Room to learn

Jane Hughes explains how a knowledge transfer programme has enabled museums, libraries and archives to support business learning and development

The Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London is a free public museum that houses the collection of the eighteenth-century surgeon and anatomist John Hunter FRS (1728-1793). Forming the centrepiece of the museum, the collection is stunningly presented in eight floor-to-ceiling glass vitrines. These contain human and animal anatomical and pathological remains, skeletons, wet preparations in jars and dried and preserved tissue. The collection is testament to the skill and dedication of Hunter and his efforts to improve our knowledge and understanding of the structure and function of the human body, and how it is affected by injury and disease.

The museum provides an insight into the history and contemporary practice of surgery, with a gallery dedicated to the development of surgery and medicine over the past four centuries. The displays reveal the growing importance of science and technology in the treatment of patients and the training of surgeons. They also give visitors a chance to try their hand at some keyhole surgery.

Working at the cutting edge
The Royal College of Surgeons of England is an independent charity committed to enabling surgeons to achieve and maintain the highest standards of surgical practice and patient care. It does this through activities including:

Supervising training of surgeons in approved posts;
Providing educational and practical workshops for surgeons and other medical professionals at all stages of their careers;
Examining trainees to ensure the highest professional standards; and
Promoting and supporting surgical research in the UK.

The Hunterian Museum supports the work of the Royal College of Surgeons through the display, interpretation, management and conservation of the college’s collections. Recognised as being of outstanding national and international importance, the museum uses these collections to encourage public interest in the history, current practice and future development of surgery.

The museum achieves this by working closely with departments across the college. For example, this autumn the public will be able to visit the £15m, newly developed education training facilities and have a go at suturing (surgical stitching) along with minimal access surgical training under the watchful eye of surgeons. They will also see how surgical team skills are developed through the mock operating theatre.1

Balancing the books versus core functions
As an independent museum largely funded through a charity, the Hunterian Museum has striven to make the most of opportunities for income generation since its relaunch in 2005. In the current economic climate this is more important than ever, as external funding becomes harder to find and the museum is required by the college to cover more of its operating costs.

One of the ways that the museum has been able to contribute towards the income of the college is through corporate hire. The museum is used by the college’s facilities department for evening receptions, private parties and conference networking events. The clients could be from the academic, medical or business worlds. While the museum is happy to support these events, it did not feel that the people attending had much opportunity to interact with the museum collections.

On a smaller scale, the museum also makes its teaching room available for hire by schools, universities and other education groups for workshops, seminars and teaching. These groups are more likely to make direct use of the museum collections, accessing material from our reserves, such as the large collection of human bones used by the Department of Archaeology at University College London. However, the level of income generated from these groups is limited and falling, as education budgets are increasingly cut.

The challenge for the museum was to find a way of generating revenue at the same time as extending access to and involvement with the collections by clients outside of the formal education sector.

Knowledge transfer programme
A project run by the London Development Agency and Museums, Libraries and Archives (MLA) London provided an opportunity to explore this challenge and gave the museum a small amount of funding to support this work.

The knowledge transfer programme, managed by MLA London, was “a ground-breaking programme of work to examine and support relationships between museums, libraries and archives and businesses”.2 Research undertaken by MLA London in 2005 and 2006 collated an evidence base for the economic contribution of the three domains. The report used secondary analysis of government data, top-level policy, consultation with key sector professionals and regional agencies. It focused on the direct economic impact and the harder to measure services that museums, libraries and archives offer, such as learning and skills development, support for enterprise, regeneration and renewal and tourism. The report concluded that museums, libraries and archives “bridge the digital divide by opening more access of the knowledge economy”.3 The two reports recommended that further investigation be carried out into the economic impact of London’s museums, libraries and archives and the sector’s role in the knowledge economy. This proposal was refined to focus on knowledge transfer, and whether businesses could benefit from the expertise, skills and knowledge within the sector.

