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1. When a musingplace examines its histories in the light of current and unfolding cultural sensitivities and sensibilities there is typically a need to recalibrate its perceptions of itself within current cultural parameters and the consequent social and financial paradigms.
Communities invest in the diversity of their narratives, their memories, their discoveries plus the complexity of their intellectual and cultural property in musingplaces. In a way they are banks of a kind, keepingplaces, for those things that enable communities to navigate a 'way in the world' that is ethical, equitable and inclusive.
More and more musingplaces are ‘data banks’ of a kind which means that they store information upon which current ‘wisdoms’ can be founded.
Throughout their histories musingplaces have been mechanisms of empowerment of various kinds – socially, scientifically, culturally and at times financially. Consequently there is a constant need to embrace current knowledge systems in a context of social and cultural conversations.
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In order to be truly purposeful institutions, commensurate with various communities’ investments in them, need to be engaged with their Communities of Ownership and Interest (COI). Notwithstanding this, all too often, aspects of musingplace operations become isolated from and insulated from their COIs.
Current information technologies’ capacities to mitigate adverse outcomes will increasingly enable musingplaces to facilitate more inclusive operational structures than has been previously feasible.
More specifically there is an increasing need to accommodate a diversity of cultural sensitivities. In Australia there is a need to be alert to the diversity of cultural differences that need to be navigated with equity and driven by ethical considerations.
2. When an institution’s metrics are such that the level of subsidy per attendee is perceived as being excessive, it’s time to do an operational audit and have a rethink .
Local, State and Federal governments invest in musingplaces on behalf of their constituency. In the way superannuation fund managers run contributors' investment accounts for their future retirement there is an obligation to ensure that their investments actually deliver a dividend. It’s not so different for government and musingplaces.
It is important to be able to ‘measure’ the investment against ‘dividend’ in accord with the declared purpose. Likewise, it’s also important to take into account the range of ‘dividend types’ – fiscal, social, cultural – in judging outcomes.
When it was recognised that ‘superfund managers’ were not always operating in the service of ‘investors’ rules were changed. Ultimately investors were finally allowed to move their investments elsewhere or were given permission to self manage their superannuation investments.
When a musingplace’s performance falls short of its ‘declared purpose’ its time for:
• An operational audit that includes evidence provided by the institution COI, stakeholders and additional experts as required;
• A re-examination of the institution’s ‘purpose for being’ in a 21st C context;
• A re-examination of the institution’s Strategic Plan in consultation with its COI.
• A root and branch review of the institution’s operational model.
NB: It seems that the Upper House Inquiry delivers in part on this in regards to the Powerhouse Museum.
3. When a musingplace’s program delivery stagnates and its capacity to win public funding and corporate/private sponsorship falls short of perceived requirements to maintain momentum into the future, it’s time for change.
Local, State and Federal governments invest in musingplaces on behalf of their constituency and typically passing ‘collection stewardship’ to a governing body or trustees in acknowledgement that ‘government’ lacks the ability to deliver itself on community expectations.
In the way superannuation fund managers run contributor’s investment accounts or their future retirement there is an obligation to ensure that their investment decisions actually deliver a dividend. It’s not so different for government and musingplaces.
Public musingplaces very often draw the ‘Ivory Tower’ criticism relative to them operating in an environment of intellectual disconnection and isolated from the practical concerns of everyday life.
To the extent that this might be true, mechanisms need to be found to enable COI engagement in musingplace programming in a 21st C communications context.
Likewise similar critiques arise to do with musingplace managements’ ‘bureaucratic disconnectivity’. Similarly programming adjustments need to be made in accord with the need for accountability to COIs.
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Such critiques need to reach governing bodies and funding agencies plus sponsors and donors in open and transparent ways. That is rather than defend the status quo, adjust policy settings to respond to COI critiques.
4. When a musingplace's infrastructure reaches a point where it is perceived to be inadequate or failing to meet contemporaneous demands in some way, its time to reassess the operational model, its strategic planning and its level of COI engagement.
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The match between infrastructure capacity and an operation’s ability to deliver on its 'Performance Indicators' is an ever present concern – and its always subjectively assessed.
There will be indicators – anticipated and unanticipatable – that from time to time will come to the attention of musingplaces’s funding agencies, sponsors, donors, et al that should spark meaningful operational reviews. Moreover, COIs are likely to offer critiques of musingplace’s given their investments in them – that is fiscal, social and cultural investments.
