BC Museums Association Podcast

BC Museums Portraits Project: Pitt Meadows Museum with Leslie Norman

The BC Museum Portraits Project is an audio interview and photography initiative that will result in an online archive of the ‘institutional memory’ of the Province’s museums and archives. We’re excited to preview this new collaboration between Spencer Stuart and the BC Museums Association on our website.

BC Museums Portraits Project: White Rock Museum with Karin Bjerke-Lisle and Charlene Garvey

The BC Museum Portraits Project is an audio interview and photography initiative that will result in an online archive of the ‘institutional memory’ of the Province’s museums and archives. We’re excited to preview this new collaboration between Spencer Stuart and the BC Museums Association on our website.

MuseNews: Episode 5

Welcome to MuseNews, the BCMA’s monthly museum sector news podcast. Each month we recap some of the latest news, happenings, and announcements from museums, galleries, and heritage organizations across BC and beyond. Join Ryan and Lorenda as we explore the latest MuseNews!

Featured News:

• Vancouver to provide arts and cultural organizations with $2 million in COVID-19 support funding
• Christmas tree fest back at Museum of Surrey in Cloverdale
• Seth Rogen voices support for Vancouver Art Gallery's Giving Tuesday campaign
• Our Hometown: Curating a life – Williams Lake Tribune
• Shawnigan Lake Museum’s expansion plans gets financial boost
• One of BC's iconic structures to be rebuilt
• Prince George’s Celebration of Lights at railway museum moves to drive-thru event
• An International Report Shows the Situation for Museums Has Improved Since Spring—But It Still Offers a Stark Vision of the Future
• Courtenay Museum releases 'coffee table book' about the Comox Valley
• An Immersive Christmas Carol Planned for Roedde House Museum

Episode 16: Virtual Tours with Bryce Mathew Watts of The VR Voyage

Today we’re joined by Bryce Mathew Watts, from The VR Voyage, to explore virtual tours. COVID has forced the industry to rethink how it reaches its audience and how it can broaden its audience through new technologies. The VR Voyage is a new virtual reality platform that is helping BC museums, along with other partners around the world, to create guided virtual tours of their institutions. With the launch of the platform in early 2021, people from anywhere in the world can explore your collection and learn about what makes your institution so unique.

 

With free production costs, generous revenue share schemes, and free marketing services, The VR Voyage is a new way to build new revenue streams and adapt to a rapidly changing world. The idea was developed by UBC alumnus and anthropologist Bryce Mathew Watts. With strong partnerships, this platform will be a way to enter a new technological era and further the education mandates of BC museums.

MuseNews: Episode 4

Welcome to MuseNews, the BCMA’s monthly museum sector news podcast. Each month we recap some of the latest news, happenings, and announcements from museums, galleries, and heritage organizations across BC and beyond. Join Ryan and Lorenda as we explore the latest MuseNews!

Featured News:

• Langley's farm museum welcomes generous donation
• Comox Valley arts-based project takes honest look at overdose crisis
• McMurray Métis find new way to celebrate Métis Week during pandemic
• Maple Ridge historian helps scouts remember local honoured active servicemen of the world wars
• Museum exhibit, Cariboo Strong, shares stories, experiences through 2017 wildfires
• The stolen returns: U'mista Cultural Centre celebrates 40 years of repatriation
• NDP says it will build a South Asian museum in Surrey – Surrey Now-Leader
• A Vancouver woman is giving away her heritage house for free
• Paranormal investigators 'connect' with Point Ellice House spirit

MuseNews: Episode3

Welcome to MuseNews, the BCMA’s monthly museum sector news podcast. Each month we recap some of the latest news, happenings, and announcements from museums, galleries, and heritage organizations across BC and beyond. Join Ryan and Lorenda as we explore the latest MuseNews!

 

Featured News:

• Alberni Valley Museum re-opens with new exhibit on Chief Dan George

• Audain Prize goes to 12 artist-run centres in B.C. in response to pandemic 

• Which US museums will show John Oliver's rat erotica and Wendy Williams pork chop portrait?
• Art Gallery of Alberta confronts history of never including Black artists in Biennial exhibition
• Museums among the worst hit in cultural sector, research finds 
• Vancouver's oldest koi, survivor of otter attacks relocated from Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden
  

   

• Okanagan man finds fame in retirement with model railway 50 years in the making

• Richmond Museum re-opens its doors after pandemic shutdown

• BC Museums Association Celebrates the Creativity AND Resilience
  of the Arts, Culture, AND Heritage Sector
  
• UBC Museum of Anthropology exhibit aims to 'correct' colonial legacy

Episode 15: Back to School Week

It’s Back to School Week at the BCMA and we’re sharing ideas, tips, and resources for museums as they think about how to continue engaging with schools and teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In today’s podcast episode, we’re joined by Tom Searby.

