Inspiration

Arts organisations in the UK see their memberships plummeting due to the pandemic. Transactional memberships worked as long as the offer/product (such as free access or members rooms) were available, but are under threat due to lockdowns. Why members might leave you – and what you can do about it suggests to adapt by understanding members’ needs, offering different membership types and expanding reach with digital means – good suggestions to tackle the threat in the short to medium term.

Longer term my experience is that memberships that take a relationship approach rather than a product-focused or transactional approach can be more resilient. Members have more of an understanding of and a stake in the organisation and not only want to use your offer, but support you. 

MHM offers a practical roadmap for membership renewal. One of its elements explores this transaction – relationship axis, asking “Are you speaking to members as clients or patrons?” 

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One of museums’ superpower is the ability to spark curiosity. New research examines how museums can effectively employ this to cultivate more inclusive attitudes.

The American Alliance of Museums and Wilkening Consulting published Audiences and Inclusion: A Primer for Cultivating More Inclusive Attitudes Among the Public. It suggests that museums can play an essential role in creating safe and welcoming spaces for marginalised and at-risk communities, and in guiding museum visitors towards more inclusive attitudes and behaviours that benefit society as a whole. Using radical curiosity and courageous empathy, it offers 10 steps to crack open museum-goers’ worldviews and effect critical societal change while maintaining and broadening audiences. 

What stood out for me is that in a world where it seems to be getting harder to change minds with facts, it suggests instead to change the questions that are asked. How can we help people consider questions they might not otherwise think of? And spark their curiosity?

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It’s Slow Art Day on 10 April.

In current times one might think of the Slow Art movement as answer to physical distancing and restricted numbers in museums and art galleries. But essentially it is about changing our way of experiencing art from a casual look as we wander through long rows of galleries to a deeper engagement with individual works. Which might in turn enhance our mental health and wellbeing.

Researchers found in 2017 that visitors to the Art Institute of Chicago spent an average 28.63 seconds looking at an artwork.

“If you just slow down and look at any kind of art, you discover that you can build a relationship with it” says Phil Terry, founder of Slow Art Day in this Washington Post article, and that this could also be a way to remove barriers that make people feel they need to know a lot about art to enjoy it.

How does slow art work? The Slow Art movement suggests to look at five works of art for 10 minutes each and then meet and talk about your experience. Jennifer Roberts, an art history professor at Harvard University and a proponent of slow art, has her students look at an individual artwork for three hours. That might be a bit challenging to start with, but definitely interesting what that experience leads to.

10 minutes or 3 hours – give it a try!

Tāmaki Herenga Waka – a new suite of galleries about Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland has opened at Auckland Museum. Having played a (minor) part in user testing some of the digital interactives I enjoyed experiencing the final versions.

The galleries tell stories of Auckland from early volcanic eruptions to waka arrivals, from early settlers to different cultures making Auckland their home, showing changes to nature and culture as well as highlighting key political moments. The stories are going back in history and forward with data visualisations about Auckland’s future. Objects and display cases are mixed with interactive elements, digital or physical, that interject some variety and playfulness.

The city and its people are still grappling with many of the issues and the stories will hopefully trigger some new thought and discussion among visitors.

Art is distracting us and keeping us entertained during the pandemic. This effect is much discussed and so is the increased digital offer of arts organisations to enable it. But is there a role beyond that for the arts? “Perhaps the most interesting feature of this digital transformation”, suggests this article, “is the growing role of institutions as documenters, commentators and interpreters of current events.”

Or should the role of arts organisations go further than that – should they be more activist in supporting the community? Alan Brown challenges organisations in the US not to be bystanders in the public health challenge with a passionate call to action for arts in the Covid-19 crisis.

Some organisations are already offering very practical support like English National Opera with its Breathe programme for people recovering from Covid-19.

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Talking with a client recently about how audience insight is discussed, we spoke about how to create a safe space where it is okay to talk not just about successes, but also share failures and learn from them.

I came across this interesting initiative in the UK, by the authors of the article above, who want to “instigate more honest and open conversations about failure.” The FailSpace Project wants to “encourage those working in the cultural sector to consider success and failure as two sides of the same coin”.

And as to failure – beyond just talking about it, this author shows that you can even make a book out of failure: Tinderbox.

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