A presentation to the 2014 Communicating the Museum conference in Sydney, Australia. As our society becomes increasingly more intertwined, it is evident that global trends that once seemed remote are having a deep impact on our local communities. These same trends play out in museums around the globe as we reflect our communities both past and present. The museum audience is inherently submerged in this current of cultural change. Without pretending to predict the entire future, there are strong signals that a few important global trends will persist. What are those trends and how can museums begin to take advantage of those likely shifts to promote, advocate, and enhance their relevance to a global audience?

1. READING THE TEA
LEAVESGlobal Trends and Opportunities for
Tomorrow’s Museums
Robert Stein, Deputy Director
Dallas Museum of Art
@rjstein

2. Flickr Credit ~karochkin
GLOBAL ISSUES IMPACT
GLOBAL MUSEUMS

3. Flickr Credit ~arthurjohnpicton

4. Flickr Credit ~mediotanque
GLOBAL
POPULATION
is growing by 80m people each year

5. Source http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/153596/

6. 70% OF THE GLOBAL
POPULATION WILL LIVE IN ONE
BY 2050 CITIES
Flickr Credit ~fab05
Source: Guardian Cities, Jan 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jan/27/guardian-cities-site-urban-future-dwell-human-
history-welcome

7. Flickr Credit ~Elena Lagaria
Negotiating the circumstances of everyday life in any true city tends over
time to create a broad-minded, feisty, opinionated personality type we'd have
no problem recognizing, wherever and whenever it appears in human
history. City people may well be tolerant of diversity not out of any personal
commitment to a utopian politics, but because that's just what the daily
necessity of living cheek-by-jowl with people who are different imposes upon
you.
City”

8. 1% OF THE
POPULATION OWNS
46% OF THE WEALTH
Source: Oxfam, “Working for the Few”

9. 85 RICHEST OWN
AS MUCH AS THE
POOREST 50%
Source: Oxfam, “Working for the Few”

10. GROWTH OF THE
INTERNET It might not be what
you expect

11. GLOBAL INTERNET ADOPTION IS
SLOWING WEALTH DRIVES THE INTERNET
NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND

12. MIND THE GAP
A disparity in access to the Internet creates a corresponding
gap in access to information and global online culture

13. MUSEUMS CAN BE
CATHEDRALS FOR CULTURE

14. [Museums] have become cathedrals for a secular
culture, storehouses of collective values and
diverse histories, places where increasingly we
seem to want to spend our free time and thrash
out big issues. We put our faith in few traditional
institutions these days, but the museum is still one
of them.
Museums in a Quandary: Where Are the Ideals?
Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, August 26, 2001
MUSEUMS ARE PLACES TO
THRASH OUT BIG IDEAS

15. The potential of art to create indelible images, to
express difficult ideas through metaphor, and to
communicate beyond the limits of language makes
it a powerful force for illuminating civic experience.
Animating Democracy, Americans for the Arts

16. Begin with art, because art tries to take us
outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to
create an atmosphere and context so
conversation can flow back and forth and we
can be influenced by each other.
W. E. B. Du Bois

17. CULTURE CREATES
BETTER CITIZENS
Even after controlling for age, race and
education, we found that participation
in the arts, especially as audience,
predicted civic engagement, tolerance
and altruism.
Ranallo, A. B. Interest in Arts Predicts Social Responsibility:
Study
University of Illinois at Chicago. August 16, 2012.

18. Flickr Credit ~purewightphotography
ROBOT
PREPARE FOR THE
COMING OF OUR
OVERLORDS

20. Flickr Credit ~in2photos
According to the US Bureau for Labor Statistics
Truck Diver is the most common job for men in America
TRUCK DRIVERS
Source: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/employment_occupations/cb12-225.html

23. Flickr Credit ~purewightphotography
Our findings thus imply that as
technology races ahead, low-skill
workers will reallocate to
tasks that are non-susceptible
to computerization – i.e.,
tasks requiring creative and
social intelligence.
The Future of employment: how
susceptible are jobs to computerization
Frey and Osborne, Sept 17, 2013

24. Flickr Credit ~stevensnodgrass
A CHANGE IN THE
NATURE OF
WORK

25. Flickr Credit ~stevensnodgrass
A CHANGE IN THE
NATURE OF
WORK
Automation will drive shorter work-weeks in order
to provide jobs for displaced workers
As routine skills disappear, a need for creative-class
workers will be a key point of concern for tomorrow’s
companies.
Shorter work-weeks will result in more “non-work”
hours available to the public.

26. For workers to win the race, however, they will have to
acquire creative and social skills.
Frey and Osborne, 2013

27. Flickr Credit ~asbjorn_floden
MUSEUMS CAN
TEACH CREATIVITY
AND INNOVATION

28. CREATIVITY
cited by 1500 CEO’s as the single
most crucial factor for future
success
IBM, 2010 http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/31670.wss)

29. The future [of knowledge] is to let ‘the machines’ do
the heavy lifting and for us humans to focus on
connecting the dots, discovering context, meaning
and relevance, and to make human sense of it all.
THE FUTURE
OF KNOWLEDGE
Gerd Leonhard. The Future of Knowledge. Jan 7, 2014
https://connect.innovateuk.org/web/creativektn/article-view/-/blogs/the-future-of-knowledge

30. CURIOSITY
THE SNEAK ATTACK OF MUSEUM-LEARNING
Flickr Credit ~aftab

31. CURIOSITY
This work suggests that once you light that
fire of curiosity, you put the brain in a state
that’s more conducive to learning. Once you
get this ramp-up of dopamine, the brain
becomes more like a sponge that’s ready to
soak up whatever is happening.
Curiosity improves memory by tapping into the brain’s reward
system
Ian Sample, The Guardian, Oct 2, 2014

32. THE WORLD NEEDS TO
LEARN HOW TO DISCOVER
Over the next twenty years the earth is predicted to add another two
billion people. Having nearly exhausted nature’s ability to feed the
planet, we now need to discover a new food system. The global climate
will continue to change. To save our coastlines, and maintain
acceptable living conditions for more than a billion people, we need to
discover new science, engineering, design, and architectural methods,
and pioneer economic models that sustain their implementation and
maintenance.
…

33. THE WORLD NEEDS TO
LEARN HOW TO DISCOVER
The many rich and varied human cultures of the earth will continue to
mix, more rapidly than they ever have, through mass population
movements and unprecedented information exchange, and to preserve
social harmony we need to discover new cultural referents, practices,
and environments of cultural exchange. In such conditions the futures
of law, medicine, philosophy, engineering, and agriculture – with just
about every other field – are to be rediscovered.
American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist
David Edwards, WIRED Magazine

34. THANK YOU
Flickr Credit ~motograf
@rjstein
http://slideshare.net/rstein