HOW TO SURVIVE A PANDEMIC: MUSEUM EDITION PART ONE

Museum Innovations | Sara Fontes

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Throughout this pandemic, times have been tough. Things have looked bleak. You have been scared for yourself, friends, and family. You have been going stir-crazy locked up in your houses.

And what do we do in frightening times? When things are dark?

Photo courtesy of Rahul | Source

We look for a light in the dark.
We look for things that we can control.
We look for comfort.

When we look for comfort or something fun to do, we often look to our cultural institutions. Museums are one of those places. Through social media and technology, we can stay mostly connected right now. As almost everyone has a smart phone or a device to access the internet, it is a good and safe way to connect to a lot of people (although we must be aware that it does not connect us to everyone).

Our cultural institutions are closed right now so how do we use them to stay connected? How do we use them to feel human and humanity?

We must be creative, and many museums have done just that. Many museums are providing online content to directly combat these issues and connect with their communities. Hamilton Civic Museums, such as Dundern Castle, have been creating excellent digital content. They have shared recipes through Instagram and made videos about how to make those recipes on their Youtube channel. 

 

Family Christmas at Dundurn | Source

It’s important for museums to stay relevant to their communities during this time away so that visitors will be excited to come visit in-person when it is safe to do so. I have noticed a trend with smaller museums where all of their online and virtual programming is free. Meanwhile, larger institutions, like the Toronto Zoo, offer a mixture of paid and free online programming. While it can be hard for smaller museums to charge for their content, paid online programming would help to bring in some money during this time. Factors such as size, manpower, and popularity of a museum might affect their ability to offer both paid and free online programming. Small and medium sized museums simply have less resources available to them. Regardless of size and manpower, small museums can still take inspiration from larger museums by following trends and using social media to become more popular and perhaps get some money coming through the doors.

Many museums have taken to popular websites and apps like Twitch and TikTok to keep things more upbeat and give people a break from worrying about the pandemic. The Toronto Zoo shows a stream on twitch of different animals on different days from gorillas, to penguins to giraffes. There are a few museums on TikTok such as the MET, but one small UK museum has blown them out of the water with followers: Black Country Living Museum in Dudley, UK. Check them out: @blackcountrymuseum!

Nothing like a bit of chloroform to get you through a bad cold eh? #victorian #history #learnontiktok 

Social media and connectivity are not the only things that we can adopt from large or popular museums. For example, take an idea that has been widely used in zoos: adopt-an-animal programs. Why couldn’t the same be done with museum objects? To adopt a museum object for a year (or two or five) could help pay for its conservation and donors could see first, before anyone else, photos of what it looks like during the conservation process. While I have scoured the internet I have yet to find a museum running a program like this or similarly titled. I do not believe, however, that no one else has ever thought of this idea but perhaps they go about it in different ways or do not advertise it beyond donations. This pandemic has pushed museums to find innovative ways to keep people connected and interested in their programming, and I'm looking forward to uncovering those innovations in future articles.

Thank you to Mallory Mahon and Jefimija Vujcic for sharing the Toronto Zoo twitch stream and the Black Country Museum TikTok respectively.