Schedule

Museums are full of incredible stories, but turning those stories into engaging social media content is often easier said than done. This presentation shares how Queensland Museum developed a dedicated content approach that transformed the way its teams work with researchers, curators, conservators and collection staff.

Through practical examples, workflows and lessons learned, the presentation explores how the museum moved from reactive posting to a sustainable content engine that consistently delivers authentic, audience-focused stories.

We all know that social media video is leading engagement, but how do you really harness that to see results as an organisation with limited resource? Using effective strategies, data, taking time to understand online audiences and weaving in trends, the Natural History Museum has transformed their social media channels using social video. Hear more about how they did it!

What if your most successful social media content is hiding in plain sight?

This session explores how the National Gallery of Canada turned a routine installation video into one of its most successful social media posts. Through the return of Ron Mueck’s sculpture Head of a Baby, we’ll examine how museums can uncover compelling stories in everyday moments, repurpose content strategically and overcome the fear of repeating themselves online. Attendees will leave with practical approaches for identifying engaging content opportunities, extending the life of successful posts and creating content that resonates with audiences without requiring bigger budgets or more resources.

What if the moment a museum closes its doors for renovation could become the moment it becomes most accessible?

Across Europe, cultural institutions are forced to shut their doors for rehabilitation of old building structures, and to protect the very heritage they exist to share.

For audiences, closure often means exclusion. For museums, it risks invisibility.

The Museum in Progress reverses this logic.

Instead of retreating behind scaffolding, we open the process itself. We turn conservation into storytelling, expertise into narrative, and closure into connection.

This is not just communication around a project. It is the project.

Museums can often feel pressure to “keep up” online with memes, trends, or other attempts at virality. But what if the most impactful social media strategy isn’t chasing after popularity after all?

In this session, we’ll explore why museums of all sizes should reconsider the purpose of their social media presence and take a more sustainable, mission-aligned path: education.

By centering your collections, your stories, and the expertise you already use every day, your museum can transform its social channels into accessible learning spaces.

Time to recharge! Grab a drink, have a stretch, and we’ll be back after a short break.

Discover how the Norton Museum of Art boosted their online engagement through staff-driven storytelling. The idea of the Norton Favorites series is a simple one: share the artwork that employees love in a weekly series. In this case study, learn how spotlighting staff in serialized content garnered more than one million organic impressions in less than a year of weekly posts.

Through this series, the Norton has transformed their digital communications, making the museum accessible by showing that anyone can be an art lover.

How do you talk about collection works and museum programming in a short video format that is informative and engaging, without subscribing to any online trends? Join this session led by McMaster Museum of Art Communications Officer Jeff Jung Sing as he takes you through the creative and collaborative process behind this work.

Social media has flattened barriers of space and time that previously limited museum audiences. This means museums now have access to unlimited audiences all over the world. That prospect is as demanding as it is exciting. How do we make content that stands out in the cacophony of social media? How might museum teams reach the audiences that will resonate most with their mission?

Museums are sitting on hours of oral histories, event recordings, demonstrations, and archival footage that few people will ever watch in full. This session shows how to turn that material into short-form stories built for today’s feeds (without stripping away the context that makes it valuable). We’ll walk through a practical workflow for finding strong moments, using AI for a first-pass review, reframing clips with sharper hooks, and packaging them with visuals, captions, and structure that help audiences care. Attendees will leave with a repeatable process they can use on their own collections.