NETWORKED QVMAG MEMBERSHIPS

RHIZOMIC INTERFACING

INTRODUCTION

The QVMAG exhibition “Growth, Change, Influence” has raised something of a minor furore amongst a component of the artists exhibited. There is nothing new in such furores and indeed cultural events without them can be likened to “soup without salt”.

If an exhibition looking at 125 years of history invested in an ‘art school’ doesn’t expose contention and controversy, or even mockery at some level, arguably it would be lacking in rigour. Smoothed over histories can only devalue the richness of stories such histories inevitably have invested in them. In short the enterprise of “smoothing over” will, as likely as not, lead to missed opportunities and/or a ‘blanding down’ at the very least.

However, all that to one side, there are standards that one might expect will be upheld in a public institution of the QVMAG’s nature, standing and implied capacity. It is especially so given the multiple millions of ‘public dollars’ invested in the institution over its own, now rather long, history.

What the current furore exposes is the level of weaknesses and failures relative to the institution’s Community of Ownership and Interest, its strategic project implementation, it’s position in the community’s imagination and in the end much of this comes down to marketing. 

Given recent events and the recent review and City of Launceston adoption of the QVMAG Review Committee's Report a review of the institution's corporate structure and the marketing paradigm it exists within would seem to be timely.

NETWORKED MEMBERSHIPS AND MARKETING

PURPOSE 

In the light of the outcome of the QVMAG Review Committee's Report and Council's recent determinations, establish a network of networked memberships to facilitate;

   • Interfaced institution wide marketing strategies;
   • Networked and rigorous scholarship, research and publication          initiatives; and
     • Inclusive and participatory program development.

OBJECTIVES

1. To grow the institution’s Community of Ownership & Interest (COI)

2. To facilitate more effective communication with the institution’s COI and beyond;

3. To facilitate more effective marketing initiatives enabling higher levels of engagement with the institution’s COI and wider audiences;

4. To enable a more dynamic research and publications program that both engages with and services the institution’s COI  and wider audiences;

5. To better resource the institution via a rhizomically networked ancillary, adjunct and associate membership;

6. To be better placed to initiate and undertake an innovative and more dynamic programs that better fit the 21st circumstance and the increasing need to generate income to sustain the institution and its research.

RATIONALE

1. The institutions Community of Ownership & Interest (COI) needs to grow in order to better reflect, and deliver upon, the 21st C aspirations and ambitions of the institution’s investors – taxpayers, ratepayers, sponsors, donors, collectors, scholars, students, et al.

2. Effective communication is an imperative in a 21st C context. Given the institution’s disparate audiences, and its diverse COI, communication networks can be expected to need to be increasingly diverse and more widely dispersed. Moreover, audiences are reachable by an increasingly diverse, non-hierarchical and rhizomically interfaced, and ever evolving, set of communications networks.

3. Effective marketing initiatives are needed to enable the institution to:

• Achieve higher levels of COI and audience engagement with the institution;
• Increase the level of audience participation and appreciation;
• Increase community and COI awareness of, and engagement with, the institution’s collections, program and projects;
• Increase community and COI awareness of, and engagement  in, the institution’s research programs, its research priorities and its publications program;
• Increase the institution’s income generating opportunities in order to sustain and grow the institution. 

4. A dynamic research program and its supporting publications –exhibitions, digital presentations, books, journals, etc. – lends credibility to the institution and at the same time generates ongoing opportunities for the institution’s COI and audiences and its researchers in order to sustain and grow the institution.

5. A rhizomically networked ancillary, adjunct and associate membership will exponentially expand the institution’s research capacity. Consequentially its COI along with the benefits flowing from this  will grow in order to sustain and grow the institution

6. Given rapidly changing circumstances, 21st circumstances, within which cultural institutions currently operate there is an undeniable imperative to be innovative. Furthermore, there is a need to have the capacity to deliver on the increased potential for more dynamic programming and an ever expanding audience reach in order to sustain the institution.

STRATEGIES

1.  Review and reform the institution’s membership and corporate structure. Accordingly, restructure the institution towards it being one where inclusive memberships are proactively facilitated and enabled in order to better reflect, and deliver upon, the 21st C cultural imperatives.

2. In recognition of the diversity, and the wide distribution, of the institution’s Community of Ownership and Interest (COI) initiate a program of development relevant to initiating a rhizomically interfacing communications network that aims to engage with every QVMAG ’member’ in some way no matter where they are physically located or are ranked within the operation.

3. Proactively review and revise the institution’s marketing strategies in ways that enable the institution, and its COI, to:

• Proactively engage and rhizomically network with the QVMAG’s various audiences in ways that enable them to participate in project development and the outcomes of these developments;
• Initiate a program of Citizen Curatorship that leads to sponsored publication outcomes, physically and digitally, in QVMAG spaces, networks and related institutions - intrastate, nationally and internationally;
• Via Citizen Curators, Curators-in-Residence, Researchers-in-residence, Writers-in-residence and related sponsorships open the institution’s and its ‘member’s’ collections – in-house & beyond – to a program of ‘publications’ – physical & digital;
• Proactively engage the institution’s COI in a diverse and interfacing research program;
•  Engage the institution’s COI in the development of income generating opportunities for the mutual benefit of members and the institution. 

