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Unexpected Collaborations; transactions of loss

from Julie Reynolds, Thursday, September 10, 2009

A snapshot from our CSR event at the Foundling Museum

It was a warm summer morning in August, summertime break for many of our participants of the Exchange Programme. A time for us all as a team to reflect, debrief and plan the last two workshops of the programme. Throughout the programme we have had a wealth of knowledge and contributions from our participants, which we capture in these blogs and are an important factor of our evidence base. After a meeting recently at the British Library introducing the MLA Knowledge Transfer programme as a whole to Phillip Morris, from York University who has developed a network; THiNK with Cambridge University, which is seeking to assess the effectiveness and impact of Knowledge Transfer projects in the Arts and Humanities academic sectors and how can they translate in the fields of literature, history, law, sociology frameworks. The story of how the programme developed in this current ‘Knowledge Economy’ was told by Victoria in a hypnotic way. Even though I have been to many meetings and know the why’s and how’s of the programme’s development, yesterday was the story unfolding in a way that uncovered the methodology. Victoria spoke of the collected stories that were gathered in the first set of research in 2007, how these stories were of individuals from all levels in the museum, library, archive and business sector and how they captured each person’s ‘travel’ through Knowledge Transfer projects. The methodology of ‘oral histories’ unravelling questions, themes and critical dialogue is a process which is embedded in all of the workshops materials and evidence gathering around the Exchange Programme. Each participants story is an important one and this leads me on to the outcomes of our workshop; CSR (or not) which took place at the Foundling Museum on 22 June.

The CSR (or not) workshop at the Foundling Museum was chosen as a venue as it is a space which is of outstanding beauty as well as housing ‘oral histories’ of its once childhood residents. The museum has received funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund to capture the oral histories of the remaining childhood residents of which 50 adults are lined up to be interviewed. They will use the London Metropolitan Archive (which was the venue for the following workshop on 21 July) as a resource as all of the hospital records are housed there. The material collated will be used for a future display/exhibition.

The Foundling Museum tells the story of the Foundling Hospital, London’s first home for abandoned children and of three major figures in British history: its campaigning founder the philanthropist Thomas Coram, the artist William Hogarth and the composer George Frideric Handel. This remarkable collection of art, period interiors and social history is now housed in a restored and refurbished building adjacent to the original site of the Hospital, demolished in 1928.
Source: http://www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk/

During the introduction at the Foundling Museum, Janet Broadhurst described Handel as being ‘the Bob Geldof of the 1700’s’ someone who gave a lot of money to charity. We were in the Picture Gallery surrounded by impressive portraits of Handel and the other philanthropists involved in the existence of the museum. The workshop uncovered conversations of loss, importance of memories and associations with collections and archives through panel discussion with Kate Cavelle, Director, Corporate Citizens UK,from Deutsche Bank, Sabine Jaccaud, Consultant, and Iain Robertson, Head of Art Business, Sotheby’s Art Institute. Kate talked about the art collection that Deutsche Bank has a renowned reputation for housing and developing. The collection is
‘the DNA of who we are…it engages staff and the outside world and is used to support our brand’.
This connection to an art collection being an important part of a businesses identity was emphasised by Sabine Jaccaud who has worked with many large international businesses and their art collections. ‘Art collections bring people together through conversations and can engage the work force with a brand and its underlying business aims’.

However, the importance of an art collection in a company should not be underestimated, Sabine talked about a huge sense of transactional loss when two large banks merged. This transaction, like many mergers and deep organisational changes, left staff feeling at a loss with their individual role within the business identity. One day they had an art collection which housed a huge Anish Kapoor in the reception area in London, and then one morning on arrival to the office only the screws were left in the wall. The collection had been discarded from the office environment, subliminally reinforcing a sense of loss, instability and insecurity. But how does all of this fit into CSR? Deutsche Bank measure the ‘impact’ of their activities and how CSR of their art collection influences their brand, the monitoring and measuring systems in place show ‘hard impacts’, and it is the – ‘*survey of the company’s values [that is important] rather than a tangible value’* and collecting art and running activities around art collections is a way for them to do this effectively. If an art collection is housed within a set department or CSR protocol it is utilised as Sabine commented, ‘an archive is historic and static, an art collection is dynamic’. Art collections within businesses are often turned into Foundations so that they are protected and can operate in a separate notion from the company, Sabine talked about one bank taking this route and ‘the art collection was sold off for one Euro and it became a foundation. The collection is now primarily in storage, strange as the whole concept was to engage people’. Iain Robertson talked about the Fleming Collection as being a unique example of how a banking art collection separated from the company and is now a prominent museum working on projects with the bank, museums and artists with its collection. Selina Skipwith talked about how this developed in recent interview:

