LETTER: Museums & Philanthropy

Philanthropy when applied to a good cause is laudable and beneficial to the giver and the receiver. In the arts it’s an idea that’s probably older than the Renaissance, the Medicis and Machiavelli.

Launceston is somewhat unique in regard to philanthropy in that each and every ratepayer, resident and tenant is automatically conscripted into the ranks of the philanthropists when it comes to the QVMAG.

In the past three or so years Launcestonians have stumped up something in the order of $12 million towards the QVMAG’s recurrent costs and then some. That is the kind of conscripted philanthropy that you do not get elsewhere.

Business and other private discretionary philanthropists, generally, fund projects and acquisitions with the latter often serving as some kind of memorial or cultural marker.

Sadly institutions like the QVMAG are going to need to look for different ways to meet their recurrent costs. As likely as not any solution is going to be the outcome of ‘outside-the-box’

entrepreneurial thinking.

Philanthropists are fickle and sometimes frivolous. However depending on philanthropy to keep the doors open would be more than frivolous in these ‘difficult times’.

Ray Norman

Trevallyn

Musingplaces and Communities of Ownership and Interest

On July 9 each year Australia celebrates Constitution Day. As a part of this year’s celebration Alec Coles, CEO, Western Australian Museum, talked about taking “A tiger by the tail?” and he promoted musingplaces (my word) as platforms for “Freedom of Speech”. 

Every now and then celebration of one these anniversaries for whatever provides an opportunity to spark an enlightening discourse. As Coles says, “it is not uncommon for Museums to be described as safe places for unsafe ideas. It is a phrase perhaps not coined, but certainly reinforced in Sydney by Dr Fiona Cameron, a research fellow at the University of Western Sydney, in her paper: Safe Places for unsafe ideas? History and science museums, hot topics and moral predicaments.”

Dr Cameron’s observation is at once a fairly straightforward idea and a challenging one. 

It’s straightforward in the way musingplaces have long histories of challenging if not the status quo, then some cherished understanding or other. We might well wonder what part some musingplace somewhere played a part in Christopher Columbus heading west across the Atlantic against the dictates of prevailing wisdoms and belief systems of the time.

All we need to do in order to understand actually how dangerous an idea can be is muse for a moment or two on Galileo Galilei’s lot in life. We need to look no further than him in order to understand the dangerous consequences of challenging conventional wisdom, ‘divine rights’ and the assumed/deemed infallibility of superiors – betters(?).

So in suggesting that musingplaces are safe places for unsafe ideas, well it depends upon which musingplace, where it is and what the status quo has at stake. If in some musingplaces stakeholders look a lot like status quoists it might not be all that surprising given their pecuniary interests in resisting change or the speed of it. Very often these status quoists have conflicts of interest if change is on the agenda in so much as they are likely to loose something – even their stake in an institution.

Nonetheless, arguably, public musingplaces are currently not only on the cusp significant change but also on the edge of a paradigm shift that is likely to shatter the status quo. 

But what is a public musingplace in this context?

Two things would need to be there for inclusion in the list after ‘public ownership’. Firstly, they are places – physical & other – where one might go to acquire, or engage with, new knowledge and/or develop new understandings. 

Secondly, they are the places we might go to in order to make sense of our world: to make sense of our past; to contemplate a future; to imagine and reimagine what makes up our world; to be exposed to cultural knowledge and belief systems; to map out our places in the scheme of things; to discover things, purposefully and otherwise; to put ourselves in the way of the serendipitous; to engage with our cultural realities; and increasingly to build cultural and social networks – and all of the above in a haptic or haptic-like ways.

In the Western world the typical museum and art gallery is modelled upon the Eurocentric model – it is easily recognised and acknowledged. In Tasmania in two instances these institution have been amalgamated into one. After that there are the idiosyncratic ‘local’ or singularly focused institutions – mining, maritime histories, heritage, et al. Many of these do not look like your average musingplace albeit that they are very much just that. For instance, historic and heritage houses are not typically imagined as museums but their purpose is very much that of musingplaces and they are the keeping places of objects and the stories that belong to them and typically a place and a community of people.

In the 1970s it was fashionable to start to consider “stakeholders” in planning and management processes in inclusive ways. At the time it was intended to be an all inclusive notion but very quickly some of these 70s stakeholders began to assert precedence over others – they demanded ranking and privileges to match. Very quickly their concerns were accommodated and as a consequence before anyone could be considered a stakeholder they needed to demonstrate a ‘legitimate interest’ – a ‘deemed’ pecuniary interest, an ownership in law, subject to a potential loss of something, whatever. 

