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The UK Museums Boom (and what happened next)

The Mapping Museums project is coming to an end. Please join us for the closing lecture:  ‘The UK Museums Boom (and what happened next)’

Thursday 17th November 6pm

Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck, 27 Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL (Map)

Chair: Isabel Wilson, Arts Council England

Speaker: Prof Fiona Candlin, Professor of Museology, Birkbeck

Respondent: Lisa Ollerhead, Director, Association of Independent Museums

With a drinks reception to follow

Places are free but please book here: Book Tickets

During the late-twentieth century there was a significant increase in the number of museums in the UK. Yet, apart from the highly polemic heritage debates of the 1980s and 1990s, the boom was not investigated in any detail. There was no firm information on its location or character, or indeed on what happened next.  The Mapping Museums project was devised to remedy that situation.

Over the last six years we have collected and analysed data on over 4,000 museums, and conducted detailed interviews with the founders of the new museums. In this lecture Prof Fiona Candlin, the project lead, will outline some of the things we learned.

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New Activist Museums

Please join us for an online event featuring the founders of two new activist museums.

Thursday 6 May, 6pm. Book here.

How do museums respond to the changing world around them? Featuring  the founders of two of these new museums, the Museum of Transology and the Museum of Homelessness, this panel explores the current flowering of museums which focus on social issues. New museums do not always follow established forms and may instead stage temporary exhibitions or pop-up street displays. Listen to a discussion of these new museums and tell us more about your thoughts and ideas on these innovative practices. 

Museum of Homelessness is a social justice museum. They carry out events, exhibitions and research that tackle homelessness and housing inequality. They also campaign and carry out direct practical actions. Jess and Matt Turtle founded Museum of Homelessness in 2015. 

The Museum of Transology is the UK’s most significant collection of material culture surrounding trans, non-binary and intersex lives. It aims to halt the erasure of trans lives from history by enabling trans people to curate their own stories. The MoT was awarded an Activist Museum Award for 2020–21.

This event is part of Birkbeck’s Arts Weeks 2021.

Image: (clockwise from top left) Museum of Transology Object Number: MOT/122. Photo by Katy Davies, courtesy of Fashion Space Gallery, London College of Fashion; Museum of Homelessness street museum installation, London 2020, photograph by Daniela Sbrisny; Matt and Jess Turtle; E-J Scott, photograph courtesy of Sharon Kilgannon @Alonglines Photography.

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Meet the founders and archive launch

Why would you open a museum? How would you do it? Enjoy an evening of interviews with the founders of small independent museums, hosted by the Bishopsgate Institute. Interviewees will include: Steve Allsop (Ingrow Loco Museum and Workshop), Geoff Burton (RAF Ingham Heritage Centre), and Anne Read (Museum of North Craven Life).

This online event also marks the launch of the Micromuseums Archive. The Mapping Museums project has conducted extensive interview-based research to find out how and why people set up their own museums. The recordings, transcripts, and other materials are all available from the Archives at the Bishopsgate Institute, and the evening will include a glimpse into this archive.

The event is free and will take place on Zoom. Book here: https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/whats-on/activity/archive-launch-mapping-museums

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Going Public

After three-and-a-half years of intense research and development we will be publishing the Mapping Museums project on Tuesday 17th March 2020. To mark the event we will be having a panel discussion and a drinks reception at the London Transport Museum.

Tickets are free but places are limited. Please book your seat at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mapping-museums-launch-tickets-88839716985

We are delighted to welcome four senior museum professionals to discuss the Mapping Museums database and findings, and the implications for the UK museums sector.

Panellists: 

Maggie Appleton, President of the Museums Association and CEO of the Royal Airforce Museum.  

Fiona Candlin, Director of the Mapping Museums research project.

Andrew Lovett, Vice Chair of the Association of Independent Museums, and CEO of the Black Country Living Museum.

Fiona Talbot, Head of Museums Archives Libraries Policy, The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Chair: Kate Bellamy, Director of Museums, Arts Council England. 

