A NETFUL OF JEWELS: NEW MUSEUMS IN THE LEARNING AGEA Report from the National Museum Directors' Conference 1999| HOME | CONTENTS | INTRODUCTION | CREATIVE ECONOMY | WIDER WORLD | CREATING THE DIGITAL MUSEUM | TRAINING | FUNDING | AGENDA | CONCLUSIONS| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | NEW MUSEUMSFor the first time we have the opportunity to link all our learning institutions and providers - including schools, colleges, universities, libraries, adult learning institutions, museums and galleries - and more, to link them purposefully to an agenda for developing the learning society. To achieve a learning society, these links must extend in an effective way to homes, the workplace, hospitals, the high street and the street corner in the same way that public utilities like the telephone are universally available.Connecting the Learning Society: Department for Education and Employment 1997
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and galleries in the UK are extraordinarily popular and diverse. Over ninety
million visits are made yearly to our 2,500 museums. These range from small
local museums that are the expression of community enthusiasm, to great
national galleries and museums holding world famous collections. Our 44
national museums receive nearly thirty million visits, and sixty million
are made to the network of local authority, independent, university and
other institutions. Museums and galleries are among our best loved and
most used public institutions, both for people living in the UK and for
visitors from abroad.
Now, digital technologies are transforming our society. In work, in education and in the home, people are using the new opportunities. Museums can be a key part of this new future. The next century will be one of lifelong learning. Ours cannot be just an information society. Information is simply the raw material for the future. We must become a society capable of continual creativity and lifelong learning - in the family and the community, at work, in libraries, archives, schools and colleges. People will turn increasingly to museums and galleries as places for learning. How adults prefer to learn Learning through digital networks - the National Grid for Learning, the University for Industry, Community Grids for Learning and a host of other initiatives - is central to the Government's vision of the learning society. As individuals take greater responsibility for their own learning, organisations will need to respond by creating new opportunities for this. The Dearing, Kennedy and Fryer reports all recommended that we increase participation in the further and higher education system and put learning within reach of everyone throughout life. Internet use is growing faster than ever MUSEUMS AND LEARNINGThe cultural sector is our country's second education sector. For adults, museums, galleries and other cultural institutions are the most important places for learning after their own homes.The museum as a centre for digital learningThe seeds for future development are already present in today's museums:* Relevant, participatory
galleries and digital exhibits
Over ten million schoolchildren visit museums, galleries and other public arts venues each year, and museums provide many events and services especially for the formal education sector. Of visitors to museums and galleries, a third are young people in school or family groups. The Science Museum alone welcomes over 300,000 educational group visitors a year; the Tate Gallery, 115,000. One in five visitors to the Victoria & Albert Museum is a student. Museums throughout the country are finding similar trends. People learn in different
ways, and we must provide for this diversity. Most adults prefer to learn
socially, informally, at their own pace, in comfortable surroundings, and
in ways that encourage practical activity and participation. Many prefer
to learn at home, and in public cultural institutions like museums, galleries
and libraries, rather than formally. Museum collections and works of art
have a special potential to engage people and act as a catalyst for debate
and interaction with others, for personal research and enjoyment.
THE EMERGING CULTURAL NETWORKSThe publication of A cultural framework (Department for Culture Media and Sport, 1998) has provided a new impetus for the cultural sector, defining common goals. A cultural network that integrates the complementary resources of museum collections, archives and libraries, will help to take this policy forward.Collections. libraries and archives The new medium can integrate the cultural and education sectors in a way no other medium in history has done. The Department for Education and Employment's Green Paper, The learning age (Department of Education and Employment, 1997) encourages museums to contribute to provision for lifelong learning. Using the new networks, institutions including museums, galleries, libraries and archives can unite around the government's common goals of education, access, social inclusion, excellence and economic development. Enabling cultural diversity Public learning runs
throughout this policy. It is fundamental to the work of all public
cultural institutions, and it is also a primary means by which many of
their other goals are achieved. The new network will be a personal cultural
medium for the age of personal learning. Museums are at the cusp
of this emerging trend. Given the resources, they can provide much
of the varied content and many of the activities that people will demand
from the new networks, to a quality and standard that will meet and exceed
public expectations.
MUSEUMS' UNIQUE CONTRIBUTIONMuseums are open to everyone, whatever their age or background. Museums and galleries are attractive, welcoming, creative, sociable, and safe public spaces. They offer continuity, authenticity and inspiration in the new fast-moving world of overwhelming and transitory information.Celebrating cultural links People can make sense
of their cultural identities through museums. Through them, people are
encouraged to find the links and the relationships between different cultures,
and can express and celebrate diversity and connections alike. The
internet richly enhances this potential.
NEW AUDIENCES, NEW SERVICES, WIDER ACCESSMuseums and other cultural institutions are experiencing a huge and growing public interest in information about their collections, works of art, and their archives. This interest is already being fuelled and facilitated by electronic access.Museums already deal with very large numbers of public enquiries. The Science Museum, for example, handled 27,000 enquires in 1998/99; the Tate Gallery, 10,000. Even smaller museums such as the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent now receives 80% of its enquiries from North America. Many museums hold archives and libraries as well as collections, and these can generate even higher levels of interest. The Imperial War Museum receives over 80,000 off-line enquiries annually, while since 1995 the number of visits to the Public Record Office’s Family Records Centre has doubled and general enquiries trebled. Websites are equally popular. SCRAN's website has recorded 1.75 million hits in the fifteen months since its launch; the IWM, 3.3 million in its first year. The Natural History Museum website records about 150,000 individual visits monthly, the Tate Gallery, twice that number. On-site information
centres are outstandingly popular, too. About 34,000 people use The National
Gallery's MicroGallery annually; 5% (13,700) of visitors to the new National
Museum of Scotland visited its on-site multimedia room in its first four
months; and the National Maritime Museum's on-site search station receives
about 700 visitors a week, double the target number it set.
Broadening accessMany more people will be able to use museum and gallery services through the new technologies. Some museums, including those with internationally important collections, are already finding that virtual visitors now outnumber physical visitors. There is evidence, too, that electronic access increases the number of actual visitors to the museum.Virtual visits, real visitors People, wherever they are, will be able to use the electronic networks to reach out across geographical barriers to national, regional and local museums. By providing more
access points to the Community Grids and the New Library Network, museums
will provide many more places where people can use the networks. Museums
can take their share of the responsibility for ensuring that no-one
is excluded.
Providing new servicesThe new technologies offer new ways for museums to work for social inclusion. Disabled people and others subject to barriers of distance or other factors will be able to benefit from museums' networked services.Museums work for social inclusion The virtual dimension will complement and enhance encounters with real unique objects by offering a richer context, facilitating interactive services, and adding new learning dimensions. Electronic networks enable new relationships to develop between the public and their museums. Museums and galleries are social institutions in which people can come together to explore their interests as well as contemporary issues, and share their knowledge of the significance and meaning attached to material artefacts. The new networks offer new ways to achieve this. |
How adults prefer
to learn
Internet use is
growing faster than ever
BMRB International's Internet Monitor for May-September 1998 October 1998 * 44%
of homes have a personal computer
Collections, archives
and libraries
Enabling cultural
diversity
Celebrating cultural
links
Virtual visits,
real visitors
Museums work for
social inclusion
Our
transport, your transport
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