Stakeholdership quite quickly became at once an elastic concept, invested with exclusivity, and then it became inclusive an idea in swift retreat – more often than not, one that is intended to underpin ranking in some way. 

Enter stage right the concept of ‘Key Stakeholder’, the people who collective outrank all others and the ones who can be relied upon to agree with each other. They are also those who will typically facilitate expedient decision-making and very often self-serving decision-making. In planning processes there is a place for stakeholders as a component of the required considerations.

Rarely does the idea of ‘obligation’ come into the stakeholder equation but ‘rights’ are regularly asserted – albeit so often deemed and self-defined. In a 21st C context stakeholdership is an untidy and contentious idea! It is especially so if you are left out of the loop.

However there is another way, and an inclusive way, to think about all this. If we think about musingplaces as having Communities of Ownership and Interest – layers of cognitive owners including stakeholders – we might then begin an interesting conversation with each other with musingplaces as facilitators of a kind.

Cognitive ownership is more a matter of ‘lore’ rather than law. It’s something inalienable and it is never up for sale and it has no price.

There is no need to invent and then market this idea as if it were something new. Cognitive ownerships have been a part of humanity's understanding of the world for a very long time and these ownerships have shaped cultural realities and social relationships for just as long.

Cognitive ownership is hardly a dangerous idea in search of a safe place to be. When we look closely, or closely enough, clearly musingplaces have extraordinarily large, extensive even, Communities of Ownership and Interest (COI) – all cognitive owners. All that really needs to be done is to acknowledge the COI as being present and begin the conversation. It isn’t rocket science! It is simply about being inclusive rather than exclusive. Importantly, accommodating the paradigm shift that comes with the acknowledgement is an imperative.

Acknowledging a COI is a cultural mindset. It is not a bureaucratic process – rather it is a participatory process. Mapping the ‘ownerships’ shared in musingplaces enriches them rather than anything that might dilute or downgrade them. Nonetheless, the tensions between Intellectual Property, Cultural Property and the Public Domain will not dissolve. They simply need to be managed in more sensitive ways when these‘owners’ are acknowledged in the ‘cognitive ownership’ layerings – multiple layerings with some owners claiming several ownerships.

Do musingplaces shape culture or do our cultural realities shape our musingplaces?

The cognitive ownership model demonstrates the richness of places – musingplaces in their geographies here – as an alternative to the poverty of perspective embedded in adversarial bureaucratic planning processes. 

Cognitive ownership calls for cooperation and collaboration rather than hierarchical obedience and blind authority.

A close examination of cognitive ownerships in musingplaces would surely reveal confluences and conflicts in ownership claims. If we abandon the notion that there can be a hierarchical or a ranked structure to the ownerships of place, – musingplaces here again – it is possible that the managers and the custodians of cultural property can begin:

• To work towards accommodating and celebrating ownership claims in the context of coexistent cognitive ownerships;
• To resolve conflicts and tensions over usage and access; and
• To establish more appropriate and inclusive, – participatory even – policy sets, planning processes and management systems.

Who are the cognitive owners of public musingplaces? 

The simple answer is almost everyone but a list of those that come immediately springs to mind is useful just so long as it is an ‘open list’ including, but not exclusively and in no particular ranking or order:

• Curators and others who operate with and within the musingplaces – establishment personnel, freelance curators, independent curators, and ‘citizen curators’;
• Citizens – tax & rate payers – of the place it is located;
• Enthusiasts of all kinds, local community historians and other historians;
• Researchers and academics;
• Tourism operators and a range of entrepreneurs;
• Government –Locals State & Federal
• Ethicists and auditors; 
• Sponsors and donors;
• People almost anywhere

Alert to the inclusivity of the listing process, and with its purpose in mind, a list is ever likely to grow over time. Like thorough interrogative research, which leads you everywhere, all at once an all the time and in unpredictable ways, inclusive cognitive ownerships are held by unlikely people and conceivably in unlikely places.

It is worth remembering that in Australia most musingplaces currently depend upon ‘the public purse’ for their existence. Self-generated income however, in a 21st C context, is likely to be a credibility yardstick – a performance indicator – that will shape musingplaces and the public funding they can expect to receive in the future. Nonetheless, this income by and large comes from ‘the public’ loyal to the institution – and it'll be hard won.

