A measure to reinforce the role of museum and heritage facilities

“City museums: innovation, education and the right to participate in Barcelona’s cultural heritage” is one of the nine measures included in the Barcelona Cultural Rights Plan. The measure includes projects and lines of action to reinforce the role of museum and heritage facilities as key agents in the defence of the rights to cultural participation, dissemination, knowledge, conservation, memory and representation.

In order to apply the perspective of cultural rights, it is necessary to incorporate, in the role of municipal museum and heritage facilities, new ways of access for citizens, promoting actions to encourage creation and cultural practices and generating new governance that fosters community and territorial articulation. In this sense, the objectives of the measure are:

– To develop a plan to boost Barcelona’s museums, promoted by the Barcelona Institute of Culture.

– To facilitate platforms that consolidate the exchange of views and encourage participation and collective creation, including cultural and artistic research and experimentation.

– To make education the backbone of the programming and action of museums and cultural heritage in general in the city of Barcelona.

– Incorporate new models of creation and production in which the hybridisation of disciplines, agents and formats becomes effective.

– To improve and enhance scientific profitability through knowledge of public collections and heritage assets.

– To improve the conditions of access and the social impact of museums and heritage in the city.

The opening of the facilities will encourage the exchange of ideas among citizens, will involve the community in a transversal way, should improve the feeling of belonging and will contribute to improving the rate of participation in the cultural practices of the city’s neighbourhoods thanks to the exercise of transparency and proximity.

The lines of action

Promoted by the Directorate of Memory, History and Heritage of the Institute of Culture, and the network of museums and heritage centres of the city, both its own and those of consortiums and foundations, with the collaboration of the Democratic Memory Councillorship, the planned lines of action have a budget, from before the publication of the measure until 2023, of 24.866.766 euros. They are as follows:

1. The right to a coordinated heritage story.

a) Patrimoni BCN online. The digital presence of Barcelona’s museums will be consolidated and expanded through the creation of a platform (Patrimoni BCN) that will present and promote the information and content of the museums in a clear, ordered and joint way to ensure access to information and interaction for all citizens.

b) Promote the creation of a coordination committee for the city’s museums. This will enable the implementation of organisational, communication and programming measures in an effective manner.

c) Harmonisation of collection policies. Validation and publication of documents explaining the collections policies of each of the municipal museums, with the ultimate aim of defining a global collections policy for Barcelona City Council.

2. Right to participation, creation and research in museums.

a) Start of the design of the Àgora Museus programme. It should become a permanent space for participation, consultation and exchange to which citizens can have access in order to make different programming proposals and articulate projects and strategies linked to the territorial context of each museum.

b) Incorporation of mediation services in municipal museums. Two cultural mediation services will be put into operation as a pilot test at the Ethnological and World Cultures Museum and the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona, in order to evaluate the impact and detect challenges before moving forward with the implementation of a mediation service in the whole of the network.

c) Consolidate and expand the Creation and Museums programme. Continue to create joint proposals with the creation of factories and other creative spaces on an ongoing basis with social and cultural impact.

d) Museums within the residency system. Articulate a municipal system of creative residencies that allows for better working conditions for creators and opens doors to international mobility.

e) Plan to improve knowledge of the collections. This line of action seeks to generate knowledge and to be able to translate it into a discursive language that is understandable, accessible and informative for society.

f) Collections Centre of the Barcelona Museums (shared reserve space). Having a shared space or facility should provide indispensable improvements in the conditions of conservation of the collections, both in terms of space and in terms of the possibilities for growth. The new CCMB would generate new opportunities. The centralisation of spaces and services should allow an economy of scale in the provision and technical equipment of the spaces.

g) Evaluation of the pricing policies of municipal museums. Work will be carried out on an evaluation of the current pricing policies and bonuses in municipal museums in order to increase access both in terms of the number and diversity of public and participants.

3. The right to museums with an educational commitment.

a) Creation of the Education and Museums Roundtable. The Committee has begun work in 2022 to agree on the educational strategies that museums should promote in order to adapt to the educational methodologies of schools. It is necessary to consolidate this working space and expand it to include the city’s consortium and private museums and increase the number and diversity of professionals and teaching staff involved. The Committee will work in coordination with the Pedagogical Innovation Council, which reports to the Barcelona Institute of Culture since 2022 and which manages and promotes the School Activities Platform (PAE).

b) Design regular collaboration programmes between museums and educational centres. One example to follow is “Patrimonia’m”, in operation since 2019, while in the current academic year a pilot programme is being carried out to temporarily host works from the city’s contemporary art collection, created by active artists, in public schools (primary and secondary schools). The programme will include the installation and exhibition of the works in the schools and the development of a public programme with the active participation of the creators and the educational community of each participating school or institute.

c) Promoting the role of museums in lifelong education. It is necessary to advance the relationship between museums and other educational agents (universities, vocational training centres, leisure education entities, dance and music schools), social agents (cultural, social and neighbourhood associations, third sector entities) and artistic agents.

4. The right to a quality museum system.

a) New systems for analysing the use of municipal museums. It is necessary to consolidate a model of close, transparent and efficient administration through quantitative and qualitative evaluation models in local museums that ensure continuous improvement adapted to social reality. In this sense, the Cultural Data Observatory of the Institute of Culture has been working for some time on systems of indicators and data collection methodologies to provide museums and the City Council as a whole with relevant data and information on the impact of museum spaces on the city.

b) Investment plan for municipal museum and heritage facilities. An investment plan up to 2024 is currently approved, which includes a whole series of resources aimed at improving municipal museum and heritage facilities. Investment planning is the tool that should make it possible to stipulate the frequency, quantity and amount of investments in museum and heritage facilities on the basis of criteria such as necessity, urgency, suitability, etc.

c) Consolidation and expansion of the methodology of plans to incorporate the gender perspective in municipal museums. Since 2020, the ICUB’s Directorate of Memory, History and Heritage, in collaboration with the Directorate of Gender Services and Time Policies, has been promoting and accompanying the process of drawing up a strategic plan to incorporate the gender perspective in each of the municipal museums and heritage centres.

d) Social clauses in municipal museums. A working group made up of municipal staff and external professionals will be set up with the aim of establishing a series of social clauses adapted to the different types of cultural services and activities contracted by the Institute of Culture.