Conference 2023: The Power of Museums

Conference kicks off with an opening night reception at Laing Art Gallery. The gallery is home to an internationally important collection of art, focusing on British oil paintings, watercolours, ceramics, silver and glassware. Our reception takes place in the beautiful Marble Hall, which is occupied by artworks by Henry Moore and Turner Prize nominee Paul Noble.

There is also the opportunity to explore Northern Spirit, the gallery’s major permanent exhibition celebrating the achievements of artists, manufacturers and makers from the north-east England.

In person attendees only

If you are a first-time delegate, come along to this welcome session to explore the programme. We will also share some networking hints and tips, answer any questions you may have and provide you with an opportunity to meet other delegates.

In person attendees only

A short break between sessions.

Our host for this year’s conference is Vici Wreford-Sinnott, a writer and director for theatre and television.

Vici is the artistic director of Little Cog, a disabled-led production company that works across a range of artforms and is based in north-east England. Her award-winning theatre work has toured nationally and internationally.

She has been a leading campaigner for disability equity in the arts for more than 30 years. She is an advocate of an anti-ableist, disabled-led approach to disability equity.

Vici held a national role as the chief executive of Arts and Disability Ireland and was also the CEO and artistic director of ARCADEA for six years, which was north-east England’s disability arts development organisation.

She has championed many new platforms for disabled artists and has supported venues and organisations to develop their knowledge and confidence around disability equality practice, promoting strategic artistic practice as a route to equity and visibility for disabled people.

Vici is a co-founder, with Black Robin, of On Whose Shoulders We Build, a living archive of north-east disabled-led arts, ensuring that disabled artists and activists past and present have a profile.

In 2021 Vici wrote and directed one of the first pieces of broadcast television drama by a disabled women-led team, Hen Night. She was recently awarded the North East Art and Culture Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts.

She is an Associate Artist of ARC Stockton, where she has delivered many partnership projects, including Cultural Shift, a three-year programme of disabled-led artistic activity running parallel to organisational change for ARC. She has been commissioned to write and perform her new solo show Wrapping Myself in All The Women I Could Have Been by ARC, and is currently under commission for two plays at Live Theatre Newcastle.

Vici is about to publish an anthology of comedy writings from the Funny HaHa disabled women’s comedy writers’ room she founded and is completing her practice driven PhD in Radical Acts: Disabled Women Performing. She is also founder of IN/Visible Disabled Women’s National Arts Collective who have proudly held a new national exhibition of commissioned works in both the north and south of England this year.

Chi Onwurah is the member of parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and is also the shadow minister for science, research and innovation. 

Chi, who was born in Wallsend in North Tyneside and attended Kenton Comprehensive School in Newcastle, has always campaigned for the causes that she believes in and was very active in the anti-apartheid movement as a student. Before being selected as Labour’s candidate for Newcastle, she was on the Advisory Board of the Open University Business School, reflecting her belief in the importance of providing educational opportunities at every stage in life and for every level of ability. Chi is also a former shadow minister for culture and the digital economy. 

Chi is a chartered engineer with a BEng in electrical engineering from Imperial College London and an MBA from Manchester Business School. 

She was inspired by Newcastle’s industrial past to become an engineer and has enjoyed a fulfilling career in the sector. Her last role before entering parliament was as head of Telecoms Technology for Ofcom, the communications regulator. 

Chi is a presidency member of the Party of European Socialists, and a fellow of both the Institution of Engineering & Technology and the City & Guilds of London Institute. She is also an honorary fellow of the British Science Association. 

Chi’s appearance at conference is subject to constituency and parliamentary business.

All attendees

A short break between sessions. 

Disabled people remain underrepresented, sometimes entirely invisible, within most museums’ exhibitions, displays and public programmes. When disabled people do appear, they are often presented in narrow, reductive and dehumanising ways and through negative stereotypes. A fresh look will often reveal those same lives filled with opportunity and autonomy, influence and adventure, love and joy.

Stigmatising (historic and contemporary) attitudes towards disability mean that archives and collections are partial, obscured or distorted, and connections to disability may be viewed as unimportant or omitted for fear of causing offense. The prevalence and persistence of negative imagery, as well as the lack of representations of “ordinary” disabled people, can be viewed as both a symptom and cause of the lack of equality and basic human rights for disabled people.

This panel focuses on how museums can develop anti-ableist approaches to rethinking disability representation, reframing societal conversations around disability, and tackling contemporary discrimination. Drawing on 20 years of expertise in the field at the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, including recent innovative and ambitious research collaborations with Wellcome Collection and the National Trust, the panel explores and shares new ethical, inclusive and socially purposeful ways of presenting richer, fuller and more honest representations of disability and disabled people.

All attendees

Mindsets + Missions is a learning and grants programme, funded by UK Research and Innovation, which supports museums and science centres to engage underrepresented groups with knowledge, research and innovation.

