This page contains information about the other events we have produced. We hope to do more in the future!

Manifesto for the Future of Museums

The Manifesto for the Future of Museums (pdf), was written by the participants of the Future of Museums conference, which was organised by Museums Showoff.

The conference was held at UCL on 3 April 2014 with the aim of giving early career museum professionals the opportunity to rethink the sector. In twenty years’ time they will be the people running the museums sector, what do they want that sector to look like? Sixty five participants, all within six years of their first entry-level museum job, spent the day discussing their ideas, visions and aspirations. In the subsequent weeks they wrote and refined their ideas, producing the chapters of this manifesto.

The impetus for organising the conference was our growing awareness of the high level of disenfranchisement felt by early career museum professionals. This was particularly strongly voiced by the people Rachel Souhami interviewed for a two-part article for London Museums Group. The enthusiastic response to the article prompted us to organise this conference.

Future of Museums Q&As

After the Manifesto for the Future of Museums was published, we were commissioned by John Orna-Ornstein, then director of museums at Arts Council England, to produce some face-to-face events. We developed two Question Time-style events in which an audience of early career museum folk questioned a panel of senior museum professionals. The events were held in London and Manchester in 2014. Full details.

We Make History

In 2015 Museums Showoff was commissioned by the Being Human Festival to produce an event about history and historians. The event was called We Make History, and took place at the Deaf Institute in Manchester on 18 November 2015.