Museum Development Officer Network

This paper was delivered by Dr Dan Robinson, Director, Cultural Heritage, Queensland Museum at the MAQ State Conference, 15-16 September 2001, Cairns

Implementing the Museum Resource Centres/ Museum Development Officers program

Our view of the growing lobbying power of Arts Queensland was confirmed when they secured New Initiative funds from the Queensland Government, to initiate the Museum Resource Centre/ Museum Development Officer Program. Up to six MDOs would be employed by the Queensland Museum, with salary and related costs devolved to the Museum from Arts Queensland, while Arts Queensland would negotiate the establishment of the Museum Resource Centers and associated financial contributions. Each Centre was to be set up under a tripartite agreement between the Local Government Consortium, Arts Queensland and the Queensland Museum. Those agreements were to be for an initial period of three years, to be renegotiated at the end of that period.

While the concept of basing the MRCs on Local Government consortia, prepared to contribute 50% to costs, may have seemed reasonable to the State, Seumas Andrewartha, charged by Arts Queensland with implementing the program, found that finding consortia organised and willing to support the program was very difficult. As a result, the program was implemented in steps over an extended period, rather than all at once, and no two regional agreements are with similar consortia. The last two negotiated were based on signing up one major Local Authority, and assisting the MDO to recruit additional partners. In none of the negotiated agreements is the Local Government contribution approaching 50% of the average $100,000 a year it costs to support a Museum Resource Centre and MDO.

Just briefly during 1999-2000 the intended appointment of six MDOs was achieved, but by that time the first of the agreements was approaching the end of its initial three years and the local consortium was not able to continue support. At the same time, Arts Queensland realised that, with salary increases to the MDOs and other cost increases, the initial funding allocation to the program was no longer able to support all six positions at the level initially negotiated and the Central Western Museum Resource Centre ceased operation. Incidentally, one indication of the initial success of the program was the number of requests from client museums in that region for the program to be reinitiated

The expectation of Hidden Heritage, that six MDOs could effectively serve the needs of community museums, keeping places and galleries across the whole State, was not achieved. At the peak of operation, for the short period when we had six MDOs employed, they were serving about 62 of the 135 Local Government areas in Queensland.

The impossibility of six MDOs serving the whole State was further reinforced when, as soon as an MDO began work in a region, the number of expected client groups suddenly grew. For instance, in the Toowoomba & Golden West region the expected 30 or so client groups grew rapidly to over 50