I am the Keeper of Art to the Fleming Collection which I guess is an odd title, historic title. I suppose it is Director of Fleming Collection. It arose by accident, I joined what was Flemings Bank thirteen years ago on a two month contract to catalogue their art collection and never left and within a year became their first full time Keeper of Art. I ran their Corporate Collection and so everything that was involved in that and doing art tours for the staff, clients, looking after the collection, hanging the different offices, managing where it was and then when the company sold in 2000 I got the family to buy the collection back from the company and gift it to a charitable foundation that we created. So since 2000 we have been completely independent charitable organisation, called the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation. And we opened a gallery called the Fleming Collection in 2002 in Berkeley Street which we run, really as a museum of art collection. It has become a museum of Scottish art so we do four exhibitions a year; they are all open to the public for free. One exhibition will always be one hundred percent from our own permanent collection and then there might be other exhibitions that year also drawn from our permanent collection but they could be complete, lone exhibitions, either that we have put together or they have come from probably a museum in Scotland.

The relationship and ‘shared heritage’ between the company [Flemings Bank] and the collection is described as follows:

We grew out of being a corporate collection, but I guess we now see us as really being just a very independent collection. We are quite specialised just doing Scottish art, but although we still maintain the relationships with our history and heritage the family when they sold, the old Flemings Bank they set up a new company called Fleming Family and Partners and we cohabit and we have very much a shared heritage but we are completely separate organisations. We are in a way a quite interesting mix because we have come from that corporate heritage but actually the way we have set ourselves up is that we are completely independent. We did that quite deliberately rather than tying ourselves completely to another company again, that if something happened to that company we would have to go through the whole process again [and particularly in light of the current climate when you look at credit crunch and market I think it was really quite a wise decision to keep ourselves as independent as possible. So we very much still maintain all our roots with Fleming Family and Partners but I guess we also have new roots with a lot of our old bankers from the old Flemings, just went off to work from a whole range of companies. In a way we have this big network of people that we have been in contact with at some point. So we are not particularly trying to put together across the identity of a company, [our soul aim is to promote Scottish art which I guess in a way is also quite unusual in a way. But obviously indirectly every time a Fleming Collection or a Fleming name is mentioned in the paper, our expert is reviewed it does have a bonus effect from the recognition for people reading it and knowing about Fleming Family and Partners or the heritage. ….. everything has very much grown as an organic process so rather than being a corporate collection as such, it has really become a world class museum collection of Scottish art as the basis rather than that company ethos.

It can be seen from the discussion from the workshop and the examples mentioned here that each business utilises collections within its identity in differing ways. It is not so clear cut when a collection represents a predecessors culture, and also applies when the collections become an integral fabric of the building and staff engagement. At a time where companies are questioning who they are, for example, a bank asking itself what am I? when in previous times this reflection wouldn’t have existed, capitalism is changing, consumers are becoming more aware of themselves as a brand and association with companies is parallel to this. Businesses should not underestimate the importance of their collections or archives; cultural strategy, cultural risk management, cultural exit strategies should be built in to their infrastructures and purpose to ensure their survival.

I would now like to highlight other themes which are arising from all of this, ‘impact’ and ‘unexpected collaborations’ and lead us into the next Exchange Programme workshop Unexpected Collaborations; Unexpected Angles which will take place at the UCL Collections, Bloomsbury, on 22 September. The conversation; on how to record the value of Knowledge Transfer projects through their impact and how can impact be measured, is happening throughout business, museums, libraries and archives, academic sector, and research funding bodies. Knowledge Transfer projects often incorporate collaborations between different sectors, of which the MLA London is addressing business and museums, libraries and archives and Philip Morris is trying to assess through a series of internal workshops at York University how you quantify what the impact of KT research has been. It became evident from the meeting with Philip that like the exchange programme which is bringing two worlds together to have conversations that there is a meta knowledge transfer conversation to start a dialogue between development banks, horizon scanning and futurists and knowledge transfer academics about the slipperiness of measuring the value of the philosophy department or a change conversation that wouldn’t otherwise have been had, and that this is the important next step for all of us if we are to consider the true value and knowledge transfer that comes about. We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences of Unexpected Collaborations please do submit…