Improvement of museum management at partner museums

1. Work Package 2 Improvement of museum
management at partner museums
St Fagans National History Museum and
Foteviken Museum

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

3. Have you identified your management
structures?

4. 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).

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

6. 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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

17. 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?

18. What can we do about it?

19. 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

20. WP2 > Review of management issues
20
Results…
• Responses from 7 partners
• Issues shared by multiple partners
Fundraising, marketing, relationship to parent organisations
– Developing and maintaining buildings
– Managing staff and volunteers

21. WP2 > Overview
Major parts of the work package
• Management of buildings (St Fagans)
• Management of staff and volunteers (Foteviken)
21

22. WP2 > Management of buildings
The major capital assets of most AOAMs…
• Construction issues
• Maintenance issues
22

23. 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 conservator
23

24. 24
WP2 > Management of buildings >> Applying best practice

25. 25
WP2 > Management of buildings >> St Fagans 2015

26. 26
WP2 > Management of buildings >> next six months
OpenArch
• Planning permission to build our structures
• Completion of interview and survey at
Modena
(Not really OpenArch, but a result of this partnership)
• Open an exhibition at the Hunebedcentrum

27. 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.

28. 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)

29. 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.

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

31. Key issues: how to produce sustainable
interpretation

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

33. That’s all folks!!!!
From the management team