Networked, Experimental, Open: ingredients for the museum of tomorrow.
A blogpost on why and how we created the NEO Collections toolbox.
note: The title of this blog re-interprets the original acronym NEO which stands for Nutzerzentriert (user-centric), Explorativ (explorative), Offen (open)
International Museum Day, observed on May 18 each year, is significant for the cultural sector in many ways. From social media campaigns, to focused conversations on emerging trends, there is always a lot to look forward to. A recurring theme in these conversations has been about ‘re-imagining museums’ and the ‘museum in the digital age’.
We chose to celebrate the day by scheduling the launch of the NEO Collections Toolbox. Personally, I was excited — for I think that the toolbox was a step in the direction towards building the museum of tomorrow.
Making meaningful connections with audiences and building a community, has been one of the important missions for many cultural institutions. With the rise of social media platforms, it became possible for museums & cultural institutions to engage and connect with their audiences. These platforms enabled institutions to offer their audiences a look behind-the-scenes of museum-practice, sometimes direct connections with curators and creative ways to participate in conversations. This nexus between digital platforms, museums and audiences has inspired a series of studies and research projects.
Yet, when I think of the “museum of tomorrow” — I imagine a space which goes beyond “followers” / “users” to being more networked. A place, where museums can work with their community to identify challenges and find solutions. I imagine that institutions are able to embrace their vulnerable self and experiment with approaches. I imagine, that museums are able to share these solutions and challenges with one another but also the wider sector (and not just via a LinkedIn post !!).
I imagine, embedding community-voices into digital museum practices so that our museums are a true reflection of the community they serve.
In this regard, I found NEO Collections, to have all the ingredients for the making of the museum of tomorrow.
What is the NEO Collections Toolbox ?
Before I get started on the Toolbox, here’s a question: Where does an IDEA come from? From within, or outside?
At the DigiS Summer School, where we recently shared the Toolbox, most participants responded by saying “within”.
All innovations started with an idea (from within) that refused to go away. An idea can be exciting, and it can become embedded in us. Inspiration though, can come from outside.
In that sense, the NEO Collections Toolbox hopes to be an inspiration for ideas on working with digital collections, in open, iterative and collaborative formats. The toolbox has the big mission of “enabling innovation” by sharing the experience of three institutions, but also by offering templates for the use of others.
Perhaps ‘toolbox’ isn’t the right word. But neither is toolkit or workbook. It certainly isn’t a report or documentation of the success of a 3-institution project.
So what is it? I set out with 3 objectives:
- Consolidate all knowledge & insights from the project
- Inspire & normalize the NEO approach and process
(- an experimental approach to collections
- work organically + collaboratively) - Disseminate information about adopting digital fellowships as a way to encourage the inclusion and participation of different/new voices.
The Making of the Toolbox
My initial thoughts about the NEO Collections approach centered around the digital fellowships approach undertaken by three museums — MK&G Hamburg ,Übersee-Museum Bremen & Nationalmuseum Sweden. This relatively new format has witnessed an upward trend since the pandemic.
However, unlike most fellowships, NEO Collections refrained from setting out “expected outcomes or deliverables”. This was immediately exciting to me, but as I delved deeper, it became clear to me, that what truly set NEO Collections apart was the process.
For the first version of the Toolbox, I studied two out of the three museums — MK&G Hamburg ,Übersee-Museum Bremen; the Nationalmuseum Sweden’s approach will be featured in Version 2. I learnt how the museums arrived at the very concept of residencies and fellowships to begin with. It was in essence, the process of learning, identifying knowledge gaps, inviting new voices and iterating.
Conversations with the team (Abhay Adhikari, Antje Schmidt, Marleen Grasse, Etta Grotrian) not only revealed how their individual strengths played into the project’s development, but also how their differences offered unique pathways.
One of the biggest highlights of this project I feel, is the willingness of the core team to document and share the vulnerabilities of their process.
The toolbox includes case studies that document and analyze the processes followed by the museums. It also includes templates which try to capture their iterative approach.
The Toolbox reflects the NEO values:
Just as the NEO Collections project, the toolbox too, is iterative, networked and open ;). Allow me to elaborate.
With the support of the cultural sector and fraternity, we hope to update and revise the toolbox as the project & its experiments unfold. This is also why we chose PubPub as a platform to publish the toolbox.
- using this platform to access the toolbox means, you can leave us comments and annotations which will help start a conversation & be generally helpful for other members of the sector.
- edits appear as Version 1, 2 and so on — so you can probably trace how we grow.
The toolbox, follows the NEO Collections approach also in the way that it invites diverse voices to help build further. We want to be able to create a toolbox that aids innovation for a brighter, better cultural sector. Towards this end, the toolbox will reflect updates based on feedback from the sector.
Lastly, the Toolbox offers “tools” with a granular approach. In using it, one is able to pick and choose the parts that are most suited to their needs / project.
The big question about NEO Collections : “Could you do it if you didn’t have funding?”
During the interviews with the stakeholders, I asked each one of them, this question — and they quite agreed that it would be difficult to imagine an experimental project such as this without funding.
An underlying mission for this toolbox thus became to make a case for grants that support learning and innovation in cultural institutions.
To create the museum of the future, museum professionals must have access to resources that allow them to iterate, to fail, and to share their success and failures.
Our sector has many toolkits and toolboxes, but in making this one, the hope was to create something that reflects our collective learnings and experiments & to aid institutions with templates.
I hope you will join us in fulfilling this mission.
The toolbox is not owned by a particular institution. It is shared by all three institutions — and reflects their unique approaches and experiments. It is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 International license.
