Happy Museum’s mission is to re-imagine museums for a sustainable future  – by fostering wellbeing that doesn’t cost the earth. 

We now need new leaders, thinkers and activists to support the Happy Museum with our mission. 

Can you help us by contributing your unique perspective, your time and your imagination for a better future –  to our Steering Group?

At Happy Museum we see the wellbeing of people, place and planet as ever more important, and at risk. We see the role of museums as critical in creating a resilient and regenerative society: as places of connection rather than division, and as places to face current realities whilst bringing a positive, imaginative and future-facing frame. 

Currently, museums face a host of pressing challenges – the cost of living crises, rising energy prices, pressure on funding streams, and more. 

We want to find new ways to support museums to creatively face these challenges head on, supporting them to positively address the climate and ecological emergency, systemic inequality, social polarisation and social injustice.

You can read our manifesto here and Happy Museum principles here.

What is the Happy Museum?

Happy Museum (HM) is a volunteer and freelancer-led group which works in partnership with Julie’s Bicycle who hold legal and financial oversight. Project activity is currently run by long-standing Happy Museum team, Gaby Porter and Hilary Jennings, with associate practitioners from the wider Happy Museum Community often supporting and delivering any funded project work.  

Projects that we are currently working on include What shall we do with all this stuff? – managing collections responsibly and ethically (in partnership with National Trust, AIM and NMDC) We are also programming online events for the museum sector around our manifesto themes, which in this series include how playfulness can support our teams and communities, and exploring practical ways to work with grief and loss within our work.  You can watch recordings of previous events here.

A vital part of how we sustain our work is through our Steering Group. The Steering Group helps to support our activity, shapes HM’s strategic direction and innovates in support of our manifesto. 

We are now seeking to recruit up to XX additional members to take our Steering Group up to 10 people in all, and to refresh and enhance our activity.

The Steering Group meets approximately 6 times per year and actively contributes to Happy Museums work through:

• Advocacy and Support, sharing the work of Happy Museum – including being an active and articulate supporter of the Happy Museum principles
• Creating connections, recognising opportunities to build and develop activity and community.
• Reflecting and reviewing, offering practical cross-sector insight and tangible applications of the Happy Museum principles.
• Innovating developing and supporting project activity

We are now particularly looking for individuals who bring:

• New perspectives from within or outside of the heritage sector 

• New ambitions for the programme and can imagine new cross-sector opportunities
  
• Communication, network, marketing and positioning skills and experience
  
• Income generation experience and skills
  
• Something we don’t currently know that we need!

To join us, you will:

• Have capacity to contribute to the work of Happy Museum and the Steering Group
  
• Be willing to embrace risk and complexity, and able to think and act strategically
  
• Be orientated towards capacity for future thinking
  
• Be able to balance courage with control, and to challenge where needed

• Have potential to oversee or support (with others) the work of the Director and other freelance team members ???

• Have good interpersonal skills, able to engage diverse stakeholders and act as a spokesperson for Happy Museum

You may be from beyond the museum sector and from a different discipline or area of expertise; you may be an early or late professional; you may have a diversity of ideas and perspectives; you may be from within or outside of the UK.

If you are passionate about the purpose and potential of Happy Museum we welcome you – please do submit an expression of interest!

New members of the Steering Group will serve a three-year term, and members may put themselves forward for one further term, up to a maximum of six years. The Steering Group is chaired by the Convenor – this is a rotating role for a Steering Group member for up to six months.

We would love to welcome your application.

To apply, please send an Expression of Interest (not more than 750 words) responding to how you meet the qualities, opportunity and skills referenced above, and to these questions:

• What is your interest in the Happy Museum project and what connections do you see with how HM can address the most pressing and challenging questions for museums, staff, volunteers, and visitors at this time?
• What do you believe you would bring to the Steering Group? What might you gain from the experience?
• What support might you need in order to fully engage with the role?

Please send your expression of interest by 10 am on 10th November to happymuseumproject@gmail.com.

Selection process

The selection and induction of Steering Group members will be made by existing members. Selection will be made through the Expressions of Interest and through interview.

We include background to the Happy Museum governance below, and you can explore our website to read about our past work and projects.

If you would like an informal chat about the role before putting yourself forward, please contact us at Happymuseumproject@gmail.com and we will put you in touch with a current steering group member.

Background to Happy Museum Board and governance

Between 2011 and 2014 Happy Museum (HM) commissioned activities by museums and gathered the learning generated by our community of practice, as well as undertaking complementary research. Between 2014 and 2018, the core HM team focused on exploring the deeper and longer term impact on organisations and individuals of a focus on the wellbeing of people, place and planet.

From 2016 to 2018, HM received Museum Resilience Funding from Arts Council England (ACE) to support a longer term programme of work with these outcomes:

• Experimentation and learning lead to better practice
• People feel a real and different future
• Flourishing organisations
• Wellbeing and sustainability embraced and embedded.
  

ACE did not confirm further funding. Since then, HM has maintained its work through a series of smaller and discrete programmes of work, including: workshops hosted by museums in our Community of Practice; collaborations with organisations including Common Cause Foundation, Clore Leadership Programme, Culture Declares and Playful Places; active involvement in networks like Co-Creating Change and the Alliance for Culture Health and Wellbeing; contributions at conferences and workshops in the UK and beyond.

In 2020, we ran No Going Back, a programme within the Season for Change programme, building on the particular power of museums to draw on past stories of rapid transition and transformation; and to inspire museums and their communities to shape new stories and actions to address the climate and ecological emergency and the experience of lockdown. 

In 2025, we are working in partnership with the National Trust, the National Museum Directors Conference and the Association of Independent Museums on ‘What shall we do with all this stuff?’, a series of conversations to stimulate immediate and proportionate action towards responsible and ethical use and transfer of collections.

HM did not set out to become an organisation – rather, to be an ongoing project. From 2011 to 2016, HM operated as an un-constituted project with funding managed through the Museum of East Anglian Life and subsequently People United, which also supported our governance development and management. In 2016 HM became a Community Interest Company (CIC) with three directors and three further board members.In 2020 the board decided to terminate the CIC, which had not served a useful purpose, and to enter a mutually beneficial partnership with Julie’s Bicycle. A partnership agreement and memorandum of understanding define this relationship, and at least one team member of Julie’s Bicycle is present at Happy Museum Steering Group meetings.

HM’s assets include intellectual property (with an extensive suite of open resources), our website, Community of Practice, networks and contacts.