that people died, you know these things happened, when you focus on one person, like Anne Frank hiding and stuff, it makes it real.
• I always find it interesting when I see pictures of a long time ago, to imagine—how things used to be.
• Being able to go in, see what it was like.
• The longhouse—that was awesome [at Ganondagan State Historic Site]
• I like real life examples—if you’re telling about how they dressed,  they had mannequins—the visual was really cool.
• You can find different answers if you look around.
• I always like it when an expert can tell you something about it.

Several comments highlighted what's often a shortcoming of local history museums.  The students very much wanted to understand local events in the context of a larger picture,  to understand, as one put it, "More the quieter events during a larger period of time."   That's something many local museums can be better at.

Most boring museum?

For one, it was an art museum.  “The most boringist thing I’ve ever gone to—they’re hanging on the wall.  Art is art.  You stand around with a whole bunch of people, it’s quiet, you can’t even talk to your other family members,  don’t talk, and don’t scuff your feet.”   For another, a sports hall of fame.  "My dad made me go. I just didn’t think anything was interesting. You just stand there and read."

 On the role of parents and museum-going

• My parents have never really gone anywhere of their own will, actually.
•  Went to Albany for basketball tournament—and went to state museum. She [my mother]  was really was interested—They [parents] don’t have as much time.  When we want to go, they go, so they just go too.
• There are some adults that are just naturally interested in history.
• My dad likes things in the advertisement, that say you can do something.

And how could the museum let you know what's going on?

• I don’t read the newspaper
• Facebook, my home page
• Posters and flyers, because kids go around town;  some kids don’t go on Facebook,  just coming to school you see posters

Facebook generated a fair amount of discussion.  They didn't quite see why a museum would be on Facebook or why they would want to like a museum there.  However,  they were more interested in the idea of seeing historic photos of where they live on Facebook and were most interested when we told them, if their parents granted permission, their group photo would be on the museum's page.  Said one boy, "You should make those blogs and facebook things more known! "

Our conversation also included their thoughts on the topics of greed, survival and ambition--the subject for another post.  But what I hope my readers take away from these great students (aside from the thought that parents have no lives of their own) is that these conversations are easy to do--and that they can easily become a part of a local history museum's work.  

And the how-to:  check out the resources at the Committee on Audience Research as a starting point.  It's critically important to be clear in your own mind about what you want to know and design questions that reflect that.  And it's even more important to LISTEN!  The goal in these sessions is to hear from the group, not to share what the museum's up to or the problems you have.   An evaluation professional can be immensely helpful in the process, but these simple conversations are something a museum of virtually any size can undertake on its own and still learn a great deal of useful information.

All of us on the project team agreed that we all learned some surprising things--and that these students now have a connection to the new exhibit.  It's a terrific two-way street that benefits all.  These simple conversations are just one way to prevent local history museums from becoming those dinosaurs.   Thanks, 8th graders for teaching me something new!

Vision, Mission, Shmisson!

I spent a day last week facilitating a conversation with staff at a museum beginning the work of revising the mission and vision statements.  To prep for the day, I randomly wandered the web in search of museum mission and vision statements and came away unsure of what we think we're doing when we write new guiding statements.

Yes,  we're exploring, we're engaging, we work in communities.  We reach out, we work with others, we want to educate and promote.  Rarely anymore do we only document, collect and preserve.   Should it be one sentence only?  Does it need several supporting paragraphs?  Is it really a true vision to say you want to be the best [insert type of museum or locality here] there is?

But the discussion with both staff and design/branding experts was an intriguing one.  We raised perhaps more questions than we answered.  Among them:

• Who is the mission really for?  To be used internally or written so that front desk staff can articulate it to visitors?
• Why is it that sometimes artifacts seemed to sneak away from the mission statement?
• Who are we for?  What does the word "family" mean?  Does that mean some people stay away?  
• Are there other ways to say "general audiences" rather than everyone?
• It's great to be aspirational, as in a vision statement, but does an organization really need two statements?  Could it not be condensed into a single statement of purpose?
• How does that vision/mission really connect to branding and design?
• Can a museum commit to pushing all of its activities through the sieve of vision and mission?  What happens if you don't?
• Can you please all of the people all of the time?  (pretty much no, I'd say)

If you have just revised your museum's vision and mission, I'd love to hear about it, particularly about the process and the final wording.   The work of deeply and collectively thinking about the work that museums do is critical--so those discussions about vision and mission need to happen--but I wonder whether there's a different way to capture those discussions for our stakeholders.   And of course, as I read somewhere in my random web travels last week (apologies for the lack of attribution),  a mission without a strategy is only a wish.

