In this episode of The Art Engager, Claire Bown talks with Ciaron Wilkinson, Head of Partnerships and Engagement at Manchester Museum — one of the UK’s largest university museums and recent winner of European Museum of the Year.

After a values-led redevelopment, Manchester Museum has reimagined how a museum can engage with its community. Its mission is to be the most caring, imaginative, and inclusive museum people will ever visit - a place where everyone belongs.

Ciaron shares how this vision has reshaped the museum’s spaces and ways of working: co-curating the South Asia Gallery with 30 community members over five years, celebrating faith and culture through the Manchester Museum Celebrates series, and opening the Top Floor hub, shared with 25 local organisations dedicated to social justice and climate action.

This conversation offers practical insights into co-curation, community engagement, and the values-led decisions behind creating cultural spaces where everyone feels welcome.

The Art Engager is written and presented by Claire Bown. Editing is by Matt Jacobs and Claire Bown. Music by Richard Bown. Support the show on Patreon and find more resources at thinkingmuseum.com

‘The Art Engager: Reimagining Guided Experiences in Museums‘ is now available worldwide through your favourite online platforms and retailers. Buy it here on Amazon.com: https://tinyurl.com/buytheartengager

The Art Engager book website: https://www.theartengager.com/

Support the show with a simple monthly subscription on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheArtEngager

Episode Links:

Manchester Museum website

Manchester Museum Instagram

Article on European Museum of the Year

Article on decolonisation

New York Times article following reopening

Hello and welcome to The Art Engager podcast with me, Claire Bown.

I'm here to share techniques and tools to help you engage with your audience

and bring art objects and ideas to life.

So let's dive into this week's show.

Hello, and welcome to a new episode of The Art Engager.

I'm Claire Bown, and today I'm chatting with Ciaron Wilkinson, head

of Partnerships and Engagement at Manchester Museum, one of the UK's

largest university museums and the recent winner of European Museum of the Year.

But before we dive in, I wanted to share a quick note.

If you followed my work for a while, you'll know that I make a

lot of resources freely available.

This podcast, along with the guides and downloads on my website, I

do this because I love what I do and because I believe that these

resources should be freely accessible.

To everyone.

So if you found them useful and you'd like to support my work, there are

two ways that make a real difference.

The first is becoming a friend of The Art Engager.

You can do this on Patreon.

Your contribution will help to cover the time, energy, and resources that go into

producing each episode of this show.

And it also keeps the podcast ad free and accessible to all.

Or you could pick up a copy of my book, The Art Engager Reimagining

Guided Experiences in Museums.

It's packed with practical tools and strategies you can

return to again and again.

So thank you so much for any way you choose to support my work.

It really means a lot.

Now let me introduce today's guest.

Ciaron Wilkinson is a senior leader at one of the UK's largest

university museums, Manchester Museum.

As head of partnerships and engagement, he plays a key role in an organization

that's committed to building understanding between cultures and

to creating a more sustainable world.

Ciaron brings a refreshingly different perspective to museum work, having

previously worked in local government, arts and culture and tourism

before joining Manchester Museum, this background gives him unique

insights into what it really means to create inclusive cultural spaces.

After reopening in February, 2023 following a values led redevelopment,

Manchester Museum has become a leading example of what it means to put belonging

at the heart of everything you do.

Their mission is to be the most caring, imaginative, and inclusive

museum that people will ever visit.

A place where everybody belongs.

Located in Manchester, in the uk, a city where over 200 languages are spoken.

The museum looks after four and a half million objects across anthropology,

archeology, and natural history.

But what makes them really special is how they've reimagined what a museum

can be and do for its community.

In today's episode, Ciaron shares how Manchester Museum has transformed not just

their physical spaces, but their entire approach to working with communities.

We discussed their groundbreaking South Asia Gallery co-curated with

30 community members over five years.

We also discuss their Manchester Museum Celebrates series of faith and

cultural events and their top floor hub.

A space shared with about 25 local organizations working on

social justice and climate action.

Our conversation is packed with practical insights about co curation,

community engagement, and what it really takes to create spaces

where everyone feels they belong.

