Failure Confessional™ MA Conference Manchester 2017

Signals from the North

For the Museums Association (MA) annual conference and exhibition this year we set up a private and confidential Failure Confessional™. We invited museum professionals to unburden themselves of the shame of museum failure and embrace a more reflective practice. We initially thought of it as a humorous provocation but then people started to pile into it across the two days and some people became really emotional and found it a really positive therapeutic experience, which took us by surprise. Luckily we were prepared as our Museum Confessor® was a trained CBT therapist. I also went around with a mic irritating and interupting people who were having a nice time at the conference to talk about failure and tried to work around museum language and ask questions about failure. Unsurprisingly many people find it an uncomfortable topic. Why don't museums talk about it? Why don't they admit failure? Or do they? What is failure to them? The conference is a big deal for museums in the UK, there are 100s of delegates who attend from all over the country representing different museums. The conference and exhibition also includes many companies and organisations that are connected to what is called the Heritage Industry; designers, consultants and people selling things to museums. This year it took place at the Manchester Conference Centre. They are usually pretty dry affairs but this year the MA organised a creative fringe programme called Festival of Change to stir things up a bit - the Failure Confessional™ was part of that. This mix is an edit of some of the interviews and includes a specially themed FAILURE playlist that includes Swans, The Smiths, New Edition, Patsy Cline, The Beach Boys, Loretta Lynn and Perry Como. We set up a twitter account to further wind up museum professionals about their institutional failures. https://twitter.com/MuseumFailures https://www.museumsassociation.org/news/02102017-festival-of-change-will-see-creative-interventions-at-manchester-2017