After that there are the donors and benefactors – private and corporate – with ‘cultural investments’ held in musingplaces and their collections. In the end, one way or another, it is the public who pays the salaries, builds the infrastructure, acquires the objects in their collections, pays for the conservation and so on.

Given that museums do not exist to generate cash profits, or dispersible fiscal dividends, the public might well ask, were are our social or cultural dividends? If they are not engaging with the organization, what might this be telling us? Musingplaces are simultaneously like banks and mines. Musingplaces store and accumulate the wealth then others take it away and use it in a multitude of ways to add value to their lives. 

Often, any interest and royalties that might be due have been paid for in advance. Yet there are dividends, tangible and intangible, to be won.

Public musingplaces operate under a social licence. Yet there are some musingplaces that imagine themselves as being somehow independent of, or isolated and insulated from all of this – and on the odd occasion, as some kind of fiefdom. This is possibly something handed down from the 16th Century when the Wunderkammer catalogued nobility’s precedence, infallibility and power gifted by God as a divine right – an idea that has lost its way over time.

About Joseph Beuys

Queen's Musingplace makes the news

A story, and an editorial, and on the same day, and the slow news day in Launceston, gives us something to muse upon – quite a bit actually. 

How this 'place' is understood and is 'valued' needs to be talked about as it has a huge Community of Ownership & Interest (COI) that for quite some time it has hardly been talked about. Arguably, this COI is as poorly understood as the QVMAG itself.

Collectively, the COI has made a huge investment in the institution and its collections – and consequently in Tasmania's cultural life as well.  In a 21st C context musingplaces, QVMAG included, have the potential to return significant dividends, rather a cluster of dividends, that might well exceed that of forestry's recent fiscal dividends. Someone needs to be crunching the numbers and arguably soonish.

Read on ... muse on!

BTW: The comments linked to the Examiner's offerings are worth reading

CLICK HERE TO GO TO SOURCE

Concerned by the unsustainable economic pressure maintaining such a significant cultural icon places on the 108,000 ratepayers of greater Launceston, the council is seeking to shape a new governance model through more equitable funding.

LAUNCESTON'S Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery is at the mercy of an outmoded financial model that has the Launceston City Council seeking increased funding from the state's coffers. 

Launceston City Council general manager Robert Dobryznski believes the move is vindicated relative to the $7.3 million the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery received in 2013 through state revenue.

TMAG's operating costs are estimated to be about $10 million for a collection valued at $340 million, attracting about 330,000 visitors a year. Launceston is widely considered to have the country's best regional museum and to hold Tasmania's finest colonial works in its collection. 

It records an estimated 130,000 visitors a year, and the pressure of operating two sites is eased considerably through what Mr Dobrzynski credits as a strong volunteer base. 

The QVMAG collection was valued at $231.9 million three years ago. Before Easter the Launceston City Council presented the then Labor cabinet with a range of priorities in seeking future funding, priorities which the newly elected Liberal government is still mulling over as it prepares to deliver its first budget on August 28. 

"No other council in Australia has such an unfair burden placed on it as we do," says Mr Dobrzynski. 

"It's come about through time, but right now the QVMAG places a $144 impost each year on every rateable property in the Launceston municipality." 

As it stands the state government supports the museum and art gallery to the tune of $1.3 million; the council's budget for the two sites is $4.2 million. 

The balance is met through retail, bequests, donations and small grants. The funding agreement expires in mid-July. 

"We would like to be considered on an equitable basis to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, which receives $7.3 million. (State funding for operations has now increased to $8.6 million.) 

"But right now I've been in talks with the Treasurer Peter Gutwein about future funding and we are looking at one year's renewal of funding, indexed to be reviewed for 2016," Mr Dobrzynski said. 

"I'm pretty happy with that. It's pretty fair in the context of sensitivity to the perilous financial state of the Tasmanian economy right now and the government's priorities. 

"But we have to work towards a more equitable solution, because it's unsustainable in the long term. Mr Dobrzynski expects to be able to table a draft funding agreement to aldermen within weeks. 

The state's Treasurer Peter Gutwein on Friday preferred to remain tight- lipped on the negotiations, saying "with the budget to be delivered on August 28, it is not appropriate to comment further." 

