“I am haunted by you” flowers and impossible cream cakes.

I had an unexpected escape from the day job today – and I used it to push off from the screen and drift into the ordinary.  I used it to bump up against the stuff that had not been digitised – to see, hear, smell, touch and taste in a way not mediated through a screen - to nudge up against the real.

Escape is best shared.  I persuaded another to cut loose from what life expected of her for the day and we explored the local as if we were seeing it for the first time.

Along the way we visited the dementia centre, delivering impossible cream cakes and an exuberance of flowers; flowers whose colours cried out “I am haunted by you”.  We hugged and squeezed each of the dementia centre staff who had helped grandpa; those who reassured him when he puzzled over the fact that when he drank juice the horizon moved, and juice escaped out the side of his mouth and rolled down over his chin ... and those who flirted with him when he fancied sex on the glacier .... and then we moved on.

At the Onehunga Mall we called into a local cafe.  We laughed so much at our grandpa memories that when we drank coffee the horizon moved for us – and the coffee ran out the side of our mouths and rolled down our chins. 

Deferring to Kingswellian “We are capitalism made flesh” thinking  –All that “every moment of waking and sleeping life is shot through with commitment to the goods and services of the global economy..” we took our caffeinated and sticky surfaces to those emporiums of feckless consumerism – the many $2.00 Shops of Onehunga. 

Here we spent up large (but small) on enough froth, sparkle, glitter and glue to transform fifty self effacing wooden pegs into “off their faces” narcissistic transgendered celebrities.  We drifted into carpet overrun warehouses, admired taxidermy wild boar heads and 3m polystyrene Doric columns in second hand shops, bought charcoal sticks and rolled canvas at an art emporium and got lost upstairs in the New Zealand section of the “Hard to Find but Worth the Effort”  bookshop.  

How would you measure the meaning of a day like this? 

In Chapter 5 of Museums in a Troubled World – Renewal, Irrelevance or Collapse,  Jane cites the thinking of Douglas Worts in measuring the meaning of museums. 

Refer: Worts, D.  “Measuring Museum Meaning: A Critical Assessment Framework.” Journal of Museum Education, 31 2006, 41 - 48 

You will not be surprised if I admit that this captured my interest - given that any folksonomy of Artichoke would reveal that I am just a little obsessed with measuring “school meaning”. 

Wort’s CAF framework has three lenses – the individual, the community and the museum. 

The "community lens" focuses on the creation of public benefit, and requires that museum staff ask themselves how well their program(s) will do things like: 

Address vital and relevant needs/issues within the community.

Engage a diverse public.

Act as a catalyst for action.

Stimulate intergenerational interactions.

Link existing community groups to one another.

Initiate or enhance long term collaborative relationships.

Create partnerships that empower community groups.

Result in products/processes that have tangible impacts in the community.  

Jane notes on p 124 that – “this approach is a radical contrast to the typical Museum programme lens, which consists of questions such as “How much will it cost?”, “How many people will attend?”; “Will there be a catalogue?” and “Will there be shop merchandise?” 

I cannot help but think that these community lens questions might work well with school. 

Many of our schools seem obsessed with measurement questions such as “How much will it cost?”, “How many students will achieve [insert sought after qualification]?”; “Will there be media league tables?” and “What is our point of marketable difference?” questions. 

The alternative - measuring schools through a community lens -  Chris Bigum's 2004 “knowledge building through identifying local and community needs” - might give purpose to both our museums and our schools. 

After all, how many of the professional learning conversations held, and learning experiences planned in our schools, are measured against how well they ...  

Address vital and relevant needs/issues within the community.

Engage a diverse public.

Act as a catalyst for action.

Stimulate intergenerational interactions.

Link existing community groups to one another.

Initiate or enhance long term collaborative relationships.

Create partnerships that empower community groups.

Result in products/processes that have tangible impacts in the community.