Museum curators and educators meet in Mutare

The Herald, 4 August 1998

TWENTY-ONE museum curators, educators and exhibition officers from 14 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are meeting in Mutare for a three-week workshop to explore ways of making Museums more lively and relevant to their communities.

A spokesperson of organisers of National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, Ms Rufaro Mahonde, said the workshop also sought to find ways of ensuring that local communities visited museums.

“Too often, visitors to museums are tourists from abroad or only the elite of the population.

“Museum programmes should instead address the needs of the general public to ensure that more attend by exploring ways of encouraging them to do so.

“It is the responsibility of the museums to break barriers and ensure that all enjoy this heritage,” she said.

The workshop was organised by the Rome-based International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and the Restoration of Cultural Property and the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe in the framework of the prevention in the museums of Africa 1990-2000 programme.

LESSONS FOR TODAY

Given the tough fundraising climate and the difficulties many museums have faced in driving visitors, there is need to rethink their marketing and fundraising strategies.

The biggest change museums can consider is a complete move to becoming “communities” instead of places to visit. The change from a location to a community has changed the process of driving attendance to museums through: use of social media to build an online community for the museum; and, using online communities to drive visitors to museums.

A number of museums are open at times convenient to high schools on field trips and primary care givers who opt for day trips with young children, which is great. But when museums think about attracting more visitors, it is worth bearing in mind that having a standard schedule of open hours means certain groups of people will simply not be able to visit. Hence, the need to create a flexible and agile operating time-table.

Traditionally, museums’ main focus has been on learning and public engagement. To what extent should museums be useful agents of social change, given the dynamics in cultural adjustments by societies?