A note on Curation in Social Leadership

The difference between my attic and the British Museum is that one is curated, whilst the other is full of junk. To be fair on the British Museum, they’ve got a lot more stuff than me to sort out…

Curation is the first step in the journey of becoming a Social Leader

Curation is partly the sciences of organisation and conservation and partly the art of interpretation and storytelling. In the Social Age, it’s also part of the art of Leadership.

Curation is about choosing your stage and gathering together the skills and capabilities that you need to perform.

In the NET Model of Social Leadership, i use ‘curation‘ as the first component, because it’s the foundation for everything else: curate your space and then develop the stories you can tell from it.

Curation is a skill in it’s own right, and an agile one at that: just as the BM changes it’s displays over time, so too we need to adapt and bring on new scenery, new skills, new tools. A museum that doesn’t curate itself well becomes dusty and irrelevant: a risk that faces us all.

Great museums (and the British Museum is a truly great museum) find a stance that is informative, engaging, educational and challenging. Something we could all usefully emulate.