2 by 2: Structuring Museums to Deliver New Digital Experiences

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Given that digital continues to disrupt and transform the parameters of visitor participation and experience, how should museums respond organisationally to deal with this change? '2 by 2' is a nine-month, multi-partner, interdisciplinary, action research project (led by the University of Leicester and Southern University at New Orleans), aiming to develop a new, sector-wide transatlantic partnership around digital leadership and skills - helping museums to build the organisational conditions to support new forms of visitor experience and participation at a time of social change. Taking a practice-based approach, the project uses a Design Thinking to inform the structure and logic of its fieldwork, with researchers delivering a series of action-research interventions in four different museum contexts - each intervention acting as a 'stage' to animate and understand different sets of issues (and possibilities) around new forms of organisational leadership, business process, institutional culture and professional practice. To deliver this work, '2 by 2' brings together national professional bodies and established communities of practice, with leading digital heritage scholars and a core group of eight museum teams with an international reputation for digital leadership, as well as an group of outstanding advising institutions - Microsoft, Arts Council England, Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University. Our 'Commissioning Partners' (the American Alliance of Museums, and Museums Association) with their extensive professional membership base, oversee the direction of the partnership and help us to identify strategic opportunities for the research. Our 'Community Partners' (the US Museum Computer Network and UK's Museums Computer Group), bring their nationwide communities of practice, working together to help share the activity and outcomes of the project to a wider 'muse-tech' community. Appropriately, however, it is our 'Museum Partners' who are at the centre of the research, providing both the environment and the expertise to explore these issues around organisational digital capability. Ambitiously, '2 by 2' pairs teams across Smithsonian Institution (at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the cross-organisation American Women's History Initiative) with four 'critical friend' UK partners (Science Museum Group, Victoria and Albert Museum, Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, and National Museums Scotland) all of whom, as IROs, serve as the project's Co-Investigators. Throughout the project, four 'Community Days' provide a means for a set of wider constituencies to input into our research insights. Each event (a 'Study Day' for early career practitioners; a 'Demo Day' for technology companies delivered with the Balboa Park Online Collaborative; a 'Leaders' Day' for museum directors and executives delivered with Culture24; and a 'Practitioners' Day' for curators and professionals) helps to inform the project's findings, but also lays the foundations for a cohesive, trusting, on-going partnership in this subject area.