Tom majored in History and English at Wilfrid Laurier University and completed a Bachelor of Education at Nipissing University. He has taught grades 8-12 in Ontario and British Columbia and has also worked as a museum educational programmer at Doon Heritage Village in Waterloo, Ontario. He currently resides in Smithers and teaches Food Studies, woodshop, and senior social studies at Houston Secondary School in Houston BC.

Today Tom will be helping to give a teacher’s perspective on how museums can support schools during the most unpredictable back-to-school season in our lifetimes. 

MuseNews: Episode 2

Welcome to MuseNews, the BCMA’s monthly museum sector news podcast. Each month we recap some of the latest news, happenings, and announcements from museums, galleries, and heritage organizations across BC and beyond. Join Ryan and Lorenda as we explore the latest MuseNews!

Featured News:

• Burnaby museum's local Indigenous history guide wins national award 
• Royal BC Museum buys IMAX Victoria theatre
• Heritage and Sustainability Unite at the Potato House

• Maritime Museum of BC Moves Forward with Next Phase of the Pacific Maritime Centre

• Learning language through whispers: Indigenous youth launch ASMR campaign

MuseNews: Episode 1

Welcome to MuseNews, the BCMA’s monthly museum sector news podcast. Each month we recap some of the latest news, happenings, and announcements from museums, galleries, and heritage organizations across BC and beyond. Join Ryan and Lorenda as we explore the latest MuseNews!

Featured News:

• New Vancouver museum to highlight Chinese-Canadian history in BC
• After nearly a century, Metis activist James Brady being recognized for his photography
• Penticton Art Gallery hosts first Bob Ross exhibit in Canada
• Most People Plan to Visit Museums Just as Much as Ever and 5 Other Takeaways From Our Survey on Art Engagement Post-Lockdown
• Opinion: Critical thinking, science culture and Canadians' super power against COVID-19
• Several BC museums received a special thanks from the Dorchester Retirement Residence in Kelowna for their special online programs during COVID-19
• Want to start your own Jurassic Park? Over 70 animatronic dinosaurs are going up for auction in B.C.

Episode 14: International Advocacy, a Conversation with Dr. Rob Lennox

Today we're joined by Dr. Rob Lennox to explore the concept of advocacy for the museums and heritage sector.

Rob is a Senior Advocacy Coordinator at the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists in the UK where he undertakes advocacy work to influence policy-makers and maintain relationships with external stakeholders. Rob completed his Ph.D. in 2016 exploring the regulation of the historic environment through government policy instruments and the impact that political processes have on the application of sectoral value-driven visions.

Through his research and work, Rob aims to develop and demonstrate a strategic understanding of the heritage sector and of its political machinations, as well as of conservation philosophy and operations in the planning system.

Outside of his advocacy work, Rob is a keen mountaineer, hiker, and skiier and enjoys birding. As an enjoyer of nature and mountains, Rob has a deep appreciation and interest in British Columbia.

Rob also recommends the following resources for those interested in expanding their advocacy toolkits:

1. Fighting for Birds by Mark Avery (A fantastic book, possibly not packed with directly relevant skills for the budding BC museums campaigner, but it shows the passion and dedication of nature conservation campaigners in the UK and will explain why advocacy is a long game)

 

2. From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in a Digital Age by D Allen & J Light (There is a lot to learn about 'new' advocacy, and it's developing all around us. But politics is changing all the time. This book looks at how we communicate around political issues and how we translate that into participatory power.)

 

3. Many charities have excellent advocacy resources. There are too many to mention, but The National Council for Voluntary Organisations is a great example from the UK (https://knowhow.ncvo.org.uk/campaigns) but you may wish to search closer to home.

 

4. Learn from other campaigns! You can look at different organisations, but the Museums Association in the UK has lots of information about past and current campaigns on its website: https://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns

 

5. Hope For the Future is for a climate change-focused local advocacy organisation! They've got some really clear advice on letter writing and other things (https://www.hftf.org.uk/template-letters)