MLA London worked with KM consultancy Sparknow, which identified pockets of good practice, such as the John Lewis Archive and London Transport Museum. They also found that there was enormous potential for the exchange and transfer of knowledge between businesses and museums, libraries and archives.4

Together MLA London and Sparknow designed four pilot projects to support this exchange, funded in part by the London Development Agency. The Hunterian Museum was involved in two of these projects, the exchange programme and the innovation fund.5

Room to discover
The innovation fund was a small but flexible fund that enabled museums, archives and galleries to work with businesses to develop resources to meet their needs. In the words of the project manager: “It gave them the freedom to try something out and to learn from it”.6

The project undertaken by the museum and supported by the innovation fund had three main aims:

To make better use of a high-quality space within the critically acclaimed Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons;
To promote the outstanding collections to businesses as a source of inspiration, innovation and creativity; and
To maximise the potential of the MacRae Gallery – a ‘room to discover’ – as a means to generate income to support the wider work of the Hunterian Museum, in particular with schools and families.

The museum worked in the first instance with the facilities department of the Royal College of Surgeons. We drew on the expertise of the staff to determine the market potential for promoting the museum’s learning space for hire, what the needs of the clients might be, what facilities the museum would need to offer and to explore the level of income the museum could realistically expect to generate.

Following on from this the museum collaborated with the college designer and photographer to produce an attractive brochure that highlighted the main features of the room and showed why this space was a unique environment for hire.

The museum also worked with the College catering contractors Charlton House to design a bespoke menu for this area. This took into consideration the conservation requirements of the collections that are housed in the space, together with the need to offer an attractive package to clients.

Making the link between our collections and business was the most challenging part of the project. For this we benefitted greatly from the experience of our visitor services manager, Stefania Riccini, who has a background in staff training. Taking the unique environment that the museum could offer as her starting point, she developed a range of modules that could provide inspiration for business development activities such as away days, team building, customer service training and other soft skills development. The modules include:

Confidence building. Using objects such as prosthetic noses and glasses, and Winston Churchill’s dentures, participants are asked to reflect on the stories behind these items, to think about the factors and individuals involved and to find examples from their own lives and how they can apply these to their business practice.
Customer service training. Selected items from John Hunter’s collection, such as the patient, John Burley, who had a large benign tumour removed from his neck by Hunter, illustrate examples of good and bad customer service that will help participants reflect on their own behaviour when providing customer care. The objects will provide them with an insight as to how those at the receiving end – the customers – felt at the time, giving course participants the opportunity to make parallels with their own situation and reflect upon possible improvements or solutions to their current challenges.
Diversity, prejudice and social inclusion. This constantly relevant topic is approached through reference to history. Participants are asked to step back in to the 1700s and consider the impact of diversity and prejudice then, and how that relates to what people might experience now.
Presentation skills and public speaking. Participants can absorb some brief and fascinating information about selected museum objects on display and practise in an authentic public space, dealing not only with nerves but also with challenges such as time keeping, background noise, voice projection, standing in the right spot, keeping their audience focused and a lot more.

Other modules in development are:

Problem solving;
Team building and group dynamics;
Identity and self-awareness; and
Managing loss and transition.

Each module has taken a specific aspect of modern business practice and demonstrated parallels to the histories of particular items on display. For each module there is detailed information about key specimens and objects, task sheets for participants, and trainers’ notes to support the facilitation of the tasks. These modules are not designed to be prescriptive in any way; rather, they offer a starting point for trainers and workshop leaders to make the best use of the venue to engage with their delegates.

The museum has conducted user testing of the confidence building module with College staff and other museum professionals. One colleague commented: “I have to admit that I thought that connecting surgical artefacts with generalised training was a bit of a stretch! How wrong was I?”

Funding from the innovation fund also enabled the museum to engage the services of an external marketing consultant for three days. Lynn Scrivener produced a marketing and development plan and advised the museum on the most effective ways of raising awareness of the MacRae Gallery as a space for hire and the additional resources that the museum can offer businesses using this venue.