If you are interested in how museums can become genuine community assets and forces

for social good, this episode is for you.

Enjoy.

Hi Ciaron and welcome to The Art Engager podcast.

So, could you tell our listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Of

course.

Yeah.

So my name's Ciaron Wilkinson and I'm the head of partnerships and

engagement at Manchester Museum.

My background is I previously worked at the local authority.

I've worked in arts and culture, and I've also worked for the local tourist board.

So I've not actually been a museum professional for that long.

So hopefully I'll be able to provide a little bit of a different insights to

perhaps some of your previous guests.

I'm sure you will.

And I think also, could you tell us a little bit about Manchester

Museum and what makes it special?

Absolutely.

So we're Manchester Museum.

We're one of the largest university museums in the uk, so we look

after about four and a half million objects across anthropology,

archeology, and natural history.

And we're located in the north of England.

We like to call ourselves the UK Second City after London, although

I'm sure some of your listeners might have something to say about that.

And our collection dates back to about 1821, but the doors of the

museum have been open since 1888.

We're also the Civic Museum of the City as well as being a university museum.

But in terms of what makes us special we've had a lot of different iterations of

the museum over those kind of 130 years.

We've expanded, we've changed, we've shifted, but probably our most substantial

change and what we'll likely spend most of today talking about is the changes we made

during our values led redevelopment, which saw us reopen our doors in February, 2023

with a museum that was almost double the size, a number of new permanent galleries.

And what we always say is that redevelopment changed not just the

bricks and mortar of the museum, but also the way that we work.

And I think that's what makes us really special.

Brilliant, and we will get into that shortly.

But I wanted to also just take a moment to say congratulations.

You recently won European Museum of the Year, so can you tell us a little

bit about what this means to you and everyone, of course, at the museum.

Yeah, I'd love to.

Yeah, so I was over in Białystok in Poland in May, which is about

two hours outside of Warsaw.

And to say that we were gobsmacked when our name was read out in that

room in front of 41 of the museums would be a massive understatement.

European Museum of the Year is a really interesting award because it

places the value on the things that we think are important, but I'll

sort of come to that in a second.

In terms of what it means to us.

We've been incredibly clear about what the values are of our museum.

We want to be the most caring, imaginative, and inclusive museum

that people will ever visit.

And we want to be a place that people feel like they belong and

can see themselves represented.

And you do literally see that on the wall.

When you walk in.

We have a big sign that says where everybody belongs.

I believe that if you speak to our colleagues, our volunteers, our

partners, they'll all tell you that is what Manchester Museum is about.

But that's what we think.

So the reason we were so happy to win that award is that European

Museum of the Year is an award that places a focus on those values.

So it's not just about visitor numbers or the quality of our

exhibitions, although we obviously like to think they're good as well.

It's about how we're living those values.

And when the judges, I'm just gonna read it to you 'cause

it's good to get it right.

When the judges awarded a prize, they specifically said that we had 'reimagined

our mission, acknowledging and addressing our complex history by redefining the

role of our collections and our public programs', which is exactly what we'd

seek to do through that redevelopment and through the focus of our work.

So it felt like a real affirmation of that commitment to those values.

We're living in a time of, you know, immense polarization and it,

the world can feel very turbulent.

So for the judges of that award to look at what we're doing at

the museum and say, yeah, we.

We think that's important and we think those values are the right ones.

That felt like, yeah, it felt like validation for the whole of the team.

Oh, congratulations.

And there's a fantastic video which we can link to in the show notes as well, showing

everyone reacting to that win as well.

Yeah.

Everyone who was watching us said that we looked genuinely

shocked, like we'd misheard.

Well, I got in touch with you after the win.

I had heard of your work previously, but I thought it would make a really good time

to chat about some of the work that you have been doing over the past few years.

And when we had our initial chat off air we talked a lot about the

theme of belonging, which I'd really like to dig into a little bit today.

'cause it really seems central to everything that

you do at Manchester Museum.

And you said this mission to create a space where everyone feels they belong.

So what does this actually mean in a museum context?

