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Created: 20 November 2012

To Norwich, for the Culture Matters conference organised by Norwich HEART, part of the Shaping 24 EU project with Ghent.  Plenty of thought-provoking speakers (Loyd Grossman, Charles Landry, Donovan Rypkema amongst others), and challenges for how best to demonstrate the value of cultural heritage.  The Norwich 12 buildings (which I managed to visit most of) cover the 1100s to the 21st century and the development of civic, commercial and church buildings.  Most visually arresting?  It has to be the marble interior of the Norwich Union (now Aviva) Insurance building, but the Guildhall has carefully-constructed flint walls which are worth a close look.  Jolliest lions in the land?  The ones outside the Civic Hall.

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Created: 20 October 2012

Just back from Slovenia, after attending a UK Trade and Industry workshop on tourism and cultural heritage.  UK organisations presented their services to museums and other cultural and natural heritage organisations from across Slovenia, with a view to improving the offer to visitors and promoting the country to tourists.  Mountains, lakes, caves, salt pans, bee keeping - lots to see and do.

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Created: 12 September 2012

For those of you who are members of ICOM (International Council of Museums) - there's a feature about the evaluation training I delivered for ICOM Croatia and Muzeoforum (Slovenian Museums Association) in the August ICOM e-news.

Here in the UK, the Museums Association's Museums 2020 consultation is taking place - what should museums be like in 2020?  Amongst other things, I think they should be repositories for former technologies - the knowledge about techniques, equipment and machinery which is now "outdated".  We might well need those technologies again in the future.  In the "Curious Case of ...." exhibition at the Hancock in Newcastle (part of Stories of the World for the Cultural Olympiad, curated by young people) is a wicker fish trap from the Caribbean.  This traditional design had fallen out of use, but is now being used again as a sustainable method of fishing, as the young fish are too small to be trapped.  We need to retain these examples of technology for when our current high-tech methods cease to be viable.