The Museum of the Future | Museums and culture in times of social and technological change

18 Jul, 2018 • Thoughts about museums • 8091

Museums and the SDGs: Where to make a difference?
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a compelling opportunity for museums and other cultural organizations to take action and show the world that culture deserves to be taken seriously when it comes to sustainable development. With 17 goals and a total of 169 targets, it may be a tough choice where to start, though. Which begs the question, Where can museums make a difference on the SDGs?

In this post I try to summarize where museums can take action on the SDGs, and how they might approach this, either by leading the way, supporting other organizations or making internal changes. Overall, there are more than 50 targets on which museums can make a difference.

This list is not comprehensive. Specific types of museums can take additional action on the topics in which they are experts. Natural history museums and science museums, for instance, have a considerable role to play in SDG 15 (Life on land), while Maritime and Coastal Heritage Museums may want to focus on SDG 14 (Life below water).

Three targets stand out, to me, as especially relevant to museums, cultural heritage organizations and other cultural actors:
- 4.7, which contains a call to action to all cultural organizations: Ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.
- 10.2, which should be a rallying cry for our approach to our audiences: Empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.
- 16.10, which touches upon some of the core tasks of cultural organizations: Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.
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27 Jun, 2018 • Thoughts about museums • 11562

Museums and the Sustainable Development Goals

The sustainable development goals are a universally adopted set of challenges to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. There’s 17 of them, including zero hunger, reduced inequality, and climate action. We have until 2030 to achieve them, and individuals, communities, and institutions around the world have begun to take action accordingly. I believe museums and other cultural organizations can be key players in achieving the SDGs if they chose and dared to step up.

The SDGs are the successor of the MDGs or millennium development goals. They ran until 2015. There were less of them – just eight -, and they were less explicit in their ambitions – “reduce…” instead of “zero…”. Nonetheless, the achievement made by the global community on the MDGs are impressive. For instance, child mortality rates have halved, avoiding 16,000 unnecessary deaths of children under-five each day.

Although the SDGs may seem like a continuation of the MDGs, there are considerable differences. The first is that achieving the MDGs relied on the work of specific professionals. Achieving the SDGs relies on all of us.

Also different is that, unlike in the MDGs, culture plays an explicit part in the SDGs. For the first time, museums and other cultural organizations have been given global responsibility for sustainable development. Specifically, there is SDG 11.4, which encourages everyone to safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage. More generally, we’re at the table!

Like healthcare, education, sanitation, energy, and so many other sectors, culture has been given responsibility for sustainable development. This is a tremendous responsibility indeed.

It is an individual responsibility, as humans and professionals, to dedicate our time, energy, and creativity to making the SDGs a success.

More importantly, it is a collective responsibility to show that museums and cultural organizations contribute to sustainable development. As Andrew S. Potts said at an event in Brussels recently, now that we’re at the table, we need to prove we are worth it to have a seat. Continue Reading
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6 Jun, 2018 • Case studies • 7128

Universal stories in the local museum

Last week I spent a night at Kystens Arv, the Coastal Heritage Museum in Stadsbygd, Norway. The museum’s location is stunning. A cluster of bright red buildings surrounded on one side by green fields and on the other by deep blue water. Its location is also challenging. To get there requires you to get to Trondheim, then take a 25-minute ferry ride followed by a 30-minute taxi ride. The journey is well worth the trouble, but for obvious reasons, most people will find it too far off the beaten track.

Consequently, Kystens Arv is primarily a locally relevant museum. It tells a national story and tries to address universal themes in its programming, but its audience and impact are predominantly local. Most museums are predominantly local.

Telling a universal story in a local museum requires a careful balancing act. For instance, most people do not relate to universal stories such as climate change and loss of biodiversity. These are too abstract, too far from their everyday lives. Instead, they wonder why they cannot grow tomatoes like they used to or where all the birds have gone, as Scott Cooper told me last year. This requires a different approach to storytelling.

Arnfinn Rokne of the Trondheim Science Centre mentioned something similar in the conference we hosted as part of the Making Museum the day after Kystens Arv. He called for locally relevant science centers. Such science centers make universal science locally relevant. Gravity is the same everywhere, but to explain how the laws of science have contributed to specific local circumstances demands another type of presentation.

That doesn’t mean universal and local stories are mutually exclusive. I believe they strengthen each other. The balancing act is between telling a universal story that may be abstract and a way of storytelling that local audiences can relate to.

At Kystens Arv, one of the driving questions is how the museum can help to make sure that children have a better relationship with the world and to the ocean. On the one hand, this implies that the museum tells the local story of boat building and invites school children to engage in this tradition. On the other, it means the museum cannot shy away from topics such as plastic in the oceans. There may even be a direct link: The traditional boats that are at the heart of Kystens Arv’s story are made of natural materials, unlike most contemporary ships. By maintaining and restoring the heritage of boat building, the craftsmen in Stadsbygd may help the global oceans with local skills.

Most museums are predominantly local. To tell a universal story or address a global topic, they best engage their local communities with locally relevant activities around local cultural heritage. The best way to tell a universal story is by starting locally.

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22 Mar, 2018 • Strategy • 9609

A global vision on the future of libraries (or how 32,063 librarians can’t be wrong)

Last Monday the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, IFLA, presented the first results of their ambitious global vision discussion. Over the past year, IFLA has worked with tens of thousands of librarians from all over the world to identify the challenges and opportunities for the library field, its enduring values and purpose, its boldest ideas and most effective local actions. The summary of this process is a highly inspirational document, and not only for libraries.

IFLA’s global vision discussion is a genuinely bottom-up process that has given a voice to all types of librarians and library workers. The discussion started last year in Athens with a workshop with about 150 international participants and continued to involve 9,291 people in 185 workshops and 22,772 people online. The contributions came from 190 UN member states, and all participants together had 469,152 years of library experience. A team of people worked for weeks to analyze the tens of thousands of data points to create the first summary.

What did they find? The key finding is that libraries are united globally in their goals and values, such as equal and free access to information and knowledge. Also, the library world must connect global and local actions effectively so succeed in years to come. The field has shared challenges, but to address them libraries need to acknowledge regional characteristics and requirements.

Underlying this key finding are ten highlights and ten opportunities, which range from updating traditional roles in the digital age to giving young professionals opportunities to learn, develop, and lead. They look inward, challenging the field to be less bureaucratic, inflexible, and resistant to change, and outward at library’s all-important community service. Continue Reading
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16 Mar, 2018 • Technology • 6846

Museums, archives, and the opportunities of open world games

Late last year I was taken on a highlights tour of the records office in Ipswich. In the strongroom, with its hum of climate control and surrounded by mobile shelving, we opened drawers and pulled out boxes. My guide was a staff member and talented storyteller who knew very well where to find the best bits of history and could also be amazed by the thousands of stories hidden in the archives.

An archive such as the one in Ipswich is full of stories and colourful characters. It is full of detailed maps of farmland and villages, the register of countless lives, deaths, marriages, people’s promises and depts and misdeeds, juicy newspaper clippings, the careful documentation of business transactions… Many kilometres of human history.

After the tour, we went for a drink in a local pub and talked about the stories of Suffolk hidden in the archives. The Red Barn Murder, Black Shuck, and countless other mysteries.

I thought about this experience – and many like them – when I read Ed Rodley’s latest blogpost(s) about story world design.

Ed describes how over the past decade or so, narrative-driven massive open world games have become hugely popular. Such games tell hundreds of interconnected stories with thousands of characters. Games placed in a historical context, such as Assassin’s Creed, typically employ historians to ensure the accuracy of these stories, the setting, artefacts, and characters. Continue Reading
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