It's a really good question and it

is quite complicated as well.

'cause I think belonging is something that can often feel quite intangible.

I mentioned that one of the core questions we asked ourselves

during the redevelopment is what sort of museum do we want to be?

And the starting point really that.

That our director, Esme Ward and the team here we're looking at

was what does it mean to be a museum at the heart of its city?

And how do you create a museum that's responding to the needs of everybody

in the local community and beyond?

What did they need us to be?

And the answer that we arrived at was to be a place where everyone felt welcome

and respected, no matter who they are.

Manchester is an incredibly diverse city.

I mean, I hope most of your listeners have been, but if not,

please do come and visit us.

It's a city where over 200 languages are spoken, but we do also have

our fair share of problems.

You know, we saw the riots, the racist and Islamic phobic riots

that happened in the UK last year.

And all of the issues that that raised.

And that remind us why that mission to bring people together and give them that

sense of belonging was really important.

There was a study done last year actually as part of Manchester's new

cultural strategy that asked young people specifically what are their

motivations when they're deciding whether to get involved in arts and culture.

And the number one response was seeing somebody that looks like me.

They said that is how they make decisions about what they spend their time on doing.

Whether there's somebody that looks like me, and that can

mean so many different things.

It can mean our diverse visitor team that are welcoming them at the door.

It can be working with them on event programming.

It can be partnering with their community group or their religious

organization that they work with.

So for us, being a place where everybody can see themself represented

is central to everything that we do and was central to that redevelopment.

So, what sort of changes did you make?

And what does that kind of look like and feel like in practice in the museum today?

Yeah.

So, it very much has driven the decision making of that redevelopment and a lot

of the decisions that we've made since.

So I can give you a couple of examples.

The one that I love to start with is our picnic area.

So I'm not gonna throw any shade at any other national or large museums.

But often when you go into a big museum and you go to the picnic

area, it's downstairs, it's tucked away, it's dark, it's a bit dingy.

And for me, for us, what that says is you are not spending any money, so

we're gonna tuck you out of the way.

But we really didn't want to do that.

So our picnic area, it's bright, it's beautiful, it's got games in there,

it's got a microwave, it's got cutlery, and it's right next to our cafe in Main

Hall and for us, that really is a sort of visual representation of the values

and the things that we prioritize.

Our museum is free and we say to people, you can come here and if you don't want

to, you don't need to spend any money.

And that is a big focus for us.

It's how we can be as accessible as possible.

And going back to that question around need, we know that there are people

in the city that need and want those experiences where they can come and get

involved in what we do without having to pay entry or buy an expensive sandwich.

There are some.

Really brilliant sandwiches available if you want one.

But people can come in and not spend anything.

We also have a prayer room, so a really beautiful prayer room that actually

we get people coming into the museum just to use the prayer room, not

even to actually see our collections.

And they come back time and time again.

And we have what's called a Changing Places accessible toilet, which

is this sort of highest standard of accessibility when it comes to

a bathroom and toilet that was.

Co-designed with a group that we work within in the museum to, to

really ensure that, that bathroom did exactly what they needed it to do.

So that sense of actually you can come into this space and you can

pray, you can use the facilities if you are disabled or have access needs

you can come in and bring your lunch.

They all feed into that idea of it being a place where people can come

in and feel that sense of belonging.

I love those concrete examples and a picnic area

for perhaps for lots of people listening is not that commonplace

to have one in the first place.

So to have one alongside your cafe, to make it next door to it, as bright and

accessible, part of the visit, you don't have to spend any money at all to be here.

It's really.

Really groundbreaking, I think.

Yeah, and I think, I always like to think that there, there

are two reasons to, to make any decision.

There's often the right reason and there's the wrong reason.

And they're both important.

And what I mean by that is for us our picnic area, we did it

because it was true to our values and we really believed in it.

But in reality it also makes sense because we get more people coming to us because

they don't have to spend money and because they don't have to buy from the cafe.

And as you can imagine, even though people might bring their sandwiches,

you know, I'm a dad of two daughters.

