Managing Multiple Museum Audiences

More attuned than usual to my professional reading, one particular article in the July 2014 issue of Curator has prompted my thinking about museums managing multiple audiences. Museums by nature have multiple audiences designated in numerous ways: members and general visitors; locals and tourists; adults, young adults, families, and children; enthusiasts, culturals, learning families. 

In “A Place for Kids? The Public Image of Natural History Museums,” co-authors Hanne Strager and Jens Astrup report on a study to investigate the public image of natural history museums. Absent published quantitative surveys and studies, the study explores whether natural history museums are seen by the public as being primarily aimed at children and families with children. Given this question, it examines the implications for the role natural history museums might play in promoting science literacy. Conducted in Denmark, the study brings in relevant perspectives from natural history museums in the US and Europe.

While this study focuses on audience questions in natural history museums in particular, it exemplifies an important practice: investigating an unexamined audience assumption, in fact, one that operates across museum types. Based on my museum experience, perpetuating unexamined assumptions about audiences is not unusual. The authors, in fact, make such a point, “Most researchers simply observe the phenomena described above as a well known fact.” (p. 313). Often unwittingly, museums perpetuate unchecked assumptions about their audiences, sometimes embracing and acting on fuzzy or false beliefs about them. At some point, these assumptions collide: public perception of a museum shifts, audiences compete with each other, attendance drops, funding slips.   

The article surfaces some audience assumptions that can limit museums in advancing their missions and serving their audiences well. The following five axioms solidly ground museum thinking in their audiences. Some are more obvious than others, but all are interconnected and contribute to keeping a thoughtful eye on museum audiences.

-        Mission drives audience.

-        Audiences are plural.

-        Museums identify their audiences but their visitors choose them.

-        Different audience groups have different interests and expectations.

-        Meeting attendance goals is not the same as serving the audience well.

Mission drives audience. The mission as the source of a museum’s audience may be neither obvious nor logical. That’s not surprising given many mission statements that refer to a large, undifferentiated public or group such as, “people of all ages.” On the other hand, a focus on a museum’s audience does emerge when it considers its mission elements: what a museum does, how, and why. A museum can bring additional clarity to understanding its audiences when it asks, who does the community need us to serve in order for us to advance our mission? Without an understanding of its audience grounded in its mission, a museum may unwittingly aspire to be for everyone and venture onto the slippery slope of chasing the audience.

Audiences are plural. Talking and thinking about “the” audience or “our” audience implies that a museum’s audience is a single, undifferentiated group. This is a problematic approach to serving 50, 100, or 400 thousand visitors a year when they come as families, school groups, seniors, or adult enthusiasts; come on busy holidays or slow weekday mornings; visit a dozen times a year or once in a lifetime. A museum must serve multiple audience groups to deliver on its mission as well as to establish a broad enough base of support to its collection, experiences, staff, and facility. Of course which audience groups are served, which are larger than others, and how a museum serves them varies according to the museum, its mission, size, and community.

Museums identify their audiences, but their visitors choose them. The mission broadly frames who the museum’s audiences are so it can identify and learn about the groups it needs to serve well to deliver on that mission. Converting an audience group into a visitor, however, is quite a different matter and not always an easy one. Visitors don’t simply show up at a museum because they fit a museum’s audience profile, although it’s tempting to operate as if that were true. Why a museum attracts whom it does is a function of multiple factors. Research helps sort out how location, experience, relevance to everyday life, educational content, amenities, and local competition play out. Sometimes, however, a group, like young adults that a museum wants to attract just isn’t inclined to be attracted. A museum must decide how much it should stretch to engage a particular audience group and at what cost to other valued audience groups.

Different audience groups have different interests and expectations. While obvious, the implications of this can be tricky to manage. In whatever way a museum identifies its audience groups (learning families, culturals, young adults, millenials, enthusiasts), it does so around within-group commonalities that are salient to its mission and offerings. Various groups may not only have different but sometimes, competing interests and expectations. Sometimes the differences between groups and the expectations begin to drive other decisions. Internal mindsets can reinforce competition for experience or space; sacrifice appealing to one group over another; or perpetuate the idea that one group ruins the experience for others. If, however, audiences are grounded in the mission, then all audience groups are valued. The museum employs its expertise, creativity, audience research, and prototyping to expand engagement strategies capable of serving multiple audience groups–building on shared interests, encouraging collaboration, optimizing spaces and time of day.               

