Today we are talking to Ed Lawless. Ed is currently working as a learning manager at Samsung Digital Discovery Centre, at the largest cultural institution in the UK, the British Museum. There Ed is creating learning programmes with the help of various technological tools and devices. Ed engages audiences and filming, coding, augmented reality trails and other fascinating experiences.

Hello. Thank you for having me here.

So Ed, could you tell us a little bit about what you do at work?

What do I do at work? As with probably most museum professionals, it’s a little bit of everything. So maybe a typical day, a whole bunch of meetings, chatting to people all the time from all different parts of the museum and trying to coordinate a digital learning programme in a very traditional museum and a museum that is incredibly old, incredibly big, has a massive collection, and trying to figure out how we use digital technology to its best ends to bring our collection alive, to bring people closer to the collection, to help people find out more about it. And particularly focusing on young people, so families, schools, other young people all the way up to the age of 18, and all the way down to zero. So a couple of weeks old, we've had to come into the Samsung Centre. So yeah, really good fun.

Well, I suppose I spent a lot of time in the British Museum when I was an undergraduate student, down the road at King's College London, studying Ancient History. I had no idea what I was going to do with that degree, all the way up until I left to be honest. I just knew I really loved old stuff. I had spent time with my family dragging me around old cities in the Mediterranean on summer holidays and just loved it. So that took me to Ancient History. Ancient History took me to the British Museum. And then I realised “No, this is an amazing place. I love these collections. This is somewhere I would love to work, the stuff in it and the building itself just makes me happy”. But I realised that I was never going to be a curator. I was never going to be a collection specialist. It didn't quite entice me enough, but I like people. I like seeing the visitors. I was like, well, who else comes to this place? Who else likes this stuff that I like? So I realised that I wanted to combine also a kind of third element, and that's digital technology. It's something I've always been interested in, that I've really enjoyed seeing how, in the past 15, 20 years it's come to cultural organisations with it's kind of new wave and that wave I think is still breaking and it's making a huge impact on how people understand museums and how museums understand people as well, which I think is also fascinating. So combining all these things, I took an opportunity, I was very fortunate to be able to take three months volunteering at the British Museum, sort of on a student placement, but I wasn't quite a student when I started it, but by the time I finished those three months, I had started studying part time at the University of Leicester. I was doing an MSc in digital heritage, which is a course that no longer exists, but maybe that's a story for later. But it was really good and being able to combine my period as a volunteer, seeing the inside workings of the museum and seeing how that worked with the theory was amazing. And from volunteering I spent some time then getting a bit of freelance work there. I started working at a couple of other museums. So the Museum of London and the Charles Dickens Museum, working on their learning programmes, with schools, with families, and a few other places as well. And eventually I got a post one day a week as a supervisor in their Samsung Centre, which was brilliant. It was really good fun, I'd kind of got a proper foot in the door by that point. And then I picked up some freelance work, some zero hours work as a teacher with school groups. I just kind of hung around and was really determined to get a full time role at the British Museum. And two years ago this month is when I started my full time post in this position as a learning manager at the BM, and it's been pretty good ever since.

Speaking of the Samsung Digital Centre, could you tell us more about what it is about, what programmes it runs, and what kind of things you are doing there? How do you engage people?

Sure. So I, as you'll expect, it involves a lot of Samsung technology generously provided to us by Samsung. We're quite interested in seeing how digital can be sort of a lens, how we can use everything from phones, tablets, galaxy books, VR headsets sometimes, smartwatches even in a museum setting for learning programmes. So it can range from everything from using these tools ultimately, as ways of providing information in a new way, in a way that can only be done through digital. So be that in a particular visual means or particular complexities of information that can be shared out in new and innovative ways, allowing people to find their own route through content, etc. Or it could be using those digital tools as ways for people to have creative responses to the collection, to create artwork, to create videos to create sound recordings like we're doing now. And using these two things in different ratios means we can create all kinds of Digital Learning in the museum. So videoconferencing, for instance, is something that we're really pushing hard at the moment to reach out nationally and engage more schools with what we have in the collection. That's just been using digital technology, one of the things that does best, it's a communication tool. It helps bring people together. That's becoming really fruitful for us and an area that we know there are more and more people who would love a taste of the British Museum and we are able to offer it that way.

