It feels like a long time since the last Core Session, most likely as I've had a busy month and I've sadly not crossed paths with my fellow group members since then, although we have been in regular email conversations.
As per my previous two blog posts on Citizen Curator Core Sessions, these are my own thoughts and views from the day, thus they aren't comprehensive or definitive representations of what was covered and discussed.
As per my previous two blog posts on Citizen Curator Core Sessions, these are my own thoughts and views from the day, thus they aren't comprehensive or definitive representations of what was covered and discussed.
Citizen Curator Core Session 3 – Communication for Curators
This session was held at Helston Museum, which I'm saddened to say is not somewhere I've visited before, although given my escapades into the museum sector are very recent, and I tend to live an introverted life, this isn't totally unexpected. For those unaware, I left my job in the IT industry in 2015 and it's only since 2016 I've been actively involved in the museum sector through volunteering and now via my own research projects and self-development programmes, of which Citizen Curators is one. I'm therefore sort of playing catch-up, although my interest in history does extend slightly further back than 3 years but not much further; certainly I would have played no attention to anything historic 10 years ago. What changed? Well, that's for another blog, if I write it :) This blog isn't about me!
For me, not only has the CItizen Curator's course helped me structure some of my museum learning, but also dialogue, as well as seeing how other museums operate compared to the one I volunteer at.
As per normal, we started the session looking back, which seemed a little apt given one is in a museum surrounded with objects from the past that have been brought into the present and future. We're reminded of the Values & Conventions of a Citizen Curator, of which the only one that sprung immediately to mind in my head was 'time': being on time, leaving on time, starting on time and valuing time. I've always been a stickler for time management although I'm no saint on the matter. Other things worth remembering is valuing others, in terms of their contributions and opinions. This is something I'm opening up more to. That's not to say I ever stuck my hand up at anyone and told them to be quiet, but more I've actively encouraged others to continue dialogue, especially within the walls of museums as I want to learn more about everything. I also wouldn't, of course, disrespect anyone else's view even if I disagreed, as the one thing I like about museums and conversations is the ability to see things differently, have interpretations revealed in ways I wouldn't have thought about, and find out what it is that makes other people tick, and tock.
There was the opportunity to reflect on experience gained since our last session, which is a bit like asking me what I was doing 4 weeks ago at 10am on the Friday of that week: I really have no idea. I've struggled with recall since I was at primary school, hence one main reason why I'm writing this blog. I have to look through my notes and recent history information on Google to remember what I was doing x hours ago, let alone days and weeks. Others, thankfully, don't have my goldfish like memory and were able to use the diagram where one has an experience, reflects on it and makes some sort of sense of it, even if the sense makes not a lot of sense, in my case. I like to think that any conclusion is a conclusion, even if it doesn't feel definitive. Anyhow, it was nice to hear what others had been up to and thought about, with the only one I made notes on being about finding out what exactly children think of an art gallery from their perspective.It's something I often think about when I see people of all ages at any museum: "Why exactly are they here? What do they think about it?". Much like the topic of today's session, if you don't know what people are thinking, how do you know if you're doing it "right?". Naturally, being right is subjective in some respects, as what's right for one person, isn't for another. Therefore, catering for as many demographics as is possible needs to be considered. Can you please everyone though? Probably not. Does that mean you shouldn't try though?
The 50/50 rule of Citizen Curators is brought up once more, as this time we're focussing on the communications sides of that equation. The quote of the session (there's one each session by the way) was from William Whyte which says "The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it." Much like I've just said, most places or people might think they communicate adequately, but how would anyone know without ways to analyse your impact and gathering feedback? We were asked what we thought of that quote and the subject of museum communication. It's safe to say that most think communication can be improved. This isn't just confined to museums, I'd say. Pretty much every group, organization, or company I've ever been involved with can improve communications. How many days go past without you or someone saying they have no idea what's going on about x,y or z?
