MuseumNext has helped to develop six wild ideas over the course of our two day event, but what next? Will each group go back to work find that they never have time to finish what they have started ?
I was really pleased to see that the group working on the ‘what to do with the Library’ wild idea had set up a Ning group so that they can continue to support the development of the project after MuseumNext. Brilliant!
In 1896 the City of Worcester built a magnificent building, a centre of information and inspiration for the citizens of Worcester, bringing together the public library on the ground floor and the museum and art gallery on the first floor.
In 2012 the library starts a new chapter, moving to a new combined public/university library (with a hotel attached), a few hundred yards away.
Many people have assumed that the museum will simply double in size, and as a traditional museum and art gallery with a wide-ranging collection we’ve certainly got enough content. But there have been other plans put forward such as selling the building and developing a museum elsewhere.
As the deadline of an empty ground floor gets closer and uncertainty still hangs over the building, we are planning for an in-between stage. This will be a period of trailing and testing what might go further, of working with our visitors and potential visitors to find exciting ways to programme that downstairs library space.
It needs to be entrepreneurial: the building is costly to maintain and run and public funding for the running costs is diminishing, not increasing. Any expansion needs to be more than self-financing.
And most importantly it needs to be participation-driven: we need our audience, particularly the people of Worcester, to champion the museum in the right direction for the next generation of its life if it’s going to survive and prosper.
We want to achieve more in the next few years than bog standard (or even excellent) visitor evaluation leading to a Heritage Lottery Fund application for capital development; we want the groundwork for a viable next 100 years. What practical tools and methods do we include in our trials to help our diverse audiences show us their future? What testing have you done that not just informed your development but started to drive it?
What do you think? Do you have any advice for Philippa?
