THE CASE FOR INCLUSION

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Institutions, organisations, NGOs, charities, etc. all have diverse Communities of Ownership & Interest (COI) that include all those who think of themselves as 'stakeholders' plus countless others. Those imagined as stakeholders are typically claimants looking for a ranking in some exclusive group - the executive, members, associates, those with a substantial pecuniary interest, etc.

Alternatively, COI membership is generally unranked and inclusive by comparison but nonetheless its members are as significant - they are the grass roots and the flowers. Typically they are musingplaces' underwriters and very often they are taken for granted.

In the "common tongue" the COI idea might not yet register with some. But it's more than interesting that some people discount the common tongue implications of COI for the exclusive voice reflected in 'stakeholder' with all its ranking and status implications.

Managerialism tends to use 'key stakeholder' as a term to reinforce ranked positioning and management's perception of its own relative importance - and its importance to bureaucratic empire building. Increasingly the 'rankism' this reflects and represents is loosing its currency in 21st C administration models. Given that rank-based abuse underlies many other phenomena such as bullying, racism, sexism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia this is unsurprising.

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Typically rank is imagined as carrying privileges with any obligations attached to them being minimised and downplayed. Simplistically, rankism is what "Somebodies" do to "nobodies." 

Stakeholdership, and the rankism attached to it, is typically at the root of the vocabulary privileged in public musingplaces and the sometimes contested hierarchies - silly as it is. Arguably, stakeholdership is mainly to do with the reinforcement of the ranking of administrators and their underlings. The assertion of privilege in the public arena, along with the social and sometimes informal fiscal benefits that comes with it, can be more than problematic.

In musingplaces it can be expected that their future as institutions will more and more depend upon their  social licence to operate, and importantly, those granted by their COI. Governments that levy taxes and rates to maintain anarchic and antiquated 'Ivory Towers' to present old stories are as likely as not about to loose their unquestioned authority to do so. In accord musingplaces' social licences, and their funding levels, are ever likely to come under closer scrutiny. In every context imaginable leaving a musingplace's COI out of the equation is not only folly but quite likely extremely reckless in the end.

If musingplaces wish to maintain their authority it is best done with the endorsement of their COIs. If musingplaces have a case for greater access to government funding, or corporate sponsorships, for programming or infrastructure they will need a social licence to win it.

Increasingly the endorsement of their COI will 'cut it' more than any other argument. It's especially so when musingplaces' recurrent funding is seen as being in competition with the restoration of failed infrastructure, sports facilities, street lighting, etc.

Looking to the future, musingplaces are going to have to meet new expectations and at an increasing rate as old goals are better met by new information technologies. Looking back musingplaces afforded themselves a leisurely pace and comfortable timeframes in which to achieve relatively moderate outcomes. Because most public musingplaces are imagined as 'cost centres' generally this has been translated to the relentless, and endless, maintenance of the status quo - resplendent as it is with its relaxed sinecures, comfortable expectations and status-laden hierarchies.

However, in the 21st C the current pace of change is such that status quoism is unsustainable, less desirable and disappearing behind the horizon in the vista looking back. Nevertheless, the desire to look ahead is rather compelling.

Albeit within a totally different paradigm the musingplace's role in 'making sense of the world' is, seemingly, as useful as ever in the 21st C.

However, divining the differences becomes a necessity if survival, and subsequently success, is on the agenda. Likewise, choosing 'the diviners' is as important, arguably more so. Without doubt talking to those committed to the status quo is likely to be unhelpful. Interestingly, many are likely to be  'stakeholders' and for the most part they'll be wedded to their survival and comfort within the current scheme of things.

Alternatively, the membership of a musingplace's COI is more likely to welcome and embrace, demand even, paradigm change and new opportunities. Typically, because of their inclusivity, they'll be experiencing, possibly revelling in, change in other contexts. Musingplace's COI memberships are extraordinarily diverse and characteristically come with a remarkable suite of abilities, information and experiences - and for the most part current and relevant.

SO A MUSINGPLACE WANTS TO NAVIGATE A PARADIGM SHIFT

As a consequence of all the above there is a compelling case to focus attention on the inclusiveness of your COI when reimaging your operation and envisioning a future that's likely to be driven by relentless change in the 21st C.

If your musingplace is funded from the public purse you are going to need a social licence to continue do so. Indeed, if any part of funding depends upon crowdfunding a social licence will be a necessity. As information technologies become more and more sophisticated, and as social networks expand uncompromisingly, accountability becomes harder to avoid.

Putting all this together it's easy to see the roles a COI can/will play in the granting of social licences, the winning of recurrent funding and more still. Social networking is also likely to play a significant role in the policing of the conditions attached to social licences. Likewise, social networking and information technologies are likely to flatten administrative hierarchies.

