In this study day, led by leading co-creation consultant Stella Toonen, you will explore approaches to achieving meaningful co-creation with communities and inspiring community-led change in your museum. This workshop will consider the values that can inform co-creation practices and explore different models for best practice when it comes to listening to community needs and dreams, sharing power, embedding democratic decision-making, and managing open-ended projects that aim to inspire change.

You will have a chance to consider how such approaches might change your organisation or practice from within. You’ll also hear about case studies from museums in London, Manchester and New York and there will be time to build tailored strategies for your own projects and the wider impact that they might be able to make across your museum.

Workshop leader Stella Toonen is a specialist in co-creation practices in museums. As a researcher and museum practitioner, Stella consults internationally about co-creation, collaborative practice, community engagement, constituent museums, and cultural democracy. Her background is as an exhibition and public programmes producer for museums and the programmes she shapes often feature place-based, participatory and socially engaged ways of working.

Power to Communities: Museums, Co-Creation and Making Change
Study Day, 20 February 2024, London

Workshop leader: Stella Toonen is currently writing up her doctoral research with Tate and King’s College London, which looks at the potential for community engagement work as a catalyst for organisational change. As part of her PhD research Stella spent three years with the Tate Exchange project at Tate Modern in London, and also conducted fieldwork at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester and the Queens Museum in New York. In addition, Stella is Programme Director for Culture Within Newham.