Reinvigorated, energised, inspired. These are all words. I have used to describe the way I feel after having been to this year’s MuseumNext www.museumnext.org 
 conference in Barcelona. I was lucky enough to be sent by work (due to some project funding)  and have been busy trying to start turn some of the things I have seen into practical changes. The conference brings museums professional, digital/media specialists and academics from all over the world to a three day conference of all things cultural and digital.
There is more than I could fit into a hundred blog posts, and rather than try and paraphrase each of the talks I went to I will give you a very brief overview as well as summing up the headlines which I have taken away.
Before diving into all that, it needs to be said that the organisation and delivery of the conference was excellent. All the venues involved ( Museu Picasso, MACBA, CCCB took excellent care of us as did the organisers Sumo ( http://www.sumodesign.co.uk/home.html. )Everyone was very approachable and open and they managed to create a genuinely welcoming atmosphere where then people felt able to get beyond the networking awkwardness and get down to business. The sumo team were all visible, approachable and friendly, they put on a great conference and kept the wheels turning
I would highly recommend checking out the museum next site for videos of the talks.
You may be asking why it has taken so long to write all this up, well, I’ve been busy trying to implement some of these things as well as preparing for a career change starting my PGCE Primary in September. Woop

For me, these were the key points:

Know who you are, what’s your story and where you are going!
It’s seems almost childishly simple but I found that it needed someone to say it to remind me of what was important. Although I hate the term mission statement, having something on hand you can refer back to and run all your decisions by is a really useful tool. I think often cultural organisations assume this is a given and everyone will just know, as we the people who work there know why we are here’s why this picture/object in  our collection. Telling that simple story of why you exist and what you have can be a good way to reappraise what you have and why you do it. Sometimes we need to walk through the front doors as a visitor and try to look at ourselves through fresh eyes and see if we are telling our own story very well.

Change: be radical not revolutionary
It being her talk, Nancy Proctor can put it better than me but paraphrased to death: radical change goes deep and makes lasting differences, revolutionary change reacts to current situations and needs to be done over and over again. Be radical, go for root and branch and you are more likely to make a lasting change that has a real impact. Go go go! Follow Nancy on twitter, always has something interesting to say about museums, digital, or both www.twitter.com/nancyproctor

Open up your spaces, your collections, your data…unexpected things will happen, and this is a good thing
Let people in. I think as museums we are often opposed to non professionals coming into our spaces and touching our things! Time and time again people raised the point that the person who may be the expert on a particular thing, may not work for you. In addition to this, when you are too close to something it can be difficult to see a new and unexpected way to use it. Again this ties in with the story element; everyone has a story to tell, as does everything, how do we get those stories out and share them. Nobody is saying open up the stores and let everyone grab what they want , but are there ways you can open up those collections to people to use in new, and here is the key, unexpected ways. I have a big thing where I believe galleries and museums should, in part, be spaces where things are allowed to fail. I was trying to think or a good analogy and a came up with this: you throw a house party and someone comes in, looks at your record collection and puts something amazing on you had totally forgotten about (like, Echo Beach or Addams family rap) and you love it. Also the point was reiterated a number of times: the expert on the thing you have may not be on your staff. How do you access and invite in that expert to work with you? ( See what I did there? Hammer it home)

Picture: One of the many inspiring talks I didn’t get round to writing about, they were all so good.

(Cheers to the guys from www.creativetourist.com for using an image of artwork I had prodiuced following their #blognorth event in Leeds. Talk was great too guys.)

 

Get the data
Get it, use it, share it. Make is accessible, make it usable and guess what…people will access it and make use of it. Radical or revolutionary?!

Share
Met some wonderful people who were  wiling to share what they were thinking about a whole range of things, this is good, no, it’s better than good it’s great. Just to be somewhere were there was free exchange of ideas was inspiring. I had a chat to the guy from Seso ( http://www.seso.net/ ) later on and I said to him how great it was ,that he was willing to share his ideas with us and that it showed great confidence in what he was doing and he said “I’ll never stop having ideas, something’s come up with this year might be of use to you so why not share it, next year I will need to come up with a whole load of new ideas anyway” Great. And his idea of design journalism has really stuck with me and I keep trying go back to it and use it: Imagine time and money were no object, what would you produce. When you have that ideal you will probably find you can do about 80% of it with the time and resources you do have.

Go to things, talk to people, ask questions
As a (soon to be ex) gallery/museum professional it’s really important that you get out of your dusty silo and find out what is going on out there. People are trying things you would like to try, solving problems you feel are insurmountable and having he debates you need to be involved in. Connect to the wider community, go to conferences and make yourself heard. Take that passion for art or objects, stories or ideas and share them. This way you will meet people who have different views from the people you work with all the time.

I was there on my own so it forced me to meet new people, have conversations about things I didn’t know much about and ask lots of questions…lots of questions.  I brought way more way from this conference than I thought I would simply by getting involved and making the most of it.  I hope I brought something to the table and perhaps contributed a little to the whole thing.  And the other great thing is the conversations sparked by the conference continue on line and in the real world, what more could you ask for?

Some links:
MACBA: http://www.macba.cat/
CCCB: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_Museum_of_Contemporary_Art
Museu Picasso:  http://www.museupicasso.bcn.cat/en/