The winners of the Museums Association’s (MA) Museums Change Lives Awards 2026 have been announced at a ceremony at Birmingham Repertory Theatre during the MA’s annual conference.
The awards recognise outstanding work by UK museums and individuals making a positive difference to people’s lives.
Prizes were presented across four categories: Best Museums Change Lives Project Award; Best Small Museum Project Award; Inclusive Spaces Award; and the Radical Changemaker Award.
The Whitworth Art Gallery, part of the University of Manchester, won the Best Museums Change Lives Project Award for Recoverist Curators, Re-imagining the World We Live In, a co-produced exhibition programme developed in partnership with Portraits of Recovery, the UK’s only visual arts charity specialising in recovery from drug and alcohol use.
The project aims to challenge stigma surrounding addiction and recovery, while addressing the lack of recovery-led narratives in UK gallery spaces. The judges praised the partnership for integrating these perspectives directly into the museum’s main exhibition spaces.
The panel was particularly impressed by the initiative’s approach to challenging stigma, which included hosting regular Alcoholics Anonymous meetings within a major public cultural institution.
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The Best Small Museum Project Award went to the Museum of Transology for Transcestry: 10 Years of the Museum of Transology.
The project brought together 15 regional museums and local grassroots Trans Pride organisations to create a national network of trans collections.
Through community-led collecting, archiving, digitisation and an eco-exhibition, the project responded to escalating anti-trans rhetoric and the historical under-representation of trans lives in UK museums.
It engaged more than 1,000 community members and collected hundreds of objects and stories, resulting in 15 permanent trans collections across the UK.
The judges described the initiative as an “extraordinary national project that explicitly challenged the systemic underrepresentation of trans lives during a period of social hostility”.
The panel praised the museum’s approach to equitable partnership working and non-extractive practice, which included providing travel bursaries, paying trans invigilators to lead tours drawing on their lived experience, and training community curators in Spectrum cataloguing procedures.
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Showtown won the Inclusive Spaces Award for Through Our Eyes: Little People Beyond the Circus, developed in partnership with the charity Little People UK.
The museum, which opened in Blackpool in 2024, brought together a community group of people with lived experience of dwarfism to co-produce a project on their own terms. Participants shaped the exhibition’s content, design and title, creating a narrative that centres the experiences and independence of little people.
The judges described the initiative as an “exceptional, unique and ethically minded project” with a clear and lasting legacy, and praised the museum for making physical changes to its galleries rather than simply adapting interpretation. Changes included lowering display cases, addressing lighting glare at lower eye levels and adding steps.
The project, which was supported by research and co-production, extended its wider impact through the production of a toolkit for other museums.
This year’s Radical Changemaker Award went to Marie Kennedy, the learning associate for young people at the University of Cambridge Museums. Kennedy specialises in SEND inclusion and supporting underserved teenagers, and her work is focused on creating welcoming, accessible and creative spaces for people who have historically faced barriers to cultural participation.
Kennedy leads the Disability Friendly Openings programme, which enables disabled visitors and their families to experience museums in environments designed around their needs. Her wider work includes the Young Parents Art Awards and Arts Pioneers.
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The judges said her work was a “fantastic example” of embedding inclusion at the heart of an organisation. They praised her co-creation approach, through which participant feedback directly informs the design and delivery of programmes.
The panel also noted Kennedy’s own lived experience in navigating her own recovery and return to work following a stroke, while continuing to advocate for accessibility. This has given her work “immense authority and demonstrates a profound commitment to the sector”, said the judges.
This year’s judging panel was made up of MA conference panel members, board members, staff and external partners. It included Sharon Heal, director of the MA; Ross McKirdy, museum manager, Grampian Transport Museum and MA trustee; members of the Birmingham Museums’ Citizens’ Jury; Ken Griffin, curator, the Egypt Centre; and Jodie Henshaw, museum curator, Mansfield Museum.
Heal said: “Congratulations to all the outstanding winning museums and individuals.
“These projects demonstrate how museums are showing up for their communities every day, sharing power, helping people tell their own stories and exploring complex and divisive histories in an increasingly polarised world.”
Museums Change Lives Awards 2026
Best Museums Change Lives project
Whitworth Art Gallery – Recoverist Curators, Re-imagining the World We Live In
Also shortlisted:
- Linen Hall Library – Ending Violence Against Women and Girls
- The Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow – Museum of Things
Best Small Museum Project Award
Museum of Transology – Transcestry: 10 Years of the Museum of Transology
Also shortlisted:
- Brent Museum and Archives – Becoming Brent: Decolonising Heritage Through Community Empowerment
- Headstone Manor and Museum – Stories of Harrow
Inclusive Spaces Award
Showtown – Through Our Eyes: Little People Beyond the Circus
Also shortlisted:
- Glasgow Women’s Library – We Make Museums
- National Football Museum – Black in the Game
Radical Changemaker Award
Marie Kennedy, University of Cambridge Museums
Also shortlisted:
- Naomi Zaragoza, Design Museum
- Emily Elsworth, access consultant
