Recognised collections and the Perth Museum and Art Gallery

Museums Galleries Scotland manage a program that identifies and recognises collections of national significance to the people of Scotland that are held outside the national museums and galleries of Scotland. The Recognition process is extremely thorough and involves the organisation that owns the collection submitting a thorough report outlining not only why it is of national significance but why the theme of the collection is of importance to the people of Scotland. This is then assessed by experts and MGS staff and if it is felt to be an eligible collection it is submitted to an assessment panel who will then make the final decision.

To date there are 37 Recognised collections across Scotland ranging from archaeological material, through mining to the national football collection. Once a collection is recognised the organisation that owns it is able to apply for special funding to assist with the care, display and promotion of the collection.

One such collection is held by the Perth Museums and Art Gallery, located about an hour by train from Edinburgh. Perth is a beautiful town and I visited on a fairly rainy day- nothing like Perth in Western Australia. The museum is located in a purpose built 1930s building but the collection goes back to 1786 with the establishment of the Literary and Antiquarian Society of Perth, followed by the Perthshire Society of Natural Science in 1867. The collection has an incredibly broad scope and includes an enormous oil painting and watercolour collection, decorative arts (with a focus on local glassmakers and silversmiths), ethnography (including Australian Aboriginal and New Zealand Maori material from the early nineteenth century), a strong costume collection, natural science specimens (including some fairly recent road kills) and social history.

In the 1993 Perth suffered a major flood which included much of the collection area (493,000 gallons of water entered the building). When I was walking by the river the wall reminded me a little of the walls that have been installed around Murwillumbah for similar reasons. Within the museum, there was much work done in the collection areas to improve storage and reduce the number of opportunities for water to enter the building (including special seals on doorways including the lift).

As the space in the building is quite tight, the museum and gallery have been given funds through the recognition scheme to install numerous compactus units to increase the amount of collection they are able to store on site.

A large collection of works by Scottish colourist artist John Duncan Fergusson was acquired by the museum and gallery in 1990. An old water tower was refurbished to house the collection and opened in 1993 as the Fergusson Gallery. In 2010 a large collection of work by his partner, the dancer and choreographer Margaret Morris was donated to the gallery. Her collection includes paintings, costume and set designs, costume and an extensive photographic collection. Some of this was on display when I visited as it's the 100th anniversary of the Margaret Morris dance movement.

During my visit we discussed the value of being a recognised collection to the museum and gallery. It was felt that this status was really helpful not only by providing access to specific funding but because it helped the museum and gallery to highlight the significance of the collection to the council. A civic reception was held when the museum and gallery received Recognition and this status is highlighted on the museum and gallery's website.

Chat with Jane Robinson, Head of Museum Development

During my time at MGS I have been privileged to have one on one discussions with many of the staff members. Today I had a great chat with Jane Robinson, Head of Museum Development who outlined many of the projects and some of the future plans that MGS have for Museum Development.

Many of the MGS staff have been focused for the last week on the planning of an upcoming project Skills for the Future. This is an internship program that will see people with tertiary level education from a range of backgrounds undertaking internships with museums and galleries across Scotland. The program includes both workplace training and a series of one day workshops and it is hoped will be the beginning of a new generation of museum workers.

Like Australia, Scotland has recently developed a new curriculum. Interestingly, where Australia is working towards a national curriculum, Scotland is working on a curriculum somewhat different to that delivered in other areas of the UK. The curriculum is developed through Learning and Teaching Scotland and apparently puts the learner at the centre of the curriculum and has four key outcomes- confident individuals, responsible citizens, successful learners and effective contributors. MGS are using these concepts as a focus for museums where learning is seen as lifelong. LTS Scotland has developed an intranet for teachers and other educators called GLOW and museums are being encouraged to collaborate on material for this website.

MGS is working through a digital content strategy which focuses on four key areas- sharing, creating, delivering and preserving. This year they have focused on effective collection management systems for large industrial museums and website based issues for museums and galleries operating within local government. As is often the case in Australia, Scottish museums and galleries based within local government are confronted with a range of issues when developing websites or engaging with social networking. To work through some of these issues, MGS will be hosting a meeting with key local government museum and gallery representatives and local government IT staff. It will be interesting to hear of the outcomes of this meeting.

Earlier this year, Adrian Babbidge was the guest speaker at MGS's AGM. Adrian is a museum consultant who has done a lot of work with the Association of Independent Museums including a research study on Volunteering in Independent Museums. Adrian's study and the speech he gave at the AGM, Changing Times, Changing People outlined the changing face of volunteering, encouraging museums not to keep looking for volunteers like themselves but thinking outside the square. His research found that there are approximately 4 "groups" or generations over an 80 year period and provided an outline of the attitudes, character and values of these different generations and how they might approach volunteering. There is much food for thought with Adrian's work.

Choices for Change

I'm including some general view from around Edinburgh in this post as it's not a particularly image strong topic.

As you will have no doubt heard, the Arts Community, including museums and galleries, are dealing with a greatly changed environment across the UK. Whilst the Scottish government has yet to announce its budget for the coming year, there is great concern about the impact of budget cuts on museums across Scotland. Museums Galleries Scotland have been approached by a number of museums, galleries and local governments over the past 6 months who have been exploring alternative mechanisms for managing the museums and galleries under their care.