The programme consists of two distinct phases: an ambitious learning programme that brought together a cohort of organisations, creative practitioners, researchers, and experts by lived and learned experience to stimulate collaboration and peer learning (March to April 2023). And a second phase, now underway, providing grant funding to a selection of programme members to support bold and transformative research-based projects. Working with underrepresented groups, the resulting diverse portfolio of projects aims to explore equitable engagement and participation in research and innovation, and to discover the future of museums and science centres as representative, responsive and just cultural institutions supporting cultural citizenship for all.

Join this session to hear about some of the key learning from the programme and discover what practical action museums and science centres can take today as a step towards creating the museums and science centres of the future.

All attendees

We have a target: cut global carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. We know where change needs to take place: transport, diet, consumption. We know that this requires lifestyle changes and not just swapping to greener products, such as electric cars and organic food and clothing. We can see that inaction is leading to greater instability. So how do we convert knowledge into action? How do we decarbonise our thinking and shift from the status quo? Join us for a workshop on the practicalities of starting climate conversations with your community and positioning museums as a catalyst for change. 

In person attendees only

This session challenges the way we think about people and families living in poverty, and asks the following questions: 

• Do our actions match our conscience? 
• Do our budgets reflect our intent? 
• What is the tension between the commercial needs of museums and working with audiences with little disposable income? 
• Does our conception of an ideal family in any way match the reality of those living in poverty? 
• Do we ever think about this audience in our interpretation?

These questions will be examined and explored by through a provocation: ‘Not our sort of people’ – is this sentiment still alive in our museums today?

In person attendees only

A chance for a screen break or in-app networking for our online audience.

Attendees at The Glasshouse can visit our networking area and discover some of the great products and services from our sponsors, as well as getting refreshments.

We are facing an existential crisis. In light of 60% reductions to our core funding in the past five years and vastly escalating running costs, many civic museums are on the brink of collapse. In contrast to the laudable aims of levelling up and placemaking, cultural access and opportunity is diminishing daily. As it stands, each museum service at risk is being considered on a local basis, but what happens to England’s national story once all of us are gone? And would a national strategy make a difference to our collective fate? Join this panel session to take part in the debate.

All attendees

In this workshop we explore how the museum, or the setting you work in, can define its role locally to work equitably and inclusively with people, organisations and communities, focusing on those who are settling in as refugees, asylum seekers or through forced migration.

You will hear from volunteer managers and have the chance to reflect on the potential opportunities within the context that you work, looking at how the people and communities that are part of projects can create inspirational, enriching and inclusive spaces, activities, events, exhibitions and spaces.

Each of our speakers brings a different angle and experience of the programmes delivered in Tyne and Wear and in Oxford. The aim is for delegates to be inspired, to reflect and to develop an offer in the context of their work. 

All attendees

The research report If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes (Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust, 2022) examines the status of anti-racism and equity, diversity and inclusion in the heritage sector. In particular, it argues for the vital importance of centring the perspectives, knowledge and culture of global majority communities.

The session considers the implications of this report and addresses how ways of working can change to adopt a more inclusive and anti-racist practice. Those implications are discussed through the lens of the experiences of Birmingham Museums Trust and its partners, incorporating work to create radical new displays for the pop-up reopening of the city’s museum and art gallery in April 2022.

Conversations will centre on the ethical and practical challenges of communicating narratives that centre anti-racism and foreground global majority perspectives. Moving beyond the report findings alone, the session also considers the vital role of solidarity in anti-racist activism. This is a key approach in building a socially purposeful museum, one which can communicate narratives that are shared and relevant to all audiences in our 21st-century society. 

In person attendees only 

How can we make our money contribute to a better future? How can we enhance social value through our spending decisions? This practical session explores why sustainable procurement matters and how museums can make a difference through what we buy.

All attendees

A short break between sessions.

Western museums hold all the power. Can cultural rights help redress this imbalance? These are rights we all legally hold and are enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. British public museums have an obligation to support all people to realise their rights, but do existing power structures enable or inhibit? When rights are championed, who benefits? 

One debate concerns the retention of objects by British museums acquired through colonialism. Is restitution the answer, or can British museums support the cultural rights of formerly colonised peoples in other ways? Corinne Lennox looks at the broader role of cultural rights as a potential vehicle for addressing historical wrongdoings caused by colonial practices for people from indigenous communities, or those who have been racially or ethnically minoritised.

Furaha Mussanzi, from the Congolese community in Bradford, talks about engaging with artefacts from Scarborough Museums and Galleries and the impact on members of the Congolese diaspora who have experienced forced migration. Rehema Mussanzi, from Centre Résolution Conflits (CRC) Congo, discusses Bambuti Lives, the Scarborough Museums-CRC Congo project with indigenous people from the Ituri Region in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

All attendees

Meet the Overlooked exhibition team from Leeds City Museum, which includes volunteers aged 14-24 and community partners, as they take you through the process of uncovering and telling overlooked histories. Participants in the session will workshop real-life scenarios from the display, including how to tell stories that have not been documented, the ethics of language, working with human remains, and how to discuss mistakes made by established bodies.