Meeting attendance goals is not the same as serving the audience well. A museum uses many measures to characterize its impact. Among audience-related measures, attendance is most common, characterizing a museum’s popularity and, to an extent, its access related to location and cost. Attendance is used so often we forget what it doesn’t convey. First, it doesn't reveal if these are the right people, the audience groups the museum must serve to advance its mission. Crowds of people coming through the doors is an accomplishment. When these crowds aren’t made up of priority groups or are served at at the expense of groups to whom the museum directs its mission, it is not a success. 

Finally, as important as reaching attendance goals for key audiences is, a museum must also serve its audience groups well. What this means is different for every museum, but it is necessarily a complex choreography across many time frames delivered by a many many people with great intentionality. It doesn't, and can't, happen without thoughtfully examining and updating assumptions and knowledge about the museum's multiple audience groups.

Related Museum Notes Posts

• Engaging Audiences Strategically

• Children in Museums

• Customers, Learners, Citizens

Polishing the Mission

There are many museum trends to watch and I certainly don’t track them all, or even most, of them. Nevertheless, I have a pretty strong sense that museum mission statements are generally getting more robust. Admittedly, this is based on an informal sample of museum mission statements. But it feels solid enough to explore it aloud.

I come across fewer mission statements that link predictable and well-worn phrases together and that could be interchanged with any number of similar museums. Fewer missions rely on simply stating that a museum “collects, preserves, and interprets” or “creates hands-on exhibits” for their audiences. Conversely, I see more attention to the serious business of describing the difference for a community a museum is marshaling its varied resources to make.  

A few possible reasons for stronger missions occur to me based on my museum planning work, professional reading, and observations. Museums are learning organizations; no doubt some have learned from the shortcomings of their latest missions or have been impressed by what a solid, hard working mission has accomplished for a peer institution. I am also guessing that museums have realized that the same type of mission that works for large corporations does not work for smaller non-profits with a learning at its core. Museum specialists like Randi Korn & Associates have focused on impact planning, often in relation to a museum’s mission. Finally, tough times can be good teachers. Navigating increasingly complex environments, often with declining resources while also demonstrating impact, has, I think, pushed museums to probe what being both nice and necessary means. This process involves clearly expressing a museum’s intention to be indispensable to its community in its mission. A harder working mission is a power tool in this effort.

Mission 101

Stated simply, a museum’s mission expresses its enduring purpose. Along with a vision that addresses the future and values that are beliefs guiding a museum’s actions, a mission centers a museum’s driving principles. This threesome gives meaningful direction to where a museum is headed, how it will act, and its intended impact. Among the driving principles, however, mission is the leader. Everything else–strategy, policy, practice, and program–directly or indirectly, is an extension of the mission.

Mission statements are aspirational about what a museum wants to accomplish, even if it will take decades; and meaningful change will take decades to accomplish. A mission statement answers what the museum does, for whom, how and why in a way that distinguishes the museum from other organizations that serve a similar audience in a similar way. These four elements–what, for whom, how, and why–must be aligned and work together powerfully, be relevant to the community, and position a museum to act.

• What the museum does, expressed more in terms of a vital necessity than a list or activities.

• For whom identifies who the museum must serve in order to fulfill its purpose in a meaningful way. For instance, “families of all backgrounds” designates more intentional beneficiaries than “the public.”

• How points to the meaningful change a museum believes it can help accomplish.

• Why this is important relates the museum’s intended impact to community priorities

Because museums and their communities change, missions change. At its origination a museum needs to create a mission. Momentous as this step at the start of a museum’s life is–and setting a thoughtful course is momentous–this mission will be revisited and rethought multiple times. If museums are useful and relevant, they will evolve. Their missions must also evolve to reflect this change and bring greater clarity to serving the community more effectively.

