'One by One': building the digital literacies of UK museums

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The impact of digital media on museums has been pervasive and profound. The notions of visit and object, collection and exhibition, have all been recoded by the presence and influence of five decades of digital technology. Constructively disruptive, 'digital' has changed the idiom of 'museum' (Parry 2007, 2010). And yet, it is widely recognised that the digital literacy of the museum workforce remains one of the key challenges continuing to impede the adoption of technology within the sector (NMC, 2015; 2016). According to Nesta, the AHRC and Arts Council England (2014; 2015), over a third of museums in the UK still feel that they do not have the in-house skills to meet their digital aspirations, and rather than improving, some digital skills areas have decreased.Addressing this pressing issue, the aim of the 'One by One' project is to leverage interdisciplinary scholarship to understand how to deliver a transformative framework for museum workforce digital literacy. Our project builds upon two years of foundation research and international collaboration, and a call by the international community of digital heritage researchers, enshrined in the 'Baltimore Principles' (NMC 2016), for a shift in the way we think about digital training in museums. Our response is to use the idea of the 'postdigital museum' (Parry 2013) as a conceptual framework in which to use humanities scholarship to design, empirically test and propose an alternative training and development provision.A form of practice-led research, 'One by One' uses the protocols and sequencing of Design Thinking to organise and drive its activities, with Action Research as the method to carry out a series of design experiments (interventions) in an array of localised museum settings across the UK. Having used a series of case studies to review the skills ecosystem for digital skills in the UK museums sector, our project uses a set of 'Literacy Labs' with museum professionals to help generate typologies of museum digital literacy to identify relevant 'activations' for developing each of these digital literacies. Led by our network of six 'Digital Fellows', these typologies of digital literacies and activation are then tested through a series of action research interventions situated in Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, National Museums Scotland, The National Army Museum, The Royal Pavilion & Museums Brighton and Hove, Derby Museums Trust, and The Museum of London. 'One by One' will synthesise the findings of this test phase of the project into a refined 'Framework of Museum Digital Literacy', which it will then share at a major national Skills Summit co-hosted with Arts Council England, as well as in a single open online professional development resource, hosted by FutureLearn, free and accessible for the whole museum sector. We aim to produce measurable changes in the confidence and competence of the museums workforce to use technology in their practice, as well as the awareness and understanding of policy makers surrounding the use of digital in museums. This is research that will benefit not just the museum workforce in the UK, but policy makers working in the fields of cultural policy, heritage and creative economy. 'One by One' is an ambitious collaboration between academics, museums and national cultural agencies: the Museums Association; the Association of Independent Museums; the Museum Development Network; Arts Council England; Culture24; the Heritage Lottery Fund; Nesta; the Collections Trust; and the National Museums Directors' Conference. And, as such, our project responds directly to the new Minister of State for Digital and Culture, who in his first major speech on museums, 22 Sept. 2016), called for museums to harness 'academic collaboration', to 'work better together in the digital age'.