Renaissance Babies’23 as a literally classical
for the later 21st century, radically different to its
example.
predecessor and underpinned by a new form of
• Developing your own online “galleries” and
partnership between museums and their users.
interpretation, made possible by museums “opening up” their collections, as the Hunt
Professor Graham Black is responsible for teaching,
Museum, Limerick has done with the Sybil
research and consultancy on the Museum and
Connolly Collection.
Heritage Management MA in the School of Arts and
• Taking part in Hack Days: such as Coding
Humanities, Nottingham Trent University. His books
DaVinci, the first German open data cultural
on museum and heritage management include
hackathon.
Transforming Museums in the Twenty-First
Contributing:
Century (2012, Abingdon: Routledge) and The
• Tagging.
Engaging Museum: Developing Museums for
• ‘My City, My Sounds’ – an app that allows
Visitor Involvement (2005, London: Routledge).
people to record sounds of the city – then upload. • Contributing to a museum crowdsourced project. Stimulating action: • At the Pledge Wall in the US National Holocaust Memorial Museum, visitors can pledge to take part in action against genocide. Within the museum, their written pledges are projected at large scale on to the wall. Concluding thoughts This paper does not present a solution to the future of museums. At best, the implementation of the ideas it introduces will give your museum a breathing-space while you develop your own vision for that future. I believe you can do so, certain that there is an enthusiastic audience out there if you actively engage with it. Let me recommend to you the Collins & Porras concept of the ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goal’24 and call for a BIG, HAIRY, OUTWARD-FACING, CONFIDENT VISION for the future of museums.25 This begins by recognising that, in an “Age of Participation”, society is changing in new ways and at web-speed.
Notes 1. Yeoman, Ian. 2008. Tomorrow’s Tourist: Scenarios and Trends. London and New York: Routledge. p. 331. 2. Foley, Cindy M., and Rachel Trinkley. 2014. ‘Intentionality and the Twenty-First Century Museum’. Journal of Museum Education 39 (2): 125–31. p. 125. 3. Anonymous, quoted in Badalotti, Enzo, Luca De Biase, and Peter Greenaway. 2011. ‘The Future Museum’. In Procedia Computer Science, 7:114–16. P. 114. 4. Rockenbach, Barbara, and Carol A. Fabian. 2008. ‘Visual Literacy in the Age of Participation’. Art Documentation 27 (2): 26–31. 5. Jenkins, Henry, Ravi Purushotma, Margaret Weigel, Katie Clinton, and Alice J. Robison. 2006. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: MacArthur Foundation, MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/confrontingchallenges-participatory-culture. p. xi. 6. Kelly, Lynda. 2009. ‘The Impact of Social Media on Museum Practice’. National Palace Museum, Taipei. https://australianmuseum.net.au/document/the-impactof-social-media-on-museum-practice. p. 2.
In response to this new age, the outward-facing museum continues to believe wholeheartedly in the wider relevance of what it has to offer. It responds confidently, enthusiastically and meaningfully to the demands and challenges of a rapidly changing world – seeing these as opportunities, not threats. It actively seeks the views of those beyond its walls, recognising that “real, sustainable change requires understanding that the voices and ideas of others are a critical part of having a broader vision of the world...”.26 And all of this results in an institutional commitment to create a transformed museum
7. Delwiche, Aaron, and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson, eds. 2012. The Participatory Cultures Handbook. London: Routledge. p. 7. 8. McLean, K. n.d. ‘Museum Exhibit Prototyping as a Method of Community Conversation and Participation’. https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.afsnet.org/resource/resmgr/ Best_Practices_Reports/McLean_and_Seriff_Museum_ Exh.pdf. p.1. 9. Ntalla, Irida. 2017. ‘The Interactive Museum Experience: Investigating Experiential Tendencies and Audience Focus in the Galleries of Modern London and the High Arctic Exhibition’. London: University of London. http://
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