He said it was worth remembering the council had a unique set of facilities demanding considerable subsidisation. "We have the Aquatic Centre, Aurora Stadium and QVMAG - it's an inequitable mix for a city our size to sustain. 

"What we have with QVMAG is a marketing issue, accessibility issues, parking issues in that everyone wants to park right at the door, and a funding issue - few other regional cities have a facility of this magnitude to manage." 

Mayor Albert Van Zetten said with the QVMAG being such an institution of such state significance every funding avenue had to be explored. 

"It's hosted what would have to be one of our biggest exhibitions last month in terms of We Are Hawthorn; both the Inveresk and Royal Park sites are now available for function hire; and full credit to [director] Richard Mulvaney for bringing the national museums conference with 350 delegates to town back in May. 

"The conference was a coup for Launceston." A rigorous review last year of operations to consolidate the QVMAG's future direction was carried out by Hobart firm MMC Link. In its findings were recommendations to reintroduce entry fees, a clarification on intent about the future of the two sites as well as a need for a much- improved marketing strategy. 

Mr Dobrzynski pointed to new signage outside Royal Park as one improvement, with installation of sizeable QVMAG signage on Paterson Street West car park imminent. 

"We are aware we have two largely anonymous sites - Royal Park separated from the city by an arterial road and Inveresk set back from Invermay Road," he said. 

While both Mr Dobrzynski and the mayor ruled out an entry fee to the QVMAG in general as it "had not worked before", both flagged that future significant exhibitions, such as We Are Hawthorn, which attracted more than 2500 visitors in just two weeks, could attract a fee at the door. 

Mr Dobrzynski said whether QVMAG ever became just one site would be ultimately determined by the people of Launceston. He was adamant there was no agenda for that to happen. 

As to marketing, Mr Dobrzynski acknowledge it was a perennial problem. "Marketing takes money and you need to earn it before you can spend," he said. 

What could be a timely flip for finances would be for the council's master plan for Inveresk to come to fruition. 

This would see an $18 million 120-room student accommodation complex built for the University of Tasmania and a new cinema complex mix in with the already established museum, the Academy of Arts, Tramsheds, School of Architecture and Design and Aurora Stadium. 

"Inveresk would then be truly multi-functional," said Alderman van Zetten. "It would activate the street frontage to Invermay Road, it would be fantastic. 

Later this month the mayor will also convene a meeting of diverse stakeholders in Launceston to scope ideas to reinvigorate the CBD through the arts, which he imagines would certainly encompass collaborative ideas for QVMAG. 

"It's in the context of building on Launceston's great enthusiasm for the arts and instigating ideas that are unique to Launceston," Alderman van Zetten said. "We have to work at getting the strategic mix right and then be proactive making it link more to the CBD."

CLICK HERE TO GO TO SOURCE

THE Launceston City Council has a strong case for an increase in state government museum and arts funding. With a collection valued at $232 million, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery receives $1.3 million in recurrent assistance from the state government and has to find more than $4 million in operating costs .... The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, with a collection valued at $340 million, this year receives $8.6 million from the state for operating costs .... As usual the regions have to fight for every cent they get, traditionally from a Southern-dominated government. In the Hodgman regime, the make-up is more evenly distributed, but there are still five Southern ministers, a Southern speaker and four Northern and North-Western ministers ....  While there might be grounds for cautious optimism, recent history of dividing up the cake has been chequered. In the 2013-14 state budget, new and ongoing capital expenditure for the North and North- West amounted to 23 per cent of the total, despite the regions shouldering 49 per cent of the state's population ....  Most of the redevelopment at Inveresk was federal money. The state government has spent about $2.9 million on QVMAG at Royal Park .... TMAG is enjoying a $200 million multi-stage redevelopment, with $30 million already spent on stage one. Work has already started on a $75 million arts precinct near the site of Hobart's Theatre Royal .... The state provided a small grant of $3000 for Festivale this year, while in Hobart it recently spent more than $15 million redeveloping Princess Wharf, where the Taste of Tasmania is held. Against this background the Launceston City Council ought to pursue its claim vigorously for more QVMAG funding.

The QVMAG Parking Myth

Attendances at the QVMAG Royal Park campus are restricted by limited parking opportunities. Well that is the myth. 

Happily the facts are otherwise except for those visitors who wish to park on the doorstep. The disabled are catered for but not the able bodied and overly lazy. 

