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Museums for Profusion

The final knowledge exchange event for the Profusion theme of the Heritage Futures project took place at the National Railway Museum in York on the 21st of September 2018.

Museums for Profusion brought over 30 curators and other collections development professionals and volunteers from around the UK together with our Profusion researchers and partners to discuss the results of our Contemporary Collecting and Disposal Survey. Bernadette Lynch and Rachael Minott set the tone for the day with short keynote presentations, followed by a series of round-table sessions where we got stuck into the survey results together through sets of data discussion cards that can be viewed below. Right-click and select “open in new tab” to see fill-size versions of each card.

The discussion cards were designed for the Profusion theme by Megan von Ackermann and serve as great conversation starters. You can download them to spark conversations with your colleagues or engage with us on Twitter by tagging @Future_Heritage and #Profusion.

Together with the survey results themselves, the discussions at Museums for Profusion are feeding into our report that will be out this December. The report will be available for free online, but do get in touch with us if you are interested in receiving a paper copy.

Data card 1
Distribution of respondents by museum location, size of social history collection and number of paid or volunteer staff
Data card 2
Overview of reported accessioning/ deaccessioning ratios & scale of accessioning/ deaccessioning broken down by collection size
Data card 3
Overview of museums' use of collections development policies and formal assessments of significance
Data card 4
Overview of how museums acquire social history objects
Data card 5
Overview of how responding curators and other collections staff view and approach their responsibilities to the future
Data card 6 (1)
Overview of respondents' current practices and attitudes relating to transfer and disposal of social history objects
Data card 7
Overview of respondents' understanding of transparency in collections development
Data card 8
Overview of respondents' attitudes toward public participation in collections development

People

Harald Fredheim
Research Associate

University of York