Sessions

Over a thousand children and young people, hundreds of artworks and writing projects and three excited educators. Two online after-school clubs, Art Club and Young Writers Club, have revolutionised the way in which the State Library engages with children and young people. By using a playful approach, we connect our members with Library collection items to inspire creative thinking that extends well beyond the hour we spend with them. Experience some of the meaningful activities that our members have enjoyed and find out why these programs are not just another pony. We will share with you what we did, what we learned and how you can apply these lessons to any cultural institution.

The WELTSTUDIO is a place for workshops and education, for participation, and for alliances with various groups. In a 500sqm area, you will be encouraged to exchange ideas about Berlin in the world and the world in Berlin, and to become active together in a surprising and unconventional way. The WELTSTUDIO features three cartographers specially designed for this space. Visitors experience various methods of making maps in a new and creative way, and can critically question those methods. The three cartographers; the weaving cartographer, the body cartographer and the rolling cartographer, focus on your individual and shared connections with Berlin and the world.

At the Slovak National Gallery we launched a course for teenagers (13-16 years old) called Meetup SNG in 2017. The aim of the course is to present a gallery as a place for spending valuable time with peers and art. We focus on supporting creativity, critical thinking, current events and expressing one’s own opinions. Since the beginning the course has undergone several adjustments in which we had to take into account specifics of the target group. The most significant one is enabling meetings with young contemporary Slovak artists, which we see as very effective and unique for this age group. During the workshops being led by the artists the participants gain inspiration for empowering their own creativity.

The Museum for Communication in Bern has the strategic goals of being more responsive to the diversity of the community and contributing to a more inclusive society. Participation means that we do not work and decide for our visitors (actual and future), but rather seek dialogue and innovative ways to create with them. Pilot projects such as the “Minilabor” set up in a day-care, or the multilingual, multimedia “Sketchbook”, which documents a participatory process, emerge from this attitude, and put co-creation at its core. Co-creation helps make diversity and inclusion “visible”, and not just empty words or “sales pitch.”

The top floor is a space in Manchester Museum for people to come together to learn, share ideas, build community and make plans. You’ll find education groups, charities, artists, writers, social enterprises, staff and students co-working and collaborating here, with a shared commitment to social and environmental justice. It will include a teaching studio, greenhouse, therapy room, artist studios, pop-up exhibition and events space and co-working hub. Providing young people with unique spaces to learn, explore and take action. Making sure they have paid opportunities, including apprenticeships, internships and paid work placements, across all departments. They are changing museums for the future.

How can museums involve young people’s creativity in their decision-making processes? Join Catherine O’Donnell and Oisín Kenny from the National Gallery of Ireland as they share learning from the first three years of the Apollo Project, an innovative programme created by young people, for young people. Creativity, wellbeing, and education are at the heart of the Apollo Project, with a focus on Creative Careers. Catherine speaks on the impact of connecting young people and creative professionals. Oisín reflects on the significance of including young people in the decision-making process and his own journey from co-producing programmes as a young participant, to full-time employee of the Gallery.

As art museum professionals, we aim to inspire wonder, creativity, and connection for all visitors. Questions we ask ourselves often though are: How are we taking care of our own creativity? How are we helping to inspire each other and stay inspired ourselves? If we as individuals aren’t feeling excited or energized in our practice, we can’t possibly expect those feelings to translate effectively into our programming. In this discussion, hear about how the Learning & Engagement team at the CMA are tackling questions surrounding creative care in the workplace, and how that extends to their audiences through programming.

Alice Neel referred to her paintings as “pictures of people,” rather than portraits, emphasizing the humanity of her sitters. In our Pictures of People digital activation, we invited our community to submit their own creative “pictures of people” to engage with our Alice Neel: People Come First retrospective at the de Young museum. Taking Pictures of People as a case study, we’ll look at the work and collaboration that went into putting the activation together, the reasons for its success, and key takeaways around engaging and collaborating with your creative community.

Corporations are the driving force behind funding programs and access at San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum (SDCDM). When seeking out new funders, it behooves museums to think creatively about corporations who will not just fund one-time programs but become valued partners and supporters. Through strategic partners like Dr. Bronner’s, SDCDM has found new ways to bring exciting programs to life through mission alignment and a valued partnership with a local organization.

Join Sarmaya, a digital museum from Mumbai, India, in exploring the creative ways in which we use digital platforms to tell stories and create memorable experiences around our collection. Through examples of our Re-Imagine series created for Instagram, educational outreach to over 60,000 children across the country and creative storytelling, we will illustrate how we communicate ideas of the past, artistic genius in the language of now, advocating for museums as stimulating sites of creativity.

Kids are engines for creativity. By embracing them as a critical audience and collaborating with them in community-driven design, they can help drive meaningful content and interactives, adjust messaging so it resonates across age groups, and inspire new ways of sharing core exhibit themes. In order to connect with children as audiences and collaborators, museums and design agencies can partner with local schools. This discussion will share a case study where collaboration with local elementary schools inspired creativity in students, drove museum content, and improved the design of museum interactive displays.

The heritage sector is full of amazing stories, but sometimes we need a bit of help telling them. Since 2019, the Dig It! project has commissioned designers, illustrators, a tattoo artist, a storyteller, a spoken word artist and photographers to ignite the public’s imagination and foster enthusiasm for archaeology. Find out how this approach can help you reach new audiences through festivals, campaigns and celebrations, allow you to connect with creatives from underrepresented communities who can bring fresh approaches to how the past is depicted, enable you to develop and deepen relationships within and outside of the sector, and more.

A far cry from the plastic and primary colours of children’s play spaces, the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House’s new signature permanent gallery, ‘Democracy DNA: the People, the Prime Ministers and the World’, incorporates opportunities for visitors of all ages to touch, interrogate and play. By working collaboratively with artists, designers and craftspeople, the project team pushed the boundaries of museum engagement in a heritage space to create 18 interactives that reflect the quality and bespoke nature of the exhibition’s objects and context. Setting a new standard for engagement-driven exhibition design, the ‘Democracy DNA’ interactives foster respect for the capability of each visitor, regardless of age, to draw their own conclusions and ask their own questions.

Childhood is known as a time for play, imagination and creativity. These are three important concepts that can help museums in any phase of their lifecycle. Join this talk to hear how the Cape Town Museum of Childhood used them in setting up their museum and exhibits, how they use them now in daily operations and how they plan to use them into the future to offer exhibits, experiences and programmes that inspire visitors.

Museums naturally lend themselves to storytelling as collections can be viewed from multiple lenses (e.g. material culture, human connections, etc.). This coupled with the visitors want of an experience gives us the opportunity to create unique and immersive offerings. In this session we will look at a case study of how the Aga Khan Museum created a whodunnit mystery and explore the process used to create it.

We will share experiences of creative, layered approaches to breaking down barriers and opening up processes, an evolving approach to shifting the perceptions of the museum to increase participation and ownership of communities, including schools. By transferring ownership and power to communities, case studies will showcase the importance of shaping spaces and developing relationships to enable creativity to thrive.

The David Livingstone Birthplace reopened in July 2021 after a 4.5 year refurbishment. This presentation will show how the museum has challenged and reframed the accepted narratives behind Livingstone, recontextualised his story to dispel the myths of him as a lone explorer and show how his achievements would not have been possible without the help of his primarily Southern and Central African crew members, friends and family. Creative responses, a little imagination, and a lot of research, were essential to highlighting the scale of the contribution of these hidden figures who, we think, deserve just as much notoriety as Livingstone.