A pan-college approach
Fundamental to the success of this project has been the driver from the highest level within the Royal College of Surgeons for savings to be made, income generated and for “all staff to be increasingly adaptable and take a pan-college approach to all their responsibilities”.7

The co-operation of the internal college departments and contractors who helped to facilitate this project was essential, as was their expertise in the marketing and promotion of the space. Staff from these departments were engaged by this project and could see the wider benefits that it had to offer on a departmental and college-wide basis. External hire of the MacRae Gallery provides an additional resource for the facilities team and increased levels of bookings helps the catering company to maximise its business.

Without the support of our other college colleagues it would also not have been possible to demonstrate the potential of this project to external clients, who will look for evidence that these modules are effective and that the facilities meet the standards that they require.

An additional source of support came from the external trainer used by the HR department to deliver the majority of the college’s compulsory training. Having heard about the modules and experienced some of them for herself, the trainer is now planning to use the MacRae Gallery and the ‘diversity, prejudice and social inclusion’ module to deliver the equality and diversity training that all college staff are required to attend. This success is testament to the skills and experience of the visitor services manager.

Learning and reflecting
At the beginning of this project the museum was seeking to make better use of its teaching space, while promoting use of the collections and maximising the potential income generated through room hire.

The project has been a starting point in achieving these aims. Building up an awareness of this space, demonstrating the benefits that it can offer businesses and translating this into paid bookings will take time. Interest is increasing steadily and the use of the room and the modules is growing.

In addition to the original aims there have been some other benefits that have emerged over the course of the project. It has enabled the museum to move the MacRae Gallery over to the main facilities booking system. This gives it greater prominence in the minds of the facilities team and enables the museum to benefit from their broader range of potential clients. It also means that the catering contractors are more interested in including the space in their marketing initiatives and promoting the museum through unusual and exclusive channels.

The innovation fund project encouraged the museum to find a creative solution to the challenge of raising more income through the use of its assets, without compromising its core function as a museum. The financial support offered by the fund gave the museum some additional capacity and enabled it to engage professional marketing expertise. More importantly perhaps, the support offered through the knowledge transfer programme enabled the museum to take risks and be less conventional in its approach. In many ways this project honoured the ethos of Hunter, who once said to Edward Jenner, the discoverer of the smallpox vaccination: “Why think, why not try the experiment?”8

The innovation fund project has formed the beginning of this experiment and the museum will continue to refine its processes in working with and for business to help support their learning and development needs.

Jane Hughes is head of learning and access at the Hunterian Museum, at the Royal College of Surgeons. She can be contacted at jhughes@rcseng.ac.uk

References
1. Find out more about the College’s new surgical training facilities at http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/education/facilities. For more information about events at the Hunterian Museum see www.hunterianmuseum.org
2. MLA Knowledge Transfer Programme website http://ktprogramme.net. Accessed 4.8.2010
3. London’s Culture Equation, ALM London, 2005 and London’s Culture Equation 2006, MLA London, for copies of these reports contact MLA, www.mla.gov.uk
4. For a more detailed analysis of the research see the Sparknow report http://ktprogramme.net/assets/14/ktp_findings.pdf Accessed 5.8.2010
5. For a more detailed explanation of the four pilot projects see the Sparknow report http://ktprogramme.net/assets/16/ktp_pilots.pdf Accessed 5.8.2010
6. Business email from Ellen Collins, Research and Policy Officer for MLA London for the Knowledge Transfer Programme, 27.4.2010
7. Chief Executive's statement, 2009
8. Letter from John Hunter to Edward Jenner, MS0015/3, 2/8/[1775?], Archives of the Royal College of Surgeons

Sidebar: Aims for the future

Generating at least one external hire per month for the next six months, and assessing the uptake of the modules by clients using the MacRae Gallery.
A targeted marketing campaign from September onwards through the facilities department and Charlton House caterers.
To work with ‘business improvement district? InMidTown to show what the museum offers to London businesses and educational organisations.
Expanding the use of the museum to deliver internal staff training using the modules developed as part of the project.