Sometimes I'm actually of the opinion that digital is enhancing what museums can do, but it's fundamentally not really changing learning. I think, fundamentally, learning programmes in a museum are about people coming and seeing objects or finding out about stories and seeing how that reflects in their life and finding their own meaning in it. I think digital technologies, just, as I said before, a bit of a tool, it's just a new thing. And although it fundamentally feels like it should be different, I don't think it is. I think it's just providing new ways to discuss learning, new ways for people. I think it's unexpected for people to come into some museums and find these kinds of opportunities that they thought, oh, I thought it was just a tour guide or a booklet or just reading labels on a wall. Maybe there's something about it that offers a scope to create greater personalization for people, because guidebooks are all well and good, but it's ultimately very linear, whereas digital can operate in slightly different ways. You can pick your own path through content. But just one example, I don't think that there's one in particular that I can reach to to say, “Oh no, this is a shining beacon of how digital is kind of leading away in learning”.

I think it's probably some of the stuff that hasn't found its way wholesale into people's homes yet. I think that's been the case with any new digital technologies, it's been introduced into museums. We are in this very kind of unique and privileged position, like we need to do something, they're only going to be here for a few hours in this amazing place, and we've got to kind of give them that amazing introduction, or amazing experience whilst they're in this museum, and help them. But of course, that's challenging because as soon as we have a bunch of international visitors, we've got to start thinking about language and all these kinds of considerations. So that's a big challenge for us, but we do want to encourage more and more international visitors into our programme, especially for that kind of family event.

I say we work with young people, and then as soon as you work with families you are working with absolutely anybody who comes through the door. So suddenly, age is not really part of it. It's more about the nature of people's group that they've come to the museum with. So yeah, we end up working with plenty of elderly people who've brought younger people with them, often grandparents, but not exclusively. So it's really interesting to think about how can I devise a programme that's not a children's programme, but a family programme, recognising that that family could be comprised of one 35 year old and a seven year old, or it could be comprised of six 86 year olds and a two year old. That's a reasonable family to come in. We will have to have created something that allows that family to have a good time, to enjoy what they've come to do. There's kind of the classic scenario where it's young people teaching their elderly adults about the technology, but it works both ways, and I think that's the beauty of it. Putting an activity in front of a group of people and letting them figure it out and use their own skills in that group to find out how to do something is just incredibly powerful. I often think the best learning is actually just letting stuff happen with groups like that, being really mindful of not being overbearing and stepping in when you're not really needed. The magic that is happening without you and that's fine.

Who do you make the magic with? Can you tell us about your team?

Team, yeah, of course. So I have a wonderful colleague Emily Carruthers, who is also a manager alongside me. At the moment she's focusing more on the family programme, and I'm focusing more on the schools programme. We sit broadly then within the schools and young audiences’ team. So around us are a bunch of other people keenly interested and experts in learning in museum settings. Their focus is on non-digital primarily programmes, but they are the wealth of knowledge and understanding of young people and families and schools and how they work and the dynamics is just totally invaluable to us. And then also, we've got a great pool of facilitators, staff who do the bulk of our delivery and look after our sessions, and they're fantastic. The awareness they have to give feedback to myself and Emily of when we devise a session is phenomenal. I'm so grateful for them because they see what's happening on the ground, more so than Emily and I ever will. A lot of the feedback we get in evaluation from families and from schools, it's not about the technology, which I think can be a good thing because it means it's working seamlessly. It's not necessarily about the collection, although plenty of times it is. The thing that comes up most is our staff, and how brilliant they are, how welcoming they are, how friendly they are. I think somehow that surprises people that they are going to have a friendly member of staff, helping them with their visit, making their visit special.

