"...a programme where shared reflection and self-knowledge are prized – rather than the 'right' and 'wrong' way to do things."
Our Museum: communities at the heart of museums and galleries
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A unique and innovative programme of development and training created specifically by Dovetail as part of a major three year collaboration with Paul Hamlyn Foundation to support their Special Initiative Our Museum: Communities and Museums as Active Partners.
Dovetail’s Development and Training programme brings a mix of interweaving opportunities and experiences for community partners and museum colleagues to develop skills and experience in reflection, collaboration and transformation. We built the programme specifically for Paul Hamlyn Foundation, drawing on our expertise in public engagement and our knowledge and understanding of cultural organisational change, and in particular, the barriers to change that are often faced, particularly in tough economic times.
Working with nine museums and galleries over three years, the work is both strategic and creative, involving a variety of approaches, on a series of different levels, and working closely with a core collaborative group of ‘change-makers’ from both museums and communities. Change is not easy as we know – the programme therefore is investing in the long term with the aim of developing models of learning and supporting organisational change that can ultimately become embedded in the way organisations work, and that can be shared with the wider museum sector. As part of the programme, Dovetail is working with a diverse team of creative professionals, activists, educators, community empowerment pioneers and organisational change specialists, bringing experience and expertise from a broad range of sectors and cultures.
Our Museum is a Special Initiative developed by Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which supports museums to place communities at the heart of their work; using reflection and collaboration to bring about effective change. It provides space for communities and museums to come together, to share their experiences, and perhaps most importantly, to learn from each other.
Through Our Museum, Paul Hamlyn Foundation is providing museums and community partners with the opportunity to make real, and sustained, changes to their ways of working; and at a time when resilience, adaptability and collaboration has never been more important. To find out more about the Paul Hamlyn Foundation click here. To find out more about the Our Museum Special Initiative http://www.phf.org.uk/page.asp?id=1125
Client: Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Partners: Belfast Exposed; Bristol Museums and Galleries; Glasgow Museums; Hackney Museum; The Lightbox, Woking; Museum of East Anglian Life; National Museum Wales; Ryedale Folk Museum; Tyne and Wear Museums and Archives.
What we are doing: creating and delivering a programme of development and training with community partners and museums/galleries committed to active partnership with their communities; to establish shared model for change that will affect the museum sector more widely.
Photos credited: PHF Our Museum Peer Review Event, 2013. Photos by Jason Lock/Courtesy Dovetail.
