Since 2012 Happy Museum has worked to re-imagine the purpose of museums as stewards of people, place and planet, supporting wellbeing and building resilience in the face of global challenges. The project is informed by six key principles which underpin the work of growing community of practice. To date this activity has been predominantly in […]
Read More →Happy Museum is pleased to be working with new Affiliate, Culture24 and Battersea Arts Centre on a new action research project looking at the social value of digital technologies for museums. As part of Culture 24’s successful digital change programme, Let’s Get Real, this project will explore how publicly funded cultural spaces such as museums […]
Read More →A new blog from Happy Museum founder, Tony Butler ‘In February 2017, nearly eight months after the Referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, the Happy Museum project held an event in Derby Silk Mill to understand why people chose to vote the way they did and to explore the kind of role a […]
Read More →by Mandy Barnett – Happy Museum Research Associate The Happy Museum project is especially targeted at museums that want to encourage participation and activism. We particularly focus on work with communities and the wider environment, sometimes called ‘place-making’. On 13th June we are holding our annual training day for museums who share our desire to ‘measure […]
Read More →Derby Museums is a Happy Museum committed to creating a supportive working environment for staff that results in positive experiences for our visitors. As such we were delighted to be a part of the Happy Museum Study Group with other inspiring venues, sharing the experience of creating organisational Stories of Change. The process of formulating […]
Read More →WICKED PROBLEMS At a recent Happy Museum gathering at Woodhorn Museum, Lucy Neal introduced the concept of climate change as a ‘wicked’ problem. Reading from Tackling Wicked Problems, a 2007 policy perspective from the Australian Public Service Commission she noted that the term ‘wicked’ is here used, not in the sense of evil, but rather […]
Read More →#OneLess campaign is setting out to rid London of single-use plastic water bottles by 2021 – is this an opportunity for museums nationally to make a similar pledge? “Every piece of plastic ever made still exists.” This is the sentence that resonated the most with my colleagues from the V&A when we attended the launch […]
Read More →Jonathan Rowson of the RSA said ‘the essence of the climate change challenge is the wrong kind of energy (fossil fuels) in the wrong kind of economy (fixated with GDP) pursuing the wrong kind of objective (consumption without end)’ In the light of this challenge, and in an increasing number and range of contexts, people […]
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