The task of musingplaces’s governance in concert with management, and in consultation with their COI, is to determine and provide the required infrastructure needs that fit the fundamental s of the institutional ‘purpose for being’.
5. When the cultural landscape that a musingplace operates within changes it is likely that adjustments need to be made to accommodate change/s to fit the new/emerging paradigm within which the institution operates.
The 20th Century was marked by dynamic change in global, national and regional contexts. Likewise, with the advent of the so-called ‘information economy’ in the later part of the century, and unprecedented change in the 21st Century, institutional change is currently an ever present factor.
If a musingplace is to remain connected to its COI, and contribute to the COI’s placedness, ‘status quo assumptions’ are unsustainable in the end.
Given that musingplaces are the warehouses for data and information with cultural and social significances it is important that they reflect sensibilities and sensitivities that are reflective of and have currency within their cultural settings – ideally be a part of the cultural placescaping.
Consequently, change must not be avoided but in fact embraced but also planned for!
6. When perceptions of ‘value’ change, evolve and are reprioritised in the contexts of fiscal, social and cultural paradigms, past perceptions come under under pressure to adapt to and/or adopt new understandings.
Musingplace collections and their ‘keepingplaces’ are ever likely come under the scrutiny of a COI’s member/s with an eye towards having their concerns and interests prioritised more highly – sometimes downgraded even.
‘Value’ is always a subjective assessment otherwise there would be no need for a ‘marketplace’ as value would always be reliably the same, pegged and totally predictable – for example the ‘gold price’ – a quasi currency – was once pegged to the $US.
Given the inevitability of change, musingplace funders, governors and managers consistently need to be in a position to recalibrate ‘values’ relative to each other in order to deliver outcomes commensurate with current evaluations – fiscal, social and cultural.
Moreover, when value is contested there needs to be mechanisms in place to determine equitable outcomes. This presumes the inevitability of and the readiness for change.
7. 21st Century musingplaces are undergoing something of a role shift as education models and priorities change to accommodate evolving technologies and the consequent impacts upon data storage and networking opportunities.
One of a musingplace’s prime objectives is to collect and store data and information. Dependent upon what its ‘institutional purpose’ – reason for being – strategic priorities will change as will modes of operation.
When change is dynamic, musingplaces, within practical constraints, will increasingly need to be fleet-footed in order to meet changing expectations and the rate of them. Status quoism is ever likely to be tolerated less and less.
That said pragmatic and innovative decision making needs to go hand in hand. Most importantly ‘governing policies’ need to be constantly alert to change and ‘management’ needs to be more responsive than has been evidenced in the past in this sector.
Indeed, musingplaces seem to be better placed to be proactive education ‘service providers’ than there has been a demand for leading up to the current era.
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In fact, funding agencies need to be both more responsive to and alert to the shifts in musingplaces’ evolving roles relative to education and training. In fact, funding sources may well shift – or need to. Actually, musingplaces are likely to need to become ‘community enterprises’ rather than continue to be imagined as ‘cost centres’.
8. 21st Century musingplaces are being looked to for leadership in the tourism sector of Australia given the changing economic base within communities – nationally and regionally.
While a musingplace’s objectives may well have coexisting tourism implications, depending upon the institution’s Charter and its ‘purpose for being’. A tourism role might not be an automatic mission or a prioritised objective – institutional aspirations.
If a musingplace is to fulfil a tourism function it may well need distinct funding to enable it to meet such expectations. The lack of clarity in many musingplaces’s ‘purpose for being’ has within it the risk that they will deliver poorly given the divergences that are likely to come up between governance determinations and the consequent management priorities. Additionally, funding allocations, private sponsorships and earned income priorities are likely to be impacted upon.
If tourism is not a part of the purpose, why do it – and do it poorly? If tourism is a part of it, how does it get done and by whom and for what benefit? If such questions are not being asked, why not?
9. 21st Century musing places are as much corporate structures as any other organisation. Yet is seems that very often they do not truly stand alone as functioning accountable entities.
While a public musingplace exists as some form of ‘corporate entity’ very often they operate under the umbrella of another entity with some form of ‘special social licence’. Typically it’s their funding agency that auspices them and that provides them with their corporate shelter.
