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!

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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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Taxes, Rates, Musingplaces & Social Licenses

Recently the Tasmanian State Government and the University of Tasmania examined Tasmania’s cost of living pressures and specifically those arising from the following sectors and expenditure categories:

          • Electricity prices

          • Water and sewage charges

          • Local government rates

          • Transport costs

·         • Housing and rents

          • Food costs

Why might this matter to a musingplace looking to maintain its ‘social license’ Well in Launceston Local Government rates include a substantial levy for the recurrent cost of the musingplaces located there. This levy relies upon a social licence that the community entrusts to its Aldermen. However there is something of a paradigm shift in play as the cost of living grows and is increasingly being measured and assessed – this license is arguably under revision. For instance:

• Research  demonstrates the intensifying cost of living pressures confronting Tasmanian households; and
• It highlights the acute cost of living pressures facing low-income households; and
• The research demonstrates the complexity of both the cost of living problem and in achieving sustainable solutions; and
• It identifies short and long term strategies for addressing the cost of living problem.

 Interestingly, Tasmanian rates have increased by 7.8% on average since 2008 – 9.6% (2008) 10.0% (2009) 4.9% (2010) 8.0% (2011) 6.4% (2012) By comparison the national increase was 7.0% and the growth was somewhat more even in its trajectory – 7.8% (2008) 7.5% (2009) 6.5% (2010) 7.3% (2011) 6.1%(2012)

In Tasmania water and sewage prices have increased by over 65% since 2005. This has come about in the midst of a period of major and across-the-board reform that began with the Water and Sewerage Industry Act 2008.

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Against this kind of backgrounding the UTAS report to do with the Cost-of-living crisis in Tasmania and its intensification  the report’s recommendations for the local government sector included the:

• Broadening of the existing rate base through a more targeted concessions policy, given that a 30 percent rebate is available to all Pension Concession Card holders
• Use independently established capital land valuations as the basis for determining rates, as opposed to the volatile annual assessed valuation; and
• Subject all local governments to independent performance audits and benchmark levels of service provision and efficacy
• Impose a statewide cap on annual rate increases, which can be imposed by local government.

These recommendations are evidence based and together represent something of a paradigm shift. Mostly, what is in evidence here is the compelling evidence for the need for change and a total rethink in the way Councils structure their budgets plus set and police their benchmarks. 

Gone are the days – if these recommendations are taken seriously –  for bureaucratic empire building and soft management friendly (elastic!) benchmarking. Likewise, with greater capacity to report on performance digitally, musingplaces will come under increased and more incisive levels of scrutiny.

The cost of living issue is such that in 2009 Tasmanian Population Health Survey found more than one-quarter (28.4%) of Tasmanian adults claimed cost as the reason for not buying the quality or variety of preferred food. 42.5% of adults in the least affluent households cited being unable to buy the quality or variety of preferred food due to cost, compared to only 14.0% in the most affluent households. Compared to the state average of 5%, 10% of adults in the lowest income households reported they ran out of food in the last 12 months and could not afford a replacement.

Anglicare Tasmania recently asked low income Tasmanians about their expenditure on essential services and products, and the decision making that drives their budget. It found that the most significant budget strategy employed by households is to prioritise the payment of rent or mortgage costs, followed by electricity and telecommunications. This entails trade-offs that include food rationing, compromises on electricity consumption, withdrawal from social participation, and the use of credit to pay for essential purchases. Juggling bills and using the money made available through delaying payment of bills is also an important financial management strategy. Some research participants, for example, reported that they delayed bill payments to purchase food and a cycle of small loans from family members.

It has been reported some time ago that something around one in five of Launceston households find themselves living on, below or just above the 'poverty line'. All pay rates either directly or via rent and increasingly it can be expected that they will be pressurising their Aldermen to curtail rate increases. Indeed their representative organisation has been doing so for some time but by and large they have not been able to persuade their officers to deliver anything that represents significant cost savings. On the evidence it appears that there is considerable comfort with the status quo in-house at 'Town Hall' – and a lack of vision that might expedite a shift in civic imperatives.

While musingplaces can deliver considerable value to a community increasingly it will be doing so in competition with emerging technologies and other imperatives. Winning a social license for their existence will increasingly difficult.

Pierre Lassonde, President of Newmont Mining Corporation ... Click Here

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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.