I have been back from Russia now just over a week. It was an experience that allowed me a real insight into the Russian museum community (albeit primarily on the western  side).   From running workshops, speaking at a conference,  being a guest to many museums, and speaking with numerous people (museum, digital, tech and more) I came away with a solid knowledge of their current cultural position (and quite frankly, a thirst to go back!).

Firstly a little background on this trip.  I first encountered Anna Mikhaylova via social media (of course) then in person at ‘Museums on the Web’ in Portland, Oregon.  I can’t remember when or how the idea of me going to Russia happened, but soon we (more like Anna) had formulated a detailed plan for 20 days in St Petersburg, Vyborg, Peterhof and Moscow.

My itinerary was hectic and diverse but allowed me to truly see the museum community in a holistic (and hands on) view. Read the rest of this entry »

On May 19, Anna Mikhaylova (@Madlena_P) and I produced a MuseomixUK workshop at The State Museum of the History of Religion (@Museum_Religion).

The delegates arrived and were immediately put into action with the first ‘deliverable’ which was to answer a question.  This question help them decide what ‘role’ they were going to play throughout the day. We knew if we asked ‘Are you storyteller/narrative?’ no one would answer yes.  So instead we had four simple questions to indicate Communications, Fab/Tech, Narrative, Design roles. [Interesting, no one wanted to be a story teller!]

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The Russian Twitter includes around 180 museum accounts from every region of the Russian Federation. These accounts feature both the great world famous museum complexes like the State Hermitage in Saint-Petersburg or the State Historical museum in Moscow and small regional museums like the Middle Kama Museum of History and Culture.

So we’d like to announce, that April, 25 is a #‎СпросиКуратора Day in the Russian twitter. It’s an analogue of the Internanational #‎AskACurator Day (with a kind permission of @CultureThemes and Mar Dixon). This tweet-event will be supported by the offical Twitter of Rissia (@TwitterRussia). It’s a unique opportunity to get all kind of museum information straight from the source.

Our challenge is to present the quite new sort of museum activity in the Internet for the Russian-speaking audience.

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I would like to thank Mar Dixon for giving me a chance to write about Russian museums in her blog. It is an honour for me. I appreciate and with interest read about what Mar does and write with regards to museums and libraries.

I came to London from Russia 5 years ago to work as a software tester. Here while visiting many various museums, libraries, castles, parks, and towns, I became interested in culture, more than I had been before. At some point I came to an idea to help museum workers from my country to communicate with their international colleagues. In this blog, I will try to share with you some bits of knowledge about Russian museums.

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