4. Proactively diversify the institution’s research program and the range of its supporting publications –exhibitions, digital presentations, books, journals, etc. – towards the end of expanding the institution’s outreach in ways that generate ongoing opportunities and income benefits for the institution’s COI and audiences and its researchers alike;

5. Proactively initiate a membership recruitment program that includes:

• Appointing a research ‘college’ charged with oversighting sanctioned members’ projects, peer review processes and ethics issues relevant to them;
• The establishment of focused groups and networks – cultural production, digital technology, community history, natural science, etc. – that rhizomically interface;
• Appointing ancillary project support personnel, adjunct curators and associate researchers;

with a view to exponentially expanding the institution’s research capacity and its publication outputs.

6. Proactively initiate income generating opportunities for the institution and its membership  – staff, ancillary members, adjunct members, associate members, collectors, etc. Furthermore, establish an action group(s?) to provide advice plus marketing and technical support for income generating projects related to the project.

CONCLUSIONS

Council's, recent adoption of seven proposals presented to it by the QVMAG Review Committee sets the scene for change albeit that as yet here is no implementation plan is in place – See CoL Agenda August 24 item 11.3

There is a danger here that no action will or can be taken on the propositions presented here. Nonetheless, if management acknowledges the need for change there are limited options open to it given that what is being proffered here is a policy change and is thus the imperative of governance – CoL Aldermen/QVMAGTrustees.

However, management might well take the initiate of enlisting the support of a group of Aldermen/Trustees in the formation of action group to:

• Advocate the changes management endorses;
• Promote the need for change in the community; and
• Shepherd those changes the community and the Aldermen/Trustees endorse through the Council processes required to implement them.

QVMAG REVEIW REPORT

CITY of LAUNCESTON REPORT: QVMAG REVIEW CLICK HERE

QVMAG REVIEW 

The report makes seven recommendations following a relatively brief period of review. In essence the report acknowledges a need for change. Nonetheless, within it, and its recommendations, there is a great deal invested in the status quo. 

Moreover, despite an implied and longstanding acknowledgement for a need to change, the telegraphed ‘change’ runs the risk of further embedding the institution in the City of Launceston’s operational paradigm – and potentially counterproductively. 

For instance, any alternative to the ‘Cost Centre Paradigm’ the institution currently operates within doesn’t seem to have been given much attention. It seems to offer little in the way of preparation for the kinds of operational and entrepreneurial change that the 'musingplaces' it is projected that it should network with are currently embracing and facing, and are bound to continue to face. 

The ‘change investment’ seems to be in the kinds of operational growth that has led to the QVMAG’s current precarious sustainability. That is projected growth with the need to fund it via increased imposts on the current funding sources.

However, with that said the report does open the door that might well enable the kind of change that would allow the QVMAG to become a 21st C institution able to take its place within a national, potentially international, network of musingplaces. 

The news that Hobart's MONA is now acknowledged as the 10th most significant international ‘museum and tourism destinations’, and that ahead of MoMA New York and Tate Modern London must give encouragement to the proposition that a reimagined QVMAG can actually deliver on both its promise and potential. 

As a reinforcement to that proposition it is worth noting that a Sydney based ‘arts entrepreneur’ is about to outspend David Walsh’s spend on MONA and invest $32 million operation in a Sydney. Indeed, it is one step closer to being built with the City of Sydney set to approve the $32 million gallery and performance space in Chippendale. Read-more here:  

Taken in their totality the QVMAG recommendations do not seem to offer a trigger for implementation in the near or immediate future. To overcome this there would seem to be two options towards progressing the kinds of change flagged in the report, and that the QVMAG needs to embrace, in order to deliver on its promise and potential. 

Alternative 1:  Immediately appoint a multi member Commission or Commissioner with the authority to: 

1. Review the QVMAG’s Strategic Plan and determine an interim Strategic Plan and a ‘Business Plan’ for the immediate term;
2. Review and determine the QVMAG's operational budget and funding structure;
3. Review and determine QVMAG policy sets in the context contemporaneous imperatives in the field; 
4. Copt a network expert ‘citizen’ advisors towards achieving the above and other tasks determined by Council; 
5. Review and determine the QVMAG’s operational model and administrative structure relative to funding sources and opportunities; 
6. Establish network links with the governing bodies of other musingplace and research institutions in the Tamar/Esk region,Tasmania, nationally and where appropriate internationally; 
7. Facilitate the instigation of a QVMAG Reform Conference that draws upon the QVMAG's Community of Ownership and Interest in the widest context;
8. Generally establish the foundations for a reinvigorated institution that is able to change and meet the social, cultural and economic changes facing kindred institutions in future decades; and
9. That is provided with administrative and secretarial support from within the QVMAG. 

Alternative 2: Council, on an interim basis, immediately meet at least monthly as QVMAG Trustees in the way it does when meets as a “Planning Authority” to: 

1. Review the QVMAG’s Strategic Plan and determine an interim Strategic Plan and a ‘Business Plan’ for the immediate term;
2. Review and determine the QVMAG's operational budget and funding structure; 
3. Copt a network 'expert citizen’ advisors towards achieving the above and other tasks determined by Council operating as QVMAG Trustees; 
4. Review and determine the QVMAG’s operational model relative to funding opportunities; and 
5. Proactively fulfil the required policy determination function until a new QVMAG governance paradigm is settled upon in consultation with funding agencies in concert with the institution’s Community of Ownership and Interest.