Why a bowling photo at the top of the post?  Because I found what has now become my favorite vision statement online.   It's for something called Bowling, Inc.  and it is:

More people, bowling more often, having more fun.

Perfect.

Back to Ukraine

One of the great things about working as an independent museum professional is that you never know what an encounter will lead to.   Although I've returned home from Ukraine to dive back into projects in the US, my time there is not over as I'll be returning for several projects.

I've been asked to put together a team to conduct an assessment and work on planning with Pyrohiv, the National Museum of Folk Architecture, the largest outdoor museum in Ukraine, just outside Kyiv.  With the support for the Foundation for the Development of Ukraine we'll be working with the staff during a visit this fall to  assess all areas of the museum's operation so that the potential of this incredible site can be fully realized.

Pyrohiv was the first museum I visited in Ukraine, on an incredibly cold snowy (Orthodox) Christmas Day just days after I arrived in early 2009.   On a rolling green hills outside a rapidly developing city,  the museum contains folk architecture from all over Ukraine.   It attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, but faces issues of adequate funding, visitor services, staffing, new modes of interpretation, collections care and building preservation.  I'm looking forward to working both with the dedicated museum staff and the staff at the foundation to explore ways that this museum can best share its work and knowledge with both Ukrainian and international visitors.

I'm also working with the State Museum of Toys in Kyiv and a US partner on plans for a traveling exhibition of Soviet-era toys here in the United States.  Their collection presents a fascinating picture, virtually unknown to Americans,  of childhood in Soviet times.  From both ideological and design perspectives, the toys allow us to understand a time and place.    

Both these projects (and several others in the planning phase) came into being because of the opportunity to return to Ukraine on a enewal of my Fulbright grant.   The opportunity to think more deeply, to talk further with colleagues and meet new colleagues,  to visit more museums, and to make more connections, has been immeasurably helpful.   I'm a long ways from fully understanding Ukraine and Ukrainian museums, but each experience adds a bit more texture and color to my picture of this place.

Photos, top to bottom:  historic building at Pyrohiv,  Christmas service inside one of the historic wooden churches at Pyrohiv, a "space car"  toy from the State Museum of Toys, and a historic photo (courtesy of the State Museum of Toys) showing the much-coveted pedal cars in use.

Велика ідея/The Big Idea

What's the big idea?  That's a conversation I always have when I work with teams on exhibit projects.  I'm indebted to Beverly Serrell and her book Exhibit Labels:  An Interpretive Approach for the chapter on the Big Idea--it's a wonderful distillation of how to think conceptually about exhibitions  and I make great use of it as well as the rest of the book.

This past week, I had the opportunity to put it to use for the first time (for me) here in Ukraine.  I'm working with the Tusten Preserve,  an historic site in the Carpathians with the bare stone remains of a medieval fortress, high in the mountains (see the picture above).   The site's enthusiastic young director, Vasyl Rozhko,  wants to redo the badly dated exhibitions in the small museum (below)  located in a nearby village.

He and I spent much of a day talking about ideas for the exhibits--to show the technology used to create and defend the fort;  to show how it was a part of several different trade routes;  and how the site was used for border defense;  what medieval life in the fortress was like, and how scientists continue to learn more about Tusten using new technologies.   Vasyl had some great ideas for interactive exhibits, and he's also recruited a student to help do some audience evaluation (Tusten is best known for a September festival which draws thousands of visitors) so ideas flew fast and furiously.

At the end of the day, we gathered with the team he had put together for the project.  None of them are experienced in exhibits, but as a group, they bring a tremendous number of skills:  designer, editor, fund-raiser, archaeologist,  architect and more.  With our cups of tea in hand, we set about trying to wrestle down the big idea,  using Serrell's framework of subject, verb and consequence, via a Ukrainian translation of one of Exhibit Label's chapters. As when I've worked on US exhibit teams, the subject and the verb is the easy part--it's the consequence that's hard.

