Call for participation in ‘Symbiosis: a new model of resilience for specialist museums’

December 19, 2016

Would you like your museum to become more sustainable and resilient through collaboration with industry or other commercial bodies?

The Museum of Design in Plastics (MoDiP) has received Arts Council England Resilience Funding (Round 2) to explore, create and share a model that will do that not just in terms of industries relevant to MoDiP but also those relevant to your museum, whether for example those industries are agriculture, architecture, astronomy, aviation, computing, fashion, healthcare, maritime, medicine, military, music, photography, printing, textiles, toys, and so on. The project will focus on the industries relevant to the museums that participate.

We are looking for small[i] specialist museums to join the project.  It aims to help them have better understanding of the potential of their collections for knowledge exchange with relevant industries, increase their ability to engage with these industries and  improve  their fundraising skills: in a nutshell to provide the tools to enable them to become more sustainable.

People in industry think in a different way and use a different language from many museum people. We are therefore in the process of recruiting an industry advocate to the project who will help us see our collections through the eyes of industry. This person will:

  1. Lead a workshop in late January or early February 2017 at which participants will brainstorm the potential of their collections from the industry perspective and discuss different ways of making contact with relevant industries.
  2. Contact a minimum of 30 businesses and, hopefully, find three with which to develop different models of mutually beneficial exchange. These will be industries relevant to MoDiP (design and plastics) however the processes involved will be relevant to industry in general.
  3. Create an online resource that provides a route map to the process and extrapolates his / her learning in the light of the priorities of participating museums.
  4. Lead a master class in early 2018 at which participating museums will have the opportunity to discuss with the industry consultant their particular needs in terms of applying the models developed to their situation.

Participants will also be asked to review and comment on the resource at their own convenience. Participation would, therefore, involve a maximum of 2 ½ days over a period of a little more than a year.

Deadline for sign up is the 20th January.

Places are limited. If you are interested please contact Susan Lambert asap: slambert@aub.ac.uk.

TRAVEL EXPENSES WILL BE REIMBURSED. IF YOU HAVE OTHER COSTS LET US KNOW WHAT THEY ARE AND WE WILL SEE HOW WE CAN MEET THEM.

[i] We define small as museums with 5 or fewer full-time equivalent staff.

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