Rethinking a mission is likely when a museum engages in institutional planning, applies for accreditation, or decides on mission level change: a change in the audience, being free, or expressing a clear intention to contribute to the common good. Often museums need a mission check using the context of their current reality and strategic ambitions. More of a thoughtful review and less than an overhaul, the outcome of a mission check is an affirmation or adjustment that adds or strengthens parts.   

Burnishing and Buffing

Polished wood (Colossal)

Whether a museum is shaping its mission for the first time, rethinking it for a major expansion, or revisiting it through strategic planning, polishing the mission is an important, often overlooked step. This kind of polishing is less about shine and sparkle and more about deep honing. As with any quality material–brass, stone, wood, or silver–buffing and burnishing bring out highlights, reveal important contours, capture light, and add luster. For missions too.

Polished marble chips

I’ve seen museums including the Kidspace Children’s Museum (Pasadena) polish their missions. Following a thoughtful, extended, and inclusive process of revisiting its mission during its master planning, the Museum took time for one more step. Polishing involved additional internal discussions, several informal reviews by museum colleagues and friends, and an explication of each key part of the mission statement.

In reworking its mission, Kidspace moved from a statement that expressed a broad concern with education, a generic reference to the audience, an all-purpose outcome, and a suggestion of how the change might occur. 

Our mission at Kidspace Children’s Museum is to promote education and enrich the lives of children, families, and the community through interactive experiences in science, art, and the humanities. (2012)

The Museum arrived at a mission that centered on children. It identified specific and meaningful outcomes for them, committed the Museum to serve all children, and assigned itself a concrete role in helping to accomplish this together with the community.

 “Kidspace provides opportunities for kid-driven experiences in order to build a community that nurtures all children’s potential.” (Late 2013)

By itself, this new mission elevated the Museum’s interest in impacting children’s lives with clearer direction for how it would distinguish itself from other groups. In polishing its mission, Kidspace chose to take more direct responsibility for engaging children’s potential, shifted its concern for children’s futures as joyful, active learners, and further focused on outdoor experiences–still keeping it concise. 

Kidspace nurtures the potential of all children through kid-driven outdoor experiences, inspiring them to become joyful, active learners. (Early 2014)

In getting to a crisper and more powerful mission statement which will serve it well in shaping strategic platforms, developing policies and practices, guiding discussions, and informing resource allocation Kidspace also:

• Strengthened and aligned the big ideas which shape its work

• Developed deeper understandings and shared appreciation

• Prepared for the next steps

Strengthening and aligning the big ideas. Big ideas must also be strong, durable ideas that are well aligned. The right-big ideas are ones that demand that a museum push beyond its current capabilities and aspirations in areas it has experience, expertise, and assets and consistently excels. In the territory where a museum has significant potential to deliver value and where its community has priorities, a museum will find a productive tension that advances it on multiple fronts.

During intense discussions of missions, forceful ideas can fly up and hijack dialogue, silencing new ideas and dismissing areas where a museum has long-term interests. While compelling ideas are important, they should also be challenged with question such as: Are these the right ideas? Why? Are they us? How do we know? Do we have a recognized track record? Do we have credibility in this area? Do solid ideas stand behind our bold language?

For Kidspace, kid-driven experiences emerges as a big idea. It is roomy and serves as a container for a set of related ambitious ideas around being child-centered, recognizing children’s competence, allowing them to act on choices, inviting children to explore their talents and interests, and encouraging them to leave their mark. Kid-driven experiences also distinguishes the Museum from other organizations serving this audience.

A mission statement is stronger when one big idea engages firmly and clearly with another big idea and connects parts of the mission: what, for whom, how, and why. Nurturing all children's potential connects to kid-driven experiences in several important ways. It further distinguishes the Museum’s kid-driven experiences, grounds them in long-term value in children’s lives, and emphasizes a commitment to all children regardless of background.

Developing deeper understandings and a shared appreciation. Whatever its mission, a museum’s fundamental challenge is practicing its mission and realizing it everyday. To meet that constant challenge, a mission’s meaning must be clear among its key internal stakeholders–staff and board–whether they have lots of history with the museum or are new to the organization.

