A visionary time ahead for SMAG
Southland museum’s innards are now almost as lifeless as those of the ancient pyramids it resembles. Enter Tim Walker, charged with producing, in the next six months, a fresh vision for its future drawn on public, professional and stakeholder consultation.
And yes, changing circumstance. This is the project the museum’s trust board had in train before April’s shock closure as an earthquake risk, and it continues independent of any project simply to reopen it.
Walker is a strategic planner who helped develop Te Papa and the Art + Creativity Invercargill (ACI) that now on the city council’s planning books for Wachner Place.
If we might gently suggest to him that consultants before him have had similar briefs, the results of which never materialised, he points to the closure as a useful focus for purposeful attention.
‘‘The closure just makes a very black and white statement,’’ he says.
‘‘I think this really does allow a bigger space to think about what a future museum could be, as well as honouring what the past museum has been.’’
Previous proposals would have added large, expensive extensions but the thinking now was that both the existing site and footprint suffice.
Here, echoing comments he made about the Wachner Place ACI, Walker talks in cautionary terms about the need to look to more essential questions than simply going into ‘‘temple mode’’.
At times, such planning has tended to veer towards edifices that were too big and financially unsustainable, he says.
‘‘I think in the past a lot of emphasis has been on collection care and architectural projects, Not so much on vision.’’
Whereas now, when so many people are paying attention, it’s time for us to collectively interrogate our assumptions; things we’ve taken as a given about the museum’s role.
Not that he would have us imagine a sweeping aside of what’s been good about the museum to this point. It’s had a wellestablished focus on the many rich stories of Southland and Southlanders and quite right too.
"This will inform everything we do – it’s certainly not a ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ exercise.’’
It’s about figuring out what’s really special about what is, what has been, and imagining what could be, he says.
And, as with the ACI initiative, community consultation ‘‘will be a key thread woven through all of the work we do during the next six months’’.
Can he provide an example of a new focus emerging from such an exercise?
The Derby museum in Britain springs to mind. The people there came up with a perhaps familiarsounding declaration that they wanted to ‘‘shape the way in which Derby is understood and appreciated’’ but then added that they wanted the museum to be a way ‘‘people from all places are inspired to see themselves as the next generation of innovators and makers.’’
Walker contrasts this to the approach of seeing museums, at heart, simply as collections that are arranged into exhibitions, then the doors are flung open while advertising campaigns try to encourage people in to admire them.
Walker isn’t characterising previous consultant reports as being that entrenched. He volunteers that Ken Gorby’s preliminary report, back in 2012, ‘‘really raises the some of the same issues I’m raising – a greater focus on people and users rather than too much on the building’’.
‘‘If museums see themselves as an agent working in conversation with a whole range of stakeholders, facilitating conversations and collaborations between them, I think they can play a role in the community that almost no other agency could.’’
The review, supported by the Southland Regional Heritage Committee, will in part look at development and storage options, aligning with regional proposals; not only the ACI but also the heritage committee’s proposal for a single regional collection store. Both of which would, in turn, liberate space back at the museum.
Walker’s review will consider governance options, staffing and operations models. All with ‘‘a clear plan to align with existing regional proposals’’ including that single regional collection store.
He is experienced enough to know that there’s been a disappointing dynamic throughout New Zealand when it comes to proposals for regional stores.
‘‘It’s been quite a common process for regions to go through (discussion) and it almost never results in that outcome. One or other of the silo--ed partners doesn’t want to buy into the shared principles.’’
Without unity of vision and high level collaboration they end up with, say, three jigsaw pieces that aren’t from the same picture. It’s a really poor outcome but can easily happen. So here, he acknowledges, is a major planning exercise that would need to make sense around as-yet-unknowns such as whatever work may need to be done to reopen the museum, and whether we get our collective storage act together, and . . . what else?
Well, he says, there could well be lessons inner-city museum exhibits in the meantime are used ambitiously, to test approaches, trial new ideas, and get feedback.
‘‘The closure does provide an opportunity to stand back, think, and test a few options of how best to ensure Invercargill and Southland have a 21st Century museum they can be proud of for decades to come.’’
Location, location, location? Walker thinks the museum could make more of its setting.
Oftentimes, museums are indoor places where people are invited to reflect on what has happened outdoors. But when the setting is this good, why not engage?
The park itself is so much an attraction, but where they should be interacting the existing layout puts up barriers.
‘‘A black-box theatre. Should that really be sitting on the edge of the park?’’
His own view is that as things stand the museum and the park ‘‘don’t seem to activate each other very much’’.
So there’s that. And what’s his take on the tuatara? Respect.
Their presence in the SMAG is been consistently and increasingly of interest, particularly to the many visitors to New Zealand, Walker says.
He knows references to the visitor economy can make locals nervous, on the grounds that it’s the sort of focus that can shift attention away from what matters to their own communities – maybe becoming a focus for museums that in truth aren’t robust enough to sustain themselves otherwise.
But it’s not an either-or proposition.
It comes down to Southlanders taking pride in their own story, and thinking hard about what its real value could be.
For her part, SMAG board chair Toni Biddle welcomes the involvement of Walker as a professional ‘‘who puts people at the forefront of his strategic planning’’.
‘‘He has successfully led and shaped some of the best museums in New Zealand,’’ she says
Walker summarises it as a community forming a clarity of purpose for the museum.
There’s a lot to it. And six months to do it in.