The question "Is there anyone listening?" was mentioned, which reminded me of SETI, of which I forgot to explain to anyone who SETI was when I chirped up; They search for extraterrestrial activity signals. Occasionally they get all excited by something unusual in their data before dismissing it as something natural or manmade. The thing for me here regarding SETI is, do we know anyone is listening? If we don't know, should we even be bothering? I'm of the view that if you don't try, you don't know. Similarly with communication in museums, I'm also of the view that you can never do too much communication.
Good Team Communications
What aides good communications in teams? We were asked to have a think before giving responses although I'm still slightly unsure if this was related to our own Citizen Curator groups or general team communications. Examples given by others were of newsletters for volunteers, email, social media, video conferencing ... and ... a few one might not think about so quickly such as delegation and shared plans. I guess if one can delegate tasks to others, it makes for a productive team, as long as one doesn't delegate everything and then put one's feet up. Shared Plans, or even shared task lists, are really useful. I'd actually just suggested this a few days earlier where i volunteer. When I worked in the IT industry we used shared task lists although I have to admit, it wasn't foolproof. Not everyone remembered to update them, and then another system came into place that was more "official" but was not really suitable for tasks, yet we had to use it. As long as everyone uses the same electronic resource for sharing tasks and it's accessible enough, then yes, it's a great thing as you know exactly what others are up to and how far they have progressed on their tasks.
Group Task: How does your museum communicate?
From the confines of our relatively cosy cramped conditions in the morning, we grouped up to answer the questions as to what does our museum do well and what could/should it use for communication? For some reason I couldn't get the idea out of my head of a town choir marching through the streets of Penzance ringing a handbell and proclaiming to all that Penlee Museum and Art Gallery was open and that they should come immediately. That's my wandering mind for you! Anyhow, every museum differs in this respect and thus the responses were naturally different from each group. Some museums it seems do better with traditional printed media and word-of-mouth, whereas others probably lack in that area and are more keen on social media. One area that most seemed to agree could be used much better was Instagram. I still see Instagram as being art based, focussing on photography and paintings, rather than objects, but luckily most museums have the former two in abundance also. Additionally, Instagram has got incredibly more interactive in the last year (or gimmicky, depending on your level of cynicism). You can vote on posts, quickly ask questions, and do quick polls. Stories in Instagram have become a thing and can be quite rich and absorbing as the content rotates between still photos, video and onto interactive content. It's much more interactive than Facebook and has a younger demographic that uses it. There's certainly room for more development in this area by some museums.
Communications & Resonances
A reminder of the various ways to communicate with the world was brought up, from signs, press releases, radio, TV, websites, online collections to leaflets in doors and more. No mention of carrier pigeons though, sadly. There's certainly a lot of ways to get your message out there, but it was emphasized that what one has to remember is, what is your target group? Although more age groups are getting online, if your target group is for over 80s, there's no use spending £1,000s on a twitter campaign.
Group Task: Cake Timer
Hmmm, cake. Yes please, this sounds excellent, I'll get my apron on.
Sadly, no cake, except the imaginary one in my mind on offer for this task. This was a group task in the afternoon where we had to choose an object in the museum and plan a social media campaign on how one would communicate what we were going to do with that object to the audience. There was another choice of task based upon wikipedia but we went for the one that felt harder for us to do, because, well, that was what we agreed and maybe we like to make ourselves suffer? :)
The plan for either task you chose was based on the cake timer diagram which consisted of four yummy slices: Theme/Topic, Modes of Communication, Feedback opportunity and Community/Audience. We was going to choose the nearest object we could see from where we sat but instead went for the rather large chunk of RAF Sea-king helicopter that was downstairs. I was elected to go take a photo of the helicopter so we could remember what it looked like, and proceeded to get myself photographed taking a photograph by the resident official photographer ... great! Can't imagine anyone wants to see my mugshot online but alas most were of my hands it seems. I rejoined the group with my rather rubbish low light photos and we got to grips with the power of Instagram, showing off its charms amongst each other before listing its attributes of polls, comments, likes, votes as ways of garnering feedback from posts on Instagram. In terms of the audience, well, there's the obvious, such as those currently in services, wishing to be in the services or ex-services. Cadets, pilots, enthusiasts etc.