All this is well and good except for the fact that the institution’s ‘purposefulness’ is liable to be lost sight of and imagined as almost anything by those functioning well away from their ‘coalface’ – and understandably so. These institutions operate via the ‘public purse’ – taxpayer funding, ratepayer funding, government grants, etc. As likely as not ‘the public’ will find gaining this kind of access bureaucratically inhibiting.
This presents a problem when COIs – stakeholders et al – wishing to engage legitimately with the institution at some other level than as a visitor, whatever – say in regard to a policy/governance or management issue. Given the public status of the institution ‘the public’ has a legitimate right to transact business with the institution as people might with any other corporate entity in the public sphere – public company, charity, etc.
It needs to be said that a range of corporate modelling appears to be in play across public and private musingplaces yet some form of consistency would appear to be useful. Say if every musingplace that held a collection with associated information and data available for public use – research, education, training, etc. – were required to publicly articulate its:
• Fundamental purpose for being;
• Underlying aspirations the institution – mission, objectives, goals;
• Short and long term plans – strategic plan with success indicators articulated;
• Rationales supporting its planning; and
• Strategies employed to fulfil its purpose and achieving its aspirations;
public interests in the institution would be better served.
Many musingplaces have competent strategic plans that enable effective management of the resources invested in them. Yet it has to be said that it is not always so and that the implementation of planning is often uneven as well.
10. In a 21st C context musingplace accountability should be more straightforward given developments in public administration and advances in information technologies. Functional accountability requires a charter/constitution that puts in place the mechanisms to ensure it. Not all musingplaces have standalone charters/constitutions.
When a musingplace has a charter/constitution that meets some form of ‘public standard’ what constitutes accountability is much less contestable. Given the consistencies between charters and their strategic planning it would allow comparative assessments.
In turn all this should allow funding agencies, sponsors and donors to make more informed and comparative value judgements and especially so in regard to performance outcomes.
In the area of musingplace accountability there is a very good case for standardising their charters in a similar way to incorporated associations that are require to meet a standard in their article of association.
11. Public musingplaces’s governance models across the spectrum is uneven in that they quite often operate under the aegis government – typically State and Local. While this provides for a level of accountability often there is no perceived need to initiate a standalone purposeful charter backed up by strategic plan that designed affords credible accountability.
While many public musingplaces operate as government statutory authorities or as a subsidiary/ancilliary entity of a council or university that in turn affords a relatively high level of accountability. That tends to be so for larger institutions under the oversighting of public auditors.
While this offers governments – as funding agencies – a level of security it is apparent in some instances the purposefulness of an institution can be lost sight of.
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In such institutions the focus is upon surviving. Mostly, that translates as staying within budget constraints rather than measuring programming and outcomes against an institution’s:
• Purpose for being;
• Aspirational goals, mission and objectives;
• Current relevance of the rationales underpinning the purpose and aspirations; and the
• Effectiveness of the strategies employed to fulfil purpose and aspirations.
In order to meet contemporary community expectations and understandings there are good reasons – fiscal, social and cultural – to re-examine public musingplaces’s governance models. Consequent to that, administration systems would also need to be examined.
Current communication technologies, networking and systems plus current data storage systems and technologies have grown institutional capacities to deliver on their fundamental purposes – when and where they are articulated.
Arguably there has never been a better time to reimagine musingplaces in all their diversity. Part of that reimagining should be devoted to:
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• Developing ways to flatten bureaucratic hierarchies;
• Developing rhyzomatic interfaces between institutions;
• Desiloing of knowledge systems that provide the foundations for musingplace collections; and
• A re-examination of the ways musingplaces are owned and the ways there ownerships are understood – in lore and law.
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Ray Norman – Artist, Metalsmith, Networker, Independent Researcher, currently a Launcestonian, Cultural Theorist, Cultural Geographer and a hunter of Deep Histories. Ray is Co-Director of zingHOUSEunlimited, a lifestyle design enterprise and network offering a range of services linked to contemporary cultural production and cultural research. Ray is also engaged with the nudgelbah institute as a cultural geographer. That institute's vision is to be network of research networks and to be a diverse vehicle through which place oriented scholarship and cultural endeavours can be acknowledged, honoured and promoted.... LINK – http://raynorman7250.blogspot.com.au/
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