From March 17th the following will be available at: www.mappingmuseums.org

  • A database containing information on over 4,000 museums. This data can be browsed, searched, and visualised, and is free to use under the terms of the Creative Commons (BY) license.
  • A website that houses the database and web application, and resources linked to the project. These include a glossary, detailed information on research methods, transcripts of interviews with museum founders, podcasts, and links to the project publications. 
  • ‘Mapping Museums 1960-2020: a report on the data’. A report outlining growth and closure according to governance, subject matter, size, accreditation, and location. Available online and in hardcopy.
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Small museums in a global context

In June 2019, the Mapping Museums team ran a half-day symposium, where specialists on Brazilian, British, Canadian, and Tibetan museums talked about museums of taxidermied gophers, the importance of place, alternative histories, and the factors underpinning the expansion of the museum sector, among other topics. If you missed the event you can now watch those lectures online (click the links under each title to view the video).

From Gophers to Fear and Wonder: Studying the Small Town and Rural Museums in Alberta

Lianne McTavish

https://birkbeck.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Embed.aspx?id=6e1c5d6d-36b2-425a-bb54-aa9600c53d60

Community museums of the 21st century in Brazil: local experiences for a global reflection

Bruno Brulon Soares

https://birkbeck.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=21fb1d2f-6dd5-4389-ace6-aa7a00ae68ca

Abstracts

Lianne McTavish

In 2013, I received funding to visit and analyze the small town and rural museums in Alberta, a province in western Canada. My research assistant (Misa Nikolic) and I first strove to find and map every museum in the province, a difficult task that eventually revealed 315 organizations. We then visited, photographed, and documented over 71% of those museums, highlighting the small and officially “unrecognized” museums in remote locations. My talk describes the challenges we faced, the adventures we had, and the lessons we learned during this process, highlighting such themes as automobility, resource extraction, and Indigenous cultures.

Bruno Brulon Soares

Community museums have transformed contemporary museum practice. In management their own museums, members of communities who are not experts or museum professionals have been able to represent themselves, and to work together to transform their social environment and lived realities. This presentation takes the Museum of Removals in Rio de Janeiro and the Museum of Sexual Diversity in São Paulo as examples of small community museums that have been actively used as political devices.

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Mapping Museums Website Evaluation 2019

Can you help us to evaluate the Mapping Museums website?

Mapping Museums is a large-scale research project that is based at Birkbeck, University of London, which aims at documenting at analysing the development of the museum sector from 1960 until 2020. We have now designed a database that enables users to browse, search, and visualise information on 4,000 museums and have developed a website that contains information on our initial findings, definitions, our research process, and the interview based research (including images and transcripts).

The evaluation session is an important means for us to gain feedback about the usefulness of the website. With your input we can further improve the system before it is made publicly available.

We’d like a wide variety of people to participate in the evaluation trial especially those who work in the museum sector or in academia.

The trial session will be based on three activities:

  • A hands-on introduction to the web application.
  • Using the application to undertake a small number of information searches. This will allow us to gauge how easy the system is to use.
  • Group discussion about your experience of using the system and the ways that it could be improved and extended.

The session will take no more than two and a half hours.

There is more information about the project available at http://mappingmuseums.wpengine.com/about/.

Locations and dates

2 – 4.30pm Thursday 26th September, Room 407, Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX (the entrance is on Torrington Square)

2 – 4.30pm Friday 27th September, Room 407, Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX (the entrance is on Torrington Square)

We would be very grateful for your assistance. If you would like to participate, please email the project director at f.candlin@bbk.ac.uk 

Researchers involved in the trial session

Researchers and contact details:

  1. Professor Fiona Candlin (f.candlin@bbk.ac.uk)
  2. Professor Alex Poulovassilis (ap@dcs.bbk.ac.uk)
  3. Dr Val Katerinchuk (valeri@dcs.bbk.ac.uk)

How the data will be handled in the study

Information obtained from you through the session will be used to inform the research work of the project and subsequent research publications. All personal data collected from this study including your name and contact details will be kept confidential. No reference will be made in oral or written form that could link any participant to information they have provided to us as part of this the study.

Your participation in this study is voluntary, and you may withdraw from the study at any time.

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Participate in our web application evaluation sessions!

Can you help us to evaluate the Mapping Museums web application?

Mapping Museums is a large-scale research project that is based at Birkbeck, University of London. It aims at documenting at analysing the development of the museum sector between 1960 and 2020. So far, the team has collected a rich range of data on approximately 4000 UK museums, and we have developed a web application that enables users to browse, search, and visualise that information.

The evaluation session is an important means for us to gain feedback about the usefulness of the web application. With your input we can further improve the system before it is made publicly available.

