What does your museum role say about you?*

It is readily accepted that, in the museum world, the only people you think are normal are the ones that you don't know very well. But does the role you play in the museum say something about you? The following is based on the staff and volunteers at the Museum of Unreason. Any similarity between them and the rest of the human race is entirely coincidental.

Museum Marketing - Outgoing Alcoholic - you possess a degree and had the reputation of being rarely sober and throwing excellent parties at University. Your general belief is the job requires more of the same. You are ambitious and believe that you can drink your way to the top. Also, you believe that the marketing budget is never big enough and that if you handed over all the cash to the marketing team and employed competent sales employees 'they will come'.

Museum Sales - Paranoid Loner - you don't possess a degree but had the reputation of attending all the same parties at University as the museum marketer before dropping out. You avoid customers like the plague in order to work on the 'strategy'. As a result you have a very low golf handicap and you hate the marketing department for wasting all the museum money.

Museum IT Specialist - Uncontrollable Geek - you have no detectable personal life but are in complete command of everything that happens at the museum. Possibly foreign, or at least in possession of a language degree, because no-one can understand a word you say. You even have acronyms for acronyms. The Chief Executive comes to you for advice and does everything you say.

Museum Accountant - Fearsomely Insane - you talk softly and wield a big spreadsheet; immune to gossip, office politics and disorganisation. You are approached with trepidation and your extreme personal wealth is probably the product supreme income efficiency.

Museum Human Resources - Grim Reaper's Less Pleasant Younger Sibling - you are rarely seen, except when bad news is expected. Your ability to seemingly float along the corridors is often commented upon. Nobody has ever seen your reflection in a mirror and as a consequence you are never invited to the pub, but you know all the gossip - how?

Museum Manager - Spineless Cutthroat - you are in your job for life as you're unemployable elsewhere. You measure success by the number of meetings held and decisions avoided. But, you are still invited to the pub, if only to pay for the drinks.

Visitor Service Officer - Cheery Suicide Risk - you are perpetually torn between having a break down and sleeping with the manager to get a promotion. Your relationship with the public is 'complicated' and you feel undervalued by the senior staff. However, solace is found in excessive shopping and cocktails.

Museum Curator - Insecure with a God Complex - you are the blue riband employee of the organisation. You are the most valuable person in your own mind, but the most expendable in everyone else's. To justify your existence you simply mention 'accreditation' and 'backlog' and retreat to the stores for a week when in reality you actually are running a restaurant on Corfu.

Museum Chief Executive - A Lucky Lucky Bastard - you got to the top because you thought you would, but your inability to use a computer, or know what accreditation is, suggests you are more lucky than brilliant. You have innate good sense to move on before your cock ups are noticed and the museum is forced to close.

Museum Volunteer - The Willingly Unwilling Martyr - you know the museum wouldn't function without you, staff knows the museum doesn't function with you. You know there are useful things you do, the staff know all the things you don't/won't or can't do. You know the staff are ungrateful but you are careful to let the staff know you are doing everything for free and giving up your free time to do this.

*This blog was written sometime ago and following the latest staff review the museum volunteer is now the marketing/sales/visitor services manager, the Chief Executive has 'moved on', the accountant has retired to Worthing, the human resources manager now runs authentic ghost tours in Milton Keynes, the curator hasn't been seen for some months and the IT Specialist was actually found to be a Bulgarian immigrant looking for work who thought the museum was the local YMCA (he now runs a car washing service on the High Road). In the meantime I continue to fulfil my role as museum manager with due diligence and professionalism.

Museum Conference Proposal 2014 - We are here to save the world

As you all may be aware the Museums Association's call for conference papers closed some time ago. Sadly, the latest email to me from that 'auguste' organisation suggested that my conference proposal had been eaten by their office cat. So yet again I am forced to publish it here in spite of the fearsome feline censorship by the 'establishment'.


Cue long delay while cacophonous applause, cheering and impromptu dancing in the aisles dies down

Fellow delegates! We are all involved in some way with the management and interpretation of the past. We carefully protect, preserve, conserve, then present, educate and perhaps even (whisper it quietly) entertain the public with that past. Why? Why bother at all?

As arbiters of the past we are historians; not academic historians in their universities searching for a truth about the past based on the available evidence, but real 'public' historians. A university historian tends to reinvest this intellectual rigour and output within the academy itself. The 'truth' is shared at academic conferences and with history students. It remains in an intellectual bubble occasionally seeping out into the wider world. There is little incentive to interpret the research into an accessible format; a phrase often used is 'dumbing down'.This is why the Arts and Humanities Research Council is increasingly concerned with the 'impact' of research as a measure of output. In other words, enable the truth about the past to escape from the university ghettos and raise awareness to an audience that doesn't necessarily care about history or the past. Major museums can employ and use as consultants some of the great minds of the day to inform their developments. The rest of the museum world is not so fortunate. We can rely on our own limited research, the research of willing volunteers and occasional grants to pay for post doctoral academic input. Yet we play the key role of interpreting the past that historians aren't necessarily trained and/or willing to do.

We, the museums, are the ones delivering 'impact'. Because we deliver the past in a relaxed social environment to the widest audience that no other form does. TV documentaries are 'niche' adult offerings, not family viewing. Costume dramas are not child friendly viewing. 'Horrible Histories' is child friendly but not adult orientated. The only place where a family (and I mean that in a very broad sense) comes together to explore the past is in a museum or heritage site. In other words a museum is the only place where true public history is practised.

That's all well and good, but so what?

Within museums is the power of influence and educate beyond that of TV. We can be hands on, immersive and engaging to a point where we can make the whole general audience truly engage and CARE about the past; and if the general public cares about the past, understands the past and learns from the past then it is more likely to want to preserve that past and make better decisions about the future they want to have.

Museums can no longer rely on the public purse to support them without really trying to justifying their existence. This actually gives museum the opportunity to help preserve and conserve the past through an enhanced engagement process and deliver the social change that has always been the potential of the museum.

If you take the choice theory view that as individuals we become the decisions we make, then a good museum will help society make better decisions and therefore create a better society in the future. In the words of the Museums Association itself - museums change lives. Can the Natural History Museum help us understand climate change? Can  the Stratford Garbage Museum encourage better waste management decisions? Can the Imperial War Museum inspire peace? Can the Amsterdam Sex Museum inspire better family planning decisions? Can the Sulabh International Museum of Toilets send us round the bend? Let's up our game and change the world. So I pledge to you the Museum of Unreason will bring reason to this troubled planet - what can you promise? If we all pull together then the 55,000 museums around the world can achieve anything and help humanity and the planet towards a viable future.

So when you go to bed at night and ask yourself why are you doing this job. Let 'the very survival of the human race' be your answer; I know it is mine.

Cue stunned silence and the beginning of the future of the human race.