Last week consultants from Nordicity were in Fort Frances conducting a series of pop up consultations with the public as they develop strategic plans for the Town’s culture department in general and the Fort Frances Museum more specifically.
Gaeby Abrahams is a senior consultant with Nordicity and was in town last week. She discussed the strategy of coming up with the plans.
“Nordicity has been engaged by the Town of Fort Frances to jointly develop the town’s first ever cultural master plan and also an updated strategic plan for the Museum and Cultural Centre,” Abrahams said. “Two separate plans but we’re developing them in parallel so we don’t have to ask the same people the same question twice. The contract was to develop both plans, and it was our proposed approach to do them in parallel rather than one after the other.”
The visit for pop up feedback sessions comes as the consultants near the end of the background research phase.
“We have nearly completed a background research phase,” Abrahams said. “So it’s looking at existing documents, policies, museum policies, things like that as well as some broader relevant provincial policy, museum sector guidelines, best practices, things like that.”
As part of the process there was also a roundtable at the Fort Frances Library last week and the consultants have also had the chance to tour the town’s cultural assets like the Museum, Townshend Theatre and Library.
While the pop up engagement sessions are over there is a public survey that is still open online the survey link is available on the Museum’s Facebook page.
After the survey closes they’ll look to see what the overriding messages are in the analysis.
“From there we kind of pull everything together, identify the key themes and then we have another series of workshops with the town and museum staff and volunteers to develop the plans,” Abrahams said. “A culture plan and a museum strategic plan and through that ensure that they are kind of reinforcing each other, the goals in each plan are mutually supportive and fit together without duplicating, so they’re not both saying the same thing.”
The plans won’t be detailed with costs but more general next steps for the culture department and museum.
“Generally we do take into account the resource considerations,” Abrahams said. “The reality of where the limitations are in terms of financial resources and human resources… There won’t be any dollar figures.”
As the consultants are still in the information gathering stages of the process, it will be spring of 2025 before the plans are ready.
“A big part of this is we want to really clarify what is and what should be the role of the Museum and Cultural Centre in the town and where else does culture happen in the town and how can it be best supported and and what does the community want to see in terms of arts and culture going forward,” Abrahams said.
