What should the future of museum collecting look like? How should we be thinking about our collections in terms of the next generation?
Bookings close: 5pm, Wednesday 30 October
Our keynote speaker Sharon Heal, Director of the Museum Association will be sharing her thoughts on this together with Kevin Gosling of Collections Trust, Jon Finch of Bristol Culture, Zelina Garland-Rowan of Arts Council England and the team from Culture Coventry.
Sharon will look at collective power. How can we use our collections to win hearts, minds and money. The Museums Association’s Empowering Collections report calls for dynamic, relevant and empowering collections. This session will explore how we can use our collection to make the case for museums to shareholders and funders.
Jon will explore the collection challenges facing a major service like Bristol Culture and Creative Industries. This is a service with a wonderful range of international quality collections. However the stores are full, some of these stores are in a poor state of repair, with limited public access. Perhaps most significantly the service’s ability to collect contemporary material is severely limited. Jon will outline potential solutions to the difficulties Bristol and many other local authority services face. He will consider radical changes to the way we collect and manage collections, challenging services, the sector and the key national organisations to think and act differently.
Kevin will make the case for data-sharing as the key to sustainable collections development. The 2017 Mendoza Review identified ‘dynamic collection curation and management’ as a priority, and noted challenges including ‘less available curatorial time and expertise, and the ongoing need for a sensible approach to both growing and rationalising collections.’ But how sensible is it that 1,700 museums are trying to develop their collections without knowing what each other already holds?
Come and join the debate about the strategic direction of museum collecting.
5 November – Making the Case: What is the Future of Collecting in Museums?
9.30am-4pm, Coventry Transport Museum, Millennium Place, Hales Street CV1 1JD
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