Re-organising the Museum Professions: Policies, Perceptions and Practices
Lead Research Organisation:
King's College London
Department Name: Education,Communication & Society
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Anwar Tlili (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Tlili A
(2010)
Mediating Science and Society in the EU and UK: From Information-Transmission to Deliberative Democracy?
in Minerva
Tlili A
(2012)
Managing performance in publicly funded museums in England: effects, resistances and revisions
in International Journal of Heritage Studies
Tlili A
(2008)
Social Inclusion and Managerialism in Publicly Funded Museums in the UK
in The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum
Tlili, A.
(2012)
Efficiency and social inclusion: implications for the museum profession
in Cadernos Sociomuseologia
| Description | The new national policy framework for museums, initiated by Government in the late 1990s, involves a social policy turn. This turn widens the operational remit of the publicly-funded museum and how it should relate to its 'outside', including the formal education sector, local communities, and a number of public and social services sharing the broad objectives of the museum as a social institution: namely, the improvement of quality of life and well-being. In parallel, museum work has been subjected to a regime of performance management aimed to steer it towards an organisational culture of measurable accountability and entrepreneurialism. This research has shown that these policy-driven measures are reshaping the meanings and realities of museum work, affecting a range of aspects, including workforce development, skills needs and gaps, the nature of the work process, the distribution of roles and resources, and the way museums relate to various stakeholders and adjacent fields. These impacts, however, are not uniform: they are mediated primarily by the factors of size and correlated source of funding. In local museums numerical targets are set by local authorities who generally seek to harness museum work, despite its perceived marginality, to local social policy priorities. In contrast, within national museums performance management is much more 'light-touch', thus allowing for a great deal of organisational and professional autonomy. Nonetheless, in larger museums key performance indicators (KPIs) can produce tensions, including those relating to competing interpretations of what the KPIs mean, and their implications for the content/mode of organisational/individual action. On the other hand, the research has found that there has been a recent shift away from the narrow focus on quantitative indicators, and towards a peer-review model of informed assessment with emphasis on capturing quality. Whilst some form of evaluating performance can be seen as legitimate and necessary on the ground that museums do not exist for themselves but for society, the performance management culture can be in tension with professional autonomy and values and a sense of professional identity. This constrains what museums can do to explore and actualise their potential and added value to culture and society. However strongly people believe in the necessity for measurable accountability and an expanded social role for museums, there is still the predominant conviction - rooted in a baseline professional value - that the collections serve as the linchpin of a coherent vision underlying the museum's organisational strategies. Re-affirming the primacy of the collections does not sit very comfortably with recent museum policies that position the public as 'the measure of all things' done by the museum. The current policy-driven organisational culture favours visitor-oriented activities and roles; this is manifest in various ways through, for example: distributed resources, recruitment, professional development and promotion/career progression opportunities. These changes create a sustainability problem with regard to the collections that affects not only the scholarship/interpretation around them, but their very maintenance and conservation. The organisational culture of museums is often caught up in a short-termist modus operandi that affects not only their strategic planning, employment and recruitment policies, but also the sustainability of community relations and the social inclusion work that the museum develops (e.g. one-off targets-driven events with no sustained follow-ups). A sustainability problem also affects the sector's need for expertise and skills that are not currently supplied through the university-based museum studies courses. The standardisation of pre-entry routes into museum work and its ostensible 'rationalisation' through postgraduate courses have, paradoxically, been coupled with growing skills gaps. Despite some recognised merits, the current mode of pre-entry professional education falls short of meeting the skills needs and gaps in the sector (e.g. context-sensitive, object-related and curatorial skills), in part due to the limited work-relevance of curricular contents and modes of delivery, and in part due to the fact that courses are often shaped less by the quality/quantity of skills the sector needs than by the organisational dynamics and stakes of academia. The need to rethink pre-entry (and even post-entry) professional education is perhaps accentuated by another conclusion from the findings: museum work is now defined more around organisation-specific dynamics than around a core cognitive and normative professional framework (however minimal and tentative) that could be seen as necessary and sufficient for entry into museum work. |
