Engaging underserved audiences remains a pressing concern across the museum and creative sector. While many institutions recognise the importance of broadening access and participation for groups that don’t traditionally engage with the sector, effective and sustainable strategies remain complex and varied. Through the lens of creative practice, how can artists and museums work together to connect with these audiences in new ways?
This international symposium brought together museum professionals, educators and multi-disciplinary practitioners to explore innovative cross-disciplinary collaborations and projects that have used art, design and making to break down barriers. It provided a platform for sharing pilot projects, works in progress, and new research, creating a space for knowledge exchange and future partnerships.
Open Eye Gallery’s Head of social practice, Liz Wewiora, took part in (re)Making Spaces session, discussing scaling up local delivery into a national conversation in the Picturing High Streets project.
This session focused on how museum and heritage spaces are being reimagined through creative collaboration with artists and makers. From public high streets to historic castles, artists and communities are reshaping how spaces are understood and accessed. Speakers discussed the power of creative practice to transform relationships between people, place, and history.
Museum educators and curators, teachers, cultural practitioners, artists / makers, researchers and community organisers joined in reimagining how museums and cultural institutions can use creative practice to reach underserved audiences, now and in the future.
