Staffing Needs and Solutions
Career-oriented Training Courses for People with Intellectual Disabilities: The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s Experience in Moscow, Russia
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lada Talyzina
the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art was founded in 2008. In 2015, Russia’s first ever Inclusive Programs department was launched within the Museum. The main activity of the Garage’s Inclusive Programs department is not limited to the transformation of existent events, it also focuses on the development of event formats for people with disabilities. This is how "The Museum Is Your Friend," a career-oriented training course for visitors with intellectual disabilities, was initiated by the Inclusive Programs team. Few people realize that a museum is not merely an exhibition venue, but a platform for education, socializing, and building skills for life. The structure of each training session includes introduction, review of the previous material, main theoretical block, training section, and casual discussion during tea-time. Transferring this project to the territory of a psychoneurological care home demanded significant changes in the course structure, which have allowed the participants to receive knowledge, bearing in mind their own experience of living in a closed state institution. Each of the courses were comprised of four classes, followed by the final stage featuring guided tours delivered by Garage specialists who spoke about their work in the Museum. For the Inclusive Programs department staff, the most important thing was to introduce the participants to the careers potentially available for people with intellectual disabilities. At the end of the course’s first enrollment year, the students completed an internship at the Garage Archive and practiced their skills working as assistant educators at selected events for families and children.
Air Force Museums and Their Civilian Counterparts: Improving Both Sides of the Equation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Corey Jane Christianson
The U.S. Air Force is a continuing entity in the fight for freedom across the world. It does its job the best way it knows how, and in the process, claims to celebrate heritage. The celebration of heritage does occur in some instances, but not to the extent or necessity that it should. Air Force-run museums lack the funding and organization that publicly-run museums utilize to thrive in society. In this study, surveys submitted to both military-run and publicly-run museums were gathered with the goal of identifying best practices for improving museum operations. Topics within the questionnaire included funding and artifact care as well as staffing. These questions directly relate to AFI 84-103, the regulations for the U.S. Air Force museum system. The surveys returned from the military-run museums indicated an extreme deficit with funding. The museums are understaffed and often the employees are not trained in museum sciences. This causes issues with the caring for artifacts, because a lack of training in the care of artifacts may lead to artifacts being mistreated, not purposely, but mistreated nonetheless. This paper discusses the necessary steps for the Air Force-run museums to take in order to better themselves by learning from publicly-run museums.
