Category: Future of work

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Introducing The Citizens’ Jury

Museums have been run successfully for over 100 years. However even museums need to move with the times. Being more useful to more people is a phase I say a lot here at BMT. One of my core principles is placing “user needs” at the heart of what we do.

In addition to the typical methods of asking existing visitors what they need from us we are experimenting with a Citizen Jury throughout the second half of 2024.

We have written about how The Citizens’ Jury works on our website.

In short the Citizens’ Jury are 25-30 representive people chosen from a lottery of 5000 people across the City. They will will deliberate our initial question:

“What does Birmingham need and want from its museums, now and in the future; and what should Birmingham Museums Trust do to make these things happen?”

Special thanks to NLHF for funding this activity.

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Visible or invisible

If you want others to know what you are doing you need to tell them. If you did a good thing at work but didn’t share this with the person you think needs to know then it is invisible. When you go for a walk, do your neighbours know where you are headed unless you tell them, of course not. Your destination is invisible. I frequently hear people lament that their boss doesn’t acknoweldge their contribution and I reply “did you tell them?” the answer is almost always “no”.

In order to get known in your workplace or community you need to show up and when the time is right tell them something that makes you proud. Then on the next thing, tell them again.

Maybe it is through a conversation, an email, staff briefing, a talk or a poster.

You are either visible or invisible.

Pssst being invisible is also a superpower some folks would dream to have.

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Improving my homeworking space lighting

Throughout the pandemic I have worked in two spaces at home. Now that I have a permament space in what is a converted garage it is time to make it helpful.

Also during the pandemic I discovered the weekly videos of construction and home renovation work of Ashville which has inspired me. As a quick reminder I am in the camp of people who believe the flexibility of where you work is a good thing and we’re knee deep in the future of work but we’re too close to see where it is heading. More reason to turn a temp solution to a good one.

The room itself is 3.6m by 2.8m and has a window facing the neighbours wall (width enough for a wheelie bin). The space is both cold and suffers from poor lighting with just a single light bulb in the centre of the room.

Ever the one to use the minimum viable product approach I started as budget as I could. I recently purchased 2m of the cheapest LED stripes that Wilko sold to see if it may be a solution. The light from this £15 stripe LED was a massive improvement and proved the concept.

I then spent way too many pockets of time watching all kinds of youtube videos on home LED installs from both professionals and DI.Yers. In conclusion I really still didnt have much of a clue except that:

  • the lights generate heat so fixing them to a proper “channel” will disipate the heat
  • LED density should be 60 LEDs per m if possible
  • shallow channels aren’t as good at diffusing the light (the more diffused the less you can see each individual LED
  • Philips Hue lights seem to be the Rolls Royce of lights but I couldn’t justify the cost for what may end up backfiring

As luck would have it our in-house tech team had just finished installing a revamped event suite for our private hire. In that projet they used LEDs and I could actually understand what a channel was! It also gave me a supplier I could use as there are literally hundreds to choose from online.

Therefore I have just stumped up the best part of £250 (a lot I know!) to buy the channels which the lights will sit on and the fixing bits and bobs. You could skip everything and just use the stripe leds sticky tape to attach directly to the wall but I don’t like the idea of heat directly on my walls…. i may be overthinking on this!

I ordered the below on 30th May 2023 from Ultra LEDS and I’m hoping I will get the time during half term to install.

If this works I will take some photos and share as others may wish to fo similar. Let’s see what we can do together.