Museums and community cultural planning, a case study in participatory action research in Peterborough Ontario

Abstract

There is a rapid and double-edged change occurring in cultural policy as responsibility and focus shift from the nation state to cities and regions, and as European cultural traditions and norms are challenged by unprecedented ethno-racial and cultural diversity. Canada has fallen behind other jurisdictions in moving to embrace a more integrated approach to local cultural development through a cultural planning approach. The literature review explores this ground demonstrating a convergence of interest among reform efforts in three fields: local cultural development, planning and community development, and museums. The literature review concludes with a framework for cultural planning in Canada.

The hypothesis is that local museums can play important roles in cultural planning. This is tested using a form of participatory action research involving a primary case study in Peterborough Ontario. In 1995 the Peterborough Centennial Museum and Archives (PCMA) assumed broadened cultural responsibilities as the Culture and Heritage Division (CHD) of the City of Peterborough. The organization took on this extend mandate with no new resources. The research examines the organizational and professional change process through three phases of data collection and analysis. It includes a comparison of findings in two communities - Kitchener and Aurora.

The findings suggest that the technocratic traditions and functional orientation of Canadian municipalities pose many barriers to the wholesale reconceptualizing of local cultural development advocated by the cultural planning approach. Innes (1990) argues that planning is about conceptualization, problem framing or values clarification. In Peterborough a reconceptualizing of culture and community-based cultural planning worked at the macro and meso levels. Participants did evolve a broadened vision of local cultural planning, and of potential new roles for the museum in this new planning context. But these insights did not translate themselves at the micro level into relevant practices across the full spectrum of the CHD's mandate, particular to reformed museum practices. Nor did they assist in overcoming a variety of personal and interpersonal barriers to the change process.

The findings from this research lend weight to Lavine's (1992) warning that museums not underestimate the organizational and professional challenge of shifting from functionally oriented and collections0driven institutions, to more outward looking institutions focused on "exchanges with communities". But the Peterborough case also suggests a risk in accepting the dichotomy drawn by Lavine regarding traditional and reformed museum practice. If local museums are to overcome the systemic biases in collecting and interpretative practices necessary to serve increasingly diverse communities, a more proactive approach to collecting will be required.

Overall the research suggests the need for further case studies that probe beneath the veneer of organizational change to explore the complexities of the change process. These in-depth organizational studies must be understood in the larger context of new planning and governance systems needed in complex cultural systems at the local level.