Understanding the mission’s deep meaning comes from knowing not only its words, but also their sense, significance, and shades. After a mission has been composed, unpacking its language and parts thoughtfully and collaboratively builds agreement around what the museum does, for whom, why, and how. Explicating the ideas and language of the mission develops a shared appreciation for the words that have been chosen and an understanding about those that have been omitted. Time taken to make the mission transparent helps everyone internalize it, find ways to inhabit it through their role at the museum, believe in the mission, and practice it everyday.

Some of this exploration and discussion occurs through internal reviews by committees throughout the process, listening to new perspectives from across the entire museum or from museum friends, and thinking about how to present the mission statement. It is also an opportunity to highlight connections to a museum’s past, articulate its relevance to its community, and include language or supporting ideas not included in the mission statement proper. In recording its process and completing its master plan document, Kidspace expanded on four elements in its mission statement.

-        Nurture the potential of all children

-        Kid-driven experiences

-        Inspire joyful active learning

-        Relate to the community

A back-up document valuable for staff and board orientation, background for grants, and selection criteria for initiatives and projects, these write-ups can be updated with evolving insights and current examples. 

Preparing the museum for the next steps. A museum’s mission is a platform for all it does, how it organizes for work, who it hires, and how it engages with the community. Implications of a solid mission cascade across the museum, from revising documents in order to reflect the new mission; to prioritizing programs, activities, and partnerships; to considering new impacts and measures.

Inevitably, a museum must align its mission with its work. If the previous mission statement focused on tasks such as collecting, preserving, interpreting, the museum is likely to be organized for work and results around these tasks. The same task-oriented organizational structure, teams, and working groups–as familiar and comfortable as it is–will hamper the museum when it adopts a new audience-centered mission.

Polishing the mission assists in probing the opportunities and challenges a museum will face in wholeheartedly living its mission. Kidspace must challenge itself to probe deeply what children’s potential means and to present authentic  kid-driven experiences. It must become practiced in making subtle but meaningful distinctions among experiences that truly are kid-driven and those that are superficially so. It will also need to be prepared to advocate for kid-driven experiences in the face of adults discomfort with mess, risk, and failure.

Polished petrified wood (Photo: Fox Marble)

Growing internal capacity is essential to making any progress towards a new mission. Does this museum have the capacity to be a crossroad of culture and everyday life? to connect artists and individuals? to strengthen the bonds of community? Polishing the mission is an opportunity for a museum to recognize the critical areas in which it must build internal capacity by investing in staff, building new systems, and developing new practices.

Every museum has a mission statement and virtually all have received thoughtful input and discussion from people who believe in the museum’s purpose. Few missions, however, receive the full and final polish they deserve, a buffing and burnishing that illuminates the work ahead, and transforms the museum into a gem.

Related Museum Notes Posts

• Missions That Matter

• Mission Check 

• Unpacking Nice + Necessary 

Stakeholder Engagement Audit

As I am gearing up for a strategic planning project, I have been thinking about some of the usual planning steps and how they might be charged to do more work both as a part of the planning, as well as in moving the museum forward.

Every museum has stakeholders whether or not it recognizes them, serves them well, or enlists them in the life of the museum and community. Stakeholders are the people, groups, constituencies, and institutions who are likely to affect or be affected by a museum, its vision, plans, or projects. Not every museum is deliberate about identifying, understanding and engaging its stakeholders; some approach stakeholder engagement in a generic way, without considering stakeholders and their interests in relation to the museum and its interests. This is a missed opportunity.

Along with many museums, over the years I have expanded my view and appreciation of stakeholders, ways of engaging them, relating that engagement to the museum’s long-term strategic interests, and integrating stakeholders into the museum’s culture.

Especially when a museum anticipates significant change, careful examination of its stakeholders is critical. Strategic planning is an opportunity for a museum to think realistically and deeply about its stakeholders as it sets its future course. In preparing for a major expansion–an addition, renovation, new construction, or relocation– a museum must think about expanding its stakeholders and how to activate them around its vision. 