How did we do?  A great start, I think.  (As in all my Ukrainian endeavors, my immense thanks go to colleagues acting as translators who do incredible work to keep up with fast-flowing conversations--in this case, thanks to Vasyl and Olya, both at right above.)  We haven't come up with a final big idea sentence, but I think we're well on our way.  It reads something like, "Human intelligence and natural features combined to make Tusten a critical line of defense and center for trade."     We'll work to refine that idea, and to use that sentence as a frame for all the exhibit development to come.

Ukrainian exhibits are generally organized not around ideas, but around a scholarly arrangement of facts and details.  So it's very exciting to see this small museum, in a small village, make plans to connect with visitors in new ways.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Last week, we spent three days in the Lake District in Great Britain. It's been a tourist area for more than 200 years. In 1844 William Wordsworth campaigned against a proposed railway saying that to make the region accessible would ruin its scenic beauty. During our cold, snowy (but sunny!) days there, we found the region incredibly beautiful. The Lake District National Park clearly works incredibly hard to maintain the region's identity. Villages and small towns maintain much of their character in the centres (most designated as Conservation Areas), working farms still spot the landscape (though many also operate as B and B's), and clearly development is restricted along the lakes themselves.



But...8.3 million visitors a year come to the region--89% by private car. And it's not a big national park from an American perspective: only 34 miles wide. In comparison, the much larger Yellowstone National Park gets just over 3 million visitors a year. Our B and B host told us that in the summer she rarely even goes out on the roads--too crowded. She and her family are some of the only 42,000 or so people who live in the District full-time. It was easy to imagine bumper-to-bumper traffic on these tiny roads and lanes during the summer months. Even between Christmas and New Year's, the streets were crowded with walkers (usually in full gear) heading out to the hills.



It's the eternal dilemma isn't it? We want people to visit our museums, our historic sites, our no-longer industrial communities--but success brings more challenges than we imagine. As I checked out the Lake District National Park website, several things struck me as they dealt with the challenges of success. First, that information--public hearings, downloadable documents, up-to-date and clear web info--is key in making both residents and visitors partners in the process of preserving and appreciating this unique place. In the planning section of the website there's even a section called, "Unraveling the jargon." Third, the park, a governmental agency, clearly understands that it's work won't be possible without multiple, committed, community partners. Third, it's planning that makes the difference. The park has a clearly articulated vision for the next twenty years and a downloadable plan for how it will be achieved.

Vision:

"Working together for a prosperous economy, vibrant communities and world class visitor experiences - and all sustaining the spectacular landscape."

The Lake District National Park will be an inspirational example of sustainable development in action.

A place where its prosperous economy, world class visitor experiences and vibrant communities come together to sustain the spectacular landscape, its wildlife and cultural heritage.

Local people, visitors, and the many organisations working in the National Park or have a contribution to make to it, must be united in achieving this.

What will it actually look like in 2030?

A prosperous economy - Businesses will locate in the National Park because they value the quality of opportunity, environment and lifestyle it offers - many will draw on a strong connection to the landscape. Entrepreneurial spirit will be nurtured across all sectors and traditional industries maintained to ensure a diverse economy.

World class visitor experiences - High quality and unique experiences for visitors within a stunning and globally significant landscape. Experiences that compete with the best in the international market.

Vibrant communities - People successfully living, working and relaxing within upland, valley and lakeside places where distinctive local character is maintained and celebrated.

A spectacular landscape - A landscape which provides an irreplaceable source of inspiration, whose benefits to people and wildlife are valued and improved. A landscape whose natural and cultural resources are assets to be managed and used wisely for future generations.

Could I see this as a visitor? Actually, yes, in many ways. Our B and B served eggs and bacon from a family farm; local products are found throughout the stores (we brought home great looking mugs from Herdy); brochures encourage you to "give the driver a break," by taking buses, trains, or boats; and the landscape is spectacular and at the same time, lived-in and homey.

