Jenny Oxley, Collections Officer (Human History) at Saffron Walden Museum tells us about their Digital Transformation Journey with Culture 24.
“In November last year we joined a small cohort of museums on a Culture 24 programme called the digital Transformation Journey, led by Anra Kennedy and Alec Ward, which is designed to “kickstart a process of positive digital change within your museum.” The other museums involved were Dorking Museum, The Combined Military Services Museum (Maldon) and The Seaside Museum (Herne Bay). It was really interesting to work with museums that all had very different governance structures and ways of working, which was really thought provoking in the breakout group discussions.
The programme was largely online, combining seminar sessions and 1-2-1 coaching sessions. The programme ran between November and April and ended with visits by the course leaders to the museums involved. All the participants were enrolled onto the Mighty Networks platform and completed three online training modules in their own time during the programme. Mighty Networks also has a social media style feed, so we could post about our progress on the course and interact with the other museums in the cohort.
The programme focussed on auditing your own and your organisation’s digital skills, creating a blueprint for digital change and planning an “experiment” with new technology. A quote which really stuck with me was…“everyone wants to transform, but no one wants to change,” the concept that small consistent changes really make the difference in the process of trying to dramatically transform an organisation. It was also about recognising that digital affects every aspect of and every person in your organisation however digitally literate or not they may be, rather than perceiving digital, just as the standalone specialist projects.
As part of the programme SHARE gave us the opportunity to apply for a grant to aid us in our digital transformation. We were successful in receiving the full grant of £1,000 towards the cost of working with a web agency to re-design our website and train up our workforce to be web administrators going forward. Taking part in the programme has set us off on a clearer and more confident path. Our new look website will be launching very soon and we will then continue to experiment with digital in line with our digital strategy.”
Museums Essex 