In charting a way forward for musingplaces it follows that proactively including their COIs - funding agency members, audience members, researchers, staff, et al - in the process, and early on, is most likely to be the way to go in winning the necessary social licencing. 

Sidelining your COI poses questions, too many questions, none of which would be easy, or all that comfortable, to answer - and should never need to be asked.

QVMAG: Unsustainable by what measure?

Clearly the QVMAG teeters at the edge of a fiscal and managerial crisis amidst a series of plausible arguments that the institution is "unsustainable" in a 21st C context - these are arguments endorsed by Trustees/Aldermen and Council management and indeed initiated by management. Given that the 'unsustainability assertion' largely belongs to the Launceston City Council (LCC) GM's office the question arises, "by what measure" - administratively, politically, socially, culturally.

Indeed, how might a musingplace's "sustainability" be defined and assessed? At a time when LCC 2014/2015 budgets are being framed this seems a reasonable question to put if accountability is a realistic and practical expectation. 

Given the scale of the QVMAG's operating budget the questions to do with accountability and sustainability are anything but frivolous and the levels of funding are non-trivial.

Normally, one would look to the Strategic Plan (SP) as well as its Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) plus the institution's operational metrics for guidance. However, the QVMAG no longer has a functional or operational SP despite it being just 12 months since the Trustees/Aldermen signed off on the institution's first ever SP.

Since putting in place a SP, as a consequence of the KPMG Form & Function (KPMG-FF) Report, LCC management has invoked a QVMAG Future Directions Plan (FDP) that overrides the SP and arguably renders it redundant.

Likewise the protracted and convoluted processes surrounding the LCC initiated QVMAG MMC-Link Form & Function consultancy process has largely served to further cloud the issue of the QVMAG's sustainability, how sustainability might be measured and how QVMAG sustainability can be assessed. Arguably, the commissioning the consultants, and their report was largely unproductive measured by its outcomes.

If the institution's existence was seen to be "essential" by whatever measure, arguably, that would be known, widely understood and informing the current budget process. Alternatively, if the institution was seen, and understood widely, to be "extraordinary", and thus of considerable value, it would likewise be well understood and informing the current budget process. It seems that as far as LCC is concerned the QVMAG is imagined as neither essential or extraordinary – rather something nice to have.

The last thing a musingplace needs to be is "nice" on one hand because it takes away any urgency to visit it and on the other, because nice is code for mediocre - and by extension mediocre is worse than bad. Click here for more on the disadvantages of being nice

Unfortunately, the LCC budget process currently in play is proceeding in the circumstances of confusion and status quoism relative to the QVMAG's status, relevance and value. Indeed the circumstance suggest that 'the Council' imagines the institution as being "nice" – something other than either essential or extraordinary – and are therefore finding it difficult to be definitive in the determination of QVMAG's relative value against other funding priorities. 

The inadequacy of all this is compounded by an unfortunate blurring of the roles and functions of governance and management relative to the institution. Furthermore, there is a culture of opacity infiltrating the institution that sidelines the QVMAG's Community of Interest & Ownership (COI) - ratepayers, taxpayers, sponsors & donors et al.

Consequentially, it would appear on the evidence that the QVMAG is currently set upon a rudderless course. As well, and somewhat concerningly, the budget process in play appears to be uninformed by a functional and operational long term SP or a short term enterprise/business plan for the upcoming financial year. How can such a budget have any veracity or credibility?

If Council is indirectly levying ratepayers to cover the recurrent budget of the institution, say a $4Million plus impost/investment, ratepayers deserve some straightforward unambiguous accountability. It is hard to see how an equitable status quo budget for the QVMAG can be framed under the circumstances set out here. More to the point, under any circumstance, status quo budgeting arguably represents poor fiscal management that in turn is ever likely to deliver poor accountability – and quite probably poorer outcomes.

Getting Back On The Road To Success

Clearly the QVMAG's current circumstances are as untenable as they are unsatisfactory and unwelcomed. As likely as not the situation is impearling the institution's ability to function as it aught in a 21st C context. Likewise, it would seem that it is also putting future government funding, academic collaborations and corporate sponsorships at risk. By and large it seems that the QVMAG is stagnating in a managerial and marginalising straight jacket of indecision. It is performing below its potential and clearly failing to meet its own KPIs.

It is all too often overlooked that public institutions are simplistically imagined as cost centres – administration units that are not designed to generate income and operate on predetermined operating budgets ... dead weight liabilities. The outcome being that fiscal performance is entirely directed towards staying within "the budget" – and doing so means "survival". However, survival does not require the creation of value. The creation of value, if it happens at all, currently, is entirely unplanned. It's not a primary purpose but in a 21st C context it will, arguably and increasingly, be an imperative for musingplaces to be entrepreneurial  and income generative and value creating.

