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.