Marketing the national heritage

Just 25 years ago in the UK, a country renowned for the excellence of its museums and the celebration of the performing arts, the co-existence, let alone, the close co-operation between marketing and the arts was deemed a complete anathema, an abominable pipe dream concocted in one of the darkest opium dens of Victorian England.

Curators at the time did not relish the idea of "mammonic"and "barbaric" business organisations messing about with their precious museums and feared, not without sufficient reason as initial experiments revealed, that business considerations would risk taking precedence over time-honoured traditions and would defile the inner sanctums of art and culture.

As long as they could afford to, museums preferred to carry on with their life as they had always done, cocooned by the knowledge that the state would provide. Margaret Thatcher put paid to all this tranquillity when she introduced significant cuts in state subsidies. This brought home the stark reality that, in order to survive, museums had to resort to new hitherto unknown ways of generating funds.

Both the marketers and the curators were young in deed and both put their foot in it more than once. Lack of sensitivity on the part of the business world mingled unhappily with deep mistrust on the part of the museums.

The early days proved the curators right and the first experiments at "revolutionising"the museums through pure marketing approaches were often insensitive, simplistic and crude to say the least. From their moral high ground, curators viewed the silver-tongued marketers with suspicion. The custodians of truth, beauty, authenticity and integrity could not easily cohabit with those they viewed as "spin doctors" bent only on corporate profits.

The same scenario that was unfolding in the UK in the late Seventies was manifesting itself in other countries too, with more or less the same results. In time, both sides realised that a lot more could be achieved through mutual understanding and co-operation than through brute confrontation. Moreover, time proved that evolution is always more effective than revolution in any change process.

Though difficult at the outset, the learning curve proved highly beneficial and forward-looking museums soon realised that by working closely and intelligently with the marketing community they could turn museum visits into museum experiences, breathing new life and meaning into the priceless exhibits in their care. Parallelling developments in the business world, museums learned to become visitor as opposed to product focused.

This highly significant change in focus created a new and positive environment that everybody could live with, and opened up new vistas for new concepts like accessibility, social inclusion, child education and popular interpretation. This changed the whole complexion of museums from static mausoleums for the learned to rich, dynamic and vibrant experiences for all.

Nowadays nobody frowns at seeing hordes of noisy and excited children rushing from one display to another or standing mesmerised in front of interactive electronic screens. Nobody frowns at museum shops. On the contrary, these have become a very welcome and looked-for last port of call in the whole museum experience.

Great care is also taken to ensure that people with special needs are provided with all the necessary facilities to guarantee total accessibility to the museums. Mini cinemas, audio guides, virtual reality and animators are all part of the modern museum experience.

Where does Malta feature in all this? Malta's museums, which have just celebrated their one hundredth birthday, are still lagging behind and have not yet come of age in terms of offering a memorable visitor experience. Despite their priceless artefacts, they are still to a very large extent not much more than glorified showcases.

With the creation of Heritage Malta just 18 months ago, all this has begun to change. Endowed with a team of young and dedicated curators and museologists, the agency has been taking stock of the situation and has been working flat out to bring its museums and sites into the 21st century in line with its mission to create greater awareness of our national heritage, enhance accessibility for visitors and to turn museum visits into memorable and rewarding experiences.

Entrusted with 33 museums and sites (seven of which are listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites) the task facing Heritage Malta is herculean, hampered as it is by a severe shortage of resources both financial and human.

In a manner of speaking, Heritage Malta is going through an accelerated evolutionary process, learning fast from the mistakes of the past and taking on board the latest developments in museology in countries like the UK, Italy, France and Holland. This evolutionary process includes an ambitious conservation project at the Tarxien Temples, in partnership with Bank of Valletta, and the complete overhaul and refurbishment of the Roman Domus.

In addition, structural and refurbishment works are being carried out in various sites, including the Museum of Archaeology in Gozo, the Inquisitor's Palace and the Maritime Museum in Vittoriosa and the Heritage Malta offices housed in the Old University Buildings in Valletta.

Other more ambitious projects are currently in the pipeline such as the Hagar Qim project, which aims to provide shelters for the temples designed to protect them from the ravages of natural erosion and preserve them for posterity as well as creating a modern visitors' centre.

The latest addition in this tapestry of events is the creation of the Business Development Unit within Heritage Malta Services Ltd. The BDU's main objective is to act as Heritage Malta's commercial arm with a view to enhancing the agency's revenue generation capabilities so as to better equip it to meet present and future challenges.

The Business Development Unit started operations in January. To date it has facilitated the holding of various events, including dinners, concerts and even weddings, in a number of sites specially earmarked for this purpose.

The opening up of a number of palaces and museums for these events has been met with great enthusiasm and support from Destination Management Companies (DMCs) tour operators, corporate bodies and the public.

Heritage Malta Services Ltd is also planning to enter into a public-private partnership to establish a number of museum shops, offering thematic high quality giftware, by the end of the year. It also plans to reinforce its policy of forming strategic alliances with the business world by launching the Corporate Patrons Programme whereby leading companies operating in Malta are invited to invest in our national heritage by offering financial support in exchange for official recognition and a number of distinct privileges linked to Heritage Malta's remit and scope of operations.

While revenue generation is of paramount importance for the long-term sustainability of Heritage Malta, the ultimate aim is to drive home the message is that our national heritage is a valuable economic resource as well as an intrinsic part of our national identity.

The Cultural Heritage Act of 2002, clearly specifies that "The mission of Heritage Malta is to ensure that those elements of the cultural heritage entrusted to it are protected and made accessible to the public". With this aim firmly in mind, Heritage Malta will soon be launching a public membership scheme (open to visitors and Maltese public alike) that will allow free and unlimited access to all museums and sites (except the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum) in exchange for a small annual membership fee.

This membership scheme, which will be open to individuals and family groups, is aimed at creating greater public awareness and appreciation of our national archaeological, architectural and historical treasures by encouraging more people to frequent our museums and sites on a regular basis and not limit their experience of our heritage to a once-in-a-lifetime-visit only.

Heritage Malta hopes that thanks to these initiatives, it can restore a sense of national pride and instil this in our children who will grow up to be tomorrow's guardians, ensuring "a future for our past".

Ray M. Cassar, M.Ed (Manchester), MA, BA (Hons), Cert IPD (Lond) is business development manager at Heritage Malta.