When we compare, we bring our own sandwiches, but we

still end up buying a coffee.

We still end up getting a biscuit.

They still go in our shop.

Which by the way, we like to think is the most beautiful museum shop in the country

which we could talk about at length.

We buy a little ,snake or a reusable magnet.

But yeah, so there, there's those kind of two perspectives really.

We do it because it's true to our values and we believe in it, but also

there actually is a commercial benefit and a visitor figure benefit as well.

I think a slightly tougher question would be when we're

talking about belonging as well, we've talked about those really physical

concrete things that we can see that make a difference, but what about.

How people feel, you know?

How do you know that you've succeeded in making someone feel that they belong?

I think that's a really good question, and there's probably two

things I would say in response to that.

One of the things that we are most proud of is our demographic.

Of visitors and audiences at the museum?

I'll give you some quick stats.

So for Arts Council funded museums across the uk, the percentage of their visitors

who identify as not being white, so global majority or whatever term you'd like

to use, tends to be between 6 and 8%.

At Manchester Museum, that number's about 35%.

So 35% of our visitors are from diverse backgrounds, and we know that

they come back time and time again.

That's more about inclusion.

It's not necessarily about belonging.

And I think one of the clearest indicators for us, that the people

feel that sense of belonging is that they work with us repeatedly.

They're passionate about their museum, and most importantly,

they feel like it's their museum.

So the language that people use when they talk about

Manchester Museum is our museum.

It's their museum.

And interestingly, they'll call us out when we do things that they

don't think are true to our values.

So at, there's a hot topic at the moment about ai.

We had a couple of incidents recently where we'd used AI or it at least looked

like we'd used AI in, in some of our work on gallery and some of our communications.

And within days of that being up, we had people messaging us saying.

This doesn't sit within the values, you know, are you

paying the artist that did this?

Why have you used ai?

You do, you know, about the carbon and climate impact of ai?

So that sort of sense of actually them feeling comfortable to be able to say,

this is as much my museum as it is your museum and you are doing something

that perhaps I'm not quite okay with.

For me, that's a huge sign that they feel like they belong here and

they feel that sense of ownership.

I love that is it's a two way thing that happens.

And we can go on to talk about that because it sounds like, co

curation has also become central to how you operate as well.

And I'd like to talk a little bit about how the South Asia Gallery

has been reimagined through the process of co curation.

So can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Yeah, so when we had our redevelopment and reopened in February,

2023, we had a number of new galleries.

So we had the South Asia Gallery, which is a collaboration with the British Museum.

We've got the Chinese Culture Gallery which is a brilliant project, which

we can talk about a little bit later.

And we also had what's called the Belonging Gallery.

And the Belonging Gallery was curated by my incredible colleague Alexandra Alberta.

Who, we think, is perhaps the world's first curator of Indigenous perspectives.

So she's an indigenous person herself.

And she created that gallery, which is actually called The Belonging Gallery.

And we can get into that in a little bit, but.

The South Asia Gallery that the idea for that gallery started in 2015 and

before our director Esme (Ward) came into post, it was gonna be a very sort

of conventional, traditional gallery.

And it was about South Asian experiences.

But she and colleagues made the decision to pivot that.

And in around 2018, we assembled what we called the South Asia Gallery Collective.

Which was a group of 30 South Asian diaspora from across Manchester,

greater Manchester, and slightly beyond.

All with interests in and connections to South Asia and connections to Manchester.

And the overall goal of that was to put real people in their experiences

at the heart of the gallery.

So.

Some of the things that you'll see in there are a uniform that

belong to one of the co-curator's granddads that he wore during World

War I. We have a sewing machine that belongs to one of the co-curators

who runs a textile design company.

We have a beautifully decorated rickshaw.

And it's all about their perspectives and their contributions.

And the gallery itself is split into what we call six anthologies.

But for us, really the starting point of that was to really rethink who gets

to tell their story in the museum.

You know, you go into a lot of museums and you see an item, you see

when it was discovered or found or brought to the UK or brought to the

museum, and you may see who found it.

And often that can be it really.

There's not a lot of context.