The Overlooked exhibition opened in February 2023, and was the culmination of two years of partnership work. The project was conceived and curated by the Preservative Party, volunteers aged 14-24, who wanted to tell stories of people they could not find in the museum collection. The group connected with local communities (including the Deaf Arts Forum, Age Friendly Steering Group and David Oluwale Memorial Association), and individuals who identified as disabled, neurodivergent, homeless experienced and LGBT+, to curate an accessible and inclusive display.

At every step the Preservative Party was confronted with new dilemmas, ranging from historic injustices and dead-naming to managing visitor experiences and supporting the co-curators’ own trauma.

Participants will work through these live case studies and are encouraged to bring their own to discuss.

In person attendees only

Contemporary museums as custodians of the past mirror the nation’s historical focus on objects. However, the concept of what it means to be a museum is being repurposed and redefined as dialogue about the redesign and remix of museums continues. Technology has afforded more democratisation in our story, and what was accepted as precious has altered because of the demand for plural perspectives and ideas, and people taking centre stage.

The concept of ‘doing museums differently’ has been voiced in many different areas, and the National Windrush Museum is a practical example of the application. We bring together our founder and board members to discuss the rationale, strategy and application of doing museums differently from a practical perspective.

Presentations include a piece of poetry and art, alongside a discussion culminating in a Q&A with the audience.

The session is aimed at everyone who would like an insight into the building of a museum in real time. It focuses on purpose, motivation, skills, strategy and challenges. Participants will have a unique opportunity to share elements of the journey. 

In person attendees only

If museums are to be financially and environmentally sustainable, and relevant to the communities we serve in the 21st century, we must take an immediate and proactive approach to collections management and review. In June 2023 the Museums Association launched “Off the Shelf: a toolkit for ethical transfer, reuse and disposal” to enable museums to more easily undertake disposals. In this session we invite you to hear more about the process, work through some theoretical examples and make a pledge to undertake disposals from your own collections.

All attendees

Lunchtime break for all.

For attendees at The Glasshouse, lunch is served in the main concourse where you can also network and meet our sponsors.

Hear from our president Gillian Findlay and director Sharon Heal about our work and plans for the year ahead. Find out about our organisational performance and proposed membership fees in our AGM. And discover the winners of our Museums Change Lives Awards from the amazing shortlist of museum projects and people delivering social impact in their communities.

All attendees

A chance to take a screen break for our online audience, while attendees at The Glasshouse can visit our networking area and meet our sponsors over tea or coffee.

Disability underrepresentation in museums is an ongoing and persistent issue which continues to evade real progress. This is not an issue that can be tackled by individuals alone, but instead there needs to be a movement for change. During the development of Curating for Change, the developers identified a need to bring together key organisations and individuals to form an alliance to spearhead this movement across the sector, so they formed the Museums Strategic Disability Network (MSDN).

In this panel discussion, members of this network describe why there needs to be a greater focus on ableism in museums, as well as how the network has supported the development of resources for the sector. We hear about other initiatives seeking to bring about positive change for disabled people in the cultural sector, specifically the National Arts Access Scheme. This panel also includes the reflections of a Curating for Change Fellow about how the work they have been doing on the ground has influenced the MSDN and why a bottom to top approach enables the possibility for real change.

This discussion is designed to inspire museum professionals to join this movement for change, with provocations and strategies for institutions wishing to improve equity for audiences as well as within the workforce. 

All attendees

With the increased emphasis on decolonisation in the sector, more museums are rightly taking a proactive approach to repatriation, reuniting objects with the communities to which they have most meaning. But our stores are also full of everyday items acquired enthusiastically since the mid-twentieth century to tell an often-limited story of society and people. Many of these items have ended up languishing unused in stores and are duplicated in multiple museums. This session brings together leaders on collections development from around the world discuss the potential power of collection disposal to empower communities and respond to the needs of society. They will speculate on what’s stopping museums from doing this and highlight the risks of inaction. 

Marina Valle Noronha is an independent curator and doctoral candidate at Aalto University in Helsinki, where she investigates curatorial theory and ethics of care within museum collections development.

Rainey Tisdale is an independent museums consultant in the US and co-editor of Active Collection, which includes a manifesto calling for American museums to think carefully about collections and disposal.

All attendees

With the unprecedented decline in funding from the public purse and the pressures of vastly increased costs on all fronts, this session explores how civic museums can be supported in the future. With funding offers often triggering local authority commitment cold feet across the board, is the current funding model for civic museums irrevocably broken? And if so, what new models could work going forwards?

In person attendees only

This panel discussion explores the impact of the Global Voices Local Choices initiative on public engagement efforts in Northern Ireland. The initiative is a collaborative effort by National Museums NI, African Caribbean Support Organisation Northern Ireland, and the Northern Ireland Museums Council funded by the Museums Association’s Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund.

This initiative engaged about 60 individuals from six groups from multiple ethnicities across Northern Ireland to start the journey of decolonisation and learning together. Community groups were given access to a selection of objects from the world cultures collection. Each group went through six workshops with cultural and creative facilitators, leading to reflections and creative responses which resulted in six creative displays at five local museums and one national museum.