A stakeholder engagement audit advances a museum in becoming more magnetic like the museums described by Anne Bergeron and Beth Tuttle in Magnetic: The Art and Science of Engagement. In all these situations, a stakeholder engagement audit involves the museum in listening and responding to and being inclusive of its closest partners.

Stakeholder Engagement Audit At-a-Glance

A stakeholder engagement audit is a deliberate process for studying the individuals and groups across the community who share the museum’s interests and value its work and how it involves them. Strictly speaking, this is not a plan, but it does guide planning and decisions across the museum. Through gathering information, identifying common and consistent themes, and framing initiatives, the audit assists the museum in activating a stakeholder community around a compelling idea with positive outcomes.

Each museum has its own particular emphasis for a stakeholder engagement audit: widening its circle of stakeholders, better understanding community organizations, becoming more relationship based, or sustaining involvement. Depending on how formal or extensive the audit is, it can be done by an in-house team, strategic planners as part of their scope, or a firm specializing in this work. And, whether a museum takes this on in a big or small way, doing it is more important than doing it in a particular way. Conducting a stakeholder engagement audit addresses four broad questions.

• How does the museum currently view its stakeholders and how does it engage them?

• Around what significant, strategic idea does the museum hope to engage its stakeholders?

• What can the museum learn about its stakeholders to serve them and enlist their interests?

• How can the museum move forward by activating a stakeholder community?

How does the museum currently view its stakeholders are and how does it engage them? A practical starting step is developing a current and realistic picture of the museum’s stakeholder engagement. This background work looks at the stakeholders, both internal and external, who are engaged with the museum and benefit from its efforts. Board, funders, members, and visitors usually lead the list, but there are also partners, policy makers and gatekeepers. Push for 360º engagement. Stakeholders with shared interests who don’t (yet) fit in an obvious group can be carried forward: advisors or research partners from past projects or vendors and service providers with related interests. Capture regional and national as well as local stakeholders.

As part of identifying current stakeholder groups, the museum will also note how it currently serves and engages them through events, activities, communication, benefits, etc. Keep track of these along with opportunities for increasing their involvement at each step. Typically, this set of discussions shifts between what the museum currently does and what it could do in the future. The museum may gain insights in exploring what stakeholders of peer organizations look like–a museum of comparable size in its city or another city. This can introduce fresh perspectives including new ways to look at, cluster, and engage stakeholders.

In wanting to activate a stakeholder community around a compelling idea, a museum must explore the significant idea–or ideas–around which it currently engages them. Typically this is the mission, a slogan, or what the museum considers to be its brand. Often this conversation reveals that the museum lacks clarity around the set of ideas and what it represents or it has a limited way of talking about them.  

Around what significant, strategic idea does the museum hope to engage its stakeholders?

Most museums know that its stakeholders are motivated by its focus, track record, the population it serves, or personal relationships with top leaders. But most museums are not clear about what, in particular, this means given its community, mission, audience, and peer institutions.

Clarity about its own public value precedes communicating it and aligning around it. A compelling, strategic idea that is more than a slogan serves the stakeholder audit directly; it is also critical in making the museum’s case for support, coordinating messages internally, writing grants, hiring the right staff, and achieving museum-wide alignment.

Perhaps memorable and succinct, a tagline is generally not sufficiently compelling to activate and engage groups of stakeholders. It neither lends itself to a powerful agenda nor gives the museum traction to be a catalyst for action. Generally museums must look deeper into what they bring to their communities that others also recognize and value. A compelling idea is often located at the convergence of: the mission and vision with which it currently engages stakeholders; emergent opportunities pursued with greater rigor; and community priorities.

A helpful discussion at this point focuses on how the interests it shares with stakeholders could be more focused and relevant. Stakeholder interest might be framed around: strong families; learning through play; connecting art and the creative processes; transformative experiences through art; children’s potential; or authentic experiences related to place.

Realistically, most museums will refine this focus throughout the audit process itself: starting with an idea, framing questions for stakeholders, listening for what’s important to them, and following themes and threads. If a museum is fortunate, this work will continue beyond the audit because more staff will be attuned to big, resonating ideas that connect with stakeholders.

