The Touring Exhibitions Group (TEG) is a professional membership association in the United Kingdom. Its members are mainly staff in museums, galleries and other public sector organisations who are involved in the exchange of exhibitions, whether as organisers or venues, or both. It was set up in 1985, following the closure of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Circulation Department. TEG itself does not organise exhibitions or administer tours, but helps its members to do so.
Constitution
The Touring Exhibitions Group was set up to be a membership body that would embrace the smallest venues as well as the largest providers of exhibitions. In the U.K., touring has always been dominated by exhibitions of modern and contemporary art so, to introduce more balance, TEG's approach from the outset was deliberately multi-disciplinary, embracing archaeology, social history, science and technology, etc. as well as the arts and crafts. To regulate how an association would function with a membership across this range of scale and variety of disciplines, its founding members drew up a constitution which was formally adopted on 18 February 1985 and which, with relatively few amendments, still defines how the organisation is run. In large part this continuity is because TEG has not attracted regular support from grant-aid sources and has consequently not been deflected by the priorities and pressures of these organisations. For the same reason, it has not built up a full-time staff who might have taken the organisation in directions away from the interests of the membership as a whole. Like other professional associations that are affiliated to the Museums Association, it draws its diversity of expertise, its authority, its policies and its funding directly from its members.
Management
Members pay an annual subscription, which contributes to the organisation's running costs. There are two categories of membership: an ordinary one (currently with an annual subscription of £45) for anyone in the public sector involved in exhibitions; and a corporate category (currently with an annual subscription of £120) for commercial companies which provide services to public exhibitions (the Touring Exhibitions Group does not concern itself with commercial or trade exhibitions). Every paid-up member is entitled to vote in an annual ballot, which elects an Executive Committee for the following year. Not all members of this Committee have to stand for election each year, because the Officers (chair, treasurer, etc.) are elected for two years at a time. Those who do not become officers are entitled to serve three years, so the structure allows for both continuity and renewal.
The Committee meets four times a year and comprises around 12 elected members, plus people co-opted for needs not provided through the ballot, and observers from public agencies with an interest in touring. TEG has no premises of its own, so its various postal addresses are the addresses of members of the secretariat, and it meets in different venues, relying on the generosity of members who provide space for free. It will also visit organisations which are not members, especially if it wishes to have first-hand knowledge of a new building or a new organisation in the market.
The Committee is not just a ‘talking shop’: it is also a reservoir of manpower. Committee members normally hold down full-time jobs connected with exhibitions and give their time without payment. Not only do they contribute to policy-making and decision-taking, but also – the “executive” part of the name – they help to implement these policies and decisions between meetings. The key post is the Chair who, by leading the committee and inspiring its members, directs the organisation, often taking the organisation in new directions. Holders of the Chair have been:
Barbara Murray 1988-1992 James Ayres, 1992–1996 Caroline Krzesinska, 1996–2000 Kathleen Soriano, 2000-2003Felicity Heywood, "Grand designs", in Museums Journal, Issue 106/3, March 2006, pp.18-21. Sarah Champion, 2003-2008Article in Museum Practice, Issue 32, Winter 2005, p.48. Andy Horn, 2008-2011 Louise Hesketh, 2011-.
When there is a task which a committee member cannot manage, usually because of a compressed time-scale or the amount of work to be done, the Committee will contract one of its freelance members to undertake the work. It commissioned Julia Ellis when the MGC asked the Group to draft the text of an insert to accompany its guidelines about touring.Museum Practice, Issue 9, November 1998, p. 14 Each year's Marketplace is usually managed by a working group drawn from the Committee, but on occasions freelance members have been asked to organise an event: Cynthia Morrison-Bell organised the Marketplace in Croydon and Jane Bevan the one in Nottingham. In 1996, Mike Sixsmith was retained as a part-time administrator, then Judith Kelly became a paid membership manager in 1999, and Asako Yokoya the website manager in 2009. Jasleen Kandhari managed the seminars for two of the three years of the EFF programme, and her replacement during 2010-2011 was Paddy McNulty, thanks to sponsorship by TESS Demountable. This small, part-time secretariat provides the necessary continuity in membership records, financial control, managing the website and organising seminars. It gives the Committee the flexibility to allow unpaid members to devote themselves to one-off projects. None of the secretariat is employed, but each has an annual contract to provide services in return for a fee.