So in the museum, there's plenty of other digital things going on. There's an entire Information systems department who looks after all computers and they are making sure the Wi Fi doesn't go down and making sure that all the pieces of software that are specialists to the collections or to conservation, so that's really good. But there's other people who work, say with audio guides, who are specialists in kind of mobile digital and looking after this one highly used product and making sure that that runs smoothly for, especially all the international visitors who use that, for that kind of language. So there's lots of digital going on in the museum, but it doesn't sit under a single team. So there's kind of pockets of intensive digital work going on. Another one, I suppose, are all of our galleries, digital screens and things in the galleries. There's a whole bunch of people responsible for them and another bunch of people responsible for the podcast and the YouTube channel. So there's so much going on. Sometimes it's really difficult to keep up with it. So I know I need to go away and listen to our podcasts from the museum, that kind of kick started again and is apparently really good. And I'm sure it is because it's a brilliant team behind it.

One of the key benefits of technology is the ability to bring the museum and the collection beyond its walls. So how do you connect with audiences that don't have physical access or it’s too expensive to travel to the museum? Do you have some outreach?

Yeah. So video conferencing sessions for schools is our kind of key driver for outreach beyond the walls of the museum at the moment. I think it's providing us with some really interesting thoughts into what that entails. So it's not just thinking about oh, that school who, they're unlikely to be able to pop down to the museum for a day, who live in Yorkshire or well beyond the realms of a day trip. But it's also thinking about actually, what about the school a couple of miles away, who don't have the capacity to organise a trip which will impact all the students who stay behind in the school and other year groups and other classes, who will need the teachers there to teach them. So outreach is literally anything beyond the walls of that museum, be it one mile or be it 300, it's still outreach for us and I think it's important for us to recognise that that's really positive. But the sessions themselves, we've got a suite of three at the moment, all focusing on topics from key stage to history. They range from perhaps the very familiar, such as Roman Britain, through to perhaps something less familiar, so prehistoric Britain, three to something, perhaps very much less familiar, which is the Indus civilization, which, although it sits as an optional part of the key stage two history curriculum, many people have never even heard of, and dare I say it, some teachers as well just avoid it. But because of the British Museum's vast collection, we're one of the few places that has a set of objects that can discuss this amazing civilization in some real depth. So for us to not provide that opportunity for schools to engage with this material would be a travesty. So that's part of our rationale behind why these three sessions exist. But more than that, we are hoping to use video conferencing to go beyond simply live streaming a lecture. What we do with our sessions is it's very much a workshop format. It's taking our runaway successes of onsite workshops, repackaging them, obviously having to rethink them because just physically it's a different experience, retraining staff so that they're comfortable with this distance between them and their class that they're teaching and making it work. But I found it really interesting a couple of years ago, and I think this has probably changed now. I asked an audience at a museum Learning Conference, what their experiences were of using video conferencing, or well, video links with friends and family and everybody said, oh, yeah, we've used Skype or we've used FaceTime, something like that. And then I asked, well keep your hands up if you've used it in your museum learning programmes and three people have their hands up out of a room of 180 perhaps. And I said, well, why not? You apparently are already really comfortable with it. It's only a small leap to take this further. So I think that's probably going to be changing over the years. It's certainly something that we've seen teachers become ever more increasingly confident with the technology in their schools, that they're now willing to kind of take a bit of a plunge, and start experimenting and testing out for themselves. So we even had a teacher who, the content wasn't the bit that they were interested in, they were actually teaching computing to their students and wanted to show the power of video conferencing as a piece of technology. And they used our session as a way of demonstrating that and it was brilliant because the students were fascinated by that, fascinated by the session we were running, and it just made for a really effective session which the children really enjoyed.

