#wam19

Evaluate your resources. Are they sustainable? Kind? - to people and the planet?

Sustainability starts with internal change before looking outward.  Look after the wellbeing of employees and create your own sustainable community

Embrace activism, don’t reject or cower from it - it promotes positive change, encourages new ways of thinking and encourages engagement

Invite conversation and make it easy - offer opportunities for feedback - a post-it wall, thought provoking questions in the exhibition design. Keep it simple and be generous.

Listen and take it slow.  Nothing of great quality or impact happened by rushing.

Work towards glueing society together

Encourage empathy and don’t shy away from emotion. People aren’t robots.

Adopt a startup mentality - innovate and identify problems - what can be made better, different, more interesting, more fun? But also, back it up with evidence, not a whim.

Don’t stay in your own lane - Work outside the silo

Tell a story and tell it well - look at podcasts to help illustrate these stories, if you can’t create your own, signpost to others - they will make the museum human.

Explore museotherapy and make your museum a comfortable space. Connect to your audience and embrace lived experience - curate lived experience and show appreciation for it.

Act with intention - museums are not neutral spaces. And that’s ok.

”Story makes sense out of a confusing universe by showing us how one action leads to another. It teaches us how to live by discovering how our fellow human beings overcome the challenges in their lives. And it helps us discover the universals that bind us to everything around us.” Jack Hart - Storycraft

THINK ABOUT YOUR COMMUNITY

Do you represent your local community - in diversity? In ability? In socio-economic status? Are you inter-cultural? Don’t ask them to use an iPad, if they are struggling to make a living.

To better engage the community understand their language, values and talk to them as people, not ‘visitors’ or numbers/footfall - everyone likes a cuppa - have a roundtable, community engagement group, or community coffee morning.  Get to know one another to better work together.

Act as an enabler rather than a service - enable connections, communication, resources, space, time, and inspiration

Consult, consult, consult

Co-create - UNPOPULAR OPINION - curators are not always experts. Engage ‘young consultants’ and empower them.

“What would happen if museums put relationships at the heart of their operation?

What would happen if they treated visitors not as a passive receiver of predefined content, but as an active member of a constituent body, whom it facilitates, provokes, inspires and learns from.”