Culture Syndicates CIC

   14th August 2018  In  Collections ,  Exploring History ,  Industry Trends And Critical Analysis Try entering ‘food and drink museums’ into Google. The results will tell you three things about the current status of food and drink in museums. Firstly, food and drink museums are characterised as ‘weird’ and, as a consequence, trivialised. Secondly, most food and drink collections have their own dedicated museums, which are confined to large cities in the US and, to a lesser extent, the UK. Finally, food and drink in most museums tends to be restricted to the (often overpriced) cafés; few museums have interpreted aliment in their displays. Given the importance of food and drink to all human beings, this absence is odd. Food is not only sustenance: it is pleasure, it is culture, it is identity. As Roland Barthes suggests, food is a “system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behaviours”. I would suggest several interlinke...

   14th August 2018  In  Industry Trends And Critical Analysis ,  Training And Employability Learning is part of the fabric of heritage organisations; heritage professionals facilitate lifelong learning daily. Yet, as highlighted by the 2016 Character Matters report, sector professionals could do more to improve their own learning and development. The Delivery Plan for 2018 to 2020, published this May, suggests that the workforce’s heritage-specific and entrepreneurial skillsets should develop through partnerships, shadowing, secondments and mentoring opportunities. However, as suggested by the original report, employees are currently overworked and the two main barriers to CPD are lack of time and the inconvenient locations of training opportunities. One solution to these issues is online learning. Though by no means a replacement for the suggestions made in the report and delivery plan, online learning is a useful complement to more intensive learning and it i...