We’d like a wide variety of people to participate in the evaluation trial especially those that are involved in the museum and archive sectors, in academia, or in digital media

The trial session will be based on three activities:

  • A hands-on introduction to the web application.
  • Using the application to undertake a small number of information searches. This will allow us to gauge how easy the system is to use.
  • Group discussion about your experience of using the system and the ways that it could be improved and extended.

The session will take no more than two hours.

There is more information about the project available at http://mappingmuseums.wpengine.com/about/.

Locations and dates:

2 – 4.30pm | October 3rd 2018 | Room 407, Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX (the entrance is on Torrington Square)

We would be very grateful for your assistance. If you would like to participate, please email the project director at f.candlin@bbk.ac.uk briefly explaining why you would like to attend. We can cover travel expenses up to £20.

Researchers involved in the trial session

Researchers and contact details:

  1. Professor Fiona Candlin (candlin@bbk.ac.uk)
  2. Professor Alex Poulovassilis (ap@dcs.bbk.ac.uk)
  3. Nick Larsson (nick@dcs.bbk.ac.uk)

How the data will be handled in the study

Information obtained from you through the session will be used to inform the research work of the project and subsequent research publications. All personal data collected from this study including your name and contact details will be kept confidential. No reference will be made in oral or written form that could link any participant to information they have provided to us as part of this the study.

Your participation in this study is voluntary, and you may withdraw from the study at any time.

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Workshop: Museums Futures in a Time of Austerity

Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury
2-4.30pm, 24th February 2018

Museum closures are a matter for concern. The austerity measures introduced under the current government have resulted in local authorities reducing funding for museums and some have been forced to close. In this workshop we examine the landscape of closure within the UK. How do rates of closure compare with previous decades and also with rates of new museums opening? What’s lost when a museum closes? And is closure always a problem? Is it really necessary to have so many museums keeping their collections for posterity?

Chair: Professor Fiona Candlin, Director Mapping Museums research team, Birkbeck

Speakers:

Dr Jamie Larkin, Mapping Museums research team, Birkbeck
Alistair Brown, Policy officer, Museums Association
Emma Chaplin, Museums consultant
Jon Finch, Re-Imagining The Harris – Project Leader

Please register in advance

Abstracts

Museum closure is often an emotive subject. While the sector can point to recent closures and their causes, there is little understanding of how such trends play out over the longer term. This talk will present preliminary findings of the Mapping Museums project concerning museum closure between 1960-2018. It reflects on the methods used to trace information on closed museums and the conceptual problems encountered during the data collection. The talk then examines long-term closure trends through a number of key characteristics (e.g. location; subject matter; governance) and considers the implications that these findings may have for the sector at large.
Dr Jamie Larkin

The Museums Association has been monitoring museum closures over the last decade. How do we define closure? How have trends around closure changed? What has the impact of austerity been? And does the issue of closure obscure other major trends in the sector at present? Alistair will examine how closure figures have been gathered, interpreted and used as an advocacy tool on behalf of the museums sector.
Alistair Brown

During 2016 Emma and her colleague, Heather Lomas, carried out research for Arts Council England and the Museums Association about how museums deal with the reality of closing a museum. She will explore what happens when closure decisions are made, the challenges that are presented and the implications this has for governing bodies, staff, volunteers, the sector and the communities that museums have served.
Emma Chaplin

Local government has been and remains the largest investor in local government across the UK. However the ongoing fall out from the financial crash of 2008, and the austerity measure put in place by national government, has led to a massive decline in the funds available to Councils.  This has led to authorities to reviewing and drastically reducing their investment in a range of services, including museums.  Therefore there has been a significant reduction of museum services in many places, and in some instances closure.  However in certain localities local authority supported museums are thriving, sometimes with increased investment.  Why do some Councils value their museums so highly, when others seem so ready to do without theirs?  Jon will use his extensive experience of working with museums across the country to explore the reasons behind Councils’ decisions to close museums.  He will use the recent closure of five museums by Lancashire County Council as a case study to consider the impact of such decisions and how local authorities might be helped to make informed decisions in the future.
Jon Finch

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AIM! I’m going to map forever…

Last week the Mapping Museums team attended the Association of Independent Museums (AIM) annual conference hosted at Chatham Historic Dockyard. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the foundation of AIM, which itself gives a good indication as to the moment when the growth of independent museums began to gather pace. As our project is working to map historical trends within the independent museums sector, the conference gave us the perfect opportunity to talk to colleagues with a long and deep involvement with independent museums and to meet those who had recently joined the organisation.