There is. Right now, we are in the midst of refreshing the Digital Centre itself, the room where we operate. The sponsorship with Samsung has been in place and renewed twice now, but it's been around since 2009. So we're 10 years old. The Digital Learning programmes existed since I believe at least the year 2000 or 2001. So we're quite old digital and mature digital learning specialists now in the museum and this programme as a whole. But the room where we operate much of our programming from needs a bit of TLC, and so we are really excited to think about how to create an impressive and effective, enjoyable and a thought provoking I suppose, space for others to come and use and ensuring that technology and its capabilities sit at the heart of that space. Because it's not just a fancy classroom with lots of technology thrown into it. It's got to be considered how it will work for 40 plus different sessions that might use that space. It's very different to an exhibition space, which the museum is very adept at putting on. It's kind of different, and it's a little bit unique. So we're treading our way through that process at the moment and hopefully going to open in mid-September. So we're really excited about what that will entail. But then beyond September, we're looking at an audience that we recognise need a bit more attention than we've been giving them recently, which is our young people's programmes. So ranging from, at the moment, our figures are 13 to 17. So that age range, we recognise is an audience we could reach an awful lot more of them we do currently and then that we have in the past. And actually this is about us finding new ways of working for the digital learning programme. So there's a wonderful colleague of mine, Io, who is working on a co-created programme of events for young people, including a summer school and as part of this has a youth collective. So we are borrowing some of the learning and insight she's gaining through that process to apply it to our digital learning programme. We are just sort of mapping out how we are going to put together almost a methodology of how we're going to reach a co-created learning programme for this audience, for this group of visitors. And it's really exciting with all co-creation experiences, we don't know what the end result is going to be yet. It's still all options are on the table. I mean, I suppose actually, the metaphor should be we don't even know what options are on the table yet. So it's very exciting, but we are confident in the process and we've seen plenty of other places and plenty of other museums do this successfully. We want to sort of embed some of this work, some of these ways of working into how we create our digital learning programme. So we're really excited about what that might entail for what programme we're shouting about a year, two years from now, and are really proud of.

My next question is to do with authenticity. So digital technologies are awesome, as we already figured out during the discussion. But is there any challenge with making sure that these devices, these digital workshops, don't overtake the actual objects?And my next question has to do with authenticity. So digital technologies are awesome, as we already figured out during the discussion. But is there any challenge with making sure that these devices, these digital workshops, don't overtake the actual objects?

I'm a firm believer that authenticity is around an object, but I don't think the object’s at the heart of the museum. I would also say that I don't believe the visitor is at the heart of the museum. The heart is the relationship between the two. That's the focus, neither one nor the other, really. So as long as the relationship is authentic, as long as you're providing the environment, the space, the forum, there are tools at people's disposal to find the relationship they would like to make with the objects to help them make the first step is having some understanding of these objects. And I don't mean dates and facts. I mean, what is it? Just start looking at it and figuring out for yourself, where's the meaning for you? Is it the shape? Is it the colour? Is it where it's from? Is it who made it? It could be any of these things. It could be all of these things. But provided you're creating a place where an authentic relationship can be built, and that might be in the museum or across digital, it could be across the internet, it could be in all kinds of different formats, it could be one of the myriad of publications, paper publications that the museum prints, you know. These are still valid places for people to make meaning from those objects and to have a relationship with them. And provided you're being truthful about the objects, providing you're constantly questioning whether you're being truthful about the objects and recognising that there could be a myriad of different truths about an object, as long as that's an authentic and open process and you're approaching it in that kind of way, I think you'll have an authentic museum.

So I suppose, in a way breaking, breaking down what that might look like, sort of what's the purpose of these activities in kind of granular detail. Knowledge and understanding something and skills is another and there's a brilliant framework, which looks at what learning could be in a museum and I'm really interested at the moment in kind of behaviours and attitudes, which is people going into a space with preconceived notions, which may be right or wrong, and just coming and being able to think differently, having the opportunity to have that kind of brains set into a more playful manner, so that people are more open to new ideas and different ideas, or simply open and able to reconfirm their ideas and be like, yeah, what I believe or what I think I still believe it. But at least I've come into a space and maybe had it challenged, and that could be anything from like, I think the colour pink is beautiful, and they come and see something and they go, yeah, I really like pink. And that's fine, that's a brilliant experience. That's a valid thing for somebody to do in a museum, of course it is. I don't know if that helps to answer the question, but that's a tricky one, yeah. What sits behind it? I think that's ultimately all it is, in its most simplistic way, it is just that relationship.

Another question, and it's a slightly different subject. So now we'd like to talk a little bit about partnerships between digital organisations, huge tech gurus and cultural institutions. So one of the recent and I think amazing initiatives is digital culture network by Arts Counselling England. Have you heard of it?

