Introducing Frankly, Green + Webb’s new monthly series as to how Museums can start to make difficult decisions and re-imagine the future.
At FG+W, we know the Museum community is having to make difficult choices and decisions. Having lost most of their income, organisations will need to decide what is essential and what isn’t. These decisions and choices will inevitably reflect the values and beliefs of the organisations and have long lasting impact.
Why does this matter?
In the early months of the Covid-19 crisis online and social was celebrated as a way to support and stay connected with audiences. Some in the sector felt that, after years of online being treated as very much an add-on, it’s time had come. Museum teams were asked to do more — often much more — and in spite of the challenges they took the chance to experiment with content and experiences. But as the crisis continues and organisations plan for an uncertain future, we will be faced with some tough decisions around funding — which digital activities we continue to support and to what extent. No matter how hard these decisions will be, for us this is a chance to imagine a different future and make positive, productive choices for our audiences, our teams and our organisations.
We will need to be clear about the value of digital technologies to our audiences (current and potential) and to our organisations. We will need to move beyond the old assumptions, check in with our values and beliefs and have better conversations.
At FG+W we’re used to talking to both museums and the people who visit them, use their services and consume their content. We are accustomed to working with these differing communities to shape decisions in ways that work for them. We know change is hard but we’ve seen from this work that provocations can help. Provocations initiate curiosity and discovery, challenge assumptions and long held beliefs, open up conversations and support better decisions. Even difficult ones. That is what we will be doing with this new series of articles and online conversations, asking:
How might we use this moment of change we are all experiencing to bring about positive change in the sector?
What
We will be sharing a series of provocations with the goal of opening up a space for curiosity, exploration, the sharing of diverse perspectives and good questions that will help us seek new evidence and ideas.
How
Each month we will announce a theme and in the first half of each month, we will set a couple of provocations. From this exploration of the questions and community discussions we will synthesise the results using our experience and write an article at the end of the month.
This process is what we’re known for but the program itself — reaching out to the community to prompt debate and conversation — is an experiment for us. We’re taking a bit of a risk because we think there’s an opportunity to use the current moment of crisis to drive real positive change in the sector.