What is not acknowledged is that the LCC Paterson St West Car Park is in fact the QVMAG Car Park, and marketing keypoint, that is simply wrongly named and poorly sign posted. To boot, the way finding is non existent and all of this together represents a major loss of opportunity and poor management in multiple ways. Oh for a few signs!

PLEASE CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Opportunity spotted and passed on 11th 11th 2012

A 22dot journey and approximately the same as from the
bottom carpark at MONA to the front door

Apparently it is difficult enough in Launceston to make the marketing decisions but more so to then muster the means – intellectual, administrative & fiscal – or even to  act with any urgency While people believe that it is hard to park in order to visit QVMAG Royal Park this is evidence of these failures. 

In the private sector bums would be kicked and heads might well roll while this kind of inaction was both in evidence and play.

Musingplaces as B Corporations

Click here for context

TechChange is an exemplar of a USA B Corporation – a legal structure often referred to as "hybrid" because it combines for-profit income structure with an altruistic mission. Its a model that public musingplaces in the world of crowdfunding might well (should?) be considering embracing.

Even though legislation varies across the USA, B corporation status generally requires a company to embed a "materially positive impact on society and the environment" into its activities:

•  Makes the company/institution responsible to shareholders and Community of Ownership and Interest for meeting its performance indicators; and
•  Generating a  fiscal profits/surplus. 

B corp status helps socially responsible corporations/institutions raise money from what can be understood as "impact investors" who want to create social change through their financial investments.

Currently there are slightly over a 1000 B Corporations world-wide. It is a social and economic experiment of great interest to the not-for-profit sector where there are cultural implications.

Musingplaces: 
It is open to museums experiment with B Corporation status, thus enabling them to attract capital from investors to:

• Improve cultural literacy and social engagement;
• Support research unlikely to be taken on by profit driven corporate entities;
• Preserve and celebrate the histories and heritage linked places; 

in addition to winning a modest financial returns to reinvest in projects. Divorced from the very often dysfunctional governances of not-for-profit corporate entities and expectations of donors musingplaces may well be better placed to achieve financial sustainability while delivering social and cultural dividends.

For instance in the USA TechChange is tackling the challenge of scale. Their founder wants the company to have a deeper social impact, and has to figure out "at what pace and with whose money." The questions being asked are should the corporation "bootstrap" itself up, expand their client base and reinvest the surpluses into growing the operation. 

Musingplaces: 

• How might such an institution attract social impact investors? 
• Indeed, what can musingplaces learn from for-profit and hybrid businesses about financing the process of scaling their operations? 
• How can they change the scope of of their aspirations in regard to scale, and change the paradigm of their fiscal structure to match?

As communities demand higher levels of transparency and accountability many public musingplaces will need to re-examine their purpose for being and their strategic planning. Elastic accountability can be expected to be a decreasing option as Communities of Ownership and Interest pay closer attention to their 'investments'. 

Future funding musingplaces in Tasmania

Since writing to the Editor of the Examiner in response to Saul Eslake’s contribution to what is now being referred to in some circles as ‘the cultural funding debacle’, I’ve received quite a bit of feedback. In the end, it comes down to a musingplace funding model that requires a level of accountability that would be quite unfamiliar to many of these institutions to date.

Also, remembering that arguably funding models are being put forward in the apparent absence of any alternative being presented by anyone to either the State Govt. or Federal Govt. – and in the sense of funding timelines, at ‘a minute to midnight’ .
Apparently one of Saul Eslakes proposals was to reinstate/impose(?) death duties for the purpose of cultural funding. He seems to have missed the one thing in the past that worked much better, indeed rather well, and still does in Britain – the lottery. In Australia it was used successfully to fund the building of the Sydney Opera House – arguably the world’s most successful cultural funding imitative.

Britain’s national mission via the lottery is to provide access to 'great art and culture for everyone'. Via the lottery’s proceeds it has been possible to champion, develop and invest in arts and cultural experiences that enrich people's lives within a strategic framework, running from 2010-2020. Britain has won many great cultural outcomes and the cultural nay-sayers who advocate more money for hospitals and schools etc. have been largely sidelined by this ‘crowdfunding model’.

The UK lottery has funded projects ranging from iconic public art projects, great museum projects plus the funding of instruments for brass bands and equipment for village halls. Thus audiences throughout the UK enjoy new and refurbished arts buildings, and a huge range of arts activity much of which feeds into Britain’s cultural tourism and broad scale economic development flowing from it. Interestingly, this is crowdfunding at work!

