The Reconsidering Museums toolkit is designed to make it easy for you to incorporate the data collected and messaging developed by Reconsidering Museums into your work. All types of museum workers, volunteers, and supporters will find the toolkit useful. The resources are designed to help you articulate the value of museums more effectively and to respond to changing public expectations around the role of museums. Consistency is key to the impact of the toolkit. When like-minded museums professionals and supporters across Canada speak the same language about the importance of museum work, we can change the conversation.

There are three types of resources in the toolkit: informational, communications, and advocacy.     

 

Informational resources will provide you with an overview of the data we collected through our engagement campaign, Museums for Me. These include three reports - the Reconsidering Museums report that gives an overview of the project and toolkit; the What We Heard report that summarizes the engagement campaign; and the Trust and Value report, that compares our data with previous data on public perceptions of museums. We've also created fact sheets, which are useful to get a quick glance at specific data sets. Module 2 explores these resources in more depth.

Communications resources will help you adopt and share the evidence-backed language recommendations and messaging developed in response to the research. These include data stories, which create easily understandable narratives from the data; a new value proposition for museums; a public campaign; and language recommendations to update the way the sector speaks about itself to align more with current public perception and expectations. Module 3 explores these resources in more depth.

And finally, advocacy resources will support you in advocating for your museum, the sector, and for community issues outside your museum. These include an adaptable case for support to be used in fundraising; letter templates for advocating to government; and an Advocacy Policy and Action Guide to help your museum be a better advocate for itself and the community. Module 4 explores these resources in more depth.

Modules 2 to 4 of this course will introduce the toolkit and provide hands-on activities to learn how the resources can be used at your museum. 


Last modified: Thursday, 2 March 2023, 4:27 PM