I have heard of it. Yes.

What do you think about it? Do you think there's a future in setting these partnerships between tech gurus and museums, galleries and other cultural institutions? Can it work at all?

I think there's a sense of they've got, something that they're trying to test and see if it works. And it's something that Arts Counseling England has clearly invested in. I think there's a myriad of opportunities out there at the moment for museum professionals and therefore museums as a whole, to start thinking a little bit more about what digital skills are required in their workforce and where those skills need to be. I think this is a brilliant example of a very sensible, and I mean that sincerely, idea of bringing specialists together as a kind of super team, for museums to then go draw on the experience these people have, many of which are outside of the sector, which I think is an awfully good thing and a very, very, very good idea. So museums can use those to think about particular skills and particular bits of work that they're interested in, particular projects. But I think it would never function in isolation. That's not the only route through, I know there's other good work going on, such as the one by one project. And even something like looking at how digital teams are constructed and put together is really important work that is helping people understand what digital and museums mean, what that relationship is going to be like in the future, what it needs to be now, what it maybe needs to have been five years ago. I think is awfully good seeing where we've made some mistakes as a sector, and learning from them and trying to learn as quickly as we can, because I think there's a huge, huge wealth of opportunity out there, which museums, honestly, we're only realising a fraction of it at the moment. I believe it will come because we're heading in the right way, we're heading in the right direction. But I'm just keen to get there quicker, because I know there's so much more fruit to be had.

I wonder if almost in an ideal world, would there be a need for museums? Would it just be something that exists, kind of everybody's engaged in culture in a way that makes sense to them? Maybe the idea of a museum as a particular type of institution wouldn't necessarily exist. I think museums are relatively modern, recent ideas. I am working at a museum with a collection stretching back 2 million years, the lifetime of a museum is a blink of an eye across 2 million years. So do museums always need to be around? Well, we did fine without them for a good amount of time. In one sense there are store houses, which I think it's important to look after objects from the past. And therefore by looking after objects, we perhaps look closer at the stories that sit around those objects, the things that they have attached to them. They physically link us with the past, most museums, most historical museums, they link us with other humans, which I think that's what life is as a human being, it is about your relationships with other humans, be them people physically or people abstracted through objects or stories or whatever it might be. So putting that aside, maybe a kind of, on a personal level, I think I love the idea of having just more playfulness in museums without going as far as, just kind of just a crazy funhouse, but just adding greater doses of play and recognising that museums aren't necessarily serious places. And even when there's very serious things happening, often you scratch the surface and you realise it's all a bit silly and fun. If you are engaging with the museum, you're looking for something and I think that's probably what's missing a lot of time. We could add more of that in. What I'd say to people, I suppose there's also something about breaking down the notion of a museum into a more general cultural space. I love the ideas of putting museums into unusual places, pop up museums, I think that's incredibly effective. I think that also stretches the definition of museum. I love just things like all of the information on the London Underground at the moment about the heritage of the London Underground. And in a sense, it's not a million miles away from kind of a museum embedded within our transport network. That's kind of a nerdy passion of kind of going oh, wow, look how they designed that tubemap, and oh, wow, that's a really interesting piece of infrastructure that was built under London, and all that sort of stuff. But I think finding opportunities to do that kind of work when museums sit just in everybody's everyday life, rather than just being big buildings that you visit fairly regularly perhaps or perhaps only on holiday, is something that I would love there to be more museums. But maybe it's more, I'd introduce some kind of cultural programme that allows that to take place and then alongside it puts together all the other things that should go with it, performance, music, storytelling and things which bring the human element really to life through it. And of course, the digital element sits in there, and as I said, it's a tool, it would help and it would enhance all of those different experiences to ensure people enjoy that.

Yeah, we had an incredibly thought provoking discussion today. I'm sure that the listeners are fascinating to go and experience the facilities of the Samsung Digital Discovery Centre, because it's free of charge, so you're welcome to go and check it out.

Thank you so much Ed, and we are about to finish and we're looking forward to releasing the podcast.

Brilliant. Thank you too.

This was For Arts’ Sake and we'll see you in the next episode next week.