Community engagement supports museums to develop relationships with audiences, generate visitors, become more relevant, build trust with local people, and give audiences a sense of ownership over a museum and its collections. Art Fund’s Community Engagement toolkit is designed to help you plan, deliver and evaluate community engagement work in museums.
Throughout 2024-2025, community-first innovators Ideas Test were commissioned as one of seven delivery partners to lay the foundations for creative health to become a permanent, sustainable part of how Medway Unitary Authority supports its communities. They developed HEARD, a project rooted in listening and making change together. Senior Producer Wayne Parsons walks us through the … Read more
The Brompton Halloween Creative Health Project achieved a set of tangible impacts on people’s lives through a mix of increased creativity and agency, gaining new skills and a greater sense of community, connection and belonging. Amy Scott, Senior Producer, Ideas Test takes us through the plan, process and results.
Natelle Morgan-Brown, Consultant, Co-creation and Participation at The Audience Agency guides us through key questions we need to ask ourselves before we start on any community engagement project.
This is ‘how to use digital tools to support collaboration’ guide was produced as part of the Digital Skills for Heritage’s Connected Heritage programme. 1. Project background First Choice Homes Oldham (FCHO) is a Housing Association in Oldham, Greater Manchester that manages around 11,500 properties in the borough of Oldham. For this project, FCHO has … Read more
Socially engaged art practices are those where a professional artist develops creative interventions in public rather than within a gallery, theatre or traditional cultural venue. Such activities might automatically assume ‘public good’ as they imply a sense of community engagement. Problematically, however, the intention and outcome of such creative practices can vary drastically, and as … Read more
There has been a recent rise in interest in everyday creativity. This has ranged from people trying out new creative activities like sewing or baking during lockdowns to knowledge workers (that is, those using computers for their jobs) wanting to do something with their hands for a change. I’m currently working on a PhD investigating … Read more
An overarching evaluation report of the key findings from the Birmingham 2022 Festival. This report represents the culmination of 12-months’ work collaborating with the Organising Committee for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games (the OC) to evaluate its cultural programme, the Birmingham 2022 Festival.
Creative Civic Change was an experimental funding programme that supported 15 communities to shape, lead, and commission creative interventions to make positive change where they lived. An evaluation by one of the programme’s four funders, Local Trust.
Dr Dominique Bouchard, Head of Learning and Interpretation at English Heritage shares insights from her fifteen years of experience leading public programming and exhibitions, and explores ideas of how museums and heritage can help communities tell their own stories.