Ave Atque Vale

New Year is a time for reflection, unless you happen to be a vampire of course. So I was leafing through past blogs and noticed the first posting justifying my last 3 years of perceptive and articulate blogging was missing. So I though I would resurrect it in some sort of Catullian Ave/Vale Janus type thingummybob.

"If you work in the museum sector in the UK you will inevitably have been part of many meetings recently that involved discussions about cuts and closures. Lots of head shaking and sighing is the order of the day.

A major rethink in the nature of museums has to go on. What should museums do? What is a museum? Is it a community resource? Is it a heritage attraction? How can we do more with less? In the end good professionals are losing their jobs.

A key museum task is the serious business of making the past relevant to the present, often in a fun and engaging way. Anyone involved in this business knows how difficult this is, especially now when the organisation is looking over your shoulder expecting value for money or income generation.

The purpose of this blog is to completely rethink the idea of museum and help professionals enjoy the underlying absurdity of managing the past. Some call it 'blue sky' thinking. I think we need some thinking that better reflects the weather in the UK.

In this country we look at the sky and know it is only going to get worse, we cannot rely on it. The only reason we go abroad is not for culture and new experiences (although that is what we tell ourselves) it is simply to look up at the sky and know that is the weather we are guaranteed for the day. However, I'm getting sidetracked.

The Cloudy Vision
However desperate the situation might be it can never be serious in the Museum of Unreason. There is no problem so intractable that can’t be solved by unreasonable thinking. Absurdity is normality."

Has anything changed? Is that vision still as essential today as it was when I stole the inspiration from Charles Handy's 1989 Age of Unreason and I quote,

"... discontinuous change requires discontinuous upside-down thinking to deal with it, even if both thinkers and thoughts appear absurd at first sight."

But has my blog changed anything? Do I still appear absurd? If so, do I need a new direction? Am I a John the Baptist or even a Frank the Museum Pantisocratist or just one of the millions of deluded bloggers clogging up the ether with irrational rationalities? And if so, should I sack yet more staff and give myself another pay rise to make myself feel better? Or instead, be nice to the Chair of Trustees for once and even learn the cleaner's name? Decisions, decisions, decisions.

I think more reflection is needed. More reflection on Mr. Handy's thesis and what this blog has achieved. Still no Museum of Car Parking Spaces. Still no inspirational Museum Association keynote speech. Perhaps 2014 is the year?


Happy New Year to you all!!