ASSEMBLY: A New Conversation about Museum Research
What is ASSEMBLY and why is it needed?
ASSEMBLY is a cross-sector forum and R&D initiative that supports Australian museums and their stakeholders, to better understand, value, enable and practice purposeful collaborative research in changing contexts.
ASSEMBLY’s vision is for an Australian museum and gallery sector that is equipped across its diversity to enable and practice collaborative research as a common place activity, helping it to enact its public purpose in changing contexts.
We suggest that there are untapped opportunities to explore alternative forms of museum collaborative research – with universities and other stakeholders – that can better align with the pressing needs of Australian museums, galleries and their communities, particularly in relation to grappling with their public purpose and relevance in the world. To better understand these opportunities, we believe there is a need to foster shared dialogue and develop a greater sense of collectivity across the museum and gallery sector and beyond, with universities and other potential collaborators.
ASSEMBLY is being developed collaboratively by a range of stakeholders from across the museum and university sectors, with the support of the Australian Museums and Galleries Association, and with the Australian National University and Monash University. While focused at a national level, ASSEMBLY also mutually informs an expanded network of research observatories being established internationally through association with the Institute for Digital Culture (University of Leicester, UK).
What information has ASSEMBLY gathered & produced so far?
ASSEMBLY has generated and captured a range of resources and information across its work to date. You can review and access these resources here.
What is ASSEMBLY’s approach?
ASSEMBLY’s approach is framed by its guiding perspectives, its applicability across scales, and its broader activities:
Guiding Perspectives: ASSEMBLY seeks to understand and influence the practice, process and purpose of museum collaborative research, as follows:
- RESEARCH PRACTICE: Understanding research practice as drawn from diverse knowledge practices.
- COLLABORATIVE PROCESS: Understanding collaboration as enacting how to connect across difference.
- ORGANISING PURPOSE: Understanding the organising purpose as responding to changing public value.
Scales: ASSEMBLY also seeks to understand and influence across all relevant scales of museum collaborative research activity including Person, Project, Institution, Sector, Network and Society.
Activities: ASSEMBLY pursues 4 areas of broader activity:
· Convening & Connecting
· Knowledge Gathering & Research
· Capability Building & Modelling
· Advocacy & Amplification
What is ASSEMBLY’s program of work?
Phase 1: EMERGING & EXPLORING (Sept 23 to June 25)
This previous phase sought to nurture a shared conversation, across the sector and beyond, about the opportunity of doing collaborative research with museums in different ways. This was done by hosting a series of nation-wide forums that explore the WHY, WHAT and HOW of reimagining new forms of museum purposeful collaborative research.
Recording and summaries of these conversations, key reflections from them, and other unpinning thinking can be accessed here.
Phase 2: UNDERSTANDING & VALUING (July 25 to Aug 26)
This current phase seeks to explore how Australian museums and galleries, and their stakeholders, currently understand and value purposeful collaborative research in local contexts.
We will do this by researching existing examples of museum connected purposeful collaborative research and the current research landscape as it relates to Australian museums.
As a first step towards this, we’d love your input into a short survey we’re running, which explores collaborative research in the Australian museum and gallery sector. The survey takes around 5–10 minutes to complete and will help us build a clearer picture of the kinds of projects, partnerships, and approaches to research happening across the sector.Your contribution will be invaluable, and all responses will be anonymised.
Take the Survey here
This phase will also convene Local Assemblies, a series of locally based conversations that explore purposeful collaborative research questions and opportunities, relevant to these local contexts. For more information about these Local Assemblies see here.
Phase 3: ENABLING & PRACTICING (Sept 26 onwards…)
Building on the other phases, we hope that Phase 3 will look at action orientated approaches to explore how the Australian museum & gallery sector can enable, practice and model purposeful collaborative research in changing contexts.
Ideas of how this will be happen are currently being developed.
How can you find out more information about ASSEMBLY?
If you are interested in participating in ASSEMBLY and wish to be kept up to date on all future developments, please choose the ASSEMBLY option in your AMaGA account communication preferences. If you are not an AMaGA member you can create a free non-member user account and subscribe to ASSEMBLY via your communication preferences, found on your account page.
If you have any specific questions about ASSEMBLY, please get in touch with Sejul Malde [[email protected]], Collaborative Research Initiatives Manager, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.