There's not a lot of explaining why it's here.

How did it get here?

Anything about that person who brought it here, so, for us, we

really wanted to rethink that.

And yeah, that was a very different, very challenging way to create that gallery.

But we like to think it's been a success and it's won all sorts of awards.

So yeah.

The idea of co-creation.

You hear about it a lot in museums.

Quite often it's on a temporary exhibition.

Something that's not a permanent part of the museum.

So I think for this to be, you know, one of the major galleries in the museum, to

be entirely co-curated with 30 community members part of the collective, but

what did it actually mean in practice?

Can you talk us through how it worked?

I'll start by talking a little bit about co-creation in

general, and then maybe move on to specifically about the South Asia Gallery.

I think for us, there's definitely something about the fact that museums are

often telling a one-dimensional story.

And curators we believe have a bit of a responsibility now to rethink what

it means to care for those collections.

So to care for the collections that we have, it's not just about the

collection itself, but it's also about the people that collection belongs to.

Their ideas, their beliefs, their relationships.

And so for us, Proper real in depth co curation.

It obviously takes time.

It means building trust dimensions that the South Asia collective came together

in 2018 and the gallery didn't open until 2023, so that was five years.

And there'd been some conversations that even predate that first coming together.

So there's definitely, you know, some practical things that you can do to try

and make sure you do co curation properly.

But for us it's really about making sure you centre those people and their

ideas in that process and not being afraid to sometimes get it wrong.

I think that's a nice segue into some of those experiences specifically from

the South Asia Gallery that we didn't get it right all the way through.

There were some people that started off as part of the collective that

for one reason or another, decided to leave and then rejoined again.

And, as an organization that puts care as one of its core values, we know

that we didn't always get that right.

There was some times that we had to actually press pause on the

process because we had caused harm to some of those people and there

was things that came up that, that we hadn't thought about.

You can imagine how heavy some of the stories are.

One of the last stories you see as you go through the gallery is is

dedicated to a South Asian doctor that was one of the first doctors

who died during the COVID Pandemic.

So, you know, these are not, a lot of the time they're not light

conversation, they're not light stories.

They're really serious and they're people's lived experiences.

So for us, there's definitely something around being able to go into that with

openness, with honesty, but also being able to hold your hands up when perhaps

things aren't quite going right and saying, okay we've not got this right.

Let's have a think about how we move forward together.

And I think a real learning process as well, you said, you know, it

takes time and that amount of time from 2018 to 2023, the long time to get to

know people, also a long time to kind of learn how these sorts of projects work.

What are some of the positive outcomes as a result of this co-curation?

Yeah, so it feels a bit reductive to mention this one first,

but we do know that as a result of the South Asia Gallery and how successful

it's been, that our visitor numbers from South Asia communities have skyrocketed.

There's about 11% of Manchester that comes from a sort of, it's obviously a very

wide ranging and not homogenous group, but there's about 11% that are South Asian in

Manchester, and we know that we're getting more of those people coming than ever.

But it's not just about them coming it's, as I said before, it's about

them seeing themself represented.

You know, I've been on gallery and seen a man about my age with a daughter,

about the same age as my oldest daughter showing her around the gallery.

And she's looking at some of the things on the wall and

she's actually seeing herself.

And I think, if you have somewhere where you can see your heritage and

you can see yourself, you want to go back and you want to engage with it.

And I think that's sort of supplemented by the year round

program of events that we do.

So.

With the South Asia Gallery, it's a permanent gallery.

But we do have things within it that change.

So we have a film that was directed by a wonderful local filmmaker called Alina.

And we have that in there, but we've also done a project with Prevent

Breast Cancer, which is about South Asian women's experience of breast

cancer, which is called Tree of Life.

And that was a project between the museum, manchester University,

Prevent Breast Cancer and the NHS.

So we've done a lot of different things and I think the best part about the

South Asia galleries that it can be a jumping off of point for further

conversations and further explorations.

And one of the community members has gone from being a

participant to a member of staff as well.

Yes.

Yep.

So that's my wonderful colleague Nara, who's our lead curator

in the South Asian Gallery.

