CultureLabel

We recently hosted a private dinner and discussion for 15 innovative senior cultural managers and policy professionals from the West Midlands region. The findings are feeding into our report on the Entrepreneurial Museum for Renaissance West Midlands and the MLA, due to be released late October.

For now, here’s a snippet to whet your appetite. First, speaking from their direct experience, we asked what is the single most critical success factor for creating a culture of innovation:

• Team leadership
• Vision
• Access to larger markets – ‘conglomerate effect’
• Tenacity with vision
• Leadership passion
• Less tolerance - “Not having time to mess about”
• Staff
• Incentivise new ideas
• Create environment to bring out the entrepreneur within
• Treating visitors and the community as customers

Second, what the biggest challenges to creating this culture of innovation in the culture sector? Their responses:

• Local authorities – difficulty in keeping money once raised
• Planning (for time and budgets)
• Government spending review cuts
• Other priorities of local authorities – get on the agenda
• Visibility
• Collections – a distraction to be ‘guardians’
• Sense of having a ‘right’ to exist
• Disenfranchised museums not in control of money
• Continually attracting the visitor of tomorrow
• “DVD’s are better than museums”

Some difficult challenges, and some interesting opportunties. To be continued.