India’s heritage forms one of its greatest cultural assets, and its museums are the key to unlocking the potential of that heritage. To help achieve that ambition, there’s a widely recognised need to develop policy, skills and up-to-date sector expertise.

So the British Council's commitment towards museum makeovers has been extremely fruitful in 2011. The highly successful museum delegation to the UK in January 2011 paved the way for many such exchanges and collaborations and contributed to the impact of the project.

All this led to the Victoria &Albert Museum collaborating with British Council in organising the Museum Masterclasses that caught the appeal of the 40 participants from across India to concentrate on professional development in museums in India. No less than Jawahar Sircar, Secretary, Ministry of Culture, pointed out the apathetic condition of museums in India and also spoke about the need for projects like the Masterclasses. “I am glad to see such widespread participation from government museums as well,” said Sircar. Martin Roth, the new V&A Director, has lauded British Council's efforts to bring in the change and sent a letter to Martin Davidson acknowledging the contributions.

Earlier, in September, in Delhi we ran another workshop on communication, signage and interpretation conducted by Dr Martin Bellamy, Research & Curatorial Manager, Centre for Collections Research, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (www.glasgowlife.org.uk) and Bridget Mckenzie, Director, Flow Associates, UK. The two-day session of understanding presentations, visiting galleries and identifying issues about audience profiling revealed the loopholes in the system and pointed out how messages can confuse and send the wrong signals to people.