More specifically, we attended the conference for two reasons. The first was to create greater awareness of our project, which we hoped would help forge connections among both professionals and those responsible for running individual sites. The second was more prosaic; we aimed to actively gather data from delegates over the course of the two-day event and put more museums on the map!

Publicising the project

The main method of communicating Mapping Museums was a lecture as part of a session on partnerships between universities and museums. The project’s Principal Investigator, Professor Fiona Candlin, provided an overview of our project, emphasising that the museums sector currently lacks comprehensive data, and that our research would chart the growth of independent museums in relation to a host of cultural, political and economic factors.

Professor Fiona Candlin addressing attendees of the AIM conference

 

The lecture was well attended and this exposure led to both  conversations with sector staff who approached the project team later in the day and a significant increase in activity on our Twitter feed (@museumsmapping). These interactions were helpful for a few reasons. On the one hand we were able to discuss forms of practical help for the project and establish new contacts. But for the most part it was reassuring to exchange stories about the difficulties we face with issues like defining museums and knowing that these are shared problems (and frustrations!) across the sector.

It was also useful to talk to subject specialists about issues particular to their museums. Chatting to a delegate responsible for historic windmills about whether they should be counted as museums, she offered her insight that they should so long as their primary operating revenue came from visitors, rather than auxiliary uses such as producing artisanal flour. Meanwhile, delegates from a historic ship talked to us about whether it should be referred to as a museum or as a visitor attraction, and the difficulties of mapping some vessels that could be moored in different locations.

A highlight of the conference was the opportunity to meet Rob Shorland-Ball, a long-time AIM member and museum consultant who was responsible for depositing the AIM archive at the University of Leicester. By doing so he has been instrumental in helping us to record around 200 (often closed) museums that we have found looking through this material, and which we may not have located otherwise. It was great to inform him about the project and thank him for his efforts. Such interactions, particularly with historical data collection, have helped to humanise the research.

 

Delegates helping with the data collection

In terms of the practical matter of collecting data at the conference, we did this by manning a stall in the exhibition hall. Here delegates could come and talk to the project team, check to see if their museum was in our database and add (or amend) their entry if not. In particular we were eager for delegates to tell us if museums were open or closed, and to give us an idea of their subject matter. The benefit of this was that experts – people ‘on the ground’ working at these museums– could corroborate, and add to, our data.

To make the process as easy as possible we created A3 paper catalogues of our database with entries listed in alphabetical order. This meant that delegates could easily browse entries and had enough space to make additions We also had our computer database on hand in case of any problems in finding museums (for example, if the Barnstaple Museum was recorded as the Museum of Barnstaple).

AIM delegates helping with our data collection

 

In addition to this, we also had on show a prototype of our computer mapping model, demonstrated by Nick Larsson, the project’s computer science researcher. The benefit of bringing the model (and we needed to a substantially reconfigure a laptop to do so!) was that visitors could experience the whole of the research process; once they had checked their entry they were able to see how the data would be visualised and its functionality, and thus think about how they could use such a resource once it is finalised.

The vast majority of the delegates that we spoke to were very enthusiastic about the project and some returned to the stall with their friends to encourage them to participate. As a result, delegates made additions to data over 60 entries and offered suggestions of museums were hadn’t heard of. As a result, we are now aware of the John Lewis Heritage Centre, the Christchurch Tricycle Museum (1984-1999), and the Wigston Folk Museum (1981-1990)! We were also given names of regional experts and offers of help to map museums at a local level. Indeed, despite the cutting-edge technological aspect of the project, our ability to collect (often obscure) information is still largely reliant on traditional forms of networked knowledge; an old fashioned form of crowdsourcing.

New data!

 

Overall, the conference was a success on a number of fronts. Our project is much more visible as a result and we have a trove of data and helpful regional contacts. Beyond these tangible outcomes, the most encouraging aspect of the exercise was to be realise that we are working as part of a sector of professionals who have a great deal of enthusiasm for a project detailing museum history, and who are willing to do as much as they can to help add to this knowledge.

 

© Jamie Larkin          June 2017