What can the museum learn about its stakeholders to serve them and enlist their interests? Now, get ready to listen to stakeholders and think about the relationship between them and the museum.

Individual interviews and facilitated conversations incorporate stakeholder perspectives and convey the museum’s willingness to listen. While there is no set number or mix of interviews, clearly, not all interviewees should be insiders-board, staff, and good friends. Varied perspectives and voices, including outliers, generate the rich information and new insights capable of providing strong direction. Typically these interviews are not confidential so interviewers can be selected based on warmth, clarity about the purpose and message, and good listening.

Face-to-face interviews and group conversations are opportunities for understanding how the museum’s strategic idea resonates with stakeholders; whether it is clearly expressed; and how it is meaningful to them. The museum will also hear how stakeholders see themselves as partners; who they view as other stakeholders and why; how much engagement they are interested in; what a fulfilling relationship involves; and the degree and source of the museum’s credibility in its area.

Organizing and distilling information from the interviews occurs in successive steps, looking at groups and approaches; themes; strengths and challenges. Forming stakeholder groups is more than sorting by demographic or external attributes. It involves finding and articulating meaningful distinctions among groups related to mutual interests, shared connections, and preferences for engagement so the similarities within and differences between the groups are easier to see and plan for.

Clustering stakeholder groups by internal (staff and board) and external stakeholders (i.e. visitors, members, community-based partners, civic leaders, donors, media, peers, gatekeepers) is a good first sort. Readiness to play with clusters, however, helps find meaningful groups and a manageable number. Interview material and the museum’s strategic idea for engagement are tools for customizing groups around relevant and specific interests. For instance, every museum has enthusiasts, but a museum may find designating enthusiasts for the riverfront is helpful. 

Interviews also reveal recurring themes such as a lack of clarity about the museum’s strategic idea, other community priorities, perception of the museum’s track record, concern about advocacy, or interest in the work of peer institutions. These themes can add definition to stakeholder groups, inform communication, or help shape engagement.

In effect, the interviews have tested the museum’s strategic vision and how compelling and clear it is for the stakeholders it hopes will invest in it with interest, time, and resources. This feedback should guide the museum in strengthening the idea, making it more tangible or relevant, or sharpening intended outcomes.

How can the museum move forward by activating a stakeholder community? Museums typically view stakeholder engagement as broad categories of involvement supported by a variety of activities and events. Participation occurs through visiting, volunteering, and attending events; learning through training, web content, or accessing resources; sharing through word-of-mouth, media coverage, or social media; support through funding or endorsing; and networking by opening doors, or social media. While stakeholder involvement very likely presents itself as these activities, activating a stakeholder community is more than assigning stakeholder groups to types of involvement.  

Developing a strategic-level framework can help the museum consolidate the audit’s information and insights and integrate it into its work. The framework also helps build alignment among its strategic idea, approaches to serving and enlisting stakeholders, and the internal capacity needed to support stakeholder engagement. A framework might include:

An institutional statement of the museum’s strategic idea around which it intends to activate stakeholders. This becomes helpful in messaging to stakeholder groups.

A working definition of stakeholder engagement. Consistent with the museum’s strategic idea, it also identifies what stakeholder engagement helps accomplish for the museum, and highlights characteristics of the museum’s approach to stakeholder engagement, such as relationship-based, interactive, reciprocity; etc.

Three-to-four stakeholder initiatives for serving, engaging, and enlisting stakeholders. Initiatives focus on how the museum will activate engagement: opportunities it will provide; how it intends to build and sustain relationships and retain stakeholders; and the benefits it hopes to give and receive. A single initiative may involve multiple stakeholder groups.

A logic model for each initiative to lay-out activities, resources, and short and long-term outcomes. A logic model also helps adjust the museum’s internal capacity to support, implement, and monitor stakeholder engagement considering: needed expertise, responsibility for implementation, coordination, communication channels, digital resources, etc. The logic models become action plans for stakeholder engagement and tools for monitoring progress.

Just More Work?

