ANNEX A

MUSEUM SUSTAINABILITY PLAN – FINAL REPORT

PLAN DE VIABILITÉ DES MUSÉES - RAPPORT FiNAL

ACS2005-CPS-CSF-0012

The following individuals/organizations submitted written comments on this issue. Copies of the submissions are held on file. A summary of their written comments follows:

Gordon Cullingham, Heritage Ottawa

· Heritage Ottawa has been an effective advocate for the City’s largest artefacts including: historically significant buildings, neighbourhoods and landscapes; it’s work complements that of all museums;

· An adequately funded museum system, with the specific aim of collecting, preserving and interpreting the material culture of the city, is an important first step in fostering an appreciation of our common heritage;

· Ottawa is fortunate in having a decentralized museum system whose components reflect a multitude of aspects of our rich past. It offers an opportunity for citizens to appreciate the diversity of it’s rural heritage as well as the multifaceted development of urban Ottawa;

· This Plan provides an opportunity to help the museums help themselves and is a realistic approach, which builds on the strengths of collections, the commitment of staff and volunteers and the potential for all museums to work together to efficiently undertake the task of telling the story of Greater Ottawa.

Douglas Beaton, President, Board of Directors, The Diefenbunker

• Ottawa museums have a key role to play in making and maintaining Ottawa as a desirable place to live and to visit and that each museum tells a unique part of Greater Ottawa’s history;
• If properly developed and supported, the Diefenbunker has the potential to become one of the world’s most compelling cultural tourist destinations; a unique and defining asset that would help emphasize Ottawa’s status as a great city;
• Each museum appears to have the problem of inadequate base funding, even severe under-funding in some cases; the lack of base funding has many repercussions, including the inability to:

- properly collect, maintain and exhibit artefacts;

- maintain properly trained staff;

- create, expand and sustain museum policies and mandates;

- build collections, programs,

- conduct research, conservation and exhibitions, in a controlled and safe structure or site.

· This Plan addresses some of the immediate funding problems of local museums, with year one and two proposals being the biggest priorities for the Diefenbunker, as the proposed funding would allow for augmentation of Board staff and their salaries/benefits, and might possibly allow for the acquisition of a badly needed site maintenance manager along with additional capital to address some mechanical problems.

Christina Tessier, Director, Bytown Museum

· Without adequate funding, the museum will constantly face staffing and salary challenges and operating hours will continue to be dependent student-funding grants;

· The proposed level of funding presented in the MSP would allow the museum to remedy many of these challenges as the plan is implemented over the next four years, including:

- the replacement of out-dated permanent exhibits with new temporary ones that attract repeat visitors;

- allowing staff to spend more time in classrooms and senior centres;

- the undertaking of badly needed conservation work;

- the ability to retain well-educated and trained staff, as well as hire new staff to take care of programming, volunteer management and business development.

· The Museum Network will also be of great benefit in allowing for the sharing of intellectual and physical resources with other museums as well as to develop joint marketing and fundraising plans. It will make each museum stronger by providing a core of support.

Meg Hamilton, Manager, Council of Heritage Organizations in Ottawa (CHOO/COPO)

Highlighted CHOO’s involvement in the development of the MSP, citing its work with the local heritage community and the general public consultation. The community is giving a clear message of support for the Plan because they feel that an increase to the operating funds is critical, that the formalization of the Ottawa Museums Network will improve efficiency, and that the Heritage Gateway provides a very good opportunity to collectively bring together and relate the complete Ottawa Story.

Shawna Moffatt, Curator, Diefenbunfer

Pointed out that the MSP would provide an opportunity for the City to support “the most important surviving Cold War site in Canada”, a prime tourist destination in Ottawa that can provide valuable tourist dollars for the local economy. Increased funding will allow the Diefenbunker to retain currently employed, valuable staff, to properly market the site, to improve the quality and educational nature of its exhibits, to ensure all our artefacts are properly stored, and to provide more visitors with the opportunity to experience this very unique part of Ottawa’s history.

Ian White

· Other levels of government must be aggressively pushed to fund specific projects;

• Many parts of the City are virtually ignored by the plan and it must be well recognized that the City is a series of very different and proud communities;
• The City libraries have an important role to play and there must be more co-operation between the two; many libraries have display space which could be used to show exhibits that would normally attract people to the museums, and both require conservation services for paper, leather and textile artefacts;
• The mandate of the Goulbourn Museum should include Hazeldean and the mandate of Pinheys Point should be expanded to include the whole of Kanata between the Ottawa River and Highway 417.

