Manifesto for Museums in the 21st Century: participation, participation, participation

What are the three most the important factors in selling your house? Location, location location.
What were the three most important policies of the Tony Blair New Labour administration? Education, education, education.
When visiting Scotland for a holiday what are the three things you most remember? Precipitation, precipitation, precipitation.

Given that we are all thinking about the future of museums and the MA may claim to have 20:20 vision in this respect. The Museum of Unreason Manifesto defines what are actually the three most important things for museums in the 21st century.They are: participation, participation, participation.

BUT, and I believe this is where our profession has gone badly wrong, not participation in the way we have seen it applied recently. We took a wrong turn at the turn of the century when there was a 'Renaissance'. We subsequently wasted £200m on museum access projects for the great unwashed to try and make ourselves relevant. How much more money do we need to spend before we realise that at the end of the first decade its just the same deluded people who continue to visit us. I would compare Renaissance approach to the 'war on drugs' an un-winnable waste of money. The big mistake was to give us the money. We should have given it to non-users to spend on museums.   What a different museum sector that would have given us by 2012. Can we still achieve this in a post Renaissance world?

Given that we are still proudly irrelevant and elitist, happily sacking education staff rather than curators. Money is not coming to us (except to the 'excellent' few) and will never do so again. What is now the prime responsibility of a museum manager? To have fun and engage with non-professionals to create an environment of enjoyable learning that is relevant to modern society? No no no - our prime duty now is to preserve the past, ignore the present and forget about the future.

The constant cry of 'put more collections on show' is wrong. Put less collections on show. 90% of collections are in store being carefully preserved, it should be 100%. Objects should only be brought out upon request (in triplicate) by people who can prove that they will appreciate, understand and learn from them. Most people don't know about them, don't care about them and, if given the chance, will break them.

Access policies? Ban them. Disposal policies? Ban them. Collect, collect, collect. If its old put it in store. Industrial decline = empty warehouses = new museum stores.

You may be asking, what has that to do with participation?

By following this simple strategic approach, museums will empty themselves of 'professionals' and the lifeless clutter of objects. Instead we will create real 'warehouses of the past' lovingly cared for by professional curators in perpetuity. The money saved will then be given to non-users who can then use the empty museums for all the fun and uneducated activity that they want. At a stroke the past is much better preserved and museums become instantly relevant to 21st century society.

Participation, participation, participation? Be true to the idea!