Creating Meaningful and Inclusive Museum Practices

Encourage wider cultural participation, community inclusion, and co-curation

This course will broaden your perspective on the role of contemporary museums in community engagement and equip you with the skills to develop meaningful and inclusive museum projects.

Understand key challenges for marginalized people and promote inclusive museum learning

The inclusion of historically marginalized communities has become a key challenge for contemporary museums.

On this course, you’ll explore a series of methodologies and strategies that you can adapt to your own context to encourage participation in all communities.

Discover participatory methodologies for social inclusion and diverse community building

Using case studies and discussions with practitioners, academics, and community members, you’ll explore the meaning of community and what it means to belong or not to belong.

You’ll learn how inclusive museum design can foster a feeling of belonging, and how to adapt institutional structures to integrate projects that are produced in collaboration with diverse communities.

Study inclusive museum practice with the International Council of Museums (ICOM)

This course is led by ICOM, an international organisation created by and for museum professionals committed to protecting the world’s natural and cultural heritage.

You’ll learn with two ICOM-appointed museum specialists with extensive experience in the study and development of participatory programmes.

Hailing from South Africa and Salvador/Canada respectively, you’ll gain a global understanding of the value of enhancing community engagement in museums projects and activities.

You’ll finish the course with not only an understanding of the concepts related to meaningful participation but also with the knowledge to transform these concepts into practical methodologies that you can apply at work.

This course is designed for all museum professionals looking to broaden their understanding and skills in inclusive and participatory practices and how to develop inclusive community projects.

The concepts and tools you’ll learn will enable you to champion inclusivity and wider participation in a variety of areas of museum work, including museum education, museum curation, museography, conservation, and more.

• Foundations
• Welcome to the course
• Exclusion
• Belonging
• Participation
• Review of Week 1
• Leadership and Governance
• Week 2 introduction
• Ethics
• Governance
• Inclusive (museum) design
• Review of Week 2
• Diving in
• Welcome to Week 3
• Principles for inclusive programming
• Strategies
• Inclusive practices
• Review of Week 3
• Taking action
• Welcome to your final week
• Democratizing museum practices
• Adaptation as key changemaker tool
• Taking action
• Congratulations and well done!