Plans aren't worth anything unless they're put to work--and have community buy-in. I want to try and keep an eye on the Lake District as the region's plans move forward. What will it be like in 2030? I hope there will still be a chance to be a solitary walker (or three of us) going down a country lane to be met by a flock of Herdwick sheep.

Good News and Bad News or хороші і погані новини

Last week I gave a talk at a local library about my time as a Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine.  This meant I spent an afternoon wandering back through all my images and thinking about Ukraine's--and my--past, present and future.   Almost every day, I read two different Ukrainian websites and they present me with two different perspectives on life there--and the work of museums.   (For new readers--my interest in Ukraine comes from my four months there in spring 2009 as a Fulbright Scholar--blog posts from January-April give an picture of my time there).

The Kyiv Post is Ukraine's English language daily--and is filled with a regular and extensive diet of depressing news.  On just one day,  for instance, January's upcoming Presidential election fraud worries, journalists are still arrested and harasssed for their work,  and the eternal news about property development in Kyiv (the latest, a hotel near Pechersk Lavra, a monastery and national treasure, founded in 1015).   Bad news, all the way around.

But I also read the Ukrainian Museum Portal, which is updated daily with news from Ukrainian museums--and I still hear fairly regularly from my Ukrainian museum colleagues.   The portal is only in Ukrainian, so I use Google Translate to get the gist of the brief articles.  The financial situation is dire in Ukraine, so I know museums there are struggling--but--I see exciting evidence of change.  A few examples (hopefully the translations are relatively accurate):

• The Ivan Honchar Museum is establishing a sort of friends group, to relax and chat about different aspects of Ukrainian folk culture with friends and associates, in honor of the museum's 50th anniversary.
• The Museum of Volyn now has a virtual tour online and Svetlana Pougach does a great job of keeping the Bulgakov Museum's blog and website current, with beautiful photographs of events and programs.

• The Bleschunova Museum of Personal Collections in Odessa sponsored a workshop, "Creating a Museum Together"  for teachers and students.   The Chernihiv Historical Museum had a seminar focused on working with the visitor, which attracted more than 60 participants.   I believe both these workshops were developed by MATRA participants.
  
• Near Lviv,  citizens are preparing a nomination of four wooden churches as World Heritage Sites.
• The enthusiastic education staff at the Kharkiv Literary Museum and the National Museum of Art continue to develop new programs for children.   At the National Art Museum there is a special program for children during the holidays focused on graphic arts.  A special exhibit and  classes take a lively approach to art that's found everywhere--from billboards to banknotes.
  

Why the change?   Several reasons.

First, Sustained professional development.
the Dutch government, through MATRA, invested significant time and resources in a 3 year training program for museum professionals.  Through workshops, mentoring, travel to the Netherlands, and perhaps most importantly, a train the trainer program, Ukrainian museum colleagues gained knowledge, connections and a sense of the possible.    This long-term training, rather than short-term visits from Western countries,  has a far greater chance of success.

Exposure to new ideas and inspirations.
Whether it's a trip to the Netherlands or connections with colleagues on the web--there are many chances to see new ideas and approaches.   My Ukrainian colleagues who visited the US this fall came back with many ideas--"just wait til you see our museum!"  one wrote after her return.

But most importantly,  it's museum workers themselves that are the agents of change.   
As I wrote in an earlier post about community museums in America--you don't get there by hoping.   With limited financial resources, and often working within a system that doesn't reward or encourage initiative,  museum professionals all over Ukraine are beginning to make a real difference.    I'm very pleased to have the opportunity, through a renewal as a Fulbright Scholar, to return to Ukraine for another four months, beginning in March, 2010 and continue to learn, share and work with museums there.  So Ukrainian museum colleagues--please continue to keep me posted on how we can work together!

Spreadability

I was struck by how generous I find the museum community when I read this article in the New York Times, about teachers selling their lesson plans online to other teachers--and in fact one site selling such materials, ranging from word puzzles to lesson plans, has generated more than $600,000 in income.