Is an audit just more work or does it put a museum ahead strategically? Museums can’t do well for themselves or their communities without investing in their stakeholders. Any time a museum focuses on its stakeholders thoughtfully, from a variety of perspectives, and in the context of long-term interests, it will be better off. There are other benefits as well. A stakeholder engagement audit can give a sense of how large and active the museum’s base of support is; surface new questions to explore about its stakeholders; identify new stakeholder groups; strengthen relationships with stakeholder groups; and identify stakeholder activities to drop because they are not valuable.

Related Posts

• Stakeholders + Engagement 

• Stakeholder Mapping

• Audience, An Area of Enduring Focus

• Public Value: From Good Intentions to Good

Strategic Planning Notes

Recently I responded to a query on ChildMus about strategic planning and suggested a link or two from past Museum Notes posts. Scrolling through the list of posts a dozen seemed relevant and I forwarded them. A few days later I thought this same set of posts might also be helpful to other museums setting out on strategic planning. Below are those posts, grouped into typical strategic planning steps.

Preparation: Preplanning gives a solid boost to the process; it helps right-size the scope, gets the necessary players in place, and removes some of the bumps that are inevitable in planning. Start with:

• Planning to Plan

Community Context All planning takes place in a larger context. In strategic planning, awareness of the community context is critical for understanding relevant environmental forces, how the museum might respond, and the role it might play in the community.

• Unpacking Nice + Necessary

• Public Value

Vision Statements: My approach to vision statements is decidedly externally oriented rather than internally oriented. The promise of this approach just keeps getting stronger as I see how it works with more museums, including ones of differing sizes and at various stages of development.

• Revisioning Vision Statements

• Vision and Impact

Mission and Values: Museums are guided by a shared sense of a deeper purpose that is made explicit in mission statements and expressed in the beliefs that guide behavior and work of the organization. If a museum is able to capture its distinctive value in its mission, other parts of strategic planning–and its work–will be easier.

• Mission Check 

• Missions That Matter

• Values as Commitments

Stakeholders: Internal and external stakeholders are the people likely to affect or be affected by the museum, its plans, and projects. Audience is a key stakeholder groups, central to a museum’s aspirations and its reason for being.  A sound and shared understanding of stakeholders and audience will assist stratgeic planning.

• Stakeholder Mapping

• Audience, an Area of Enduring Focus

For Good Measure: At its best, strategic planning invites solid strategic thinking. But not everything that seems to be strategic actually is and not every strategic planning tool supports strategic thinking. Become familiar with the various meanings of strategic that your team might be bringing to the process and look critically at how to get better thinking out of a familiar planning exercise.

• Strategic, Not Strategic

• The Trouble With SWOTs 

                                       

Creativity and Museums

Rashad Alakbarov

Creativity is an area of significant interest and importance to museums and to the museum field. 

We view creativity as enhancing our quality of life and prosperity as individuals and as a society. Considered a critical human resource, creativity provides us with skills we need to navigate the present and adapt to the future. Everyday we are exposed to messages about how the next generation’s success hinges not only on what they know, but also on their ability to think and act creatively as global citizens.

Museums reflect this importance and give it visibility with creativity in their names, missions, and brands. Museum missions aspire to develop creativity in our citizens, nurture creative thinkers, and inspire creative thinking. The works of artists across many forms inspire exhibits. Artists themselves facilitate participants in exploring the creative process. Visitors celebrate their creativity with the projects they make. Position titles highlight staff responsibility for creativity and innovation in exhibits, education, and programs. Museums see creativity as a way of being relevant and attracting visitors.

An interest in creativity is also evident across our field. AAM’s Brookings Paper on Creativity in Museums invited papers that "describe examples of creativity in any aspect of museum operations, from collections, programs and exhibitions to finance, marketing and administration–or anything in between." Independent museum professionals, Linda Norris and Rainey Tisdale, are writing a book on creative practices in museums, sharing the process on their website and blog, Museums and Creative Practice.

Museums are exceptionally well positioned to cultivate creativity in visitors, learners, staff, volunteers, and even across their communities. They are rich in objects that often have emerged from the creative energies of artists, inventors, and innovators. Delightful and intriguing combinations of objects are presented in their innovative and compelling settings. Museum experiences allow learners to engage in open-ended and self-directed exploration of settings and exhibits based on personal choice and interests. In fact, museums regularly and often do creative things through the work of creative people.

