Vision

Our vision is for natural and cultural heritage to be valued, sustained and communicated as it represents the shared histories, heritage and identities of all Australians.

Purpose

Museums Australia is the national organisation for the museums sector,  committed to the conservation, continuation and communication of Australia’s heritage.
As a non-government, non-profit body, Museums Australia promotes museum sector development, articulates ethical standards, facilitates training, advances knowledge, addresses issues, and raises public awareness through its national and international networks.

• MA champions its membership and the museums sector as resources for social development, based on equality of opportunity and support for intellectual, cultural and social diversity.
• MA promotes an understanding of heritage as including natural and cultural, tangible and intangible dimensions.  Heritage is conserved through particular objects and people, sites and places, events and narratives, music and performance, song, dance, scientific research, history and other human activities that convey knowledge and bear cultural meaning.
• MA affirms that governments and communities share responsibility to support and resource the conservation and communication of the nation’s heritage.
• MA believes that the distinctive work museums and galleries pursue in conjunction with communities in preservation, research, interpretation, education and public programming is critical to the conservation of the nation’s memory. 
• MA recognises Australia’s Indigenous peoples as the nation’s First Peoples and is committed to ensuring that Indigenous people have control and management of their cultural heritage and are active participants in any interpretation to the wider community. 
• MA supports ICOM’s  Australian National Committee – as MA’s ‘international committee’ – which offers important resources for extending the national museum sector’s contacts and access to international networks for professional development, partnerships and exchange. 

3.1 FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PROVISION FOR CULTURE & HERITAGE
The Commonwealth government 2007-2010, and reshaped administration of cultural heritage it has mandated (with a single Minister overseeing ‘Environment, Heritage and the Arts’), provide new advocacy opportunities and policy challenges for the sector.  Through the Commonwealth’s presence and co-ordination of the Cultural Ministers Council, its direct impact on the arts sector through the Australia Council, and its support and convening in recent years of the National Cultural Heritage Forum (through the former Department of Environment and Heritage), the federal environment offers opportunities for advocacy and program development interconnecting all levels of government. Museums Australia recognises that varying arrangements exist in state and local government provision for culture and heritage across Australia.  MA believes it can work constructively to influence policy and program decisions at all levels that impact on the sector, while taking care to avoid cross-purposes or duplication of services already well delivered at state or local government levels.

3.2. ACCESS AND INFLUENCE
Access to government is increasingly crowded and competitive (at all levels).  In this environment, MA must ensure that it is well positioned and able to take best advantage – including through effective partnerships and alliances – of opportunities to influence government policy and program provision.  Advocacy opportunities must be created and advanced to achieve positive outcomes for the sector. Such advocacy should be linked also to promotion of the social well-being of communities, in which it is now widely recognised that cultural heritage bodies and services offer instrumentally beneficial resources.

3.3. CURRENT POLICY FRAMEWORKS, CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES
There are evolving opportunities for decisive action through the museums sector within the following national priority concerns:

3.3.1. Education
There is a renewed focus on national approaches to education.  This provides museums and galleries with sharpened opportunities to champion the value that they contribute directly to education across the curriculum, and the need for national (as well as state and local) programs to ensure equitable access to cultural resources and shared national stories.

3.3.2. Economic & social development of communities
The well demonstrated connections between cultural resources, distinctiveness of  history, place and people and their direct impact on economic and social development of communities (especially through tourism) continue to be relevant.  Museums, historical societies, art centres and local community networks have opportunities for synergistic initiatives supporting heritage in a governmental environment explicitly attuned to ‘equity of opportunity’ across the nation.

3.3.3. Digital economy & the global information society
Museums and galleries are gaining broader audiences through the fast-changing digital environment.  In addition to programming for physical visitors, a growing public presumes access to cultural, historic and scientific heritage through linked digital technologies and 24-hour service platforms.  Meanwhile the museums sector is increasingly challenged to profile its unique resources and agency in interpreting and communicating Australian heritage, stories and distinctive identities, in competition with expanding networks globally.

4.1. EFFECTIVE ADVOCACY: Ensure effective advocacy, on behalf of the sector, of the value of a comprehensively shared heritage as a national public good.

4.2. SUCCESSFUL POSITIONING:  Ensure positioning of MA as the representative ‘sectoral’ body advancing the cause of museums and galleries nation-wide, while also effectively championing the work and services of its divisions, through the discipline-specialist networks, branches and activity of smaller bodies at state and regional levels.

4.3. ORGANISATIONAL RENEWAL: Accomplish organisational renewal through evolving MA’s organisational model, so that MA can more effectively encompass the breadth and diversity of activities that link the sector nationally.

4.4. STRENGTHENED CAPACITY: Strengthen MA’s National Office and sharpen the capacity of the whole organisation so that it is better able to project its vision and achieve its objectives.

Patricia Sabine (President, Museums Australia) on behalf of MA’s National Council  

Download a pdf of the Strategic Plan here