Museum debate: How much digital is too much digital?
“I just think that hands on opportunity is so much more valuable. If you can pass around actual objects, natural and man-made, you have really got a special experience."
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The Invercargill City Council has already made its digital quest pretty clear. It wants the region’s new museum experience to be 70 percent digital.
It’s part of the push for a “wow factor” and to appeal to younger generations through various digital elements.
So, it was probably a surprise to a few when representatives of the Youth Council showed up to a museum consultation hearing on Tuesday and declared its preference was “access to the heritage of the region” rather than digital content.
“We have a rich history in Southland, and we want to see that shown through our artifacts, rather than focusing heavily on digital instalments,” the Youth Council stated in its submission.
There were also concerns raised that technology was evolving fast and the Youth Council did not want the council to invest significantly in current systems as they could date and create future problems.
Former city councillor Lloyd Esler - who worked in a teaching capacity at the old museum - also wasn’t sold on the push for a significant digital presence in the museum.
“I’m not all that in favour of the digital stuff. I think if you can Google it and see it on a screen at home you don’t need to leave home and see it.
“I just think that hands on opportunity is so much more valuable. If you can pass around actual objects, natural and man-made, you have really got a special experience,” Esler said.
Esler pointed to Te Hikoi in Riverton as a museum that has been done “extremely well”, and also the museum at Rakiura.
While the design for the outside of the new museum building at Queens Park has been released to the public, just what the experience inside the building will look like has only been made available to certain stakeholders, at this point.
When that is made public it is expected to provide people with a better understanding as to how that push for a digital experience will stack up.
Angela Newell spoke at Tuesday’s hearing on behalf of Arts Murihiku and the Shakespeare in the Park organisations. Newell is also an Invercargill Licensing Trust board member.
Newell felt there was a wrong perception floating around of the digital experience.
“Please don’t compromise on the digital aspect. I’ve heard some people say, ‘I don’t really want my kids sitting in front of a screen, they get that all of the time at home’.
“I think that’s a very naive and incorrect view of what this digital experience will be,” Newell said.
“We are not talking about a couple screens here; we are not talking about a 50-inch TV screen kids will plonk themselves in front of.
“We are talking about professionals creating an experience for all of us.”
Once the public was shown a presentation as to what the digital experience might entail, Newell expects people will be impressed.
“Looking at what I have seen elsewhere, I think that they will be blown away by what the creative team will come up with. I trust them and I think we all need to trust them because they’re the experts in their fields.
“Just let them go and do what they are proposing to do and let’s pay for it,” Newell said.
The council has been consulting with the public after it was revealed up to $19.5m would need to be added to the museum budget to proceed with the project as per the initial brief.
It included an updated $11m cost for “the experience”, which is effectively what will go inside the museum once the building is completed.
One of the cost saving options put to the public was the possibility to reduce the museum’s experience digital and instead increase the percentage of static displays. It could provide a cost saving of between $1.8 million to $3.8 million.
The other options included in the latest museum consultation were: 1. Proceeding with the final design based on original brief 2. Removing the Green Star Accreditation quest at a saving of about $800,000. 3. The removal of Green Star Accreditation and also a delay in constructing the new 71-space car park with a cost-savings of about $2.4m.
Option 1 - which is to proceed with the initial brief at an increased budget - was the most supported with 36 percent of the 265 submitters in favour of that.
The next most supported option was to make savings by reducing the digital experience with 29% - or 78 submitters - in favour of that.
Not proceeding, or pausing and completely rethinking the whole project, was not provided as an option as part of the consultation, although this was raised by about 45 submitters.
Half of those 45 were clear that they didn’t like any of the options or stated that any rate rise or budget increase at all would be unacceptable.
The council will make its final decision on October 22.
The Youth Council have got it right. And after all it will be that generation and the next that will be saddled those expensive upgrades.
You get to understand how flawed democracy can be when only 265 people can be bothered making submissions that will impact the 50,000 people of Invercargill for years to come. And out of that only 36% agree with the direction the council is heading which must be around 95 people. That is 0.2% of the city's population.
Just talking with a group of people yesterday who were saying a generation of school kids has moved through the system knowing nothing about and museum which says a lot about how the council has dropped the ball.
Now seems they could well drop the ball again by moving to a digital experience. Someone should be showing us where this has worked in another comparable museum around the world. Lets not think we should reinvent the wheel in Invercargill.