News release details

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights' (CMHR) annual summary corporate plan has been tabled in the House of Commons and is now available in English and French on the museum's website.

As per federal legislation, each of Canada's national museums annually prepares and submits to government a five‐year corporate plan intended to guide museum operations and budgeting.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights' 2012–13 summary corporate plan highlights areas of priority focus as identified by the organization's executive and board of trustees. The plan centers on four key actions in the lead‐up to the museum's inauguration in 2014.

These include:

Building inaugural exhibits and programs

The CMHR will continue exhibit development and construction in line with the outcomes of its multi‐year research and consultation process, which includes the museum's national public engagement project, consultation and collaboration with stakeholder communities, direction from human rights advocates and scholars, and external academic peer review. The museum will finalize exhibit content planning, contract exhibit fabrication and graphics production, and complete the independent academic peer review of all museum galleries. The CMHR's learning and programming department will continue to work with the museum's education partners to incorporate human‐rights learning into school curricula, develop age‐appropriate resources for educators, develop pilot projects for museum‐led educational programming and prepare a framework for the museum's national student program. Working with its Inclusive Design Advisory Committee, the museum will continue to implement design principles in its exhibits, programs and digital offerings that will set a new standard for inclusion and accessibility among cultural institutions.

Establishing museum operations and presence

The CMHR will finalize and implement policies related to ticketing and admissions, visitor services, retail, rentals and food service. The museum will expand earned‐revenue channels, establish profit targets and deploy revenue generation strategies in international markets to capitalize on opportunities within the travel trade, meetings and conventions, travel media and leisure sectors. The CMHR will build on efforts with its national and international tourism partners to grow industry familiarity, and to launch targeted marketing and promotional campaigns within key tourism markets. With local partners, the museum will move forward with a detailed inauguration strategy, including volunteer recruitment, host/ambassador opportunities, and opportunities for partnership to maximize local investment and economic activity. The museum will initiate work on a transition strategy to ready the organization for the shift from project development to operations in 2014.

Completing construction and servicing the building

The museum will substantially complete base building construction by the close of 2012 as scheduled, while moving forward with plans for building occupancy. In 2012–13 the CMHR will tender and award exhibit fit‐up contracts, complete interior construction to an occupancy‐ready (dust‐free) standard, and install and implement the environmental systems and fixtures that will allow the museum to achieve LEED Silver status. The museum will build and install IT infrastructure, develop an IT operations plan, design and deploy a security and facilities management strategy based on best practices, and finalize multi‐departmental operations plans for visitor services, events management, learning and programming, and other museum units.

Supporting the fundraising campaign led by Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

To further build on Friends' national fundraising success –– including $6 million in new private donations over the past year alone –– the museum will work with Friends to leverage newly completed assets to drive additional private‐sector contributions through the 2014 inauguration and beyond. The museum will provide use of CMHR facilities, offer guided site tours, identify new naming opportunities for major donors, as well as provide speakers for donor events. The museum will deploy new regional and national marketing efforts to complement Friends' fundraising efforts through the 2014 inauguration period and beyond, and continue to partner with Friends at donor cultivation events across Canada.

As with its previous summary corporate plans, the museum's 2012–13 summary plan includes a snapshot of both current and projected organizational finances. The museum also provides quarterly financial statements on its website and publishes audited financials each year in its annual report.

Museum officials noted the organization will present an overview of its priorities for the coming year, a briefing on museum budget and finances, and a review of the past year of operations during the CMHR's Annual Public Meeting on Thursday, Dec. 6 at Sisler High School in Winnipeg.

Members of the public are invited to attend the Winnipeg event in person, or by watching a live webcast that will be made available in both official languages. Museum staff will welcome questions both in person or online. More information on the Annual Public Meeting is available one the museum's website at www.humanrightsmuseum.ca/cmhr2012.

BACKGROUNDER

From planning to operations: Toward 2014

The current fiscal year marks an exciting time of transition for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. With the building's major structural elements now complete, the focus moves fully to the building's interior, including fabrication of inaugural galleries and exhibits, development of the museum's educational programming, and completion and launch of core operations such as visitor services, ticketing and admissions, retail, rentals and food services.

Rigorous adherence to a multi‐tiered operations strategy ensures this unprecedented undertaking continues apace, in line with the internal benchmarks that follow an aggressive project schedule leading up to inauguration in 2014.

Project management tools include:

• A master workflow schedule, tracked and externally monitored by Stantec Consulting. The master schedule sets out major project milestones –– from base building completion to exhibit prototyping to development of online education programs –– with clearly established timelines and benchmarks. A companion exhibit project workflow, reviewed by senior exhibit team members each week, ensures all aspects of exhibit planning and development follow a regimented schedule and workplan.

• A master project management plan, developed in partnership with GBAssociates, governing all aspects of museum development beyond completion of the base building. The plan ensures major "post‐construction" activities such as exhibit fit‐up, audio‐visual installation and building operations are closely managed to meet both schedule and budgetary objectives. The plan sets out a critical path focused on maximizing museum resources, identifying operational efficiencies and implementing needed processes to ensure operational readiness for the 2014 inauguration.

• Regular public reporting of project achievements, areas of current focus, and future goals and milestones. The museum highlights key accomplishments within its three program activity areas each year in its annual report. The organization also outlines current‐ and future‐year operations and budgeting objectives in its annual summary corporate plan, provides quarterly financial updates on the museum web site, and provides a public update of completed project objectives and areas of current focus during an annual public meeting.

• Strategic hiring to support project timelines and objectives. Adhering to its multi‐year staffing plan and benchmarks established in the master project schedule, the museum's staffing complement is evolving from a primarily planning function to an operations function. Strategic hiring in the areas of facilities management, education and public programming, volunteer services, security planning, rentals/events management and other areas will continue through the current fiscal year and through 2013–14.