Photography gallery Belfast Exposed and Glasgow Museums have become the last two organisations to join the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s (PHF) £3.2m initiative to help museums and galleries put community engagement at the heart of their work.
Last month the PHF exclusively revealed to Museums Journal the initial seven museum and gallery organisations that are taking part in the four-year project. Each participant will receive up to £150,000 as well as training, facilitation and peer review.
Belfast Exposed was founded in 1983 as a community initiative that uses photography to challenge cliched or misleading views of the city. It now has a gallery for contemporary photography, a community photography archive and runs an educational outreach programme.
Belfast Exposed director Pauline Hadaway said the PHF money will help to bring its gallery and community work closer together.
“Over the past 10 years we have been developing a contemporary photography programme that we are very proud of and we have continued to work with schools and communities, but we are aware that there is a gap between the two,” Hadaway said.
“Over the next three years we want to join everything up again so people experience us a gallery and a community resource.”
Glasgow Museums is planning to use the PHF money to see how its Open Museum community engagement concept can be applied more widely and integrated into the whole service.
The seven other organisations taking part in the PHF initiative are: Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives; Hackney Museum, London; The Lightbox, Woking; the Museum of East Anglian Life, Stowmarket; Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales; Ryedale Folk Museum, North Yorkshire; and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums.