Lobbying
The Touring Exhibitions Group was set up following the closure by the Victoria & Albert Museum of its Circulation Department, which had been one of the two main sources of exhibitions for regional museums and galleries in the U.K. It was never intended to replace what was lost, by organising itself a new range of exhibitions. Instead, it provided a voice for regional venues (and their visitors) which had been deprived of material of high quality. Its aim was two-fold: first, to lobby H.M. Government to replace the funding whose withdrawal had led to the closure, and second, to represent venues’ needs to potential alternative sources of exhibitions. The campaign began with a serious handicap, in that the collections of the Circulation Department, hitherto dedicated to “regional” use, had been integrated into the other departments in the Museum. Its first success was persuading H.M Government to fund the establishment in 1988 of a travelling exhibitions unit at the Museums & Galleries Commission (MGC), a previous incarnation of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. In the event, this unit lasted less than five years because the politicians were disappointed that significant quantities of so-called ‘hidden treasures’ – not least those which the specialist departments at the V&A had recently absorbed from the Circulation Department - were not being released from the basements of the national museums and galleries. TEG's campaigning role continues notwithstanding, and it contributes when it can to consultations undertaken by Arts Council England, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Heritage Lottery Fund, etc., to ensure that touring is included in wider policy discussions and to argue for more resources and better funding for touring exhibitions. In the other direction, organisations such as the Crafts Council, Creative Scotland and the Southbank Centre have observer status on the Executive Committee, which provides them with a forum where they can contribute to discussions on current issues and concerns and where they can exert influence rather than act directly.
The Manual of Good Practice (1995)
The closure of the MGC's travelling exhibitions unit in 1993 – and, more importantly, the withdrawal of government funding – effectively blocked any further national initiatives in touring by museums. The Touring Exhibitions Group then switched its attention to its second aim, of representing the needs of venues to alternative sources of exhibitions. In addition to the remaining national provider (at the time administered by the Arts Council of Great Britain, but now run by the Southbank Centre), museum services and galleries were gearing themselves up to tour their own exhibitions. Even during the life of the MGC's travelling exhibitions unit, TEG had given a lower priority to what a national museum was prepared to make available (usually not primary material which would normally be on display). Instead it supported a broader strategy founded on what regional museums and galleries themselves said they wanted, on organising exhibitions on subjects of interest to their visitors, and on borrowing the most appropriate material to interpret these subjects. As a consequence, it devoted more attention to providing training and raising standards, by organising seminars and publishing Occasional Papers. The latter arrived at number three in the series before it was agreed that a comprehensive handbook was needed on how to organise and tour exhibitions. The last significant manual in the UK had been Teresa Gleadowe's Organising Exhibitions, (Arts Council of Great Britain, 1975), an outline of this organisation's methods. Twenty years later, the breadth and depth of experience in regional museums and galleries could be tapped and shared, so contributors from across the country wrote chapters for Touring Exhibitions, the Touring Exhibitions Group's Manual of Good Practice (ed. Mike Sixsmith, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1995 ).Review by Clara Åhlvik, in Museum Practice, Issue 1, March 1996, p. 14
TEG also participated in devising the complementary Standards for Touring Exhibitions (Museums & Galleries Commission, 1995).Touring Exhibitions: Making Them Work For You, Museums & Galleries Commission, 1995, p.12 See also http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/index.cfm?ct=assets.assetDisplay/title/Standards%20for%20Touring%20Exhibitions/assetId/62 These guidelines then formed the basis of the minimum standards to which, by virtue of their membership, members are expected to adhere and/or aspire.
Marketplace
Another consequence of the closure of the MGC's unit was an increased emphasis on the exchange of information about exhibitions available for hire. Many museums and galleries were beginning to tour their exhibitions, but they needed to locate venues as early as possible in the planning stages in order to set their budgets. In many cases, their existing contacts were informal and unstructured and they did not know the staff in more distant venues where their exhibitions might be better placed in the interests of the widest possible distribution. As a result, in 1995 the Touring Exhibitions Group began a series of Marketplaces which were designed to give people involved in exhibitions - venues as well as organisers, small as well as large, in all disciplines - to network, meet, put faces to names, renew old contacts and foster the mutual trust that was essential for effective collaboration. The events provide an informal environment where possible bookings can be discussed and negotiated. They are one-day events, usually accompanied by a seminar on a topical subject, and each event takes place in a different part of the country to make it possible for the staff from smaller venues to attend at least once in a while.Judith Kelly, "The partnership approach", in Museums Journal, issue 105/2, February 2005, pp. 30-33 The venues have been:
1995, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. 1996, City Art Centre Edinburgh. 1997, Croydon Clocktower. 1999, Bonington Gallery, Nottingham. 2000, Victoria Art Gallery Bath. 2001, Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery, Carlisle. 2002, National Portrait Gallery, London. 2003, Gas Hall, Birmingham. 2004, Collins Gallery, Glasgow. 2005, Millennium Galleries, Sheffield. 2006, Rugby Museum and Art Gallery. 2007, Discovery Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne. 2008, Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool.