coronavirus – Museum Development East Midlands

The current evolving climate around Coronavirus is increasingly pointing to a significant decrease in museum visits, and potentially the temporary closure of many sites. At MDEM we are here to support you in returning to ‘business as usual’ but are also here to support you in this unique situation.

Remote Volunteering:

Many museums may find themselves with a volunteer workforce unable to attend site or new individuals interested in using their time at home in self-isolation to undertake a volunteering task. Here are some resources if you are wanting to create some opportunities for remote volunteering.

The Museums Association has a wealth of resources and case studies around utilising Digital Volunteers – from Social Media, blogging, transcription and data backlog. This might be applicable for current volunteers who are unable to visit your site, or individuals wanting an opportunity to volunteer whilst themselves in self-isolation.

Two cases studies around digital volunteering, including blogging and transcribing can be found on the Heritage Volunteers Group website. The National Archives currently offer remote volunteering opportunities alongside is on-site projects, such as transcription and desk based research. Other successful volunteering opportunities include social media campaigns and Collections Data Backlog work.

Information on how to recruit new volunteers for a short period of time (also known as Micro-volunteering) can be found on the NCVO website. Within this useful document from Sheffield Volunteer Centre there is a table outlining micro-volunteering opportunities.

Digital Engagement:

Other museums are launching new online digital resources. Hastings Museums are launching a Digital Museum to help combat social isolation and loneliness.

As some families with children are needing to self-isolate, some museums are also providing better links and visibility to their learning resources to aid home schooling activities. Take a look at the GEM resources to support museums in this area.

If you want to look into other digital activity, then Culture 24 have a range of resources. From creating a staff led podcast to improve digital literacy within the team.

Museums Hour is hosting a special on Thursday 19^th March at 1pm on Twitter for museum professionals to share examples of digital engagement for the coming months. You need to sing into twitter to access this and follow @MuseumHour #MuseumHour

Communication:

Some museums are taking to social media to connect with audiences which may not now be able to visit then. The hashtag #MuseumFromHome is being used for museums to post short videos or pictures about their collections and galleries which are interesting and bite sized.

Creating videos or live streaming might be a great option for your museum. The Museum Development London team have made available a presentation they ran on this topic.

We’ll be looking to regularly sign post to new and emerging resources over the coming weeks and months as well as to provide consistent support in returning to ‘business as usual’ as soon as possible for the sector. If you would like to share any resources then please contact sarah.harsthorne@leics.gov.uk

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Coronavirus/Covid-19 : Resources for Museums

Sarah Spurrier — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 15:59:44 +0000

At MDEM we want to provide as much information as possible for museums in the region dealing with the evolving Coronavirus/Covid-19 situation. As such we have created a round up of resources which you may find useful and will try and update these as frequently as possible.

For the most up-to-date support offers to museums, please sign up to our e-newsletter. You can see the latest edition below:

Current Information on the virus:

For up-to-date advice and guidance from Public Health England’s please click here here

Supporting the Workforce:

The NHS Coronavirus pages contain the very latest advice and guidance, including preventative measures and responses to common questions.

Many individuals in our region’s workforce are aged over 70. Age UK have a very useful resource for older people which is also helpful if you are caring for or working with an older person.

The NCVO have some excellent guidance on how to safeguard your workforce, and some practical advice around HR issues such as sick pay.

We have put together some initial resources to support remote volunteering which you may also want to explore.

Business Resilience:

The Association of Independent Museums has practical guidance, including a ‘Business Resilience Checklist’ which we’d recommend all museums take a look at.

AIM partners, Charity Finance Group (CFG) have put together a practical guide for charity finance professionals covering business continuity planning, cashflow management and insurance. Read the resources

Information on the contractual implications of cancelling events or AGMs etc can be found on the Bates Wells website.

South East Museum Development have put together these useful resources to assess and manage the organisational risk. We would recommend you look at these documents as a reference to creating your own plans, policies and procedures.

We have also collated a list of digital resources which feature remote volunteering, digital programming (including learning opportunities) and use of social media.

Message from Arts Council England’s (ACE)

We will offer individuals and organisations working in the cultural sector new financial support during this crisis, totalling £160 million. We’ve re-purposed all our investment strands to be able to offer this support. These emergency funding streams will be open to applications very soon.

Funding for organisations outside of the National Portfolio: £50 million will be made available to organisations that are not in receipt of regular funding from the Arts Council. Organisations who have applied to National Lottery Project Grants are welcome to apply for this support. More information

Funding for individuals: We want to support artists, creative practitioners and freelancers as best we can in this crisis. We’re making £20 million of financial support available to individuals, so they can better sustain themselves, and their work, in the coming months.More information

Funding for National Portfolio Organisations:  We will be making £90 million available to NPOs. We hope organisations will use this funding to reboot their creative work, but we also understand it may be required to alleviate financial pressures on NPOs. More information

Message from the National Heritage Lottery fund:

We are making £50million available for a Heritage Emergency Fund to support the UK heritage sector as an immediate response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.

We will be investing the £50m where it is needed most, by providing short-term funding for organisations delivering heritage projects or running previously funded projects, and safeguarding heritage sites we have previously invested in to ensure they are not lost to the public.

The Heritage Emergency Fund will be available as:

A fund that organisations can access over the next three-six months as short-term funding to stabilise operations and manage unforeseen risks. Grants of between £3,000-£50,000 will be available.
A select number of key strategic investments where heritage is identified as at greatest risk. This could include grant increases to funded projects that are currently underway.

In addition, we are also supporting the heritage sector by:

Enabling organisations that have received grant funding and are currently delivering projects to delay or change the way the projects are delivered. This can include changes to approved purposes, flexibility on costs within a project, early drawdown of grant payment, a relaxation of some conditions of the grant, and flexible use of contingency funding.
Providing bespoke advice and support via our local teams and in some cases, via our specialist network of mentors.
Accelerating the provision of our £1.2m Digital Skills for Heritage initiative to help the sector through the crisis and beyond. This will include support for organisations to run activities and events, reach audiences, engage volunteers, share content and fundraise online.
For the longer term, to help with recovery from the current crisis, we have invested £4m in two Enterprise Development programmes for heritage leaders across the UK, and Business Support Programmes in all four countries. More information will be available in due course.

Decisions on awards under the Heritage Emergency Fund will be made as quickly as possible to support the sector. Awards will be made on the basis of a set of criteria to identify those with the greatest need.

Find out more in our Heritage Emergency Fund news story. Hear from our Executive Director of Business Delivery, Eilish McGuinness. And visit their website for more information on how to apply.

MDEM Team:

Currently we have decided to postpone all our upcoming training in March and April 2020. This will be reviewed before May and a decision will then be taken on further events. You can view our current position statement here. We are running online training and support -visit our training section to see what is coming up.

We will also be available remotely to support museums in any area of their organisation. This includes helping museums return to ‘business as usual’ as soon as possible, but also some extra programming and resources to help over the coming weeks. Below are our contacts if you would like to email or call us. Please note the team work part-time so you may want to email in the first instance:

Claire Browne – Regional Programme Manager: Claire.Browne@leics.gov.uk T: 07973 800 072

Sarah Hartshorne – Programme Officer: Sarah.Hartshorne@leics.gov.uk T: 0116 305 8118

Heather Lomas – Organisational Health Consultant and Museum Accreditation Advisor office@heatherlomas.co.uk T: 07809 771066

Anita Hollinshead – Regional Collections Advisor and Emergency Risk Network Facilitator anitahollinshead@hotmail.com T: 07876 166 742

Laura Hughes – Project Officer Laura.Hughes@leics.gov.uk T: 0116 305 3118

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