16th January 2013

January Reading Club: a great session for a great book

The session with Sergi Pàmies reminded us of the great sessions of our club, in which interesting conversation was accompanied by a great sense of humour.

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5th July 2012

Toolkit lifestyle profiles: view on culture

Last month I was in Rotterdam to join a program of conferences called Audiences Insight/ Out. The last session organised by Flanders CultuurNet, consist in doing a workshop based in Flanders, in 2003 and 2009 for the leisure participation of Flemish people. Flanders CultuurNet has a team of 8 people who travel throughout Flanders to give personal support to local authorities and to help them in taking a more strategic approach to their culture and leisure communication. This workshop seemed to be a strategic toolkit « view on culture » which allows the user of the toolkit to create an action plan to attract more potential participants in 5 steps, taking into account their tastes, preferences and thresholds.

An example of six cultural lifestyle profiles

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15th November 2010

Cultural Diffusion, Participation and the New Technologies

In this last couple of weeks I have attended two very interesting seminars which drew attention to the need to rethink the methods of disseminating culture in today’s society. What is art? What is communication? How is culture disseminated? Where is the boundary and how is that information transmitted: these were the subjects reflected on at the 3rd Conference on Innovation and Cultural Dissemination at the CCCB and the Digital Discussion: Key Aspects for Successfully Innovating and Internationalizing the Audio-visual Sector at Barcelona Activa.

At the CCCB the focus of the talks, as Juan Insua made clear in his introduction, was on the paradigm of innovation in the field of culture: going beyond a static culture in art, this proposes a participatory approach in which the users interact with culture, making it more accessible and therefore closer to people’s interests and concerns. Emphasis was placed on the importance of cultural institutions embracing the role of mediator between culture and its users in order to democratize it and make it more social and in this way emulate existing cultural networks. Read more »

9th April 2010

Museums as part of society – and vice versa

As head of the Visitor Services department I have just spent three days visiting some of the most famous museums in the city of London – the British Museum, the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.

In all of these museums I had the pleasure of meeting the heads of the various departments responsible for visitor services and of discussing with them issues to do with guided tours, audio guides, activities, accessibility, complaints, signage and tour management, including others.

Like the vast majority of cultural institutions in Britain, these museums believe that art and culture are not a luxury but a part of the DNA of a country or city and, as such, a necessity. Read more »