Within museums and our communities, there is a need for hope that moves beyond critique and towards transformation. To maintain activist efforts, and to build consciousness and solidarity within communities, we must recognise museums’ power to define the possible and influence how we experience and act on hope.

We must also consider how museums can teach hope, and in what ways we are encouraged to position ourselves in relation to oppression. Critical pedagogy attributes an incompleteness to humanity, as well as a capacity for change. This can provide museums with a framework with which they can facilitate the development of transformative hope. 

This hope is based on a refusal to accept injustice, shared imagination and a deep-rooted belief in humans’ capacity to collectively transform the future. Hope is essential to the future of museum activism as a practice that recognises and utilises its power to contribute to and support social and political change. 

The Big Flame project, which was run by the Working Class Movement Library in Salford from September 2024 to June 2025, involved 11 working-class people between the ages of 16 and 25 who were interested both in political organising, and archives and heritage studies. 

The project rejected fatalism in favour of hope grounded in critical understandings of class politics, anti-imperialism and anti-oppressive traditions. It was informed by past movements and committed to action. This achievement can be attributed to the approach taken by the project team 
at the Working Class Movement Library’s. This echoed the work of Marxist philosopher Paulo Freire, who re-imagined teaching as a collaborative act of liberation. 

It illustrates the power of museums to nurture hope as a collective and radical capacity and, in so doing, enrich social and political movements, both inside and outside of their walls.

This article reflects on the research findings of an MA in museum studies dissertation, The Struggle Against Gloom, Defeat and Accepting our Lot: A Case for Critical Pedagogy and Transformative Hope within Museum Activism.

Olivia Duval has an MA in museum studies from the University of Leicester