In placing our focus on the wellbeing of people, place and planet, Happy Museum has from its outset explored what we value as a society, how we measure it and the particular contribution of culture. Merely counting visitor numbers tells us nothing of the quality of their experiences and, working with the principle ‘measure what […]

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The dictionary definition of evaluation is ‘a judgement about the amount, number or value of something.’ At Happy Museum we value the wellbeing of people place and planet – first and foremost. Which sounds like a no brainer.  But we live in global system where our collective driver of value, our primary measurement of societal […]

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In May 2020 in the middle of lockdown we held a workshop hosted by Culture Declares programme The Offer in partnership with Common Cause Foundation Watch a RECORDING of the session Covid-19 changed our world in ways that we could never have imagined, and in doing so revealed many anomalies that have challenged us. In […]

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Covid-19 has changed our world in ways that we could never have imagined.  The pandemic has had a seismic impact on our world, its impacts exposing questions about what really matters and what our priorities are in the face of adversity, inequality and injustice. Common Cause Foundation (CCF) works with what they call the ‘perception gap’. […]

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‘The past few weeks have exposed the fact that the biggest things can always change, at any minute. This simple truth, both destabilising and liberating, is easy to forget. We’re not watching a movie: we’re writing one, together’ Peter C Baker In mid-March Happy Museum launched a new project Museums and the Imperative for Change, […]

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Happy Museum is excited to be a Commissioning Partner in the forthcoming Season for Change 2020 – a nationwide festival of artistic work engaging with the climate and ecological crisis, co-curated with partners across the UK and internationally and timed to coincide with COP 26 in Glasgow. Our partner project will explore museums and the […]

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Read how research at Derby Museums informed work into the intrinsic wellbeing of objects. It was a friend of mine that tipped me off to Happy Museum Project and the Derby Museum and Art Gallery. This was in 2016, as I was underway with my research into humans, objects and wellness that would come to […]

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‘Our communities are diverse and complicated. They are muddled and made up of individuals who share, disagree, find common cause or show indifference to each other. Some neighbourhoods are diverse, some are monocultural to the point of exclusion The result is an aversion to exploring difference and conflict, and a lack of understanding that communities […]

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‘The wonderfully named Wellbeing of Future Generations Act requires public organisations to consider the long-term implications of their decisions for people and places, culture and communities. It aims to encourage people to think harder about the future and to consider the triple bottom line of environment and society as well economy. In fact, with its […]

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