As I read the article I realized that I couldn't remember a time, if ever, that I called or emailed a fellow museum professional and they didn't generously offer their time, help, knowledge and perspectives, whether it be lesson plans, policies, or whatever. In the article, several of the teachers felt they were underpaid, and this was just fair pay for the work they did, but it troubled me, on so many levels. I know teachers work hard, and I know they're underpaid, but this seems to me exactly the kind of behavior I wouldn't want to encourage in students. Nina Simon posted a thoughtful response to one of my blog entries a couple months ago about providing "spreadable" content--and it seems to be that "spreadability" should be our goal--not the individual hoarding of resources and knowledge. And for a great example of a sharing teacher, check out my friend Anne Gohorel's art teacher blog.

Spreadable museum sites are too numerous to mention--some links at left, and many, many others. Thanks, my fellow museum professionals, for all the generosity of spirit!

Top: Hello Beautiful from josh.liba's photostream on Flickr

Ten Ways to be Better

I was a bit cranky in my last post about museums and change, without offering many useful suggestions. So here's a quick list of ten easy cheap (or free!) things any small history museum could do to create change in their organization.

1. Start a blog. Blogs are free, incredibly easy to set up, and provide a way for your museum to communicate with your audience on a timely basis. Don't know what to write about? Joanna Church of the Montgomery County (MD) Historical Society has a great object a week blog; and the Alice Miner Museum in tiny Chazy, NY highlights both programs and collections.
2. Change something in your permanent exhibit--anything! At the National Museum of American Art's Luce Center, you get to vote on what piece to place in a case. Let your visitors decide.
   
3. At a board meeting, take time to really walk through your museum, inside and out, and see what you could do to make it more visitor friendly.
4. Change that faded paper sign or label.
5. Make your admission free!
6. Change your open hours to suit your visitors, not your staff.
7. Think about what parts of community history aren't represented in your museum--and then go out and learn about it. Call a community elder and sit down for a conversation.
8. Turn down that unprovenanced object that duplicates something in your collections. You can say no.
9. In developing your budget for next year, squeeze one new program in, even if it means giving up one that you've always done.
10. If you don't have a strategic plan already, start one! And for all organizations, make sure that your vision and mission are not just boilerplate stored in a drawer, but inspirations that guide and shape your work.

And a bonus suggestion: ban the words, "but we've always done it that way" from your organization.

Top: Women assembled at Wheeley's Church, near Gordonton, North Carolina, to clean, 1939. Photograph by Dorothea Lange, FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress

Reminders of Our Failures

Finally, back to posting about our session earlier this month at the TICCIH conference. I was privileged to be on a panel with Moulshri Joshi, a member of the architectural team who won the competition award for plans for a memorial at the site of the Union Carbide gas tragedy in Bhopal, India.

In her passionate presentation, she raised some provocative questions:

• Can our understanding of heritage be extended to include reminders of our failures as well as tokens of our past glories?
• Is the attempt to eradicate symbols of failure and suffering effectively a selective overwriting of history, in order to construct a more appropriate collection identity?
• How inclusive are our notions of the collective identity which we seek to preserve and how far such an identity would represent narratives of the marginalized?

The challenges at Bhopal are many. The site is still contaminated and the city is rapidly encroaching. There are competing ideas about how the site should be used: should funds be used to improve the lives of those affected by the tragedy still living in poverty? What should the memorial be like? A park? a monument? And it will probably be years before any scheme is completed. But I found much in common between Bhopal and Chernobyl.

My own talk was framed around the ways in which the disaster at the Chernobyl is interpreted and presented both at Chernobyl itself, at the Chernobyl museum in Kyiv, and at the information center in Slavutich and online at Pripyat.com, a website operated by former residents of Pripyat, the abandoned city near Chernobyl. All of these sites are different, telling different stories. At Chernobyl and in Pripyat itself, it's left to the visitor to make sense of the story. It is a place of highly individualistic meaning-making. At the Chernobyl Museum in Kyiv, it seems to me to be primarily a memorial story; in Slavutich, the city built to replace Pripyat, the story is one of the plant and those who worked there--and a memorial to them as well.



