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 well 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, 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 are 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:
- Increasingly government funding will be project oriented with hard benchmarking applied;
- Triennial funding is more likely to be harder to win and when won it is more likely to carry stricter conditions;
- Increasingly institutional funding will be subjected to independent peer review;
- Increasingly funding will be highly competative and carry expectations to generate income and demonstrate entrepreneurship;
- 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.
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