Jean Bruce, Arts, Heritage and Culture Advisory Committee representative on the Museum Steering Committee

• Although the advisory committee supported the Plan as presented, there were concerns expressed that the timing of the Design Development Study for the Preservation Centre and consideration of capital investment in building a physical Heritage Gateway do not coincide; nonetheless, they recognized that it is consistent with Council’s directions to staff that the long-term ongoing financial viability of ten local museums must be assured before a Heritage Gateway is built;
• The City Archives must be involved as a primary source of material for both a virtual gateway and a physical gateway, and their needs should be included when the Design Development Study for a new preservation centre gets underway;
• It is reassuring that provisions for museums’ accountability are mentioned specifically in the Plan because of the importance of collections policies to effective museums’ management; these policies ensure that objects collected relate directly to each museum’s mandate.

John D. Reid, President, British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa

• Members of the Society have a broader interest than just their British roots, and they want to live in a vibrant sustainable city that rejoices in and prospers from its heritage;
• The City must include sustainable museums, as well as an effective City Archives;
• Vibrant museums are essential, together with libraries, schools and other educational institutions and should be an important part of the City’s learning infrastructure if Ottawa is to be competitive in attracting leading-edge knowledge industries and in sustaining an environment for life-long learning;
• The plan is founded on the museums working together and sharing;
• The recommended increases are modest and affordable, especially when taken in context with some of the City’s other funded works.

John G. McAvity, Executive Director, Canadian Museums Association

(Michael Rikley was to present his letter)

· The Canadian Museums Association feel this is a sound plan and the funding requested is modest given the size of the city;

· The City has a leadership opportunity to demonstrate best practices in the management of the country’s cultural heritage, and museums play important roles not just in preserving that heritage, but also at engaging citizens by building greater awareness and support for the arts, heritage and cultural life;

· Museums should be regarded as an essential public service to the community and should therefore be funded accordingly with sustainable, multi-year funding, which can be augmented by fundraising, earned revenues, et cetera;

· The Canadian Heritage Minister is currently developing a new Canadian Museums Policy, with new and much needed funds for non-federal museums

· The Association recommends that governments at all levels provide adequate, stable, and multi-year funding targeted for operations and core functions to assist small and mid-sized museums across the country in fulfilling their mandates to research, preserve and interpret Canada’s heritage for generations to come;

· They strongly recommend funding to help museums to reach out to those not presently engaged with museums, and to build bridges of understanding in order to build stronger citizens in the community.

Terrence Quinlan, Program Coordinator, Applied Museum Studies (AMS) Program, Algonquin College

• The AMS program offers two distinct museums studies diplomas and students of the program partner with all local museums and a number of heritage organizations to profit from mutually beneficial learning opportunities;
• The AMS program is committed to community and city operated museums and supports the MSP, particularly the creation of an Ottawa Museum Network. If funded, this organization would be capable of applying for grants that would support the creation of advanced internship opportunities for Museum Studies students.

Francis Beaulieu, Executive Director, Vanier Muséopark

• Together with arts and culture, heritage is the City’s most valuable asset and is irreplaceable;
• An Ottawa Museum Network will give local museums more strength to stand on their own and give a clearer distinction between Ottawa as the Nation’s Capital and Ottawa as a city of diverse communities, rich in local heritage and history;
• Since amalgamation, the Vanier community has struggled in trying to preserve and relate its distinct heritage and history – hence, the creation of the Vanier Muséopark;
• Most of the funding for the Museopark came from the community itself and what must be stressed is the importance of funding to maintain museums.

Michelle Leboldus, Pinhey’s Point Foundation

• It is hoped that this new proposed funding would addresses several deficiencies that the site currently struggles with due to poor funding, including:

- inadequate signage to direct new patrons to the Museum;

- lack of a heritage gateway to promote interest in the site;

- inadequate funding to secure full-time, site-dedicated staff;

- incapacity to develop and participate in educational (outreach) programs;

- insufficient funds to conduct adequate marketing.

