Museum Evaluation and Peer Development
Today’s operating environment challenges museums to develop themselves and their operations actively and in collaboration with customers, communities and other parties. The evaluation and peer development of museums are tools that are intended to support museums in identifying their own challenges and opportunities.
The MOI Framework
MOI! Museums of Impact project ran from 2019-2022 and received funding under the Creative Europe programme. The MOI! Museums of Impact project was co-ordinated by the Finnish Heritage Agency. The MOI Framework was co-developed with the partners and the European museum sector.
The MOI Framework complements already existing models of quality requirements and impact measuring by focusing on internal capacity development in museums, helping organisations to take control of their own impact. The framework is a tool that helps museums discuss, evaluate, and choose development goals to increase their impact in society.
The MOI Framework is freely available in English on the Network of European Museums NEMO website: www.ne-mo.org/museumsofimpact
Peer development forum
The museums’ peer development forum is a forum jointly organised by the Finnish Heritage Agency, the Finnish Museums Association and Finnish museums, where museums can share their expertise and experiences in developing operations, engage in sparring with each other and learn together. The aim is to provide museums with development support, circulate the wisdom found in museums, give rise to new ideas and experiments, and promote cooperation between museums.
Museum evaluation and development framework
The museum evaluation and development framework supports the development
of museums’ operations. The framework helps museums identify their own
strengths and developmental focus points and examine their operations from the
perspective of goal orientation and effectiveness. The framework emphasises the
importance of the operating environment, customers and communities and the
competence and content of the museum itself in the process of developing a
successful operational concept.
Museum evaluation and development framework (PDF in English)
About evaluation
Finnish museums have been using an evaluation framework since 2007. The previous framework, which was used until 2015, consisted of a self-evaluation conducted by the museum itself and an external evaluation (Museum evaluation framework 2007-2015, in Finnish).
In 2015, the Finnish Heritage Agency began to revise the framework in collaboration with museums. As a result of the revision, online tool for evaluation and development was published 2016. The online service will close at the end of 2024. The framework helped Finnish professional museums to identify the challenges and opportunities of the modern operating environment.
The revision work also involved investigating the evaluation systems employed in foreign museums. The investigation looked at how, for what purpose and by whom museum evaluations are conducted, how the contents of the evaluation are categorised or emphasised and what kind of monitoring measures are included in the evaluation frameworks in different countries (Museum evaluation frameworks abroad, in Finnish).