Museums and the Challenge of Change

Graham Black has worked in and with museums for over 40 years. Today, he combines his role as Professor of Museum Development at Nottingham Trent University, UK, with museum consultancy. Exhibitions on which he has acted as Interpretive Consultant have twice won the UK £100,000 Art Fund Prize, amongst many other awards. His previous publications include two books: The Engaging Museum, published in 2005, and Transforming Museums in the 21st Century, published in 2012, both with Routledge. In recent years, his belief that future museum content should be much more agile, fast-moving, cheap, and responsive has meant he has moved away from large, expensive re-display projects to working with local communities and organisations taking approaches that he believes can make a difference.

INTRODUCTION: THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE; SECTION 1: CONTEXT; Ch 1 Societal change; Ch 2 Museums and the Digital Revolution; A Jenny Kidd: Social Media and Participation: The selfie as a curious cultural artefact; B Rebecca O’Neill: Museums and Participatory Culture: Wikimedia and GLAM; C Daniel Brown: ‘A series of interesting choices’: Gaming and Gamification as Participation; SECTION 2: MUSEUMS IN THE WIDER WORLD; Ch 3 Engaging Diverse Audiences; Ch 4 The Activist Museum; D Tony Butler: Making the Museum of Making at Derby Silk Mill; E Elizabeth Crooke: Participation, Trust and telling Difficult Histories in Museums; F Mark O’Neill, Pete Seaman & Duncan Dornan: Public Health and Museums: building a strategic partnership; G Merel van der Vaart et al: The Stedelijk Museum: facing the challenges of being truly of, by and for all; SECTION 3: DEVELOPING THE PARTICIPATIVE EXPERIENCE; Ch 5 The informal museum learning experience; Ch 6 Creating an inclusive and participative museum experience; Ch 7 Developing participative exhibits and activities; H Johannes Bernhardt: ‘Slow Participation’: the case of the Baden State Museum, Karlsruhe; I Kirsten Drotner: Joint creativity for democratic transformations in museums; J Hsiao-Te Hsu: A case study on Digital Technology, AI and Participation at the National Palace Museum, Taipei; K Mette Houlberg Rung: On Dialogue and the museum as social space; L Anders Sundnes Løvlie et al: Designing for interpersonal museum experience; M Philipp Schrögel: Showcasing Science and Facilitating Interaction: Science Slams in Museums; SECTION 4: MANAGING CHANGE; Ch 8 Managing Change; N Scott Cooper: Design (Re)Thinking a Legacy Institution – Strategic Planning at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia; P Kathryn Thomson: National Museums Northern Ireland: Managing Change, a Case Study; Ch 9 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: IF NOT NOW, WHEN?