Karen Culver. Assignment 2

Karen Culver

Thesis Thoughts 2

Presented by 18 October 2017

Background

My working premises are

·        Cultural heritage can and should be non-elitist and accessible at community levels as well as regional and national levels.

·        Cultural heritage helps people to identify their own history and community.  An awareness of a common past can help people understand the present, plan the future, and retain what they perceive to be of value to their community

·        Voluntary engagement with cultural heritage is essential to ensure the survival and continuing life of that heritage. 

·        A positive policy environment from the national government enables voluntary activity

·        Suitable and active management policies and practices from the cultural heritage institution will increase the amount and value of voluntary activity.

·        The common perception is that UK has many active volunteers and Hungary does not.

Clarifying the Research Question

The original research question was - 

‘What government policies and management practices most effectively support grass roots voluntary activity in cultural heritage?’.

I wish to work on volunteerism in cultural heritage institutions in Hungary and UK.  I believe to compare and contrast case studies will enable me to understand the successful volunteer management practices of UK.  I wish to use this understanding to address the problem of low volunteer engagement in cultural heritage in Hungary.  I believe voluntary engagement with cultural heritage is essential to ensure the survival and continuing life of that heritage.

To date this has not changed.

Previous Concerns

I had been concerned that I needed to decide the breadth : depth of the research very soon.  Linked to this, I had been concerned that I needed to decide and confirm which types of voluntary activity, which types of cultural heritage and which specific institutions were to be included in my research.    These decisions needed researched in themselves, and this was a challenge considering the level of workload and quantity of term papers to be submitted.   

Offered Solutions

I had a useful meeting with Joska and Alice on 10^th October.  They confirmed that a tight definition of the scope of the thesis was not required yet, and I should review more institutions to find the most relevant and effective for the thesis.  This is good as the specific institutions researched will be important in defining recommendations for managing volunteers in Hungary.    Joska and Alice suggested that I could extend this initial research from the current six locations, being three in Hungary and three similar institutions in UK or Ireland, to possibly as many as fifteen.  This would give a wider view and much better opportunity of targeting some good case studies, and provide background information for the final thesis.

They suggested doing an initial review of the following –

• ·        Aquincum where the CHSP has personal contacts and an active volunteering programme
• ·        The Budapest Fine Arts Museum which has good visitor relations.   Their active docent (volunteer guide) programme has a training course and exams for all new docents.  Most of the docents are foreigners, and I know some and should have access to the programme managers.  The Museum is closed for renovation and should re-open in spring 2018.
• ·        Budapest zoo.  The zoo has a good volunteer and visitor engagement programme.  I have never been so this will be interesting. 
• ·        The small country houses / manor houses that are open to the public in various ways.

Joska & Alice expect research of UK institutions to compliment the Hungarian.  They noted that Hungary does not have any equivalent to the British National Trust, which is a large NGO with a shareholder attitude towards its members and strong membership relations. 

They suggested that I should review the meanings of volunteering and how it affects different people and institutions.

Next Stages

The next tasks I need to work on are as follows –

• ·        Formulating criteria for volunteers – I think this should be as wide as possible to increase the relevance to Hungarian institutions
• ·        To consider volunteerism from many different perspectives to increase my understanding of other view points and start to address negative perceptions of volunteering
• ·        Start making contacts with cultural heritage institutions for the initial research. This will probably be web and eye-ball research first.
• ·        Link up other course term papers to this research when possible
• ·        Where to find government policies & attitudes to volunteering, and its relation to the real attitude of the population
• ·        Joska mentioned the current Hungarian expectation for young people to include their voluntary activities in their University applications.  Is this a re-introduction of sobotniki? How and where to research?

On-going Challenges

There remain the on-going challenges of time and Hungarian language (lack of both).