ABSTRACT
Planning a successful, inventive and sustainable museum requires a special kind of ‘alchemy’: a distinctive blend of analytical skills, expressive thinking and creative business planning. Through iconic global case studies and a fresh, collaborative approach, the authors will present a three-stage process for a new model of museum planning. Planning begins with a need: the need to tell a story, to preserve an asset, to be more sustainable, to open up an opportunity or embody an idea. The first stage is to analyse this need, breaking it down through honest and empathetic dialogue. Then, from its constituent parts, planners can begin to build it back up, synthesising the myriad elements of the original need into a brief: a clear vision for future development. The perfect brief succinctly articulates the why, who and what is to be preserved and exhibited, as well as assumptions regarding space, people and operations. This brief is then used to inspire ideas and options for a new development. These ideas are then holistically assessed and consensus gained. The development plan is the final part of this process, a shared roadmap to the future. This document guides the project team and is used to obtain investment and create stakeholder buy-in and excitement. The plan is an interdisciplinary endeavour, fusing creative, curatorial, business, cost and operational considerations. The authors will draw on their global heritage experience and put forward inventive paradigms in museological thinking to inform this plan, from new financial models to new ways to tell stories. The role of the museum as ‘agora’, as ‘experience’, and the museum's ever shifting relationship with its audiences will underpin this fresh approach to planning a new museum.