These stories and reflections are not only reaching increased numbers of visitors and encouraging them to empathise with the experiences of ethnic minorities, but also demonstrate that by leveraging the world cultures collection, National Museums NI and its partners have been able to open a pathway to more actively promote social inclusion and to start the journey of decolonisation in a country with a people transitioning from a troubled past.

In person attendees only

A short break between sessions.

More information to follow soon.

All attendees

Our main conference party takes place in the Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle’s museum of natural history, archaeology, geology and world cultures. After a day packed full of sessions and debate, you have the chance to relax, mingle with friends and dance the night away.

The party will be held in the Living Planet gallery of wildlife and habitats. You also have the opportunity to explore other parts of museum, with collections ranging from ornithology to Etruscan art and archaeology, as well as an extensive display on the history of Hadrian’s Wall. 

In person attendees only

In light of enormous reductions to our core funding in the last five years and seismic increased costs, most civic museums are on the brink of collapse. Our commerciality, agile nature and increasingly skeletal structures, plus our alignment with laudable charitable and cultural locally infused objectives is not enough to guarantee our future.

We’ve never been more popular, or more in tune with our communities needs and ambitions, and yet we can no longer afford to keep the doors open. This early–morning session gives delegates the chance to explore the shared issues and solutions for the crisis in civic museums across the UK. Are there any signs of hope for our future, and shared solutions that we can adopt? 

In person attendees only

A short break between sessions.

Many museums are not realising their potential to enrich the lives of our fellow citizens, not only because of lack of funding, but because there might be something wrong with our model for engaging with society. Is the institutional permanence of our sector to be celebrated and built on, or do we need to do something more radical and flexible to reflect society and support communities to navigate the changing world around us? This session brings together leading thinkers in the museum world for an honest and hard-hitting conversation on shifts and changes in museum practice and reflections on what progress has been made and what still needs to be done. 

Mark O’Neill worked for over 30 years in museums, mostly in Glasgow, where he moved in 1984, serving as head of Glasgow Museums from 1998 to 2009. He led a number of large scale, award-winning projects, including: in 1993, the only museum of world religions in the UK; in 2006, the £35m refurbishment of Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum; and the £74m Riverside Museum, the European Museum of the Year 2013. From 2009 to 2016 he was director of policy and research for Glasgow Life, the charity that delivers arts, museums, libraries and sports services for the City of Glasgow, the largest organisation of its kind in Europe. This gave him a new perspective on the possible roles and impacts of museums in delivering access and social inclusion. He has lectured internationally and published on museum philosophy and practice, as well as on strategic planning for heritage, tourism and urban regeneration, and on the health benefits of cultural participation. 

Jette Sandahl has been the founding director for two pioneering new museums, the Women’s Museum of Denmark and the Museum of World Cultures in Sweden. She has served as director of exhibitions and public programmes at the National Museum of Denmark, and as director experience at National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Most recently, she was director of the Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has held a number of elected and appointed posts in the museum world, including chairing the European Museum Forum and the Icom standing committee on Museum Definition, Prospects and Potentials. She has been part of the formation of new paradigms for museums as platforms for empowerment, cultural participation and social justice, and publishes widely within the museological field. 

Sara Wajid is co-CEO, alongside Zak Mensah, of Birmingham Museum Trust. Sara was formerly head of engagement at Museum of London and head of interpretation at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 2017. Before working in museums she was a cultural commentator, journalist and editor. She is a trustee of the Pitt Rivers Museum, a judge of the Museum Activism award, a member of the Museum Detox network for people of colour in museums and an active advocate for diversity and equality issues in the arts. 

All attendees

Writer, artist and part-time superhero, Jess Thom co-founded Touretteshero in 2010 as a creative response to her experience of living with Tourette’s Syndrome. 

Jess campaigns for disability rights and social justice and is on a mission to change the world “one tic at a time”. 

Jess has written in the mainstream and disability press including The Guardian, The Observer and Disability Now. In 2012 she published Welcome to Biscuit Land – A Year In the Life of Touretteshero. 

Jess has spoken widely in the media about her life with Tourette’s, including on Woman’s Hour, This Morning, and Russell Howard’s Good News. She has given a TEDx talk at the Royal Albert Hall and features in the Annalisa is Awkward documentary on BBC Radio 4. 

In 2016 Jess took her award-winning stage show Backstage in Biscuit Land on a national and international tour. In the same year she received a Wellcome Engagement Fellowship, became an Arts Council England Change Maker and received an honorary degree from the University of Wolverhampton. 

In 2017 Touretteshero hosted Adventures in Biscuit Land at Tate Modern as part of Tate Exchange, and curated Brewing in the Basement at the Barbican Centre. She also debuted her critically acclaimed performance of Samuel Beckett’s short play Not I. 

In 2018 Jess took her stand-up show Stand Up, Sit Down, Roll Over to the US and Europe, hosted Heroes of the Imagination at the Southbank’s Imagine Festival, and Brewing in Battersea at Battersea Arts Centre. Her one-hour film Me, My Mouth and I was broadcast on BBC Two and went on to be screened in the US, Russia, Chile, Switzerland and Canada. 

