Jay;

My main task, in the pre-retirement special assignment I am now in, is to
rebuild our relationships with museums and other institutions across the
country and abroad. For years, our museum did very little to assist other
museums (a select few excepted), especially in the area of lending them
artifacts from our large collection, even though our physical exhibitions
space was so limited that we could show barely 1% of the collection at one
time! I cannot tell you how many complaints I have had that, in the past,
our senior staff couldn't even be bothered to acknowledge their requests,
let alone respond to them!

Beginning in February, we set out to change all that, with the result that
we have signed partnership agreements or are signing them with almost 100
institutions, including some in the USA, Australia, Belgium and the UK. I am
now starting to get letters that are much more positive, in some cases
complimentary, so I know we are turning things around.

Our most significant success story to date has been the development of
exhibitions each summer on our courtyard, in partnership with the Canadian
Forces. We had carried out two trial runs, one to commemorate the 125th
anniversary of the establishment of the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery
and the other (much smaller) on demining. On the strength of the success of
the first of these, I made a presentation to the then-acting Chief of the
Defence Staff, who had a MAJOR national public relations problem, stemming
from a series of incidents that put the military in, as many of us thought,
an unfairly negative position.

I suggested that we use our very prominent location in the national capital
region to change that - by presenting not merely the equipment items (which
ultimately included complete aircraft, a large tank for naval clearance
diving demonstrations, etc.), but what was much more important to our
visitors AND to the Forces - the MEN AND WOMEN of today's Canadian Forces -
to show the public that they were NOT all the idiots and scoundrels painted
by the media.

We would present the men and women of yesteryear INSIDE the museum and the
Forces would showcase their contemporaries OUTSIDE. We could offer a
prominent venue, but we had no money to use it effectively. They had limited
money, running to at least of a couple of hundred thousand dollars and the
deployment of, at any one time, twenty to thiry full time personnel.

The joint project was a huge success. This summer's project included
artifacts from our own collection and focussed on the 75th anniversary of
the naval reserves in Canada. Next year, we will jointly pay tribute to the
air force.

What are the ingredients of a successful joint venture? I think there are at
least three.

The first, and perhaps most important, is good communications. We make the
relationship clear to all parties by signing a formal memorandum of
understanding and cooperation. We keep in constant touch at all stages of
the project and we share our problems and successes. There is no substitute
for effective communications; it underpins EVERYTHING! I write and call our
partners frequently, just to keep in touch and, more than once, people have
told me how isolated they felt and how good it was simply to know that
someone in another institution was interested in them.

Second, both parties have to see that a joint project could yield results
they could get no other way. We are beginning to develop a program of small
travelling exhibitions, keyed to the space availabilities and needs of our
smallest partners. WE need to get our exhibitions and artifacts to Canadians
everywhere (and we'd loan these exhibitions to institutions elsewhere), but
we don't have venues across the country. Our partners are starved for
temporary exhibitions, but in most cases lack the resources to create these.
Together, we can do a lot for both our publics.

The corollary of the second point is that each partner must have something
special to contribute that the other partner does not, be it space,
resources, artifacts, a different visitor population, or what have you. One
sided partnerships don't last long.

Finally, you have to have a commitment from management and staff at all
levels and across both institutions. It is only when everyone enters into
the spirit, that cooperation can work. From our director on down, our people
are working positively and responsively to create and strengthen our  new
relationships. Is this communications? Yes, but more important, it is a
matter of ATTITUDE.

Harry


> ----------
> From:         Staff[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To:     Museum discussion list
> Sent:         Monday, October 26, 1998 6:43 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Collaboration:  Successes & Failures
>
> Fellow listers:
>
> I am chairing a panel discussion on collaboration & partnerships for the
> upcoming state museum conference and thought I would enlist your help.
> Please share a story, happy or sad, success or failure, about
> collaborations with other instiutions.  They need not be other museums--if
> you collaborated with a business or another not-for-profit--I would like
> to
> hear that story too.  And finally, what are the two or three biggest
> factors in creating  succesful collaborations/partnerships?  What are the
> biggest factors that lead to their failur (or rather I should say "lack of
> success")?
>
> You can reply to the list or to me personally at
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Thanks for your help.  I can't wait to hear your stories!
>
> Jay Smith
> Executive Director
> Reno County Museum
> Hutchinson, Kansas
>