Enhance your community outreach strategy at the year’s biggest sector show

It is fewer than seven weeks until the Museums + Heritage Show 2022 returns to London. The packed event features a programme with more than 40 sessions, 80 speakers and 150 exhibitors.

Among a broad range of topics to be discussed at the free show is community engagement, with five talks across two days devoted to the subject.

The first of the talks will be led by Emma Middleton, Curator: Artists’ Projects & Participation at Foundling Museum. Middleton’s talk will discuss the museum’s role in engaging with care-experienced young adults through its trainee programmes, and the ‘do’s and don’ts’ of reaching out and continuing engagement.

Middleton will be joined by a Graduate of the Museum’s Tracing Our Tales traineeship and will share the experience of care-experienced young adults within the sector, showing that art transforms lives and encourages philanthropy.

Also on the first day of the event is ‘Finding History, Health and Happiness’, a talk with speaker Victoria Ryves, Programme Manager (NPO) at Heritage Doncaster.

The talk will outline how Heritage Doncaster’s collections have been used as the basis for outreach and community engagement activities to spark conversation, improve wellbeing and ultimately combat loneliness through initiatives outside of the museum walls.

On day two, Kerem Cetindamar, Digital Project Manager at Leicester Museum & Galleries will guide attendees through an Arts Council funded project to bring e-ink devices into its gallery, allowing for diverse community voices to take centre stage in its displays.

A rundown of the project will show attendees how it engaged with audiences to collect new interpretations and how the digital labels were received by the public and staff.

Also on day two Philip Carter-Goodyear – DWP Social Justice & Disability Employment Leader for Suffolk, Department for Work & Pensions and Eleanor Root, Collections and Learning Curator (Community), Colchester + Ipswich Museums will discuss how two very different organisations found reciprocity and grew a partnership with deep roots on a limited budget.

Museums Mix networking zones

As well as the schedule of talks, this year’s Museums + Heritage Show will also see the introduction of new dedicated networking zone. Offering peer-to-peer support, chat and networking, the hourly networking events in this space will be a chance to receive advice, support and guidance from organisations across the sector.

The full list of Museum Mix networking sessions is available on the Museums + Heritage Show website.

There’s no need to register individually for sessions – attendees can access all the talks from this bumper two-day event by simply registering for a single free pass. See the full programme of talks here.