Getting Started with Disposals

Join to hear a case study from the Food Museum and an overview of the Spectrum 5.1 Deaccessioning and disposal procedure.

Waitlist

If the ticket type for your region has sold out, please join our waitlist here https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/116SQO/

Facilitators and Speakers

• Anna Rhodes, Outreach Officer, Collections Trust
• Lisa Harris, Collection and Interpretation Manager, The Food Museum
• Katherine Bridges, Curator, The Food Museum
• Alex Gordon-Jones, MDSE (Facilitator)
• Sarah Sinka, MDSE (Facilitator)

What will be covered?

The Food Museum recognised that it had a collection that had been growing since the 1950s, with poor documentation and deteriorating storage. With over 40,000 objects, a small staff team, a global pandemic and water coming through the roof, where do you start?

During this session the team will share how the project evolved, how they made a collections audit work for them, intentional and unintentional learnings and the value of working with volunteers differently.

Collections Trust will also be joining us to give an overview of the Spectrum 5.1 Deaccessioning and disposal procedure. We will review policy considerations, Spectrum requirements and suggested procedure.

The session will feature a balance of process and practical tasks.

We are trialling this in-person training day on disposals to help build confidence with disposals in your own museums.

Learning objectives

By attending this session you will:

• Have an understanding of the Spectrum requirements and policy guidance for Deaccessioning and disposal. (Accreditation requirement 5.2)

• Have an understanding of the Spectrum suggested procedure for Deaccessioning and disposal. (Accreditation requirement 5.2)

• Know where to find more information, guidance and toolkits for methods of disposal, decision-making and documentation.

• Gain increased confidence in disposals and know where to start, how to respond to challenges and how to tailor the guidance to make a collections audit workable for your museum and its situation.

Who should attend?

All staff and volunteers working directly with collections

Accessibility

To help us ensure you get the most out of the session, you will be asked to email us with any access requirements you may have when you complete your order form. Please see the list of examples of adjustments we can make. This list is not exhaustive and we would be happy to accommodate other requirements where possible, please email us to discuss.

Eligibility

MDSE is funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to support museums in the South East of England within ACE’s Accreditation scheme. The South East is defined as the local authority areas of:

• Bedfordshire (Bedford Borough, Central Bedfordshire and Luton Borough)
• Berkshire (Bracknell Forest, Reading, Slough, West Berkshire, Windsor & Maidenhead and Wokingham)
• Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes
• Cambridgeshire and Peterborough
• Essex, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock
• Hertfordshire
• Kent and Medway
• Norfolk
• Oxfordshire
• Suffolk
• Surrey
• East Sussex and Brighton & Hove
• West Sussex

We prioritise places on our training programmes for museums which are Accredited or officially Working Towards Accreditation. ACE publishes the official lists of Accredited and Working Towards Accreditationmuseums on its website. Where possible we will make places available for museums which do not meet these criteria but the number of places will vary depending on the event format.

Terms & Conditions:

For full details of our programmes conditions, see our Terms and Conditions on our website

By booking a place on to a Museum Development South East training event, you are agreeing to the following terms and conditions:

• That you are from a South East museum which is in Arts Council England’s Museum Accreditation Scheme. Where this is not applicable you acknowledge that MDSE will facilitate your attendance if availability permits and that you or your organisation will pay any fees which may apply.
• It is a condition of receiving this ACE funded training that the online evaluation sent to the email address provided at the point of booking is completed by the specified deadline. This deadline is in the email notification unless a paper evaluation is specifically requested and submitted on the day of the training session.
• By booking a place you agree that you will make every endeavour to attend the event and you will give us at least 24 hours’ notice if you need to cancel your booking. If you repeatedly cancel your booking without sufficient notice you agree that we may exercise our right to remove you from future event bookings.