Museums, Communities and Programming in the Earth Crisis
This session, led by Bridget McKenzie and Victoria Burns from Climate Museum UK, will explore how museums can respond as museums to the climate and ecological crisis – using collections, programming, and work with audiences, to enable people to gain awareness, reflect and take action.
We will explore how the social role of museums can support people and communities as they grapple with this global threat.
Aims
Participants will gain understanding of:
- How the impacts of the Earth crisis affect the wellbeing of communities
- How museums can help as people become more impacted by the threats to health, peace, the economy, and local places as a result of the Earth crisis
- How museums can help people develop coping strategies as their awareness grows and as the impacts directly affect them
- Techniques for engaging audiences with conversations, ideas and actions about these impacts and solutions, through their public programme and collections
- What it means to be Possitopian, to help you and your communities have active hope
Outcomes
By the end of the session, participants will:
- Have some insights into the feelings and possible future experiences of their communities
- Have ideas for interpreting their own museum objects or site to illuminate the causes, impacts and solutions of the Earth crisis
- Start to form a plan for how their museum can play a role through their programming to help communities cope, learn and take action.
Please note this session will not focus on ways for your museum to become environmentally sustainable at an operational level – other sessions will support this need.
Priority will be given to one person per organisation, and to non-NPO museums in the Yorkshire and Humber region.
This 2-hour session will be delivered via Zoom, with a short break.
About our trainer – Climate Museum UK
We are a mobile and digital museum stirring and collecting responses to the climate and ecological emergency. A team of creative people based in the UK, passionate about the planet, we produce and gather art, objects, ideas, games and books, and then use these to activate people. These activations help people to play, make, think and talk about the Earth crisis and to open their imaginations to possible futures. A distributed museum, associates grow their own collections and work with their local museums and communities, which helps reduce our footprint and be responsive to local needs. We deliver online workshops and participatory projects, pop-ups and Print It Yourself displays, and professional training sessions, as well as bespoke commissions.
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