Museums: The importance of collaborating
In the course of our Creative Entrepreneurship Challenge -in which we are called to provide our help with ideas in a real-life problem situation of a cultural organisation- our team (Christos Daniilidis, Charis Zarbalas, Frossini Drakouli, Danai Lyratzi, Martha Davari)visited Benaki Museum during an exhibition’s opening.
During my research for this Cultural Entrepreneurship Challenge I came across the situation that many museums do not often collaborate with other companies outside the cultural sector. For many, this is not a problem or something that needs to change. This article is here to change their mind.
The Introvert Museum
In a free and open economy that the ways of connecting are many and the idea of hubs and think tanks is strong, Museums are the ones who should lead the way to a more connecting and collaborating world. An introvert Museum cannot connect neither with the public nor with its own exhibits. Therefore, it’s time to see the Museum not only as a cultural organisation but also as a creative center, devoted to the cause of promoting art and culture.
How to come up with new collaborations
Let’s say a Museum is ready to start new collaborations and be more extrovert than before. How can its employees and executives know what to look for?
Here are some tips to organise a new plan of collaborations:
1. What are some problems that the museum is facing?
Find out how you can improve your administration’s organising tools by collaborating with new start-ups who specialise in this sector or how to eliminate heating expenses by turning the Museum into a green and environmentally responsible space.
2. What are visitors’ most demanding need that the museum is lacking?
Is it the parking space? Or maybe that the museum is not reachable by metro or train? If, for instance, this is the case, why don’t collaborate with a transportation app (e.g. Uber) in order to have exclusive offers for your visitors?
3. How can you make people’s visit more exciting?
When someone visits your museum, from a lonely visitor to a 5-member family, you want their experience to be remarkable. This is why you don’t want them to be annoyed by anything during their visit.
Let’s take for example that every weekend, the entrance lines are very long and visitors have to wait hours to get in the museum. How can you fix that through collaborations? You can hire an event organising or ticketing company (e.g. Eventora or Eventbrite) to manage your tickets and visitors easily. Then, all you will have to do is promote and communicate that people can pre-buy tickets to their favourite museum (why don’t give them a discount with this option?)
4. Except the exhibits, what other kind of art or cultural experience you want the Museum to promote?
In order to brainstorm for this, think of the people who are coming to your museum; Is it families or just people from the art world?
You can maybe organise cultural activities every Sunday for children and their families or collaborate with jazz bands to host Jazz nights every Fridays for young people.
What to expect
Collaborations are a great way to attract new people to your museum and transform it into a cultural hub rather than just a place showing exhibits.
But collaborations may sometimes not be successful or not attract the amount of people you want to; that’s okay. Either it’s a successful or an unsuccessful event or collaboration, it is always a lesson on what your next steps to be. Therefore, it needs a lot of brainstorming and testing to figure out what your target groups and audience really like. The most important thing is to not give up.
Successful Case Studies
There are lot of successful case studies of museums working together with companies or even the municipalities or the government:
1. Moscow: Museums are accepting Public Transportation cards as an entrance ticket in order to promote taking the bus and metro and not the car.
2. Finland: The Tampere Art Museum was organising its “The Young Artist of the Year” Award in cooperation with Nokia.
3. Russia: In the rather big oil boom town of Khanty-Mansiysk, the Oil & Gas Museums set its values into teaching the message of the development of environmentally responsible energy sources by Shell and Gazprom.
Museums should serve as cultural and educational hubs that in cooperation with other organisations, creative clusters, companies or even government agencies would serve as meeting points for forward-thinking and idea-sharing.