Museums and Galleries Scotland have responded to this by preparing a toolkit called Choices for Change, which provides a means for museums, galleries and local government with a self assessment process to analyse what services museums and galleries are delivering to their local community and their local government. While it aims to provide an opportunity to look at alternative operational models, it is equally useful for museums and galleries who want to outline to their local government the sort of services they are providing to their community. In this manner there may be information that could be drawn from this process to inform council's cultural/social planning or overall planning processes. Equally it could be useful for museums and galleries who need to outline their services/operation in situations where council is looking to change their operational structures.

Certainly this model has been developed for a Scottish environment which is somewhat different to the Australian environment, but there may be information that could be adapted for Australian situations.

An Introduction to Oral History

Today I sat in on one of Museums Galleries Scotland's workforce training events- An Introduction to Oral History. MGS run a workshop about once a month, each one focusing on a single issue. This workshop had twelve participants and was delivered by Dr Gary West, University of Edinburgh- it gave a great outline of what's involved in undertaking oral history projects. Gary ran through the planning, interview and management phases of the project and then showed us the sort of equipment that's now being used for oral history interviews.

As in Australia, solid state recorders are now the most commonly used recorders. He showed us the ZOOM H4N which has two microphones in built and the capacity for a further two external mics to be attached. These recorders take SD cards and utilise about 2 GB of memory for an hour's recording. He recommends recordings are done in .wav files (not MP3) 44.1 kHz 16 bit or 48kHz 16 bit format. At the School of Scottish Studies, where Gary is based, they store master copies of the recordings they undertake on large hard drives with further masters burned as files onto DVDs. As is the case in Australia, there is still no certainty about the longevity of storage systems for digital files.

In the afternoon, the participants were given the opportunity to test out the equipment and their interviewing skills by interviewing each other. Finally Gary showed us some material from the School of Scottish Studies digitisation project Tobar an Duachailis. This is an incredible website that provides access to the School of Scottish Studies vast archive of oral histories, music recordings and songs that go back to the 1950s. The site is still in test mode but is well worth a visit.

Museums Galleries Scotland

Well I've now had two full days in the offices of Museums Galleries Scotland and what a whirlwind it's been. I was asked to provide a brief talk to the staff about M&G NSW and the museums and galleries of NSW for the second morning so I had a very busy night pulling together something that gave an impression of us and the NSW museum and gallery scene- in 15 minutes! I'm not sure I fully did us justice but people were telling me all afternoon how interesting it was so I guess there was something there.

In putting together the talk I realised how much larger NSW is than Scotland. This is particularly striking when you consider that M&G NSW has about half the staff of Museums Galleries Scotland. MGS offer many of the same services that M&G NSW do, with the major difference being that MGS don't tour exhibitions.

MGS have a really strong interest in research which became focused a few years ago through the development of a research strategy. Following the development of the strategy MGS commissioned a study on the impact of museums on communities as a broad sweep study of this area. This study then led to two further studies undertaken in 2009- Volunteering in Museums and Cornerstones of Communities. What has been great about this research is the manner in which MGS has been able to use it to back up further work such as a wonderful glossy document written to promote the work of museums with Stakeholders also called Cornerstones of Communities and the document that promotes to government he role museums play within communities called How Museums Can Help You

The latest Saatchi exhibition- Newspeak, British Art Now opened in London last night and British Art- Show 7 is on in Nottingham. There's a bit of discussion going on about which is more representative of contemporary art in the UK today. Newspeak doesn't include any audiovisual works, presumably because these are not within the collecting interests of Saatchi which has led people to ask- is it better to have an exhibition of one man's collection or an exhibition curated by outside curators (as is the case with Show 7)? It would seem that this is also an opportunity to debate the strength of the arts in the north and south of the country.


Today I'm attending one of Museums Galleries Scotland's one day workshops, this one is focused on oral history and is being run for the second time this year as it filled up (18 people) when it was held at the beginning of the year. I'll be particularly interested to see what sort of equipment and storage methods are being used over here, as well as how people are using oral history in their museums.

Well it's now 9am on my first full day in Scotland. The sun finally turned up at about 8am and it's going to get to a rather chilly 7 degrees Celsius, brrr. It was a lovely sunny afternoon when I arrived yesterday and apparently remain sunny through to tomorrow which is great news. Yesterday the UK government announced their austerity budget so people are feeling a bit nervous right now. I'm reminded of what SA and Victoria went through in the 1990s, thanks to the collapse of some other financial institutions.

As I look out this window, I'm thinking about the connection to harbours on this journey so far. Of course Woolloomooloo, where M&G NSW is located, is right on Sydney Harbour, and is where my grandfather first arrived in Australia on WWII British naval ship and now here I am in Edinburgh looking at the harbour that is the other end of that journey.

I was really struck by the bustle of Hong Kong harbour, barges filled with containers headed for ships, ferries, little service boats, huge cruise ships etc etc. While it is a very modern place with wall to wall skyscrapers, the hills still rise up behind all of this, reminding one that there is an ancient presence behind it all. Strangely I could still imagine the trading partners of the East India Company arriving in their sailing ships and the battles of the opium wars with the ships being blown up not far from the harbour.

I'm off to catch up with the staff of Museums Galleries Scotland for lunch

Google map of journey to Scotland

To help you get an idea of where I'm travelling, I've created a google map that I'll update during the journey to give you a sense of where I've been.

You can see it on the right of this page.