Consulting Alliances Working Group advances case for collaboration

09 May 2014 – Michael Adamson

Consulting Alliances Working Group, NCPH Annual Meeting, Monterey, California, March 2014. Photo credit: Michael Adamson

The Consulting Alliances Working Group formed last fall to explore collaboration as a means by which independent consulting historians might do work that otherwise would not be available to them. After writing, posting (on this blog), and commenting on individual case statements, the group gathered in March in Monterey, California, at the annual meeting of the National Council on Public History (NCPH) to continue their consideration of the extent to which consulting historians may be missing opportunities to join colleagues in competing for projects that are likely beyond their reach as individuals. Consulting historians not only may be missing out on chances to work on more, and more varied, projects but also on opportunities to hone and leverage their talents as professionals. As Bill Willingham noted, by collaborating, historians can increase their creativity and improve their ability to execute projects.

Historians have worked more often with professionals in other fields than with colleagues within the discipline, at least in the United States. Still, the working group agreed that opportunities abound for historians to work as valuable contributors to project teams. As Nancy Berlage observed, “We live in a world of increasing specialization, but we can use that to our advantage in collaborations.” Prompted by both one another and audience members, participants considered expanding pathways to alliance-building, including training public history students and new professionals in consulting practices.

The working group made a number of recommendations to provide opportunities for collaboration, including improving the NCPH consultant’s directory as a networking and communications tool; posting documents related to consulting as a small business and entrepreneurial enterprise on History@Work or the NCPH Web site; posting cases of collaborative work on this blog and examples of project outcomes, such as exhibits, on History@Work or the NCPH Web site; and holding a “boot camp” for students and new professionals in conjunction with the 2015 NCPH meeting in Nashville. The participants in the working group who are also members of the Consultants Committee agreed that exploring other means to expand opportunities for historian-historian alliances should be a charge for the committee in the upcoming year.

~ Michael R. Adamson is a Senior Consultant with FTI Consulting and works out of the San Francisco office.