Both our work on this group task and from other groups jointly brought up issues such as legality and copyright, which leads deeply into Museum Ethics and another conversation I'm not going to go into at this juncture, but I may well in another future post. :)
This session was held at Helston Museum, which I'm saddened to say is not somewhere I've visited before, although given my escapades into the museum sector are very recent, and I tend to live an introverted life, this isn't totally unexpected. For those unaware, I left my job in the IT industry in 2015 and it's only since 2016 I've been actively involved in the museum sector through volunteering and now via my own research projects and self-development programmes, of which Citizen Curators is one. I'm therefore sort of playing catch-up, although my interest in history does extend slightly further back than 3 years but not much further; certainly I would have played no attention to anything historic 10 years ago. What changed? Well, that's for another blog, if I write it :) This blog isn't about me!
For me, not only has the CItizen Curator's course helped me structure some of my museum learning, but also dialogue, as well as seeing how other museums operate compared to the one I volunteer at.
As per normal, we started the session looking back, which seemed a little apt given one is in a museum surrounded with objects from the past that have been brought into the present and future. We're reminded of the Values & Conventions of a Citizen Curator, of which the only one that sprung immediately to mind in my head was 'time': being on time, leaving on time, starting on time and valuing time. I've always been a stickler for time management although I'm no saint on the matter. Other things worth remembering is valuing others, in terms of their contributions and opinions. This is something I'm opening up more to. That's not to say I ever stuck my hand up at anyone and told them to be quiet, but more I've actively encouraged others to continue dialogue, especially within the walls of museums as I want to learn more about everything. I also wouldn't, of course, disrespect anyone else's view even if I disagreed, as the one thing I like about museums and conversations is the ability to see things differently, have interpretations revealed in ways I wouldn't have thought about, and find out what it is that makes other people tick, and tock.
There was the opportunity to reflect on experience gained since our last session, which is a bit like asking me what I was doing 4 weeks ago at 10am on the Friday of that week: I really have no idea. I've struggled with recall since I was at primary school, hence one main reason why I'm writing this blog. I have to look through my notes and recent history information on Google to remember what I was doing x hours ago, let alone days and weeks. Others, thankfully, don't have my goldfish like memory and were able to use the diagram where one has an experience, reflects on it and makes some sort of sense of it, even if the sense makes not a lot of sense, in my case. I like to think that any conclusion is a conclusion, even if it doesn't feel definitive. Anyhow, it was nice to hear what others had been up to and thought about, with the only one I made notes on being about finding out what exactly children think of an art gallery from their perspective.It's something I often think about when I see people of all ages at any museum: "Why exactly are they here? What do they think about it?". Much like the topic of today's session, if you don't know what people are thinking, how do you know if you're doing it "right?". Naturally, being right is subjective in some respects, as what's right for one person, isn't for another. Therefore, catering for as many demographics as is possible needs to be considered. Can you please everyone though? Probably not. Does that mean you shouldn't try though?
The 50/50 rule of Citizen Curators is brought up once more, as this time we're focussing on the communications sides of that equation. The quote of the session (there's one each session by the way) was from William Whyte which says "The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it." Much like I've just said, most places or people might think they communicate adequately, but how would anyone know without ways to analyse your impact and gathering feedback? We were asked what we thought of that quote and the subject of museum communication. It's safe to say that most think communication can be improved. This isn't just confined to museums, I'd say. Pretty much every group, organization, or company I've ever been involved with can improve communications. How many days go past without you or someone saying they have no idea what's going on about x,y or z?
The question "Is there anyone listening?" was mentioned, which reminded me of SETI, of which I forgot to explain to anyone who SETI was when I chirped up; They search for extraterrestrial activity signals. Occasionally they get all excited by something unusual in their data before dismissing it as something natural or manmade. The thing for me here regarding SETI is, do we know anyone is listening? If we don't know, should we even be bothering? I'm of the view that if you don't try, you don't know. Similarly with communication in museums, I'm also of the view that you can never do too much communication.
