Consideration of dialogue, participation and organisational change have been key to our recent work on the Curious project at St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art at Glasgow Museums. Curious aimed to create “intercultural dialogue and a legacy of increased understanding of each other, our city and our collections’”.
Throughout the project, particularly in the recent final stages, we’ve focused on creating impact beyond small groups of project participants.
As a result we were invited to lead workshops on participatory practice and intercultural dialogue at Jonkopings Lans Museum and Kulturparken Smaland in Sweden, as part of the knowledge exchange element of their culture, strategy and future project.
The project tackles issues much discussed in the UK around supporting and embedding participation and dialogue in museum practice. It is reminiscent of the Our Museum initiative in aiming to build staff capacity and support individual and lasting organisational change.
During the workshops in Sweden we shared our experiences developing and delivering Curious – especially the exhibition and learning programme – and tackled broader questions about learning from participatory projects.
We investigated ways to capture learning from our experiences of working with 100 participants to choose and interpret objects for the Curious exhibition, and from Jonkoping’s experience with 200 participants creating the engaging 100 x Cultural Heritage exhibition.
Jonkopings staff will soon encounter similar questions to those we faced about documenting participants’ and visitors’ responses to the collection.
Together we explored approaches to evaluation: capturing and analysing responses to objects and accompanying questions around ethics, as well as highlighting the successes and shortcomings of our own practice.
Our workshops built on the Curious adult learning programme in cultural awareness and strategies for intercultural dialogue, which encourages openness and attitude change by prompting a process of self-reflection, exploration, discovery and practice.
As well as experiencing the programme, we discussed how similar approaches could be used in Smaland. Our colleagues from Kulturparken and Jonkopings Lans Museum also suggested a range of imaginative ideas building on the value and potential of collections to prompt dialogue.
It would be interesting to see specific events resulting from our time together in Sweden, but, more importantly, our workshops aimed to support broader attitude change for individuals, and, by extension, the organisation.
During our trip, we met staff at Varldskulturmuseet, Gothenburg's World Cultures Museum.
It was a particularly interesting time to visit as the museum is planning redevelopments using high density open storage to display more of its collections. We were especially intrigued to see “the test site”, an interactive action research exhibition asking for visitor feedback about specific objects and interpretation.
Visitor responses result in quick changes in the gallery, creating a visible and highly participatory environment.
Having explored various ways for participation to impact beyond small groups of project participants, it was fitting to finish our visit with this powerful example of the huge potential for participatory practice to function as action research and inform future redisplays.
Aileen Strachan is the project development officer at Glasgow Life and managed the Curious project. She visited Sweden with Lyndsey Mackay, project curator for the Curious exhibition and Carrie Newman, learning assistant, who co-devised and delivered the Curious learning programme along with Martha Findlay.
Throughout the project, particularly in the recent final stages, we’ve focused on creating impact beyond small groups of project participants.
As a result we were invited to lead workshops on participatory practice and intercultural dialogue at Jonkopings Lans Museum and Kulturparken Smaland in Sweden, as part of the knowledge exchange element of their culture, strategy and future project.
The project tackles issues much discussed in the UK around supporting and embedding participation and dialogue in museum practice. It is reminiscent of the Our Museum initiative in aiming to build staff capacity and support individual and lasting organisational change.
During the workshops in Sweden we shared our experiences developing and delivering Curious – especially the exhibition and learning programme – and tackled broader questions about learning from participatory projects.
We investigated ways to capture learning from our experiences of working with 100 participants to choose and interpret objects for the Curious exhibition, and from Jonkoping’s experience with 200 participants creating the engaging 100 x Cultural Heritage exhibition.
Jonkopings staff will soon encounter similar questions to those we faced about documenting participants’ and visitors’ responses to the collection.
Together we explored approaches to evaluation: capturing and analysing responses to objects and accompanying questions around ethics, as well as highlighting the successes and shortcomings of our own practice.
Our workshops built on the Curious adult learning programme in cultural awareness and strategies for intercultural dialogue, which encourages openness and attitude change by prompting a process of self-reflection, exploration, discovery and practice.
As well as experiencing the programme, we discussed how similar approaches could be used in Smaland. Our colleagues from Kulturparken and Jonkopings Lans Museum also suggested a range of imaginative ideas building on the value and potential of collections to prompt dialogue.
It would be interesting to see specific events resulting from our time together in Sweden, but, more importantly, our workshops aimed to support broader attitude change for individuals, and, by extension, the organisation.
During our trip, we met staff at Varldskulturmuseet, Gothenburg's World Cultures Museum.
It was a particularly interesting time to visit as the museum is planning redevelopments using high density open storage to display more of its collections. We were especially intrigued to see “the test site”, an interactive action research exhibition asking for visitor feedback about specific objects and interpretation.
Visitor responses result in quick changes in the gallery, creating a visible and highly participatory environment.
Having explored various ways for participation to impact beyond small groups of project participants, it was fitting to finish our visit with this powerful example of the huge potential for participatory practice to function as action research and inform future redisplays.
Aileen Strachan is the project development officer at Glasgow Life and managed the Curious project. She visited Sweden with Lyndsey Mackay, project curator for the Curious exhibition and Carrie Newman, learning assistant, who co-devised and delivered the Curious learning programme along with Martha Findlay.