Robin Derrick, John Curry, Marion Gullock, and Phil Sweetnam Goulbourn Historical Society and Museum

· The Museum Sustainability Plan allows for a decentralized approach to their community history, and does not impose a solely centralized approach, thereby allowing museums to be true to telling the histories of their local communities; it will also provide museums with the resources they need to fulfill this important function;

· Museums are an important and essential source of relevant facts and photos for newspapers/journalists and editors;

· Museum and History Centres serve as a resource for those researching their family histories, or those conducting local history research;

· Without proper funding their local museum cannot run its programs and services;

· From a business point of view, the proposed Plan is a good fit for a city the size of Ottawa and a good commitment to heritage of this City.

Rick Strong, Merridy Bradley and Doug Fogerty, members of the Association of Friends of the Billings Estate Museum, Ottawa

· Canadian heritage is a non-renewable resource that should continue to be made available to everyone and heritage should remain a base-budget item because it is something that everyone benefits from;

· One of the city’s oldest cemeteries is located on the Billings Museum property, which the City is required to maintain and keep safe for public viewing under Section 44 of the Cemeteries Act. The Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board has also designated portions of the Billings Estate collection as having outstanding significance and national importance, a designation that requires the City to maintain this heritage in accordance with high standards of collections management and preservation;

· The MSP would permit the staff to get back to the work of caring for the collection, programming for public education and promoting the site; it will allow for fresh exhibits, visitor tours, site bookings, and Visitor Services to welcome customers.

Carrie Brooks-Joiner, President, Ontario Museum Association (OMA)

• A decentralized network of local museums and historic sites, supported by an active Ottawa Museums Network, a preservation center and a central “Heritage Gateway” is a viable model that may well be cited as a best practice in the near future;
• Because the model was developed locally as a result of extensive internal and external consultations, it is likely to succeed and meet the needs of the City for many years to come;
• The OMA recognizes the highly valuable services that museums provide to communities and asks that the City join them in their efforts to lobby other levels of government to provide or increase the level of sustaining operating funding made available to community museums, and to provide the advisory services which are now only available to the arts community;
• The challenges of providing an adequate legacy to future generations are significant enough that it will require collaboration between municipal, provincial and federal governments.

Dan Hoffman, Curator, Nepean Museum

• Museums are the sentinels of a city’s cultural and historic identity and a museum’s ability to provide care and safekeeping of the cultural property entrusted to it is dependent upon funding to do so;
• The ability to improve on existing services and to develop progressive, innovative and revenue generating fundraising activities requires financial resources to start the process in motion;
• Council should move forward with this Plan and set the standard by which all other City’s would measure their success in the preservation of their past.

Sean Mckenney, Ottawa and District Labour Council

• The Council was very disappointed that the Workers’ Heritage Museum has not been included among those museums that are to receive operating funding;
• While they do not ask for the level of commitment that will be afforded to other museums, they want to be able to show other sponsors that they have the commitment and full support of the City through some level of funding;
• The City has expressed it’s support for the Workers’ Museum in the past and the Ottawa and District Labour Council believes the Greater Ottawa Story can never be accurately told without the inclusion of the Workers Museum and the working people.

Susan Flemming, Vintage Stock Theatre

• Referred to the significant investment that Vintage Stock Theatre has been able to make in the Cumberland Museum, but emphasized that volunteers alone cannot continue to sustain these institutions with such limited City expenditures;
• The Official Plan clearly identifies heritage as an essential element in the quality of life and the more invested, the more volunteer participation is encouraged and the greater leverage for your investment, not merely in relation to soft dollar concepts or partnerships but in community activism and active fostering of heritage celebration, memory and identity;
• This Plan is an opportunity that provides hope and contains a number of proposed strategies that should lead to enhanced operations, better governance and management, functional community relationships, and greatly improved conservation and preservation of our fragile collections.

Marguerite Rogers, Harvey Powell, Linda Resbeck, Jeff Morris speaking in support of the Watson’s Mill

Comments from their PowerPoint presentation included:

• The Mill is crucial to attract tourists to Manotick; there is a symbiotic relationship between the Mill and the Manotick business community, and it provides an emotional connection to the history of the village, the city, and the nation;
• The Mill currently receives the smallest operating grant of all City-owned and community museums; an increase in funding would enable the Mill to hire a full-time manager, rent a permanent office, continue its interpretive signage, be eligible to receive a CMOG provincial grant, and obtain new security measures and a fire suppression system.