Good Team Communications
What aides good communications in teams? We were asked to have a think before giving responses although I'm still slightly unsure if this was related to our own Citizen Curator groups or general team communications. Examples given by others were of newsletters for volunteers, email, social media, video conferencing ... and ... a few one might not think about so quickly such as delegation and shared plans. I guess if one can delegate tasks to others, it makes for a productive team, as long as one doesn't delegate everything and then put one's feet up. Shared Plans, or even shared task lists, are really useful. I'd actually just suggested this a few days earlier where i volunteer. When I worked in the IT industry we used shared task lists although I have to admit, it wasn't foolproof. Not everyone remembered to update them, and then another system came into place that was more "official" but was not really suitable for tasks, yet we had to use it. As long as everyone uses the same electronic resource for sharing tasks and it's accessible enough, then yes, it's a great thing as you know exactly what others are up to and how far they have progressed on their tasks.
Group Task: How does your museum communicate?
From the confines of our relatively cosy cramped conditions in the morning, we grouped up to answer the questions as to what does our museum do well and what could/should it use for communication? For some reason I couldn't get the idea out of my head of a town choir marching through the streets of Penzance ringing a handbell and proclaiming to all that Penlee Museum and Art Gallery was open and that they should come immediately. That's my wandering mind for you! Anyhow, every museum differs in this respect and thus the responses were naturally different from each group. Some museums it seems do better with traditional printed media and word-of-mouth, whereas others probably lack in that area and are more keen on social media. One area that most seemed to agree could be used much better was Instagram. I still see Instagram as being art based, focussing on photography and paintings, rather than objects, but luckily most museums have the former two in abundance also. Additionally, Instagram has got incredibly more interactive in the last year (or gimmicky, depending on your level of cynicism). You can vote on posts, quickly ask questions, and do quick polls. Stories in Instagram have become a thing and can be quite rich and absorbing as the content rotates between still photos, video and onto interactive content. It's much more interactive than Facebook and has a younger demographic that uses it. There's certainly room for more development in this area by some museums.
Communications & Resonances
A reminder of the various ways to communicate with the world was brought up, from signs, press releases, radio, TV, websites, online collections to leaflets in doors and more. No mention of carrier pigeons though, sadly. There's certainly a lot of ways to get your message out there, but it was emphasized that what one has to remember is, what is your target group? Although more age groups are getting online, if your target group is for over 80s, there's no use spending £1,000s on a twitter campaign.
Group Task: Cake Timer
Hmmm, cake. Yes please, this sounds excellent, I'll get my apron on.
Sadly, no cake, except the imaginary one in my mind on offer for this task. This was a group task in the afternoon where we had to choose an object in the museum and plan a social media campaign on how one would communicate what we were going to do with that object to the audience. There was another choice of task based upon wikipedia but we went for the one that felt harder for us to do, because, well, that was what we agreed and maybe we like to make ourselves suffer? :)
The plan for either task you chose was based on the cake timer diagram which consisted of four yummy slices: Theme/Topic, Modes of Communication, Feedback opportunity and Community/Audience. We was going to choose the nearest object we could see from where we sat but instead went for the rather large chunk of RAF Sea-king helicopter that was downstairs. I was elected to go take a photo of the helicopter so we could remember what it looked like, and proceeded to get myself photographed taking a photograph by the resident official photographer ... great! Can't imagine anyone wants to see my mugshot online but alas most were of my hands it seems. I rejoined the group with my rather rubbish low light photos and we got to grips with the power of Instagram, showing off its charms amongst each other before listing its attributes of polls, comments, likes, votes as ways of garnering feedback from posts on Instagram. In terms of the audience, well, there's the obvious, such as those currently in services, wishing to be in the services or ex-services. Cadets, pilots, enthusiasts etc.
Both our work on this group task and from other groups jointly brought up issues such as legality and copyright, which leads deeply into Museum Ethics and another conversation I'm not going to go into at this juncture, but I may well in another future post. :)
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