Mahere Rautaki Strategic Plan 2023-2026
Te Whakatanga / Our Mission
Celebrating the tangata whenua and tangata tiriti histories of Kawatea Okains Bay and wider Te Pātaka-o-Rākaihautū (Banks Peninsula) through creative and accessible storytelling, collection care, public programmes, and research projects, all of which place our collections in a national context and honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Tō Tātou Whare Taonga / About Us: Our Museum
The Strategic Plan builds on the Okains Bay Museum’s history as a museum founded on the principle of biculturalism.
Ā Mātou Mahi / What we do
The Okains Bay Museum cares for collections of local, regional, and national significance including an outstanding collection of relocated heritage buildings, objects associated with rural life on Banks Peninsula, and a nationally significant collection of taonga Māori with provenance to iwi/hapū from throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. Access to these collections in the Museum’s unique rural setting, online, and in other community spaces, inspires visitors, students, researchers, and communities, to learn, reflect, research, and explore our shared histories, cultures, and identities through stories, exhibitions, and special events.
Te Mahere me te Rautaki Aroturuki / The Plan and Monitoring Progress
This plan sets out our priorities for the next three years and guides and informs the Museum’s annual work plans.
The key strategic priority which underpins all our actions is to ensure the long term sustainable future of the Museum through innovative, creative, collaborative, and ambitious programmes and actions in the face of significant challenges including climate change, geographical remoteness, and financial hardship.
O Mātou Tikanga / Our Values
- Engagement: We actively engage with our visitors and are passionate about bringing our Museum to life and making it stimulating for the wider community.
- Integrity: We act honestly and with sincerity, seeking, respecting, and valuing diverse opinions and points of view. We are fiscally responsible, accountable, and act with integrity for our people, our taonga, and the environment.
- Collaboration: We work as a team, seeking out and involving those within our communities to understand and utilise our combined knowledge, strengths, and experiences to deliver the Museum’s vision.
- Kaitiakitanga: We are focused on working together to preserve the physical, spiritual, conceptual, intellectual, and cultural aspects of our collections.
- Manaakitanga: We support and care for our community, staff, volunteers, and visitors. We strive to work collaboratively to ensure that everyone feels welcomed and valued and has an enriching experience.
- Mana Taonga: We recognise living relationships and connections between taonga and their cultures of origin and the importance of creating meaningful relationships with the communities, peoples, and lands from whom the objects and collections originate and who identify with them.
Overarching Strategic Priority 2023-2026
To create a sustainable future for Okains Bay Museum, priotising collections care, storytelling, stakeholder engagement, effective governance, and secure funding while respecting the legacy of Murray Thacker’s collecting, and acknowledging the deep connections the taonga themselves have to this land, and the stories they have to tell.
- Collections: Develop a strong foundation for managing, caring for, sharing, and utilising the collection
- Gain intellectual control over the collection: ensure the Museum has thorough knowledge of what is in the collection, where it is located, provenance, and alignment with the collections policy.
- Review collections policy
- Apply collections policy to the collection
- Inventory collection
- Ensure physical and cultural safety of the collection, supported by tikanga and preventive conservation principles.
- Create annual plans with specific tasks around preventive conservation, security, professional development of staff (tikanga and collection care)
- Implement recommendations from reports provided by collections and museum experts
- Interpret collections: increase audience engagement with the collection through storytelling.
- Prioritise local stories and work with source communities to tell their stories
- Conduct ongoing research – effectively capture and share the significant research potential within the Museum collection
- Improve access to the collection
- Online – develop and maintain an online presence by sharing the collections and their stories
- In the Museum – employ a strategy for physical interpretation over the Museum site which ties in with our online presence.
- Promote the collection to researchers and students – cultivate the academic potential of the collection by promoting it to prospective researchers
- Gain intellectual control over the collection: ensure the Museum has thorough knowledge of what is in the collection, where it is located, provenance, and alignment with the collections policy.
- People and relationships: Build and maintain meaningful, valuable, and collaborative reciprocal relationships with all our partners
- Foster a strong partnership with mana whenua, honouring the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi
- Ensure a productive relationship with Christchurch City Council including the funding team, Community Board, Akaroa Museum and Christchurch Art Gallery
- Maintain relationships with GLAM sector colleagues (Canterbury Museum, Akaroa Museum, Ngāi Tahu Archive, Air Force Museum, Te Papa, Teece Museum, Universities – Museum Studies students)
- Emphasise and enhance the Museum’s position as part of the historic precinct of Okains Bay and build a strong and steady foundation of trust and goodwill within the local community including relationships with the Okains Bay Enhancement Society, School, General Store, Church, and Library
- Indentify source communities – actively work with source communities to tell their stories
- Develop strong relationships with existing and potential funders to ensure security in funding while targeting proven revenue streams to cover baseline operating costs
- Attract more visitors in person, online, and through taking collections into community spaces
- Communication
- Communicate clearly with all partners and stakeholders regarding the Museum’s long term sustainability and events
- Prioritise communication with mana whenua and the local community
- Identify new and existing avenues of communication
- Conduct consultation sessions with partners, stakeholders, and visitors
- Foster a sense of community ownership of the Museum: ‘This Is Your Museum’
- Conduct visitor surveys including feedback forms (physical and online)
- Organisational Structure
- Review organisational structure to provide greater equity in workload for staff and Board members and ensure work aligns with strategic objectives
- Review governance processes and ensure arrangments are robust and fit for purpose
- Increase the capacity of the organisation to meet the distinct needs of the Museum with active investment in professional development for staff in key areas including collections care, bicultural aspirations and communication
- Move towards alignment with the Museums Aotearoa Code of Ethics
- Commit to improving knowledge/training/Mana Tangata – at all levels – board, staff, collections, etc.
Download a copy of the Okains Bay Museum Strategic Plan 2023-2026