Bloomberg Connects Tabs Pioneer Museum for Digital Upgrade

Jeff Green | Aug 07, 2024

For a small, seasonal museum, run by a volunteer board and dedicated to the history of a small community that has seen its share of hard times, the Pioneer Museum in Cloyne is now travelling in some prestigious circles.

Bloomberg Connects is a project that has brought access, for a global audience, to over 500 museums, galleries, sculpture parks, gardens, and cultural spaces around the world. As the project, which is funded by Michael Bloomberg Philanthropy, continues to expand, new museums are bring added all the time.

There are only a handful of Canadian cultural institutions that are currently included in the project, including the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.

“We heard about Bloomberg Connects” said Pioneer Museum Board member Ken Hook, “and it offers something we have been looking at doing ourselves, but the subscription fees for the software had put it out of our reach. So, we decided to apply.”

Hook said that it was a surprise, given the prestige level of many of the institutions on the Bloomberg list, when the Cloyne and District Historical Society (CDHS), which operates the Pioneer Museum, was selected.

“The great thing about it is that all of the costs are covered, and they provide the training to set everything up,” added Hook.

While Bloomberg Connects covered all the software and hardware costs, it has been up to the Pioneer museum volunteers and board members to create and upload a wide variety of content into the system. That included a 13-week training course over Zoom, some new writing, and a set of decisions about what to feature among the museum’s collection of artifacts

The CDHS has been proactive in the past in dealing with the problem of its seasonal nature, as it is only open a couple pf months each year. An archive is posted on the museum website, and though Flicker, 100’s of historical photos are available for viewing

Bloomberg Connects will take the virtual gallery to a whole new level and will also add some important accessibility features and a huge marketing boost.

The details about how the viewer experience for people who visit the museum when it is open in the summer, as well as virtual access year-round through the free Bloomberg Connects app, will be released in the coming weeks as the launch date approaches at the end of August.