The annual Museums Association conference was held at the
start of October, which this year was held in Cardiff for the first time since
1997. The event is always an excellent melting pot of discussion on the issues
that have surrounded the sector for the previous 12 months, many of them
especially relevant to our region.
Many of the sessions were concerned with sustainability in
the sector in the context of the (often euphemistically phrased) ‘current
funding climate’. David Fleming, Director of National Museums Liverpool, spoke
powerfully about how NML are still working to deliver ambitious projects in
this situation, including the excellent dementia friendly programme House of
Memories. Many small museums in our region are also eligible to apply for
funding from programmes such as the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Arts Council’s Museum Resilience Fund,
which both had representatives at the conference.
There were many
inspiring case studies, not least from the excellent Talking Statues project in
London and Manchester. Plaques have been mounted on 15 statues across both
cities, with QR codes and other methods, which allow users to hear the statue
speaking to them on their smartphone. (How many people would love to hear the
words of Robin Hood or Brian Clough in Nottingham?)
The show was
stolen though by Mat Fraser, who gave a powerful keynote performance of his
show Cabinet of Curiosities: how
Disability was kept in a box. Fraser was commissioned by the Research
Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester to create a
performance that reflected how disability is portrayed in museums. He used a
soundtrack including Daft Punk, objects from the collections of National
Museums Wales, and his own rapping and crooning skills to put a new perspective
on a subject that has long been neglected in the sector.
He challenged us
all to find and reassess one object in our collections from the perspective of
its relevance to disability. That’s not difficult is it?
----
This post was written by Simon Brown, Artefact Loans Officer at Nottingham City Museums and Galleries and the East Midlands member representative for the Museums Association.. He manages the 11,000
strong Access Artefacts handling collection, based at Wollaton Park.
He graduated from NTU
in 2004 with a BA in Heritage Studies with Human Geography, and has since gone
on to work in various roles for Nottingham City Museums and Galleries and
Nottingham Contemporary, including as a museum assistant, curator and
documentation assistant. He is currently studying for the AMA.
Useful links:
House of Memories at National Museums Liverpool: www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/learning/projects/house-of-memories/
Arts Council’s
Museum Resilience Fund: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/apply-funding/apply-for-funding/museum-resilience-fund-2015-18/