In 2019, Touretteshero received Elevate funding from Arts Council England, a programme which aims to strengthen the resilience of diverse arts organisations. Jess deepened her advocacy work, hosting numerous facilitated conversations around access for senior managers or organisations such as the Barbican and Shakespeare’s Globe. 

In 2022 Jess filmed a short pilot of her Channel 4 sitcom Biscuitland which went on to be shortlisted for a Bafta. In 2023, with support from the Collaborative Touring Network, Jess took Burnt Out In Biscuit Land on an eight venue UK tour. 

All attendees

A chance to take a screen break for our online audience, while attendees at The Glasshouse can visit our networking area and meet our sponsors over tea or coffee.

A reflective and discursive session exploring the emotional impacts of doing decolonial work with problematic museum collections. The session begins with selected readings from Blood on the Roots, Blood on the Leaves, written by the Culture& team, and a short film, To Whom Does This Belong, made by Sandra Shakespeare, Museum X, with Cornwall Museums Partnership. This is followed by a healing libation performed by Ama Josephine Budge and an audience discussion on the three areas below. We facilitate a ‘brave space’ to share experiences, and collectively envision positive ways to move forward while promoting care and sustained wellbeing.

All attendees

This interactive workshop explores what happens if, instead of assuming that the minority of visitors have access needs, we a) assume that most visitors have access needs, and b) use what we know about disability to reimagine the museum experience. Aimed at interpretation specialists, inclusion and access professionals and education teams, this workshop uses recent examples of disability-centred museum practice to discuss their benefits and drawbacks for all museum visitors.

We also introduce the principles of the Sensational Museum project, which aims to create a new sensory logic within our museums and museum practice, where no one sense is necessary or sufficient to understand or experience museums. We will ask workshop participants to find ways to challenge current concepts of ‘access’, which are founded on an ableist mindset that assumes a binary distinction between the ‘abled’ and the dis/abled, and together we will consider how museums can move forward with an inclusive approach to audience experience.

In person attendees only

Many museums have Gypsy, Roma, Traveller (GRT) collections: some know it, some don’t. The presence of GRT people within communities means that the material culture of everyday life often has a GRT connection, without necessarily being labelled as such. How far these connections are made visible partly depends on what curators currently define as ‘GRT’ and ‘GRT objects’. It also depends on museums’ willingness to engage GRT communities in sensitive and collaborative ways.

This panel brings an open-air museum with designated GRT collections into discussion with artists and writers of GRT ethnicity to ask: whose heritage is this? What is a GRT collection? Why should everyone care about GRT representation?

This session is relevant for anyone committed to the inclusion of those with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller heritage in the depiction of the past. 

In person attendees only

Helping Hands is an ambitious two-year project to transform cultural volunteering in Cumbria. The project aims to improve community wellbeing, grow capacity and workforce diversity across the Cumbria culture sector and break down barriers to volunteering that exist across a large, complex, rural county. It is funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, via Arts Council England, through the Volunteering Futures Fund.

Led by Cumbria Museum Consortium, Helping Hands brings together 45 partners in five place-based clusters to effect a step-change in volunteering across four protected characteristics: age, disability and neurodiversity, race and socio-economic.

This session shares learning to date both from Helpings Hands in Cumbria and the national Volunteering Futures programme. The successes and the challenges are all laid bare in a candid and entertaining discussion between key project managers and partners. It will benefit those seeking to promote volunteering who are open to collaboration beyond the museum. Delegates will gain inspiration and practical tips from a project model that centres on the individual volunteering experience, while sharing resources to address a common issue. 

All attendees

A short break between sessions.

The museum sector has made progress in the past five years on welcoming children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Valuing processing and engagement from neurodivergent and disabled children has, however, mostly been ignored.

Museums evolved as places of enlightenment, valuing awe and wonder, changing to become places of academic privilege and elitism. This led to a perception that museums cannot possibly be relevant to audiences who do not follow ‘normal’ routes to information access such as labels or audio guides.

This is simply not the case – in fact, evidence from ground-breaking research and inclusive practice shows very much the opposite. Museums can hold awe and wonder as well as relevance and enrichment for SEND children and young people (as well as adults). Not only can museums be powerful places for SEND audiences, but these visitors can also bring different ways of seeing, being and appreciating museums and the objects within them.

They can lead us as a sector towards a new appreciation of museums as social hubs for enlightenment and connectivity. We should reinterpret what ‘learning’ is in museums and question radically why subtle judgment of engagement is present at all. 

All attendees

One year on from English Civic Museum Network’s New Deal for Museums debate at the MA’s conference in Edinburgh, we want to put some of the emerging priorities to you in an interactive session. Come ready to share your knowledge and experience on the future of workforce, governance, collections, social policy and funding. The future of the civic museums sector is in your hands.

In person attendees only

Amgueddfa Cymru is at the forefront of empowering young people to work within museums. This is an in-conversation session with two Amgueddfa Cymru Producers – young people who are paid freelancers – that deliver incredible youth–led projects exploring decolonisation, queering the museum, the environment and ecology, activism, anti-racism and much more.

