Symposia – Happy Museum Project

The Happy Museum held an annual Symposium each year between 2012 and 2014 and a further gathering in 2018. These events brought together members of the growing Happy Museum Community of Practice with key thinkers from museums, galleries, economics, wellbeing and the wider cultural sector to help think through the challenges and potential for museums and galleries in a ‘transition’ to a high well-being, sustainable future. To find out more read the summary reports of the events:

Links to a blogs and reports from the events can also be found below:

Symposia

Support learning for resilience – 2012 symposium discussion

It was acknowledged that resilience was often pigeon-holed as a funding issue and it was key to see resilience in a broader context of global challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity and fiscal instability ? and to look at residence beyond the doors of the institution. In that context, how can museums support individual, ...

Think Global, Be Networked – 2012 symposium discussion

Here is a summary of this Happy Museum Paper principle at the symposium ?Think global, act local’, should be a guide for museums in transition. Whilst most museums might best support well-being in a specific locality, all could increase the extent to which they make international links, use digital tools to reach wider audiences and open ...

Measure What Matters – 2012 symposium discussion

The following is a summary of discussion of this principle at the 2012 symposium How do we decide what matters? Different things matter to different people. It’s important to decide what matters to your project from the beginning and remember, you don’t have to measure everything! How do we measure? Using what methods? At the beginning, having ...

Happy Museum Symposium 2012 – reflections

We will shortly be publishing a full report on the first Happy Museum Symposium held in Suffolk last week – but in the meantime the following piece by Tony Butler (published on Guardian Cultural Professionals HERE) and the various blogs referenced within are a good starting point to the challenging discussions that took place. Last March ...