{"id":28932,"date":"2021-03-12T00:26:24","date_gmt":"2021-03-12T05:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=28932"},"modified":"2021-03-12T00:26:48","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T05:26:48","slug":"museum-charts-course-for-next-four-years-with-new-home-in-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/museum-charts-course-for-next-four-years-with-new-home-in-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum charts course for next four years with new home in mind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Museums often look backward, but the Aurora Museum & Archives is very much focused on the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, curator Shawna White presented to Council the museum\u2019s plan through 2025, one which will see them grow physically within its new home within the Library Square complex as well as expand its reach through the community as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany people believe my role is confined to the past, the history of the community, but one must acknowledge that yesterday is history and to be truly robust and relevant means that I must be aware of what is happening in the community in order to preserve, promote and present the vibrancy and change as it happens,\u201d said Ms. White.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The multi-year plan as presented looks at four key factors that will define change as it happens: access, collections management and conservation, partnerships, and programs and outreach. The plan contains 15 strategies and 50 action items through to the middle of the decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ultimate goal of this first pillar is to increase the community\u2019s access to the collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the temporary closure last year of the Church Street School for the duration of Library Square\u2019s construction, Town Hall has been the Museum\u2019s nerve centre. Although the building is unable to open to the general public due to ongoing restrictions related to the global pandemic, increasing access to the collection is already underway within those red brick walls on John West Way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, the Museum transformed a wall outside Council Chambers into a mural exhibition on the Queen\u2019s York Rangers, and plans are now afoot to translate their previous exhibition, The Wardrobes of Aurora, into a mural and artefact space on Town Hall\u2019s second floor showcasing textiles, shoes and other items from Aurora\u2019s closets that now reside within their collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collections and Management will be a \u201cvital\u201d area going forward as the Museum looks towards its new digs at Library Square. Once complete, Ms. White says the archives will be housed in a new facility with a glass wall that will allow visitors not only to see the archives themselves, but conservation efforts in action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As these efforts continue, partnerships between the Museum and community organizations are set for an expansion. These partnership efforts came into sharp focus in February for Black History Month as the Museum collaborated with members of the Aurora Black Community Facebook group for a series of virtual commemorations. This will continue with their planned new exhibition, Journey to the Crossroads, which looks at immigration from its earliest days through to the 2000s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. White\u2019s plan was received warmly by Council, but it did not come without question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Michael Thompson, for instance, focused in on the Museum\u2019s proposed budget through the next five years, including plans to bring on an additional staff person in 2022 to expand education, programming and outreach. As such, he asked when the Museum plans to grow revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response, Ms. White says they currently are unable to do school programming due to space and staffing issues, and they presently \u201chave no baseline\u201d on revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to pull figures out of the air based on nothing,\u201d she said. \u201cThere will be corresponding revenue and that will be our only revenue line. The Museum is a service that is provided, much like the Library. There is no cost to residents to come in and see, but there will be costs for formal programming. The position is to bring that programmer in to develop the programs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Councillor contended it \u201cis not a bad thing\u201d to look at revenue projections over a five-year horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI get it, it\u2019s a shot in the dark, but it is always good to have targets,\u201d said Councillor Thompson. \u201cI think if we have a number there it gives us a goal to reach at. I hear you when you say it is a service [like] the Library, but when I sat on the Library Board, I still challenged the Library Board to grow revenue, even if it was just incremental in any which way because, at the end of the day, revenue you\u2019re able to generate means it is less of a requisition from the taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also asked the Museum for key performance indicators (KPIs) over the next five years to \u201cgauge the effectiveness or success\u201d of what the Museum is trying to achieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKPIs, to me, are so broadly worded and I am not sure I necessarily agree with just broadly using that word,\u201d said Ms. White. \u201cI would rather come up with specific actions and plans that are measurable, that you can look back: did we do what we said we were going to do rather than coming up with increased attendance by X amount or whatever because I can\u2019t measure that. We don\u2019t have ticket sales, we don\u2019t have a counter that comes in. It is open. I have to measure by my actions and by what we do as a museum. I can take a stab at KPIs, but I think it is much more productive to judge me and the museum by these action items\u2026how much we realized and how we did what we said we were going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Thompson\u2019s sentiments, however, were shared by Councillor John Gallo who said that while the \u201cmuseum has certainly gone a long, long way\u201d it was \u201chard to grasp the return on investment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is hard to grasp the return on investment on these types of things because they are cultural in value and the value to the community is very hard to pinpoint to a dollar,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Added Mayor Tom Mrakas: \u201cI think every single person around this table looks at how we can make sure we\u2019re providing the best possible services and the best possible price. We\u2019re always looking at what we can do to save taxpayers any money, but I think when we look at our heritage there is an immense amount of value that sometimes you can\u2019t put a value on because we need to continue to preserve and protect that heritage. People say you need to know where you\u2019ve come from to know where you\u2019re going. That\u2019s important for our Town.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong>
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Museums often look backward, but the Aurora Museum & Archives is very much focused on the future. Last week, curator Shawna White presented to Council the museum\u2019s plan through 2025, one which will see them grow physically within its new home within the Library Square complex as well as expand its reach through the community […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-7wE","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-18 08:20:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}