• Izzy McLeod has been heavily engaged with the museum’s LGBTQ+ work, environmental activism, and future planning at the museum. They have used their voice, creativity and lived experience to feed into decision making, exhibitions and youth-led projects.
• Abraham Makanjuola is a core member of the Demystifying Acquisitions group – a first-of-its-kind project where the acquisition process was opened to a group of young people rather than exclusively curatorial staff at Amgueddfa Cymru. This project has been at the forefront of institutional change within the museum. 

Joining them are two Youth Engagement Facilitators, members of staff who have delivered and supported the work.

In person attendees only

Since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, many museums have committed to ending institutional racism and becoming anti-racist organisations – but what does this look like in reality? This practical session demonstrates the urgency for anti-racist action and explores ways in which museums can become fully–fledged anti-racist organisations.

Lunchtime break for all.

For attendees at The Glasshouse, lunch is served in the main concourse where you can also network and meet our sponsors.

No corner of the globe is immune from the devastating consequences of climate change, and it is clear that action is urgently needed to tackle the crisis. But this is also a challenge that will require an ongoing and sustained commitment for many years. In light of this, as well as what museums can and should be doing right now to support efforts to make progress in addressing the issue, what is the long-term trajectory of this work in the sector?

Our speakers look forward to 2050, the time for which many climate goals are set, to discuss what the future role of museums might look like. Presumably, by 2050, climate “deniers” will be as significant as flat-earthers are today, and the fossil fuel industry as we know it will be a subject for history books. But what role will our sector play then? Will we be helping the public cope with climate grief, and remembering ecosystems that were lost? Will museums be supporting the government and the public to get behind stronger carbon reduction initiatives? Or will we simply be monitoring the progress of climate impacts and disasters? Or, possibly, will we go in an entirely new direction that might not be obvious from where we stand today? Join our panel of international speakers to take part in this fascinating debate.

Our chair, Caitlin Southwick, is the founder and executive director of Ki Culture and Sustainability in Conservation (SiC) and the CEO of Ki Futures. She holds a professional doctorate in conservation and restoration of cultural heritage from the University of Amsterdam. Before founding Ki Culture, Caitlin worked in the conservation field for eight years in museums and sites around the world, including the Getty Conservation Institute, the Uffizi Gallery, and Rapa Nui.

Soren Brothers is the Allan and Helaine Shiff curator of climate change at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. He is also an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. Soren’s research examines the effects of climate change on lakes, and how changes in aquatic systems can influence their greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. Born in Mississauga and raised in Toronto, Soren has worked on lakes in a diverse array of environments around the world, including the Nunavut tundra, Quebec’s boreal forests, and the Great Lakes.

Nicole Heller is associate curator of Anthropocene studies at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. She is a transdisciplinary professional focused on improving cultural and ecological sustainability. Nicole’s primary research is concerned with understanding and promoting biological diversity in the face of global changes associated with the Anthropocene.

Kirsty Robertson is professor of contemporary art and director of museum and curatorial studies at Western University, where she also directs the Centre for Sustainable Curating. Her role involves curating large-scale speculative and experimental exhibitions with students. Kirsty has published widely on activism, visual culture and museums, culminating in her book Tear Gas Epiphanies: Protest, Museums, Culture. 

All attendees

When resources and budgets are tight, making a strong case for your museum is essential.  Regardless of role or seniority, advocacy is something we all should be doing. But how do you advocate for your museum?

Join us for this practical workshop where we will work through a variety of different scenarios that will support you to advocate effectively for your museum.

In person attendees only

In this presentation and discussion, a research team comprising staff from the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries and National Museums Liverpool (NML) present their work to develop a co-production framework for NML as part of the Waterfront Transformation and redevelopment of the International Slavery Museum.

The team share details of the collaborative action research methodology developed to enable this work and show how such democratic processes can both generate learning and drive change. They focus particularly on questions of organisational transformation, the sharing of power and the opening up of museum processes, and how the project has generated deep insights into the conditions required for inclusive change to flourish across museum teams, processes and relationships.

The speakers share some of this learning as well as the challenges of recognising and responding to the gap that many staff, particularly new staff, experience between the ambition of the project and the day-to-day realities of doing the work in an organisation in transition. Exploring what we can do at both an organisational and individual level to create the conditions for change, the presentation sets out key strategies for research-led change, centring co-production as a default organisational setting and reflecting on the emotional intelligence of cultural organisations.

In person attendees only

What object would you use to tell your story? It could relate to a person or event significant to you – something that represents where you have come from or what you are carrying. What does it say about your story? Your identity? Who you are?

Coach and positive psychology practitioner Denise McGahan and curator Karen Logan have developed an innovative and inter-disciplinary approach to exploring our understanding of identity, where it comes from and the agency we all have as authors of our own stories.

National Museums NI invited eight participants from different ethnic, political, socio-economic and religious backgrounds to share a personal object and story. They worked with staff at National Museums NI to explore their meaning, looking at them again with new possibilities. This resulted in a co-curated display within the Troubles and Beyond exhibition with an interactive element that challenges museum visitors to reflect on where they have come from.

This session demonstrates how this approach can be applied in a range of contexts and the impact and meaning it had for both the participants and practitioners.