By way of comparison, not-for-profit community enterprises need to succeed, beyond simply surviving, as there are constituencies expecting and depending upon their productivity outcomes and the wealth they create – constituents lifted out of poverty, services delivered, people educated, people healed, etc. 

Sir Humphrey's Hospital, the one with administrators and no patients, is a joke that still, sometimes, finds a real world manifestation. Non performing not-for-profit operations cannot be tolerated.

What is unsustainable about many musingplaces is their "cost centre status" and their self-imaginings that survival alone can be deemed to be success. Unfortunately, with the status quo in play, this tends to be relentlessly repeated each budget cycle.

The simplistic notion that an institution's fiscal woes might be overcome by yet another government bailout or an untied injection of funding is deeply mistaken. Currently, any financial assistance offered to institutions like musingplaces should to be accompanied by strict conditions focused upon outcomes and accountability. It's not always so. Nonetheless, government funding needs to be conditional, just like it is the case in the corporate sector and for corporate funding.

Equally, the notion that the QVMAG as an institution unequivocally and somehow automatically embraces 'the common good' is little more than a hollow cliché. Also, the idea that musingplaces are 'iconic' and consequently beyond criticism and critique is nothing but a self-serving and a administratively dangerous furphy.

On the evidence of the past decade or so the QVMAG as an institution, like many regional and metropolitan musingplaces, needs to embrace fundamental 'root and branch' change in order to succeed in a 21st C context.

Without doubt there is a pragmatic need for the QVMAG to change because of the benefits and values the institution has the potential to deliver. In a 21st C context there are dividends (social & cultural) to be had relative to investment - ratepayers' longstanding and ongoing investments, taxpayers' investment, sponsors' & donors' investments.

Once the need for fundamental change is acknowledged just as it has been in educational institutions across the board over recent years, with newspapers and retail marketing, the foundation will almost immediately fall into place to enable the reconfiguration of musingplaces in ways that meet current needs, demands and desires.

As is the case in the corporate world, musingplaces will need to engage more proactively, more openly and more directly, with their investors - their Communities of Ownership & Interest. By and large musingplaces operate on a social licence and going forward it will be an imperative to both negotiate and navigate the licence conditions.

Secret 'museum business', and indeed 'secret corporate business', transacted away from the gaze of  'ownership' and their constituencies is simply unprincipled, and less and less tolerable, in the 21st C. Change, and the need to embrace it, is an imperative. Perhaps more to the point, as is observable on all levels of society, globally and locally, secrecy is increasingly insufferable in any event – and inevitably broken and unsustainable.

Funding Success

The purpose of public musingplaces is largely to do with generating new knowledge and developing better understandings 'of the world' across a wide range of contexts. The notions, typically unchallenged notions, of 'the public good' that surround them, nevertheless do not always bring with them inbuilt opportunities for success. In each instance there will be local measuring sticks to access success but they are not always used.

Local government has a role to play in funding cultural development and the facilitation of musingplaces in concert with their constituencies' independent efforts. It's local government that is nearest to the coalface and it should be well placed to assess community needs and aspirations.

Likewise, State and Federal governments have a role to play in devolving taxpayers' dollars to musingplaces for the provision of infrastructure and recurrent programming. Equally, there is a role to play in the facilitation of musingplaces' research.

Increasingly, the conditions applying to musingplace funding will need to become more rigorous.  Success outcomes will be demanded in much the same way as it is in the corporate and academic sectors. As likely as not the "bums on seats yardstick" will be applied alongside a range of pragmatic measures that have not always been applied up to the present. Oftentimes, funding criteria will be almost overt reflections of political policies.

Observers of public funding are quite aware of the paradigm shifts in play. While predictions of the future are all unreliable, the prediction of inevitable paradigm shifts are evidence based.

How Might New Funding Pragmatics Manifest Themselves

Typically Local Government and State Government funding flowing to musingplaces has been line item funding within wider budgets. Typically, close scrutiny, sometimes not such close scrutiny, is applied on a triennial basis. Typically, political imperatives outweigh fiscal, social or cultural imperatives when accountability comes into play.

Within this paradigm accountability can become a loosely applied obligation. However, musingplaces are increasingly demonstrating that they can deliver more pragmatically measurable dividends – sometimes even in accord with political agendas. What is more, by doing so some are seeing increased funding levels. In some cases they are receiving funding they would otherwise have been unlikely to win. It is even possible to imagine that  some musingplaces have pragmatically shifted their programing. 

