UK museums are currently served by more than 30 membership groups and organisations. Here Nick Poole, Chief Executive of the Collections Trust, looks at the new trend in museums towards self-organising networks and the end of the big Association...
UK museums are currently served by more than 30 membership groups and organisations. But a recent blog post from Vanguard Technologies (http://vanguardtechnology.wordpress.com) offers a stark challenge to professional associations across all industries, both public and private:
“Your members are no longer logging on to your website because they don’t need to turn to you for the industry information you’re providing. They’ve found somewhere else. You’ve lost your authority.”
Elsewhere in the same article, the author warns “your members have found that your 25-year old newsletter and your hard-copy membership directory just aren’t enough incentive to stay engaged with your organisation”. In this modern, multi-channel world the concept of the large, authoritative Association is, it seems, coming under threat.
The museums sector is better served than most by professional associations, groups and membership networks. The Museums Association Suppliers Directory lists, among the dozens of commercial organisations offering products and services for museums, more than 30 of them.
It is a peculiar and expensive behaviour, this proliferation of small groups. Each of them has emerged over the past 20-30 years to represent a particular community of practice. Each has grown gradually, to the point at which it acquires staff requiring accommodation and equipment. Each has to fought to differentiate itself from the increasing noise of provision, either by representing specific communities or subject areas. Each is competing within a very narrow field for resources, for attention and for political influence.
But a number of recent developments are starting to indicate that this model is running out of steam. In part, this is to do with the severe financial pressure most museums are experiencing, but it actually began before the ‘Credit Crunch’ and has its root in the new attitudes and values of the current generation of practitioners.
To understand this change, we need to understand what has traditionally motivated people to pay their membership fees. Evidence suggests that these motivations are personal and individual, but that they follow a clear pattern.
Many people join simply to feel that they belong – it can be an isolating business working in a museum and the feeling of membership conveys a sense of community. Many join because they want to express their support for the sector, the desire to contribute to its development or their solidarity with colleagues. Some believe that, by supporting a particular group, they are supporting that group in promoting or lobbying for a particular aim or interest. Some are motivated by the need to develop their career, either through training or by extending their CV. At the same time, in the past, many have been motivated to join because of specific products or services, a newsletter, say, or an event.
But in recent years, all this has changed. One of the starkest changes is in the ready availability of tools and technologies which allow people to create self-organising communities. Where once it required a cash grant to set up a website, it now takes less than 10 minutes to launch a site using tools such as Wordpress and Ning.
Take the example of the Museum 3.0 community (http://museum30.ning.com) set up by Lynda Kelly in Australia. Using an existing platform, hosted for free, this community has grown to become one of the most active international fora for exchanging knowledge about current issues in museums. But Museum 3.0 carries no subscription fee and it ‘belongs’ simply to everyone that uses it.
Another fundamental shift is the basic change in editorial voice away from authority and toward consensus. Where once, membership Associations had the luxury of a monopoly on information about the sector and professional practice, it is now emerging everywhere in a free, shared and collaborative way.
This reflects a basic shift which is currently being felt throughout the media, publishing and broadcast industries. The business model of controlling information seems to be coming to an end, whereas the business model of enabling information to be shared is very much on the rise.
And this new self-publishing environment is creating an unprecedented freedom in the way people are expressing themselves. Take, for example, the blog of David G Marwell, Director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. Blogging as ‘Museum Director’ at http://mjhblog.blogspot.com/, his posts often give a personal and informative insight into the issues he is facing in managing a complex institution. Or the occasionally acerbic insights of the anonymous ‘New Curator’ at http://newcurator.com/, which deal openly and honestly with some of the most active debates in today’s museums.
Where the previous generation of professionals had to subscribe to a magazine to find out about the work of their peers overseas, here is some of the best and brightest current thinking from around the world, all available for free and, if you choose, delivered directly to your desktop via technologies such as RSS.
This new kind of publishing is exemplified in many ways by this magazine and website. Museum-iD is part of a next generation of museum channels which combine online and offline information sources and add value to them through high production values and a compelling editorial voice. And all of these developments are good for individual practitioners because they are delivering an unprecedented degree of choice.
On the political front, the way that Government and the Civil Service are beginning to open up the process of engagement is making the professional association a less and less effective mechanism for pursuing a lobbying agenda. The new currency is less about centralised influence and more about the ability to corral a significant body of consensus. Hence, one of the most influential voices in the recent Digital Britain consultation was a small community that organised a series of spontaneous ‘unconferences’ to gather the views of different regional and professional sectors.
It is telling that these ‘unconferences’ took place in free venues, were free to attend and were organised almost entirely using free tools such as Twitter. The result? The ‘unconference’ network merited its own section in the final report – something which many more ‘influential’ organisations failed to achieve.
This undermining of the business model of professional associations can be felt across their traditional range of services. While many have made good money from products such as yearbooks and gazetteers, the burgeoning movement towards open access to public data means that this information is increasingly available for free online. Where they have been able to monetise recruitment and other forms of advertising or events, they are finding themselves competing increasingly with non-sector offers and channels with a far broader reach and often lower costs.
But the fundamental problem confronting professional associations is the sheer speed of these developments. As recently as 3 years ago, a business model based on membership subscriptions was a reasonably safe bet. Today it is looking decidedly risky. As museums move into the ‘public sector recession’ over the next couple of years, this is only likely to get worse. But once these organisations reach a particular size, it becomes very difficult for them to be sufficiently agile to respond to these changes in the marketplace quickly enough to remain relevant.
All of this points to a period of bloodletting for professional associations across the spectrum in the next few years. We are likely to see a gradual attrition, first of membership services and ultimately of organisations themselves as the sector comes to terms with this new economic and professional reality. In their place, we are likely to see the rise of a new kind of service provider which exists to broker knowledge, which remains small and agile and able to support the development of and participate in self-organising networks. In this highly competitive environment, these new providers will be assessed by their relevance and the integrity, authenticity and value of their voice.
Rather than depending on membership subscriptions for revenue, they will adopt smart, open business models which leverage secondary value and investment from the public and private sectors. And the most important change of all? We are likely to see a profound shift from a world in which you belong to a professional association towards one in which they belong to you. And that can only be good for all of us.
Nick Poole - Chief Executive, The Collections Trust
http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/
Join the New Social Network for Museum and Heritage Professionals: http://museum-id.ning.com/