In thinking about my presentation, I drew on the work of the International Coalition of Historic Sites of Conscience, to consider the ways in which these sites of tragedy--of failure, as Moulshri notes--could provide a place for discussion and conversation about not just the past, but the future. These sites are everything but easy. The Coalition's work addresses questions such as:

• How can sites like these both acknowledge private experiences and encourage public participation?
• What reactions do sites like these engender: memory, horror, voyeurism, fear, action?
• Can museums or sites that encourage discussion be state-run or must they be independent?
• How, and should, multiple perspectives be shown at these sites?
• How will these memorials involve new generations who have no memory of the event?

When I worked with photographer Michael Forster Rothbart on his Chernobyl exhibit in Kyiv Kyiv last spring, we conducted visitor evaluations. Some results from our (admittedly unscientific) survey (and special thanks to Natasha and all the volunteers for all their work on collecting and translating these). One question--before you visited this exhibit, what thoughts came to mind? Some of the answers:

• Radiation
• Sad, frightening and hopeful
• Danger
• The place of lost technologies
• Nothing good, ecological catastrophe
• I was there, nothing good
• Suffering of the whole world
• Ukraine is not Chernobyl

Think of the challenges of developing a museum, exhibit or memorial around visitor reactions like that. It's very unusual in Ukraine for audiences to be asked what they would like to see in an exhibit. When we asked about what other information viewers would like presented in an exhibit (particularly to foreigners), here's some of the answers:

• That it might affect people right now
• To remind us of what we already know all the time.
• We know enough [visitor from Italy]
• More truthful information, all the information available
• Show foreigners that Ukraine is not the country of freaks
• The info is shown from one side, but there was a lot of horror as well
• Information about people who died protecting others. Foreigners should know the truth
• Everything, the more the better

That last comment, "the more the better," is the take-away for me from this conference session and my talented colleagues. The more we share, talk, discuss, and debate both our successes and failures, whether it's industrial history or any other kind of history, the greater the chances are for understanding and change. Museums and historic sites have unique opportunities to be this kind of space. A space where transparency matters.



Top: Union Carbide plant, Bhopal, from jphangoo on Flickr.
Center and bottom: Pripyat, Ukraine

Passionate Work

I had a nice lesson in passionate work over the weekend. With a friend, I went to see her teen-age son and his two band-mates perform at a local theater. The audience was very small--at mid-day on July 4th. Even so, it didn't matter to them that no one was there. They enthusiastically and passionately performed their own songs and covers to an almost empty theater. I was struck by how much they cared about the music, and thought about several other museum colleagues for whom music is an integral part of their lives.

I also thought about about the passionate volunteers I come in contact with--the ones who spend their Fourth of July distributing audience surveys at a local street fair, for example. Or my mom, whose enthusiastic embrace of local history in Hagerstown, Maryland became a passion for the past ten years (and who I know will find another new passion in her new/renewed hometown).

Are passion and creativity linked? I've been reading A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can be More Creative by Roger von Oech (recommended by Anne Ackerson on her blog). I spend a fair amount of time thinking about interpretive projects--and I don't want to think the same way about each project. I want to bring different ideas and perspectives to the table each time.



So von Oech provides some great ideas for avoiding staleness and conventional thinking. For me, I think that's one way to maintain that passion for work and avoid what he calls becoming prisoners of familiarity. Some of his suggestions:

• Changing contexts is a way to discover the possibilities of your resources
• Change the wording of your questions
• Think in metaphors
• Fall out of love with a cherished idea
• Ask what if
• Imagine you're the idea
• Have fun and play
• The hand stimulates the brain
• Keep free time for exploring

We put a few of these into play at an interpretive planning meeting at the Chapman Museum in Glens Falls last week. The museum is beginning work on a new permanent exhibit on local history--but wants to try something very different than the usual local history timeline exhibit. We talked about what Glens Falls would have been if the lumber industry had never existed; we put our hands to work building some little interactive prototypes; and we talked about finding time to explore other museums and ideas.



Another piece of advice from the book? Let a random piece of information stimulate your thinking. That's what blogs are great for. I'm always looking for new ideas and information on blogs and other places on the web. That's one way, for me at least, to keep my own passion for the work I do.

Top to bottom:
Alex and Dylan. Hear their music.
Changing contexts: Maria Prymaschenko animal being carried on the street
View of Glens Falls, New York State Archives
Log interactive brainstorming, Chapman Museum