All this is here to contextualise a proposal that has been floated and is in need of a champion/s if it were to go anywhere. Set against:

• Regional musingplaces being a significant fiscal burden for ratepayers, some of whom are themselves are under fiscal stress, and some/many of whom assert that they receive a minimal or no dividend – social, cultural or fiscal;
• Regional musingplaces potentially being aregion’s most significant asset in regard to cultural tourism  and community cultural development;
• Regional musingplaces being potentially a region’s most significant non-structured, open access, education facility – and a significant employer in the field; and
• Potential funding cuts initiated by the Federal Govt that could negatively impact Council budgets.

there are many reasons to argue for regional musingplaces’ continued funding – rather to continue to invest in such an institution. However, the second two dot points above contain the word “potentially”, often the most damming word in the assessment of anything. Consequently the environment presents cost pressures that seem unlikely to diminish coupled with severe cost pressures on ratepayers that mitigate against proportional increases in rates. As a result, some means of alleviating budgets coupled with methods to improve the value offered by the museum, appears to be indicated.

In summary, the proposition being put, and in its most basic expression, the proposal is:

1. Regional musingplaces’ levies be openly identified on Council rate notices as a tax deductible contribution;
2. That Council resident ratepayers, renter-residents and business tenants directly pay their musingplace levy collected by Council into a cultural trust – say something like a Regional Cultural Trust operating as a Community Cultural Trust – via the Council;
3. That ‘levy payers’, typically in a region, be entitled to be in a draw for a significant annual fiscal benefit/dividend/payout to an individual levy payer – say $100,000;
4. That levy payers be able to sell or gift their chance of being eligible to such a benefit to whomever they determine – family members, charity, organisation, whoever;
5. That levy payers be entitled to musingplace benefits determined by their Trustees from time to time;
6. That Councils themselves and possibly adjoining Councils also, from time to time, pay funds into the trust for ‘projects’ that deliver measurable short term outcomes in accord with LCC’s, or an adjoining Council’s, Strategic Plan;
7. That the Councils advocate in concert with ‘the trust’ that, adjoining Local Govts, the State Govt., Federal Govt., funding agencies, sponsors, corporate research funding bodies and private donors contribute to the trust directly via various means towards the achievement of specific targeted outcomes; 
8. Set against this funding model there would be an imperative to put in place:

• A constitution for the musingplace that reflected its funding and its consequential accountability;
• A governance mechanism that fitted the circumstance; 
• Consequent to that, an institutional management structure that delivered on policy sets determined by the constitution and institutional governance; and
• Perhaps more importantly all this is an exemplar of crowdfunding in action with inbuilt accountability imperatives.

As stated at the outset, this funding model requires a level of accountability that would be somewhat unfamiliar to many such institutions to date. Given that its being put forward in the absence of an alternative, and at a minutes to midnight, it is somewhat concerning.

To do or say nothing now could be regarded as Nero like behaviour and to be accused of fiddling while Rome burns. And yet again it’ll be the ratepayer body and taxpayers who care about their musingplaces that’ll bear the burden through the loss of amenity, the loss of opportunity and/or yet another increase in rates without a commensurate increase in service.

Admittedly the proposal is an audacious proposal but if there were the will to make it work, arguably it could work. In any event it’s worthy of independent assessment.

There needs to be more research here but I can see myself advocating this kind of funding model in concert with the ’4 Step Plan’ advanced before – Click here.

Letter to the Examiner: Musingplace Funding

Rosita Gallasch’s report on Saul Eslake’s address to museum people on Monday is right on the money. He’s no ordinary economic commentator and he does know how to join dots.

When he says that cultural institutions such as museums and art galleries are going to find public funding “tight” it’s true. He’s talking about the tip of that ominous iceberg called ‘fiscal accountability’.

Otherworldly ‘Ivory Towers’ that once held out in splendid isolation to muse upon the world are beginning to crumble. Almost noiselessly, the winds of change are disturbing the dust and tumble weed in troublesome ways for elitist musers. 

Saul Eslake’s “personal” intuitions might well be much more informed than he dare give himself credit for. Musingplaces actually do offer real dividends and are not in competition with “schools, hospitals and the police”. Not by necessity anyway!

