​CCC Keynote Lecture: Why is participation in museums so difficult?

​Helen Graham, Professor of Heritage and Participatory Praxis, University of Leeds

​We’ve been facilitating participation in museums for decades now. Exhibitions have been co-produced. Collections have been co-developed by those with passionate interest and deep knowledge. Events have been co-design and co-delivered. Community members have been invited to sit on trustee boards.

​And yet, adding participation to museums has often generated conflict, disappointment and anger.

​Drawing on her recently published book – Deconstituting Museums: Participation’s Affective Work (2025) – Helen will argue we can better understand why participation in museums has been difficult by identifying the distinct and contradictory underlying political logics of museums and of participation. In other words, that significant tensions are produced in combining institutions based in liberal approaches to decision-making ‘on behalf of’ the public and practices of participation based in collective action and decision-making.

​Helen will then go onto develop an alternative set of political logics for museums focused on reimagining core museum ideas such as object, future, the constituencies of everyone/public and future generations, ideals of inclusion and representation and the line between use and access in conservation.

​The talk will conclude by arguing that political groundwork of this type is necessary in enabling a shift in museums away from participation codified as engagement and towards participation as governance. And that it is through participation as governance that we can rework what museums are in, and for, our current moment.

​To get a quick sense of what Helen will talk about read this blog on the Museum Association website, ‘Why is participation in museums so difficult?’