While in the rest of the world museums are doing MuseoMix we also get to talk about it in a dedicated workshop at the 24th Annual Conference of NEMO (the Network of European Museum Organizations) whose 2016 topic is “The Economic Value of Museums”.
Why is that important?
In Karlsruhe organizations representing more than 30.000 museums are meeting to investigate how to understand how museums generate value, how that value can be transferred and made into sustainability. The conference explores the wide spectrum of the economic value of museums. Looking at the different dimensions of the economic value, such as cultural tourism, job creation, regional competitiveness and development, cooperation and the creative industries, we will discuss how museums in Europe can best open up to the manifold opportunities and engage in cooperation with other sectors.
MuseoMix is a very demanding and very challenging way of creating value. It puts museums staff through a lot. It forces them to learn new ways of interacting with their community, to exchange knowledge with alien professionals such as programmers, designers and makers, it pushes them to develop their infrastructure further, create interaction dedicated spaces, host technical community brainstorming for more than six months. It forces museums staff to do research and development and get a full understanding of new technologies and skills. Huge pain in the ass.
Expansion of the staff skill-base. Organizational change. Prototyping. Infrastructural development. Functional communication applications and creation of a common ground with new stakeholders and prospective funders and commercial partners.
These are some of the impacts on museums that MuseoMix can have. It’s worth try to understand this model better and discuss it together at this important museum expert gathering.