All attendees

A short break between sessions.

This session asks whether nostalgia – often maligned as a regressive ‘pastiche’ of history – can be a positive force for change in our museums.

The session is designed to help delegates understand and identify what nostalgia looks like in museums today, illustrating how different types of nostalgia can foster inclusion and exclusion, particularly with regard to ethnicity and social class. Delegates are encouraged to reflect on the types of nostalgia present at their own sites.

The panel shares practical examples of their experiences with nostalgia in museums, highlighting where forms of nostalgia have served to exclude certain groups, along with the challenges and learning points of using nostalgia to overcome these exclusions and drive positive change in the present.

A series of provocations will be put to delegates:

• All museums foster nostalgia, whether they like it or not.
• Nostalgia is a force for progressive change within museums that is currently underused.
• In order to feel nostalgia at a museum, the object or story in question does not need to be within our own lived experience.

Delegates will reflect on these provocations before coming into discussion with the panel.

All attendees

We know that museums can enhance quality of life and contribute to improving mental and physical health. Many museums are engaging in programmes and projects that aim to improve wellbeing, boost mental health, and tackle health inequalities. This work is important and has significant impact on the lives of people in our communities. However, is there a chance that we could be doing more harm than good?

How do we ensure that we are doing this work ethically and appropriately to meet the needs of complex audiences? What boundaries do we need to explore? How can we reduce the emotional burden of this work on staff, and what can support look like?

Victoria Ryves and Michelle Kindleysides both lead on wellbeing work at museums in the North of England. They look at these questions with participants in a practical and hands-on workshop. Participants explore scenarios to identify boundaries, as well as explore models of staff support.

In person attendees only

The People’s History Museum’s (PHM) Nothing About Us Without Us is an exhibition and programme exploring the history of disabled people’s rights and activism through co-curated exhibitions, events and activity. The project follows a legacy of successful co-produced projects and exhibitions such as Migration: A Human Story and Never Going Underground: The Fight for LGBT+ Rights that have sought to address the imbalance in dominant narratives in museum and heritage sites.

Nothing About Us Without Us was led by a team of four disabled people employed by PHM as community curators, working alongside the PHM programme team and guided by a steering group of disabled people and their allies. This session outlines and explores the project from the perspective of community curators and museum staff. It looks at how museums can make themselves easier to work with, and what they can do to address structural barriers to become more inclusive spaces.

This is an acknowledgement that museums, their procedures and ways of working are often restrictive for many. We reflect on the learning from Nothing About Us Without Us and the importance of embedding flexibility and a willingness to adapt and change. The session includes a brief overview of the project followed by discussion between the project team, including two community curators. The session concludes with a group activity which will give participants an opportunity to reflect on and identify the structural barriers in their own institutions or working practice. 

In person attendees only

Running from 2020-23, Race, Empire and the Pre-Raphaelites was a research group of the British Art Network (BAN) focused on exploring Victorian art and design collections through the lenses of anti-racism and decoloniality. Using the rich holdings of the city of Birmingham as a starting point, it brought together museum professionals, academics and artists to examine these objects’ global contexts, particularly in relation to ideologies of Orientalism and Empire, and to explore how they might be displayed and interpreted in the 21st century museum.

In this session, the co-convenors of Race, Empire and the Pre-Raphaelites and visual artist and academic Bharti Parmar reflect on how the group approached its research questions through a programme of workshops, seminars and visits. They also launch a new set of resources aimed at museum professionals wishing to foreground race and empire in 19th-century art and design collections and displays.

All attendees

A chance to take a screen break for our online audience, while attendees at The Glasshouse can visit our networking area and meet our sponsors over tea or coffee.

All attendees

Celebrate and reflect on your conference experience at our closing party at the Discovery Museum. Located a stone’s throw from Newcastle Station, the museum tells the history of Newcastle with a focus on its maritime, scientific and technological importance to Britain and the rest of the world.

See Turbinia, the 34-metre steam-powered ship that was once the fastest in the world and an iconic part of the history of Tyneside and explore the Newcastle Story gallery, which takes you on a journey through the city from the Roman times to the early millennium.

In person attendees only

Yevonde, Life and Colour is an exploration of the life and career of Yevonde, the pioneering London photographer who spearheaded the use of colour photography in the 1930s. This exhibition tells the story of a woman who gained freedom through photography – as she experimented with her medium and blazed a new trail for portrait photographers.

As an innovator committed to colour photography when it was not considered a serious medium, Yevonde’s work is significant in the history of British portrait photography. Her most renowned body of work is a series of women dressed as goddesses posed in surreal tableaux exhibited in 1935.

Tours operate on a first-come, first-served basis. There are 12 places on this tour.

This tour is fully wheelchair accessible.

In person attendees only

Find out about how Discovery Museum is responding to current issues. Hear about recent work to diversify the stories in the permanent galleries, including a community-led decolonisation project that includes stories from women of colour and Indian Indentureship and hear about the forthcoming public programme on climate crisis and technology entitled Steam to Green.

Tours operate on a first-come, first-served basis. There are 12 places on this tour.

