Central Asian Museum Management Training “Museum in a Changing World”

18 August 2005

The Central Asian Museum Management Training Program, “Museums in a Changing World”, took place from August 18th to 21st in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The UNESCO Almaty Cluster Office, the Soros Center of Contemporary Art, Almaty and The Laboratory of Museum Projects of the Russian Institute of Culture (Moscow) organized the training. The goal of this trainingwas to bring together the museum's professional staff and experts related to museums from all over Central Asia, and to find a way to improve the marketing management strategy in Central Asian museums.

The training “Museums in a Changing World”, with topics such as innovative and computer technologies for use with cultural exhibits and research, marketing policy, fundraising, exhibit promotion, publicity, and the creation and evaluation of museum projects, helped outline and organize new resources and strategies for the development of cultural organizations and professional activity in Central Asia.

The following topics were discussed during the training:

• museums and the technology of tourism (such as innovative museum practices for the development of the tourist business in the city or region of focus, the organization of tourist routes and destinations, efforts for creating a qualitative infrastructure of tourism);

• museums and new educational programs (innovative and modern approaches to the content, organizational design and promotion of educational programs in the museums);

• joint museum programs (projects and the programs realized in the partnership of museums and socio-cultural institutes for qualitative reorganization of cultural environments in cities, regions and local communities, such as museums and privet galleries, contemporary art centers, libraries, theaters, mass-media etc.);

• technologies of museums’ expositions (non-standard forms of museum expositions, virtual expositions with the use of new technologies, modern forms of work with target audiences, etc.);

• social services for the disabled people (new forms and the mode of operations, form of the attraction of attention and support, participation in the wider-scale social programs, etc.).

The training was divided into three main themes:

• lectures of key trainers;

• interactive consultations of experts, master classes, business games;

• individual work of participants lead by group coordinators. This forced the participants to practically implement the knowledge gained from the seminar.

The participants were primarily museum administration staff responsible for the basic operations and the development of programs catering to visitors.

The training consists of analytical and design sessions. Dr. А. Lebedev, senior scientist of the Laboratory of Museum Projects of the Russian Institute of Culturology lead the training.