Contributed: Jim Cullen
Former executive director of Revelstoke Railway Museum
Sustainability is a perennial topic for museums everywhere, with worldwide research ongoing. I was fortunate to be involved in the Alberta Museums Association’s sustainability project, and the framework we developed has driven much of my efforts as the Railway Museum’s executive director.
Museums are one of the few institutions that society expects to be around forever. Forever is a very long time so sustainability really matters to museums. In railway museums particularly, we can no longer rely on our visitors’ and volunteers’ nostalgia, as railways are less and less a part of most people’s lived experience. This waning nostalgia is an existential threat to all railway museums.
The Alberta Museums Association’s Museum Sustainability Framework has five facets: Cultural, Health, Environmental, Financial and Social. It makes an easy acronym: CHEFS. All five facets need to be present and connected with each other, otherwise, the framework collapses. Another key element of the framework is the fact that the museum has to support each of the five facets for its communities, not just for itself. It’s also trite but true that sustainability is a journey, not a destination: our environments and communities constantly change, so we must anticipate and respond to new and changing challenges to our sustainability.
Many Revelstokians are mindful of the fast-changing nature of our city as its emphasis shifts towards being an outdoor recreation powerhouse. During my time here, I heard a lot of Revelstokians’ fear of losing our roots and authenticity as a real place with a deep, real, and compelling history.
Many people see a core role of museums in cultural preservation; cultural sustainability relates to what the museum does to preserve culture – both inside the institution and also in our surrounding communities. Our exhibit “Revelstoke is a Railway Town” attempts to build awareness of Revelstoke’s remarkable railway history and stories. It’s meaningful for our old railway families, but also helps newcomers make sense of what makes Revelstoke the wonderfully unique thing it is.
While we have barely begun our journey of de-colonizing the railway museum, we also use our agency to help others’ de-colonizing work, particularly Indigenous Friendship Society Revelstoke(IFSR): we have hosted classes led by Indigenous educators, two REDress exhibits, and we sell IFSR products with all proceeds going back to them.
Health sustainability is more basic. Is the museum a safe and healthy workplace, and how do we help make Revelstoke a healthier place? Research tells us that Museums can be places for people to recharge, take in something interesting or beautiful, share stories and memories, gather with others and enjoy their company, or just plain have a good time.
Environmental sustainability is probably the easiest to connect to the familiar environmental “buzz”. Are we doing our work in a way that reduces environmental impact, and how are we helping Revelstokians do the same? Like everyone else, we recycle whatever we can, and from time to time we offer things on Revy Sell that we can’t use, in the hopes that someone else can do so and landfills can be avoided. For years, our volunteer Don Hawker has been relentlessly replacing old fixtures with more energy-efficient ones. We host special events organized by others – all the better to make use of the existing investment in our facilities.
Financial sustainability, at its simplest, means we have enough money coming in reliably so that we can continue to provide services to Revelstokians. Being a non-profit organization is not a business model, and we have to ensure the earned and donated revenues we bring in will cover our expenses.
Running a museum is expensive. There is no free ride and we have to operate frugally. While we do a great job of earning income for the museum and are grateful to our museum members whose continued support is invaluable, we are working on a fundraising strategy to ensure our funding is reliable from both what we earn and the money which people and organizations donate to us.
Financial sustainability also means that any capital project we take on has to be affordable in the long term in maintenance and operation. Our relatively small size means we do not face the challenges of larger museums that build huge additions that must be paid for. However, a particular challenge for us is the long-term preservation of our outdoor rolling stock.
A good starting assumption is that each piece of equipment will cost about $20,000 every 20 years to restore, re-restore, and re-restore…forever! Restoring our locomotive No. 5500 will be about a $250,000 endeavour, for which we are actively fundraising. The roof project over locomotive No. 5500 – which is being generously supported by an anonymous Revelstokian – will help ensure the restoration will last a very long time, with less frequent repeats.
As both a cultural cornerstone and a tourist attraction, we are part of a much bigger tourism and culture ecosystem. Research tells us that tourists value authentic experiences in authentic surroundings. By helping make Revelstoke a more attractive – and authentic – destination we help attract and retain tourists here.
Finally, Social sustainability means what we are doing for society and how we are helping keep Revelstoke socially sustainable. When I think of “social sustainability”, I think of “society”. Our grassroots founding by several Revelstokians means that we have to serve Revelstokians first and foremost. If there is one thing we learned from the pandemic, it’s that when the tourists don’t come, you have to depend solely on your communities (and we were certainly heartened by the many generous gestures of support we had during the pandemic, large and small). I intentionally say “communities” because Revelstoke consists of a bunch of communities.
One of my favourite slogans during my time here has been the goal to make the museum a “front porch” of our communities. When you think of a front porch, it’s a place where people “come as they are” and enjoy themselves, a place where everyone is welcome and everyone is comfortable. Our wonderful partnership with Arts Revelstoke is providing us with new and interesting ways of making the museum a venue, for example, our reincarnation of “Railway Day” into a third day of LUNA Fest, and the REVY Tracks concert series.
One of the key jobs of a museum is as a place of learning, and supporting the education of our youth is a huge part of that. We are working with a senior educator here to develop curriculum-based educational programs. Our “Throwback Thursday” and “Games Night” programs also make the museum a place where people can meet and gather, at a very low cost. Since that program started in the fall, we know that strangers meeting at Games Night end up as friends.
In a place like Revelstoke where we have a lot of seasonal population turnover, anything we can do to help new Revelstokians appreciate their communities means we are helping ensure they have a good experience while here, and maybe they will stay. Our special events (Family Day, LUNA Rail, Trackside Holiday Party) are all admission by donation, in the hopes that this eliminates an economic barrier preventing some residents from enjoying the railway museum.
In 2023 the museum celebrated its 30th anniversary of operation and I hope our founders would be proud of what we have become and the role we play in Revelstoke. If sustainability is a journey rather than a destination, it’s arguably more of a permanent marathon than a quick sprint. We hope that our work not only ensures we will be a vibrant and vital part of Revelstoke for generations to come, but also that we will continue to help make Revelstoke a great place to live, work, play and visit.
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