This tour is fully wheelchair accessible.

In person attendees only

Visit and hear about Newcastle’s compact and attractive city, from the Georgian town centre with its beautiful sandstone buildings, through the old medieval streets to the Castle area, once the site of the Roman Fort, to the quayside which has developed from a busy port to a thriving cultural centre.

On the way you shall pass the monument to Charles Earl Grey, the oldest and smallest existing Marks and Spencer in the world, the Theatre Royal, Balmbras Music Hall, St Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle Castle, Guildhall, the Bridges of the Tyne and the new and exciting developments on both sides of the river.

Tours operate on a first-come, first-served basis. There are 10 places on each of the two tours.

This tour is wheelchair accessible but caution is advised due to steep inclines.

In person attendees only

Embark on a tour of groundbreaking interventions in the museum’s permanent galleries, designed to introduce captivating new stories and showcase cutting-edge research. Join us as we explore these recently developed additions, 14 years after reopening following a major £26m redevelopment.

Tours operate on a first-come, first-served basis. There are 20 places on this tour.

This tour is fully wheelchair accessible.

In person attendees only

Matt Rugg: Connecting Form will be the first major retrospective of the work of the British abstract artist and teacher Matt Rugg (1935-2020). Taking place at Newcastle’s Hatton Gallery from September 2023 to January 2024, the exhibition will display previously unshown work alongside well-known pieces and provide a platform for an outreach and learning programme exploring radical shifts in art education.

Tours operate on a first-come, first-served basis. There are 10 places on this tour.

This tour is fully wheelchair accessible.

In person attendees only

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art creates and produces exhibitions, activities and opportunities that explore our understanding of the world through diverse contemporary art by artists from across the globe. Located on Gateshead quayside, it has 2,600 square metres of exhibition space dedicated to the art and artists of today and tomorrow.

In 2022 it became the first Gallery of Sanctuary in England, in recognition of its work to support forced migration communities in north-east England.

This tour will explore the centre’s specialist collections on contemporary art and visual culture.

Tours operate on a first-come, first-served basis. There are 20 places on this tour.

This tour is fully wheelchair accessible.

In person attendees only

Visit and hear about Newcastle’s compact and attractive city, from the Georgian town centre with its beautiful sandstone buildings, through the old medieval streets to the Castle area, once the site of the Roman Fort, to the quayside which has developed from a busy port to a thriving cultural centre.

On the way you shall pass the monument to Charles Earl Grey, the oldest and smallest existing Marks and Spencer in the world, the Theatre Royal, Balmbras Music Hall, St Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle Castle, Guildhall, the Bridges of the Tyne and the new and exciting developments on both sides of the river.

Tours operate on a first-come, first-served basis. There are 10 places on each of the two tours.

This tour is wheelchair accessible but caution is advised due to steep inclines.

In person attendees only

This tour will bring the medieval history of Newcastle to life, which lies hidden behind the facade of the modern city. Most known for its industrial past, Newcastle’s foundations lie in its medieval predecessors.

With an emphasis on the civic nature of medieval placemaking and wellbeing and health during this period, a costumed guide will take you from St Andrews, Newcastle’s oldest church, past the formidable town walls, taking in Friaries, before finishing at the imposing Black Gate – the gatehouse of Newcastle’s Castle.

From here you will be free to explore the amazingly preserved remains of the Black Gate and Castle Keep.

Tours operate on a first-come, first-served basis. There are 20 places on this tour.

Please be aware the Castle Keep is a Grade I listed building and a scheduled ancient monument; only the gaol is accessible to wheelchair users, but there is a video showing the Keep, which is up many stairs.

Please also note some of this tour will be on cobbled streets – see this video for a walk-through of the tour.

In person attendees only

The Farrell Centre opened earlier this year as Newcastle’s new public centre for architecture and cities. Instigated by renowned architect-planner Terry Farrell, and forming part of Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, the centre’s mission is to widen the debate around the crucial roles that architecture and planning play in the contemporary world.

The centre combines a public gallery, research hub and community space, offering a variety of experiences for visitors of all ages. The centre’s programme is wide-ranging and inclusive: temporary exhibitions, public talks and debates, workshops and activities for schools, young people, community groups, events for built environment professionals, as well as publications, podcasts and other digital projects.

Tours operate on a first-come, first-served basis. There are 10 places on each of the two tours.

This tour is fully wheelchair accessible.

In person attendees only

The Farrell Centre opened earlier this year as Newcastle’s new public centre for architecture and cities. Instigated by renowned architect-planner Terry Farrell, and forming part of Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, the centre’s mission is to widen the debate around the crucial roles that architecture and planning play in the contemporary world.

The centre combines a public gallery, research hub and community space, offering a variety of experiences for visitors of all ages. The centre’s programme is wide-ranging and inclusive: temporary exhibitions, public talks and debates, workshops and activities for schools, young people, community groups, events for built environment professionals, as well as publications, podcasts and other digital projects.

Tours operate on a first-come, first-served basis. There are 10 places on each of the two tours.

This tour is fully wheelchair accessible.

In person attendees only