Museums Current Awareness Service - Bulletin 151
Information about the Museums Current Awareness Service can be found on the Welsh Government website.
WELSH GOVERNMENT
Name change
Please note we have changed our name from CyMAL: Museums Archives and Libraries Wales to Museums Archives and Libraries Division. There is no change to staff or the work we do. There will be some
changes made to our website in the future.
TRAINING
Emergency planning: your business continuity plan
Cardiff Story, 8 September
Flintshire Archives, 9 September
Service users and change
Wrexham Museum, 8 October
Cardiff Story, 15 October
Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism launches new programme using culture to tackle poverty
The Fusion: Tackling Poverty through Culture programme will bring together Communities First and cultural bodies for the first time to engage with and inspire young people and adults who wouldn’t normally have
the opportunities to participate in culture and the arts. The initial strand of the programme was launched on 21 May in Butetown, Cardiff and establishes six Pioneer Areas in Swansea, Wrexham, Gwynedd, Cardiff, Newport and Torfaen, which will be supported to
trial new approaches which will place culture at the heart of their work with disadvantaged communities.
The Fusion programme will seek to implement the recommendations of Baroness Andrews’ Culture and Poverty report, which made a compelling case for the Welsh Government, local government, cultural organisations,
community bodies and schools to work together to ensure culture is accessible to all and can benefit our most disadvantaged communities.
Consultation: Protecting Community Assets
Do you cherish your church, do you love your library, or are you maybe just partial to your pub? From 21 May to 11 September the Welsh Government is running a consultation to gather your views on how we can
protect our community assets across Wales. This is your chance to tell us how we can help you have a say in how the local facilities that are important to you are run.
If you care about your community assets and would like to take part in our consultation then please read the full consultation document which provides extra information. Then answer the five questions included
in it.
National Survey for Wales Results 2014-15 - First Release
The National Survey for Wales results for 2014-15 have been released. The results are based on over 14,000 interviews across Wales carried out between April 2014 and March 2015
In 2014-15, the National Survey asked people about their views on arts events, museums and historic places. 58% of people had been to an arts event, 59% had visited a historic place, and 39% had been to a museum.
Those who had been to an arts event, historic place or museum were then asked how satisfied they were with their visit. 97% of people were satisfied with the arts or historic place they visited, and 96% were satisfied with the museum they visited.
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WALES
Record of Proceedings - Questions to the Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism
Wednesday 10 June 2015
What steps is the Welsh Government taking to protect our industrial heritage in west Wales?
DEPARTMENT FOR CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT
Last chance to stop Cardiff Castle vase leaving UK
Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has placed a temporary export bar on a vase designed by William Burges, one of the most original and important architects and designers of 19th century Britain, providing a last chance
to keep it in the UK. This vase is one of a suite of four designed in 1874 to be placed in the corners of the Summer Smoking Room, at the top of the Cardiff Castle’s clock tower. Two of the four vases are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the
Higgins Gallery and Museum, Bedford. The third vase remains in private ownership.
The vase was created as an integral part of one of the pre-eminent architectural and decorative commissions of the nineteenth century, and certainly the most significant in Wales. Burges’ work drew on a great
range of sources, including the arts of the Middle Ages, the Islamic world, and East Asia, and the vase is a stunning example of both his great range and skill as a designer and the eclecticism that characterises his style.
PROMOTING MUSEUMS
Longlist For 2015 Telegraph Family Friendly Museum Award Announced
Visitors told us in their hundreds where they’d had the best time at a museum. They nominated one-room volunteer-run museums; big, national museums of worldwide fame; high art galleries stuffed with Impressionists;
open air museums inhabited by costumed guides in period dress; Tudor palaces; Victorian mines; museums housed in old post offices, battlements and gunneries. Museums were nominated all over Britain, from the tip of Cornwall to Morayshire.
COLLECTIONS
Disposal from museum collections
A UK-wide group of museums funding, membership and development bodies released a joint statement on 27 March 2015 saying that they will not seek to work with museums whose governing bodies choose to sell objects
from their collections in a manner that contravenes the long-established Accreditation Standard and Museum Association Code of Ethics. The UK Accreditation partners are conscious that this statement may cause concern from museum colleagues working in Accredited
museums that there may have been changes to the Accreditation Standard or its guidance.
The UK Accreditation partners would like to confirm that:
- there has been no change to the Accreditation Standard
- the statement has been produced as a direct result of recent unethical and non-compliant sales from collections, as well as known pressures across the UK on collections
- the statement is designed to provide support to museum colleagues in their work of protecting, developing, caring for and using their collections for the long-term public benefit - there is no policy change
from any of the endorsing/author bodies
- existing guidance and advice still applies in the form of the MA Disposal Toolkit.
Campaign for good curatorship
We believe that great museums need good curators and that delivering public benefit is about effective integration of community engagement and expertise in the objects which represent that community’s heritage.
Good curators understand their collections and use this knowledge to improve the impact, value and sustainability of all of the outward-facing functions of the museum. We are inspired by the vision of museums as open, participatory places. The Campaign for
Good Curatorship is an initiative to promote the crucial role of curators and curatorship in making museums and their collections useful, relevant and sustainable for the public benefit. Our aim is to promote a positive message about this crucial role of curators
and curatorship.
DOCUMENTATION, DIGITISATION AND ICT
Please help us map examples of co-creation and participatory governance!