Catchwords like ‘interfacing technologies’, ‘social networking’, ‘efficiency and productivity dividends’, ‘crowdsourcing’, ‘crowdfunding’, ‘citizen curator’ etc. are increasingly coming together to deliver much more for much less in musingplaces.

All this is going on well below the tip of that fiscal iceberg Saul Eslake is reporting on. Nonetheless, he does seem to be suggesting, musingplaces need to get busy joining some dots … and smartish!

Ray Norman

Why are musingplaces changing

Most households will have someone living in it, or someone near to them, who will remember their museum, the one near where they lived, as a kind of chamber of curiosity. Typically a visit to the musingplace meant that 'the visitor' was passively receiving whatever it was the people running the place thought they should know about in order to 'live better in the world' – whatever that really meant. 

While we might nostalgically reminisce, the world has changed, sorry ... it is continually changing, and what once was, mostly, no longer cuts the mustard. 

Children once could be encouraged to spend a wet Sunday in a musingplace and lose the day wetting and slaking their curiosities. But no more and quite clearly so. Why go out on a wet day to muse when with a SMARTphone, ipad, laptop, whatever, in some cosy spot somewhere, the universe can be explored and from there? AND it doesn't even need to be Sunday! AND Wikipedia is free, authoritative and it is never shut when you have homework to do –  and mostly its pretty reliable. Quite a democratic and interesting place really!

CLICK HERE

The 'owners' of 16th C Wunderkammers/Kunstkammers used their musingplaces to demonstrate their authority and power – assert it even. Later Napoleon, the British, and other empire builders put musingplaces together to display their spoils of empire and to allow their subjects to muse upon their great power in deference to it. In a way, public musingplaces, in kind of a way, still employ this technique. 

Also, MONA's, owner, plausibly, uses his musingplace in Tasmania to demonstrate his prowess and draw a line in the sand. Indeed, his stoush with the tax office would seem to bear this out. It's not too long a bow to draw to say that often(?) musingplaces are political tools.

Nonetheless, increasingly 'the public', 'the great unwashed', tax payers et al, are increasingly encroaching and banging upon the door of the 'Ivory Tower' and demanding accommodation inside. No longer can those running musingplaces claim to be 'the authority'. Napoleon was not an authority on much except military matters and clearly he took advice from scholars et al in order to win. The world is full of experts outside musingplaces.

Then again, by all accounts it was unwise to disagree with Napoleon. Possibly it still is unwise to argue with musingplace gatekeepers if you think about political empire builders in musingplaces. But Napoleon met his Waterloo and ended his days in exile on Saint Helena. But he did give us access to The Louvre in not such a round about way.

So, its possible that musingplaces, public musingplaces, are not really changing all that much. Yet the technologies they employ, need to employ, are changing as are the expectations of their audiences who in turn are increasingly expecting more. That's the kind of change Ole Worm did not have to worry too much about.

Even if it was not Karl Marx who said "religion is the opium of the people" musingplaces are sometimes imagined as as secular temples of a kind. However, it seems that their priests are being defrocked and locks on the gates are becoming much easier to pick it seems.

Marketing the muse

Recently the Ecopreneurist – a klnd of greenish musingplace cum ideas marketplace online – was promoting an app and website that invites people to map oases of calm – musingplaces (?). People value  and feel a sense of ownership for musingplaces for vast variety of reasons. 

A person might want to find some information on a particular topic or place, or simply to be entertained. They may want a "third place" , somewhere other than home or their workplace to engage socially, somewhere they can relax and somewhere to socialise with friends – a place to meet and muse ... their Community of Ownership & Interest. 

Sometimes some people may just want a place to be quiet, a refuge from the noise and hustle of the urban environment or anywhere that precludes quiet contemplation. 

Stereopublic's website says, "Welcome to a quieter world. People from many cities across the earth have been adding spaces of solace and retreat for you to find. Use the map to find your own space." The app includes original music compositions, musingplaces tagged by the crowd, some include an image other simply GPS coordinates.

In the end 'the app' is a MARKETINGtool for the musingplace concept in a 21st C kind of way. The question hanging in the air is when will musingplaces proactively adopt this app as a MARKETINGtool? The answer probably is only when it cannot be ignored anymore but by then the musers will have worked out where they are welcome and where they are not.

