A Forward Plan sets out how your organisation is going to meet its objectives using its resources - collections, people, land, buildings and finance - to best advantage.

"Planning for the Future" The last session of this workshop is now fully booked.  If there is sufficient demand, it may be possible to repeat it in the South West.  The SW Fed is happy to deliver the workshop outside the region.  Please contact us to enquire about prices and availability.

This toolkit

This step by step guidance has been developed to help museums of any size develop a robust Forward Plan. It draws on several sources, principally:

• Davies, S., 1996, Producing a Forward Plan, Museums & Galleries Commission - download here .
• Day, M., revised Babbidge, A. 2008, Creating and Implementing Forward Plans, Association of Independent Museums, AIM Focus Paper - download here .

The guidance takes you through the process of drawing up the Forward Plan - believed by some to be more useful than the final plan itself - and suggests practices to ensure that the finished plan does not remain on the shelf but becomes the principle tool for managing and evaluating your museum's performance.

It is not prescriptive - at several stages there is more than one suggested course of action.  How you choose to create your Plan will depend, amongst other things, on the size of your organisation, the communication channels in place, the stage the museum is at in its development, the resources at your disposal.

For a visual indication of the toolkit's  scope, see the overview diagram on the right >> 

The powerpoint in the Download column - Quick guide to Forward Planning - is available for you to adapt and use to introduce the process and its place within Accreditation to your Governing Body and workforce.  Please remember to acknowledge the source of the original in your presentation.

The place of Forward Planning in Accreditation

A Forward Plan is at the centre of the revised standard, Accreditation 2011.  This reflects the objective of making the scheme less of a discreet excercise and of integrating it into the day to day management of the museum.  Reference is made throughout the toolkit to the specific requirements of Accreditation. Effective forward planning is Requirement 1.4 of the Standard.

Acknowledgements

This toolkit was devised by Vicky Dawson on behalf of the South Western Federation of Museums & Art Galleries and with the generous support of Renaissance South West.