In a competitive cultural funding environment the advantages of demonstrating higher levels of accountability is reaping its own rewards. Here crowdfunding has serendipitously demonstrated the advantages of more credible, and more incisive, accountability – and funding agencies are paying attention. In accord with this funding agencies are reviewing their standards and shifting their priorities. That's not to mention the growing inferences that funding applicants need to seek crowdfunding for certain aspects of musingplaces' funding spectrum.

Musingplaces, it can be expected, will find winning government funding more arduous. Indeed, as not-for-profit community cultural enterprises, musingplaces  can expect to be subjected to deeper and more delving scrutiny and required to deliver on hard benchmarking. Consistent with this it can be anticipated that:

1. Increasingly government funding will be project oriented with hard benchmarking applied;
2. Triennial funding is more likely to be harder to win and when won it is more likely to carry stricter conditions;
3. Increasingly institutional funding will be subjected to independent peer review;
4. Increasingly funding will be highly competative and carry expectations to generate income and demonstrate entrepreneurship;
5. Increasingly funding will be in the form of underwriting aspects of an operation by devices such as 'Guarantees Against Loss' (GAL) in order to underwrite institutions, or aspects of their programing, while providing a level of financial security against unforeseen fiscal failures.

Such measures are likely to be applied by government funding agencies in order to protect Communities of Ownership & Interest's investments in cultural institution via their governments, and by extension, via COI's taxes, rates and levies paid. Digital technologies facilitate closer scrutiny and more forensic examinations of the day-to-day operations of institutions. Quite possibly as change is embraced the paradigm shifts in the ways musingplaces function, and fulfil their various purposes, will become more visible to musingplaces' visitors and their management teams.

The expectation that the status quo is sustainable, or even maintainable, is pure folly.

QVMAG: Recommendations for Change

STEP 1

Take expeditious actions and unambiguous steps towards differentiating between QVMAG’s governance – policy determination and the purposeful what and why that shapes the institution – and management – the ‘how’ and the ‘means’ by which policy will be delivered.

STEP 2

Towards that end in the short term devolve ‘ownership’ of the QVMAG’s collections to the custody and legal ownership of the State Government given that in lore they belong to Tasmanians rather than Launcestonians or LCC. Furthermore the QVMAG collections are an important element of Tasmania's & Australia's cultural property. 

The purpose in taking this step is on one hand symbolic in that it would defuse assertions that real change and accountable governance is not actually an option or ever on the LCC agenda  in one step. 

On the other hand, it would protect community cultural investment in the collection and keep it available for research and researchers' operations in any future manifestation of the QVMAG as a musingplace with national & international standing.

STEP 3

Consistent with the above, LCC the current Aldermen/Trustees in consultation with the State Govt. as owners of the QVMAG collections, appoint a Commissioner or Commissioners to take on the role of the institution’s Governor/s and over 2 (3?) years charged with the tasks of: 

1. Putting place a transition budget with an enterprise focus that is:

• Based on the QVMAG's operation budgets for the past 2 years;
• Structured to differentiate between base administration and benchmarked enterprise oriented programming; and
• Increasingly dependent upon underwritten collaborative Guarantee Against Loss project funding – research & other.

2. Transitioning the institution from a LCC Cost Centre to a Regional Cultural Trust with a stand alone board of governors/trustees appointed for their relevant domain knowledge; 

3. Transitioning the institution from a Local Govt. Cost Centre to a stand alone Community Cultural Enterprise with:

• A 5 year Strategic Plan;
• A short term Enterprise Plan; plus 
• Put in place the appropriate management structure to service the institution.

4. Establishing a collaborative/cooperative regional governance model focused upon the Tamar Region in the broadest context  and that proactively interfaces with other Tasmanian musingplaces. 

5. Lay the foundation for the QVMAG as a standalone ongoing 21^st C community institution networked with regional, national and international musingplaces plus regional collectors and research organisations and that uses peer review processes to ensure rigour in program decision making.

STEP 4

LCC in its role as the current QVMAG Trustees, initiate a ‘facilitated community conference’, supported by Internet participation and contributions, towards:

1. Engaging the QVMAG's Community of Ownership & Interest in a strategy to widen the institution's memberships and affiliations;
2. Engaging the QVMAG's Community of Ownership & Interest in the evolution of the QVMAG into a Regional Community Cultural Enterprise;
3. Exploring options and opportunities open to the QVMAG as a 21st C institution with Tasmanian, national & international; standing;
4. Identifying weaknesses and threats inherent in various potential future operational models;
5. Exploring the potential dimension/s of the QVMAG as a 21st C musingplace networked with regional, national and international musingplaces, organisations, community networks etc.