Can contemporary cultural institutions ensure their social relevance?

Major cultural institutions struggle to engage diverse populations in their practices, programmes, and collections. One key challenge is the tension between well-conceived scholarly programmes and being engagingly relevant to their local populations. Relevant contemporary cultural institutions need to connect with their place and communities. They must publicly demonstrate knowledgeable, imaginative, and collaborative practices that are locally specific and have a broad geographic reach. How can institutions step beyond their familiar modes of practice into collaboratively sharing decision-making and programming, in effect, share power? This is one of the questions the Australia Research Council-funded project "The Collaborative Museum. Embedding Cultural Infrastructure in the City" investigates. The project is a partnership between Western Sydney University and the Powerhouse (previously the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences). The Powerhouse Ultimo is an example of a classical 19th-century industrial technology and science museum based in Sydney CBD. Our research, however, investigates how their new institution, Powerhouse Parramatta, will develop in an urban, densely multicultural area that, until now, has never had a major cultural institution. The Powerhouse Parramatta, sited on the banks of the Parramatta/Burramatta River, appears as more of a 'space station' than a 'spaceship' with its multiple functions of residential education, culinary archive and experimental cooking facilities, productive gardens, with an art, science, and technology focus. Our research method uses cultural mapping in a variety of settings, which, at the time of this writing, has resulted in the Parramatta Food Cultures interactive web database, a documentary Parramatta Redux, a multi-disciplinary symposium, and publication on the Parramatta/Burramatta River. Cultural mapping is an interdisciplinary and intercultural process that identities individuals' and groups' perceptions, experiences, and needs through cultural practices and social histories. It is also a constant form of border crossing. What will the Powerhouse need to relinquish or gain to collaborate with the local population successfully? How have others addressed this challenge? This paper presents some options regarding institutional boundary crossing to transform institutional practices and cites examples of institutions, such as the Helsinki Central Library, Oodi and the San Francisco Science, technology and Arts Museum, Exploratorium, that continuously attempt the transition.