A small group led by Happy Museum with partners – AIM, NMDC and the National Trust – is exploring how to address the mounting challenges facing museum collections. 

Environmentally, financially, socially, professionally and ethically, we need to change the way we’re currently working with collections. The scale of the challenge for many museums is existential: they are struggling to survive. In order for our organisations to survive and to thrive, we urgently need to re-think our approach to collections and collecting. How might we better and more fully serve our public and our purpose, as well as creating more positive impacts which contribute to a stronger future? How do we build confidence and empower museum and heritage workers to think holistically and to take more radical steps?

Happy Museum’s decade of work on institutional resilience and wellbeing, combined with our partners’ expertise in collections management and sustainability, has highlighted the need to connect individual innovations into sector-wide transformation. Excellent work is taking place already across the sector but we urgently need to increase the scale, pace and impact of initiatives. The new Museums Data Service offers unprecedented opportunities to understand and review our collections at scale. And this year there are reviews of both the Code of Ethics and the Accreditation scheme.

We see an opportunity to build momentum and create a coherent vision for change, and to create practical pathways for institutions to make bold, informed decisions about their collections. We believe that by bringing together key stakeholders and decision-makers like yourself we can catalyse the systemic change our sector needs and reshape how we think about and work with collections.

Through this project we hope to build momentum and map out the next steps to achieve the scale, pace and impact of the change that we understand is needed to address these challenges.

What are the key questions we are exploring?

• What might become possible if collections were coherent, well cared for, serving the purpose of their organisations and relevant to their communities; animated by compelling stories and fuelling new possibilities?
• Where are the opportunities and tipping points for change: who are the best people and places for advocacy and action? Where are the places/ gatherings to meet, engage and explore with them?
• How might we develop more agile, proportionate and scaleable procedures for transfer and disposal?  What questions or provocations might unlock the current impasse and build a sense of urgency and momentum to achieve the appropriate pace, scale and impact?

What has happened so far

In March 2025 we hosted a conversation with key stakeholders (including MA, Collections Trust and the Civic Museums Network) to build consensus and agree directions for action: to unearth and consider radical solutions; map current sector initiatives and their interconnections, and identify opportunities for scaling-up successful approaches; and define what success looks like in terms of public value and sustainability.

In May we led a workshop at the ICOM UK conference – Regenerative Museums – in Liverpool.

In October we led two sessions bookending the Collections Trust Conference online.  We asked the open question What do you imagine might be possible if collections were coherent, well cared for, serving each organisation’s purpose and relevant to communities? receiving over 50 responses, which we summarised at the end of the day. The responses ranged from the hugely aspirational to the intensely practical – an explosion of ambition and possibility making a compelling case for the value of collections and what might be released by support for collections management.

What have we learnt so far?

We can unlock great potential by addressing this issue – the discussions we’ve held to date make a compelling case for the value of collections and what might be released by support for collections management.

Appropriate realisation of assets and resources are key to the survival of organisations. Current processes are onerous and museums cannot afford the time, capacity, resources and in some cases expertise and/or confidence to apply them.

There are compelling reasons to act. The jeopardy of the current situation is huge and undermines the entire purpose of museums: the immediate financial crisis which many museums are now facing; the existential crisis of the climate emergency; the threat or damage of war; and political interference.

These conversations are timely, with developments across the sector level: the MA toolkit for ethical transfer, reuse and disposal; the new MA Code of Ethics; the Arts Council’s Accreditation review.

The prospect of searching across collections as the Museum Data Service develops is huge, unlocking the potential to find out what other museums hold.

What next- how can you get involved?

We will host further workshops – we are particularly keen to explore with regional and/ or specialist groups how we might create clusters of museums in a locality/ region and/ or subject specialist networks and regional groupings, to collaborate and offer mutual support in decision-making. 

We plan to host a final open session online in the spring to bring together the various threads of enquiry, share proposals for change and explore next steps. Do please contact us if this is of interest and/or you see an opportunity to connect with this work – Happymuseumproject@gmail.com