Still Crazy After All These Years

There's going to be another "day" soon. On Monday to be exact. Know what it is? Go on, you must know. No. Oh well, not that surprising. It will in fact be the 31st international museum day. There. I'm sure you're glad about that. I confess that I had not, until today, known that there was such a day. That would be 30 previous years that had passed me, and probably you, by. I only know that this will be the 31st because Alcúdia town hall emailed me; the Pollentia museum and the Roman town will be participating.

What is this museum day precisely? It is organised by the International Council of Museums, and this year's theme is "museums and tourism". That, I suppose, is why the town hall and the Balearic Government's tourism ministry are giving it their backing. According to the ICOM website, museums - including, one supposes, the one in Alcúdia - will "be celebrating ethical, responsible, sustainable tourism, showing how heritage can bring tourists and local communities together in new, mutually beneficial relationships". A grand vision. And quite frankly, it sounds like tosh. In other pronouncements on the site are references to "sustainable cultural tourism". We've been to the sustainable tourism theme before, now we must add a second adjective - cultural. It all sounds very laudable, but what on earth does it mean? Doubtless the ICOM have a clear idea, as probably do some "museum professionals" to which the council also refers. But does the tourist in the street or traipsing around the museum care a jot whether it is sustainable? And would he know it if it were to be presented to him or her?

I sense in all this a distance, a distance between the grand ideas and philosophies of bodies such as the council and the public. How precisely should heritage "bring tourists and local communities together in new, mutually beneficial relationships"? Let me suggest that it is not by presenting that heritage in a sterile manner and it is not in a manner that does not benefit local economies. In simple terms, there has to be some monetary advantage; that sounds more like sustainability to me. This all relates, in the local context, to the creation of the new museum for Pollentia in Alcúdia. A mutually beneficial relationship would be one that attracted new tourists and a far greater number of existing tourists who might not otherwise be inclined to go to the museum. And that is done by making it exciting. Sustainable cultural tourism can only be sustained if there are people who are willing to actively engage in it, i.e. by visiting a museum. It will not be sustained and therefore sustainable if it is just dull, which is what many museums can be. And that dullness is merely reinforced by the rather pompous, albeit worthy, mission statements and the rest of the International Council of Museums. When they come to dreaming up the theme for the 32nd year of the International Museum Day, here's an idea they might wish to consider. Museums and Fun. Making museums sustainable by making them places where everyone can have a damn good time. It doesn't mean doing away with the heritage; precisely the opposite. It means promoting it in a way that appeals to a contemporary tourist.

Link to the site for the International Council of Museums - http://www.icom.museum/


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Paul Hardcastle, "Nineteen" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSGvqjVHik8). Today's title - well, crazy is probably overdoing it, but after 30 years ...? Anyway, who was this?

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