Heritance :: Projects

What We Do

Workshops | Consultations | Seed Grants | Who Qualifies? | Upcoming Activities

Our goal at Heritance is to help museums - regardless of their financial and other resources - to implement "best practices" in interpretation. These best practices will be developed from the museum's own needs, as well as drawing on literature such as The American Association of Museums' list of characteristics, elements and outcomes of exemplary interpretation.

To this end, we provide training, facilitation and consulting on site in museums, as well as seed grants (up to US $1000) for the realization of projects related to exemplary interpretation. Our services are provided by a team of experts whose museum-related work is showcased in our Projects & Partners.

PHOTO: Heritance Technical Director Jean Bermon during a museum consultancy with colleagues on a tea plantation in the Kandy region of Sri Lanka, 2005

HERITANCE PLEDGE: Heritance does not impose changes on museums. Our role is to provide facilitation, training and consulting to museum stakeholders, so that they can work together to continuously evaluate and modify their museum in response to the community's changing needs.

Workshops

In general, a Heritance workshop is comprised of all-day sessions, which last two to five days on site in a host museum. This model, however, is flexible. Heritance will work with each museum to design a workshop theme and schedule to meet the needs and requirements of the host museum.

We accept invitations to address any aspect of museum work - ranging from strategic planning, community outreach, architectural design, grant writing, web presence development and interpretation to exhibit design.

The sessions are facilitated by at least one Heritance specialist and are designed to serve 5-20 participants. We encourage museums to invite their staff, volunteers and board members and also to work with us to identify and invite potential future stakeholders, such as researchers, community members, potential donors, representatives of regional businesses and governmental organizations and museum professionals from other museums.

In our experience, the best outcomes occur when the participants are numerous and diverse and include newcomers to the museum.

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Consultations

Heritance also offers consulting services online or in person to museums. As with the workshops, our offerings include all aspects of museum work and the structure and duration of the intervention is flexible. A Heritance consultation is recommended for a museum, which does not yet have a host site or requisite number of participants for a workshop. For many museums, it is a first step towards a Heritance workshop.

Technical assistance includes:

Architectural Planning
Collection Security, Conservation and Preservation
Program Development
Exhibit Design and Installation
Business management
Board Development
Community outreach
On-going communications between museums and museum professionals

The full list of free services is viewable on the About Us page.

Seed grants

As an incentive to participate in our workshops, we provide gifts of up to US $1000 (or its equivalent in local currency) to museums which host a 5-day Heritance workshop. The seed grant may be applied a concrete project that is in keeping with the mission of Heritance.

Who qualifies for a seed grant from Heritance?

Any museum can apply. The prerequisites for consideration are that the applicant host a 5-day Heritance workshop with at least 10 participants. Interested? Please send us a letter of inquiry

Upcoming Activities

[ See also the NEWS page for upcoming event listings ]
In 2007, Heritance received 501C3 IRS non-profit status. In the meantime, we are offering workshops and consultancies upon request and proceeding with a fundraising campaign. By summer 2007, we will begin to make available a directory of participating museums, preliminary tools and resources available for museum development, and an online discussion group for museum stakeholders. Future developments will include enhanced workshop services and an online virtual museum to showcase the exhibits and stories of partner museums.