The pinnacle of digital engagement success is when you succeed to co-create value with your audience. Co-created value is the ultimate goal of the Digital engagement framework and in the most recent update we
introduced a tool to help you identify your potential value through co-creation.
In recent years some organisations have started to apply co-creation processes to their own development. The Derby Silk Mill invited the citizens of Derby to play a role in their redevelopment programme, a new
public library in Helsinki experimented with participatory budgeting and in Scotland everyone can adopt a monument to ensure its survival. And maybe you have done something similar!
Please help us map examples of co-creation and participatory governance in cultural heritage. Add your own case studies or cases that inspire you to our crowdmap. The outcomes of this mapping exercise are manifold.
First and foremost, hopefully it will inspire you to design and implement your own participatory practice in cultural heritage. In addition, it will contribute to the development of policy on participatory governance in Europe and potentially results in a handbook
for all of us to involve more people in our cultural heritage.
WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
Behind the Scenes at the 21st Century Museum
Get an introduction to museum studies with this free online course. How can we understand museums today? Who makes the decisions about what to put in them and whose stories they tell? Who are museums for and
why are they working to engage new audiences? How do we respond emotionally to museum objects and spaces? And how can museums play a role in the pursuit of social justice, human rights, or health and wellbeing?
In this this free online course, you will explore all of these topics through a range of inspirational case studies and thought-provoking ideas. These show how modern museums seek to impact our contemporary
world. Throughout, you will be encouraged to share your thoughts and contribute to these key questions from your own perspective.
ACCESS, LIFELONG LEARNING AND SOCIAL INCLUSION
Rules for a Playful Museum
We are delighted to be able to share these to encourage and support museums to become more playful places. Rules for a Playful Museum celebrates and promotes play in our shared public, cultural space and sets
down some key ideas for changing or improving museum and gallery approaches towards play
Launch of the Happy Museum 5-Year Plan
Since 2011 Happy Museum (HM) has brought together thinking around well-being and sustainability and investigated the particular role of museums in supporting individual, organisational and societal resilience.
It places its work firmly in the context of, and in response to, current global challenges such as climate change and social justice. In this context we believe there is a vital need to develop resilience in museums, in the individuals and communities who engage
with them and in wider society as a whole.
In late 2014 we gathered the core HM team together to look forward at the future of HM thinking and activity and to consider what our longer term plans should be. We agreed to focus our activity on the development
of a 5-year programme at the completion of we intend to disband.
The programme aims to achieve the following outcomes:
- Well-being and Sustainability are as familiar and relevant to museum thinking as Learning and Participation.
- Through a focus on Well-being and Sustainability we will have played a key part in supporting organisational resilience in the museum sector.
- In turn museums will have supported the development of resilience in their staff and communities and in wider society as a whole.
- The value of culture in developing a sustainable global future will be better recognised.
FUNDING AND AWARDS
PRISM annual reports
The Preservation of Industrial and Scientific Material (PRISM) fund awards grants towards the costs of acquisition and conservation of items or collections which are important in the history and development
of science, technology, industry, and related fields. The PRISM annual report is published in retrospect, on completion of a year's grants
RESOURCES
Early Tourists in Wales
This site contains classified extracts from over 1,200 published and manuscript accounts of tours of Wales, 1700-1900. It is being created by Michael Freeman, former curator of Ceredigion Museum, Aberystwyth.
This site will include many fully referenced quotations on over 200 different subjects about which the tourists wrote and illustrated.
SITUATIONS VACANT
Collections Curator - Cardiff Story
Full Time, salary: £19,742 - £22,937
Closing date: 03/07/2015
Can you play a key role in shaping the future of our Museum and help us tell the Cardiff Story? We are looking for an individual with a passion for museums and objects and promoting access to the stories they
tell. You will be committed to ensuring our museum and collection is a true community resource and will care for our collection to professional museum standards. You will be highly experienced in collections documentation, care and management to maintain our
Museum Accreditation status, and have skills in pro-active collecting and community outreach. You will need a relevant postgraduate qualification and significant experience. For an informal discussion please contact Victoria Rogers, Museum Manager, on 02920
788334.
NEWS - ENGLAND
Chester city centre turns into museum
A new scheme aimed at turning the whole of Chester city centre into one big museum has been launched. Artefacts normally kept in museum vaults are on display in 30 shops and businesses. The idea is to boost
sales and make more people aware of Chester's hidden treasures.
Elizabeth Bennett & Carol Whittaker
Current Awareness Service
Inclusion of third party information in the Museums Current Awareness Service does not constitute an endorsement by the Welsh Government. It takes no responsibility for the quality of third party events, products
or services featured in this Newsletter. Whilst every care is taken to provide accurate information, neither the Welsh Government nor the editor undertakes any liability for any error or omission.
If you know anyone who would like to be added to the circulation list, or would like a ‘hard copy’ of the main mailing, or if you don’t have access to the internet and need prints from the sites listed - please
contact Carol Whittaker. People who currently receive hard copies will continue to do so.
Welsh and English versions of the bulletin will remain separate in response to requests from readers.
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Elizabeth Bennett
Is-adran Amgueddfeydd Archifau a Llyfrgelloedd - Museums Archives and Libraries Wales Division
Adran yr Economi, Gwyddoniaeth a Thrafnidiaeth - Department for Economy, Science and Transport
Llywodraeth Cymru - Welsh Government
Rhodfa Padarn,
Aberystwyth,
Ceredigion,
SY23 3UR.
Ffon/Tel: 0300 062 2101
Fax/Ffacs: 0300 062 2052