Aligned for Creativity

The need, interest, and capacity for museums to be agents for creativity seem to be present and well aligned. Yet, in spite of this, I have found little evidence of the underlying work that provides the clarity and accountability for museums to promote themselves as centers for creativity or their offerings as cultivating creativity. What conceptual frameworks are providing the philosophical or research backdrop to support and guide a museum’s wholehearted commitment to creativity? Are museums with creativity in their names, missions and values also articulating the nature and extent of their interest in creativity, its value to their community, and connecting their response? Are museums with centers for creativity or programs that build creativity confidence or offer creativity resources for teachers guided by creativity frameworks grounded in research, that articulate their specific approach, describe what creativity looks like for their audiences, or identify their intended impact?

Where I am able to find evidence of this kind of background work, it is interesting and focused. Given the emphasis on creativity across so many museums–history, art, natural history, science, and children’s–including museums of creativity and innovation, however, the examples feel slim.

Since the early 1950’s creativity has been central to the pedagogy of the Municipal Infant-Toddler Centers and Preschools of Reggio Emilia (IT). Based in theory, reinterpreted through various perspectives, and alert to myths surrounding creativity, the schools value creativity as emerging from daily experience, a characteristic of thinking, knowing, and making choices. For more than 60 years, the schools have been following a set of ideas to understand how they might be revised and how they might be expressed through children’s creative thinking and creative behavior. These ideas, while evolving, are touchstones for significant work.

The Bay Area Discovery Museum (CA) has an expressed commitment to nurturing childhood creativity that is stated in its mission. The Museum’s rationale for focusing on childhood creativity, its definition of the creative process, perspective on creativity, and related research are posted prominently on its website. The relationship of creativity to other key ideas, including child-directed play and place-based learning, is clarified in the Museum’s Interpretive Framework and is woven throughout.

Addressing the question of clarity and accountability about creativity in another way, a group of researchers in the UK have been exploring the gap between the significant potential of exhibits to stimulate children’s creativity and an actual design methodology that fosters children's creativity.

Addressing Creativity

Museums are well positioned to be catalysts for creativity in the lives of their visitors and communities. Realizing those opportunities, however, rests on considerable work that integrates significant ideas into the life of the organization. An initial step is likely to be a set of lively conversations among staff and trustees and with partners about why creativity is valued and how it is integral to the museum’s mission, vision, and values. Informing these discussions and choices might be a literature review or a white paper on about creativity in informal learning settings. Before going very far, a museum is likely to find helpful a working definition of creativity and a shared vocabulary, even if they change with time. A museum seriously interested in advancing its interest in creativity might explore the following questions.

• How does creativity relate to other organizational priorities like science learning, art, nature, play, or natural history?
• What work on creativity is currently being done by local colleges or universities?
• What myths of creativity persist and might interfere with creativity in your museum?
• How does your museum currently encourage creativity?
• What does creativity look like in your museum–for different age groups and visitor groups (i.e. school, family, community)?
• How might staff interact with children and families around creativity?
• What partners could leverage and add value to your museum’s efforts in creativity?
• What could creativity look like as part of your museum’s everyday experience?
• What areas of intended impact around creativity are of greatest interest to your museum?
• What should a framework for creativity with related practices cover?
• How might a wholehearted commitment to creativity change your museum, its staff and culture?
• How deep is your museum’s commitment to stand for creativity?

Moving Ahead

In 2005, Chicago Children’s Museum completed a two-year study to develop Standards of Excellence in Early Learning: A Model for Chicago Children’s Museum. That process and the resulting document created significant changes at Chicago Children’s Museum by consolidating the Museum’s interests in early learning, grounding its work in research, and engaging important sectors of the local and national early childhood and children’s museum communities. Perhaps equally as significant, the project generated ripples of change in practices across children’s museums by setting an example of what articulating a deliberate focus on a community and museum priority requires.

Now, almost 10 years later, could this be the time for a similar project on creativity in museums?