Musing right along: how many people have their own secret third place in a musingplace somewhere, where do they go to find some peace, some solace, some stimulation, whatever? It is going to be interesting to see how many musingplaces, courtyards,  gardens, country houses or historic sites or other third places show up on this MARKETINGtool dedicated to alerting us to their presence. 

All this will be one more way to measure marketing outcomes in a digital KPI kind of way. Crowdsourcing is the way of the world and only lazy or out of work marketers can ignore this newish social phenomena.

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What Value a Musingplace

The value of museums in a 21st Century context is questioned from various perspectives. From a purely economic rationalist point of view, commentators typically forward propositions that the funding allocated to musingplaces would be better spent more pragmatically. 

Conversely cultural elitists assume some kind of moral cum cultural high ground and talk about “the public good”. The commentary is simplistic but the polarisation it engenders far from simple. If it were there would be some standout vantage point from which to mount a more informed critical discourse but that is not the case. 

Assessing the value musingplaces – museums, art galleries and libraries – add to a community’s wellbeing is complex and multi-dimensional issue. Nonetheless, in current cultural realities musingplaces play somewhat different roles than they did for the greater part of the late 20th C. No longer are their audiences passive receivers of pre-masticated ideas that fit some cultural norm or other – sometimes blanded and blended ideas. 

Rather, new technologies are delivering participatory and engaging ways for musers to acquire new knowledge and develop better understandings of their world. Increasingly, ‘the world’ they are exploring is far off as they venture to places far from home and examine ‘home’ with more intensity.

As organisations, musingplaces have the ability to improve their efficiency and better target expenditure than is currently apparent given their outcomes. Critics advancing such arguments, may suggest that here is an opportunity to “underpin programming with the advances in technology, societal changes and an expectation of achieving efficiencies and value for money". Furthermore“increasingly eliminate the traditional arguments for public musingplaces".

But the critics don’t then go where this argument is seemingly headed. They seem unlikely to recommend a noble retreat from public funding of musingplaces.

That age old observation that when the whole village is starving it’s rather pointless to be hunting down a few mice. The point of the message here is one economic rationalists often cannot see.

Instead, they might well ask why the benefits deliverable via new technologies and increased competition have not translated into increased productivity or reduced the demand on the public purse.

They charge instead that public musingplaces have overlooked these benefits, new found as they are. Rather than embracing them for the benefit of their public all too often musingplaces' masters can be found resting on rather wilted laurels and wondering why the crowd isn't cheering them on. 

Interestingly, the economic rationalists continually choose to discount the values, and the dividends musingplaces offer to their Communities of Ownership & Interest – and can deliver on in fulsome ways. For instance, musingplaces are adjunct 'school rooms' where children have the opportunity to have the kind of haptic educative experience school rooms do not offer – not to mention the opportunity to think independently. 

In a different way dementia patients, Alzheimer sufferers, and their carers are being provided for in musingplaces in the USA – MoMA & The SPARK Project – with considerable dividends being delivered.

In the language of the efficiency dividend an annual reduction in funding for the overall running costs of an operation can be delivered as a consequence new technologies. Or alternatively musingplaces

might well deliver expanded dividends in new ways. Musingplaces might well be put on notice by proposing a benchmarking exercise that would attempt to estimate the size of this captured resource,  how it might be best employed and the dividends it has the potential to deliver. All this may well allow musingplaces to enter into future funding equations that impact on programs, the ways they are delivered and the ways they are measured. The notion that public musingplaces might continually, and automatically, becomes more productive is as yet a groundless assumption.

There may well be room for cutting public sector inputs in concert with the potential rate of increase in productivity without changing the level of output. Yet the urge to cut corners and apply a theory without testing it is something to be mindful of.

Nevertheless, it seems that musingplaces will need to undergo fundamental change and transform themselves from their 'cost centre' models into not-for-profit enterprises if they wish to fulfil their promise. Possibly even in some instances they will need to operate as quasi for-profit enterprises in line with the cultural and social paradigm shifts currently in play. 

The changes, and the increased audience reach, that new technologies offer might well allow the derived efficiency gains to benefit musingplace programs allowing them to deliver: •

1. Enhanced cultural dividends and new cultural opportunities for an expanded Community of Ownership and Interest; 
2. Value-adding in regard to employment, educational and professional development opportunities for the benefit of a diverse range of people internally and beyond the institution. 
3. Improved income opportunities for related enterprises such as tourism related enterprises –accommodation, restaurants, guided tours etc.

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