We, funders of museomix, (Marie-Noéline, Stéphanie, Christophe, Yves-Armel, Julien, Samuel) met on the 13th of december. We wanted to talk about what’s next for us, see what each of us is up to, make sure we are still on the same page about what museomix is all about…
This year fast growing museomix community, with 6 local organisations, has brought many lessons and questions.
Right from the start, we thought of Museomix as a way to express an attitude toward cultural empowerement, an ambition for museums. Today, we still all fully subscribe to the initial values and common ground.
Museomix is a mouvement, a dynamic to change museums, break the status quo, accelerate changes in institutions, get away from traditionnal ways of doing things, behing walls and towards visitors. Museomix is an attemps to shift from a “showcase” and diffusionist model, to be more agile and creative in an open, collaborative and networked museum.
Even though the annual event is what makes most of Museomix, and only what most observers might notice, we know that Museomix participants experience something more : a way to try something else, a bet that museums can be approached differently and an experience to make it real. Overall our fondamental intention stays the same but we anticipate it might evolve in new shapes over time.
We think we are far from all what Museomix can bring to the table in terms of shared knowledge and experiences. Let’s look all together how to make visible and shareable all the ideas, innovations, questions and sometimes frictions that Museomix produces !
To be up to theses ambitions Museomix needs to find an organisation sustainable with an open, growing and innovative community
We all noticed a need for more lisibility and simplicity in the way Museomix works : what are the local/global links, what can be expected from whom, what are the processes that can facilitate contributions ?…
To do that, we thought of a few structural elements that should facilitate initiatives without centralising them, agile enough to keep the flow of creative energy coming from all the community members.
- funders : their main rôle is to focus on nurturing the Museomix spririt across projects and in time.
- a global coordination : not a the service, nor at the command, of local museomix communities, but a community facilitator, to articulate and network initiatives, and deal with what cannot be done on local level.
- a dynamic board of initiatives of the community : a mean to make community life more visible, to show working projects, what’s needed and to avoid energy loss with repeat work. The global coordinate makes sure the board reflect well what’s going on inside the community. This board will also make it easier for new people to see where they might want to fit in, or what they might offer to do that is missing to them.
- a mentoring program to welcome and make it easier to contribute for the first time to Museomix.
- an association, created last october. For now this only a legal tool for the global coordination, to take care of administrative affairs that cannot not be dealt with by local organisations.
In that regard, we got a proposal from the Rhone-Alpes (Lyon-Grenoble) Museomix community : they are offering to be the next “holder” (did find how to translate “porteur” in french) for the global coordination next year. Rhone-Alpes Museomix community is strong, very active and was very much involved in this year edition. They are up to be even more engaged at the global level and be instrumental in reaching these ambitions. This is an opportunity for us to get much needed ressources to set up this global coordination, and make sure it is managed all year long.
The bad news is we don’t have the budget yet to pay for coordinators, and looking for the needed finances will be one the projets involving the community. We aim to be able to recruit a “senior” coordinator (for about 3 months worth all year long) and a full time global community coordinator dedicated to operationnal matters. The good news is that R.A. community is up to the challenge to start right away and work on these essential coordination matters.
Those are open suggestions and we are calling for your feedback and we are eager to ear your own ideas to help make museomix an exciting community to be involved in.
Happy holidays everyone !
Stéphanie, Marie-noéline, Yves-Armel, Christophe, Julien, Samuel