| Exploitation Route | The findings can be used to inform museum and art/cultural policies more generally both at sector and organization levels. This can happen especially in connection with the areas of education, outreach and community-related work as well as work workforce and professional development. They can also be used as a springboard for further research across different types of art organizations (not just museums and art galleries). This is something that I have already moved onto in the context of my teaching, more specifically in the context of an Master's degree programme that I created and designed in collaboration with the London Southbank Centre (MA in Education in Arts & Cultural Settings) launched in 2011. This MA programme embodies the principle of research-led teaching to the extent that its initial conception and design as well as its ongoing conduct and delivery are underpinned and driven in substantive ways by the transferrable knowledge, expertise and skills that I have gained through the ESRC project. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Description | The findings have been used and cited by both academic and professional publications. It has attracted both attention and requests from policymaking bodies in the field (the Museums Association) and museums. My research was cited in the Parliamentary Yearbook 2009 on the theme of museums. I get a high number of requests for copies of publications from the project. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2000 |
| Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Policy & public services |
| Description | Advice to inform a policy document on professional development and education for museums, produced by the committee for professional education/training of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| URL | http://icom.museum/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/professions/frame_of_reference_2008.pdf |
| Description | Advice to the UK Museums Association |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Invitation by the Science in Society (SiS) Programme of FP7 (EU Commission for Research) to an expert consultation workshop in April 2012 in Brussels. |
| Geographic Reach | Asia |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Invited consultation and advice for several museums and art organizations |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Pump-priming funding for the 'Learning with Tate' project to conduct 'Literature Review on education in art and science museums' |
| Amount | £2,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | King's College London |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 06/2012 |
| End | 08/2012 |
| Description | Seedcorn funding, Department of Education & Professional Studies, King's College London |
| Amount | £2,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | N/A |
| Organisation | King's College London |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2011 |
| End | 08/2012 |
| Description | Collaboration with Tate (a project entitled: 'Learning with Tate') |
| Organisation | Tate |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Following on from my ESRC-funded project, discussion with Dr Emily Pringle, Head of Learning Practice, Research and Policy at Tate has resulted in the conception of a research programme in collaboration with Tate whose first stage consisted of a collaborative pilot research project (supported by seedcorn funding from my institution King's College London) entitled 'Learning with Tate' on which I was PI, and also involving my colleague from my department Dr Jen DeWitt. The project was successfully completed and a dissemination event for the project took place at Tate Modern in February 2013; it was very well-received and engaged key people from the arts and informal learning professional and policymaking organizations (e.g. the Wellcome Trust, the Science Museum, the Arts Council England, the Courtauld Institute and the National Theatre). Out of this project two jointly authored papers are being finalized and soon to be submitted to peer-reviewed journals. We are currently using this project as a platform to build a case for a karger follow-up bid tied to the AHRC strategic research theme 'Science in Culture' by developing a comparative research framework on education and learning in art and science organizations. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Tate served as both a research collaborator with my colleague Dr Jen DeWitt and myself on a pilot research project 'Learning with Tate' which in many used my ESRC project and the experience and research expertise I have gained through it as a platform and backdrop. Tate also has served as a research site for our collaborative research project as well as the context of a successful dissemination and engagement event. |
| Impact | Two papers still being finalized. |
| Start Year | 2011 |
| Description | Half-day seminar in collaboration with Tate |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The 'Learning with Tate' collaboration built on my ESRC-funded project (in collaboration mainly with Dr Emily Pringle, Head of Learning Practice, Research and Policy at Tate). The ESRC-project informed this project and its result featured in many aspects of a half-day dissemination event/seminar that I co-organized with Dr Emily Pringle and led. The event was very well-received and engaged key people from the arts and informal learning professional and policymaking organizations (e.g. the Wellcome Trust, the Science Museum, the Arts Council England, the Courtauld Institute, the Imperial War Museum, the V&A, the Sorrel Foundation and the National Theatre). There was a good deal of follow-up after the seminar, including requests from people in these organizations to find out more about my previous and current research, and seek my advice in light of that with regard to their informal educational and engagement programmes. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |