Renaissance

2008-9 Business Plan

2008-9 will be a transitional year for Renaissance during which the Hub and the Regional Agencies will implement one-year business plans.

The Renaissance vision is of a modern, adaptable museum service, promoting learning, widening access to collections, where users are at the centre of all the museum activities. To achive this vision MLA has adapted and extended its priorities with three principle areas of activity:

Audience Development and Community Engagement
Collections Development and Use
Workforce and Organisational Development

To meet the needs of its users the 2008-9 Renaissance plan for the East of England has addressed a number of its key priorities. These include the regions:

Defining rural character
Extensive coastline
Fast growing population due to inward economic migration and growth status
Older than average inhabitants
Large Traveller Community
Pockets of deprivation and low educational attainment

SHARE stands for Support, Help and Advice from Renaissance in the East of England. This scheme, as the name suggests, is about museum professionals coming together to share expertise in a two-way process of exchange. The initial aim is to share expertise in a two-way process of exchange. The initial aim is to make consistent the offers of support from Hub staff to teh museums community across the region, and to publicise and promote this offer effectively, thereby improving skills and collections care. Long term it is hoped that this will promote networks of museum staff across the region. SHARE builds on many existing relationships between hub and non-hub staff. It provides a structure for promoting this support consistently. In the first instance this involves Renaissance funded staff across the region offering free advice and support on a range of different issues, including evaluation, conservation, documentation, marketing, display, learning and outreach as well as curatorial advice on specialist subjects. The MDO network is crucial to brokering these connections. It is hoped that the service will complement and enhance the support already available from the Curatorial Advisors Network.

For more information on the work of the East of England Renaissance Hub, visit their website.