Work Package 2 Improvement of museum management at partner museums

St Fagans National History Museum and Foteviken Museum

What’s the museum’s mission and what economical and personal resources must the museum have to deliver this mission.

Have you identified your management structures?

How is your organisation coping with the profile of how to present the museum for the public – what are the management issues? (Costs, interpretive style, interpretive messages).

How much knowledge do you need at the bottom of your organisation to run an AOAM?

How are we looking into knowledge from the management point of view?

Do we need to have the knowledge in the house, and if so, on which level?

Who is running the business? An archeologist or a marketing manager?

Is this something that volunteers, archaeologists, enthusiasts can cover, or are the skills needed among staff?

Does the picture we show using experimental archaeology accurately reflect the past?

How experimental are we? How much is science, how much is Von Daniken?

Should craftspeople be in T-shirts in a special area prepared for presentations, or in character: 1st or 3rd person?

What way shall we lead the museum concept – houses with signboard or houses filled with action and museum teater?

How can we improve our working conditions regarding a stressful environment in summers?

Do we make reconstructions for the public or as an experiment?

• How to implement new media interpretation methods depending on the size and nature of organisation

How can we construct and maintain structures which balance academic credibility and the needs of visitors?

What happens if we leave our houses cold and damp for 9 months of the year = decaying replicas, damage to structures and an impression that people in the past lived in misery and squalor?

What can we do about it?

Summary: what we are going to do

WP2 Improvement of museum management at partner museums

Dr Steve Burrow

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

12 April 2012

WP2 > Review of management issues

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Results…

• Responses from 7 partners

• Issues shared by multiple partners

Fundraising, marketing, relationship to parent organisations

– Developing and maintaining buildings– Managing staff and volunteers

WP2 > Overview

Major parts of the work package

• Management of buildings (St Fagans)

• Management of staff and volunteers (Foteviken)

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WP2 > Management of buildings

The major capital assets of most AOAMs…

• Construction issues

• Maintenance issues

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WP2 > Management of buildings >> European perspective

Learning from our partnership…

• Study of one building at each partner venue

• Interview with person responsible

for the building

• Survey of the building by a

museum conservator23

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WP2 > Management of buildings >> Applying best practice

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WP2 > Management of buildings >> St Fagans 2015

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WP2 > Management of buildings >> next six months

OpenArch

• Planning permission to build our structures

• Completion of interview and survey atModena

(Not really OpenArch, but a result of this partnership)

• Open an exhibition at the Hunebedcentrum

Series of surveys before each meeting based on the other work packages, to see how much difference they make to the partners before and after.

Gathering of organisations with related interests in building management at museums

Gathering of other museum organisations with interests which overlap with EXARC (IMTAL,, NOOAM, EAOM etc)

The role of interpretation. The results will be presented for discussion in a workshop. with specific approaches to interpretation, notably the cost / benefit of 1st and 3rd person interpretation.

Product: a summary report describing how people work today and trying to establish what we hold in common and proposals for ways forward

Key issues: how to produce sustainable interpretation

Key issues: how to train our staff so they deliver this interpretation

That’s all folks!!!!

From the management team