Policy, Polido

Bit busy lately writing a major funding bid for my day job so there's not been much progress with the digitising of my family negatives. However, the mountain of job specs, tender briefs, budget spreadsheets and myriad other supporting documents I've been accumulating for this application has made me consider how much paperwork even a small museum can generate. I'm thinking particularly of ...museum policies.

Policies, policies, policies. Museums have policies for everything - a policy for what you collect, a policy for looking after the stuff you collect, a policy for cataloguing the stuff you collect, a policy for training people to look after the stuff you collect, a policy for disposing of things you no longer collect, a policy for engaging visitors with what you collect, a policy for making sure what you collect doesn't get stolen or go on fire or get wet, a policy for planning what you're going to do with the stuff you collect over the next five years, a policy, a policy, a policy... 

This is GREAT of course - these are vital documents which (mostly) stop museum work descending into chaos and help give the public confidence that museums are organisations which care about and will properly look after all the old stuff. It's just sometimes, like when you have to get ALL the policies in order for an Arts Council Accreditation review (required ever 3ish years), you realise quite how many of the darn things there are. 

ACCREDITATION?
(Accreditation is the premier league for UK museums and galleries - it's overseen by the Arts Council and comprises a set of standards (with policies...) which ensure you manage your collections, organisation and engage with the public properly. Among the benefits, aside from well-earned smugness, are more access to heritage sector funding and a nice shiny certificate to hang in your entrance. Learn all about it HERE)

Anyway, in a previous job we'd written or updated so many documents for our Accreditation review (which upgraded us from provisional to full Accreditation, tee hee) that the Chair of Trustees commented, in mock exasperation, 'You do seem to like your policies, don't you'. This got me thinking that what we really needed was one more policy just to keep on top of policies, and thus was created (and added to our policy matrix)...

Well I thought it was funny. Laters!


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