So she originally worked in the voluntary sector and she started off as part

of the South Asia Gallery Collective.

And then partway through became one of the co-curators and then now is actually

our lead creator and member of staff.

And I think that's one of the things that I do think makes

this museum really special.

You know, we've got some absolutely incredible colleagues that are

very much museum people through and through, and they are very important.

We absolutely need those people.

But we also have people like Nus who have just a totally different perspective

on what it means to be a curator.

You know, she's come from that community, she's got friends, she's got family.

She's really well connected, and she knows what they want from us.

She knows what they expect from us.

So having her in that role, I think, it is really forward thinking.

And she's not the only one.

We've got other people within the museum who have similar perspectives.

Yeah it's not the conventional story.

I think for me, one of the things I'm really interested in and will be

a big part of the next stage of our evolution is how we use or benefit

from this experience to make sure that we can do that with the next Nusrat

Who comes through, you know, the next diverse curator or other colleague who

wants to come and work at the museum.

How do we build on the experiences of her and me and some of my other colleagues?

To make sure we can continue to push the boundaries really.

Brilliant.

And I'd love to move on to some of the other projects and initiatives that

you've done to cement this feeling, this sense of belonging within the museum.

So tell me a little bit about the Celebrates series.

Yeah, so, we're really proud of this.

The Manchester Museum Celebrates series is a year round program of celebratory

cultural and faith-based events.

So it was actually the first one we did was a community iftar

that we did in in the museum.

For anyone who doesn't know what it is, it's a meal that happens during Ramadan

where people come together after they're fast to break their fast together.

We did the first one of those in response to rising Islamophobia,

so it was a number of years ago.

Now I mentioned that we're part of the University of Manchester,

which we're really proud of.

And the university has its faith chaplains.

So there's a Muslim chaplain who we worked with, and essentially we said to them.

Do you think the scope for us to do an Iftar in the museum.

Now people listening will know food and museums.

They don't always go together that well.

But we did it and it was a huge success and we've been doing that

for about six years now, I think.

And one of the mission statements of the museum is to build

understanding between cultures.

And so what you get at those community iftars, which I think is really beautiful,

is you get almost like a 50 50 split between muslim colleagues, university

colleagues, our local community who are observing Ramadan and are, coming

in to break fast and celebrate.

With our friends and the family, but you also get 50% non-Muslims and 50%

people who are just interested in actually knowing what a community iftar

is and some of the kind of thinking behind it and the religious side of it.

And I think museums ,I believe in this really passionately, I think

museums are really uniquely placed.

To bring people together.

They are places that people trust.

I mention this that a lot, but one of the things I love is that the UK produces a

trust index, which is all of the most and least trusted professions you can imagine,

which some of the ones are at the bottom.

Don't you need to go into that?

But the ones at the top are often doctor, teacher, and museum curator,

which I think is so interesting.

You know, museum curators and museum staff are people that people trust.

So our community that was built around the idea of actually there's

a lot of sort of misinformation, there's a lot of hate really out

there about some of these topics.

How can we bring people together in a safe environment to just

have those conversations?

And that was so successful that it's grown.

So we now do a yearly Diwali celebration.

With our Hindu community, we work with Manchester Sikh

Foundation on an annual Vaisakhi.

We did an EID celebration this year.

We celebrate Africa Day with our quite substantial African

community around the museum.

So yeah they're very much celebratory moments of shared joy.

But they're essentially built around kind of co curation, so that they're

all developed and delivered with community groups, cultural and faith

leaders from Manchester who bring in their community and we work with

them to make them happen really.

And I think as you said, in, in the times that we are in at the moment,

increased polarization in the world.

All sorts of things happening.

It's bringing people together in a museum and connecting them,

creating those connections.

But also museum as a convening space where community can come together.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And as, as I said, I think it's, they are places that people trust.

You know, that the, those civic spaces that they're on the decline,

unfortunately, you know, we, we know that there's libraries closing down.

There's community centers closing down.

There's youth centers closing down.

And those places that people can come together to have conversations are

diminishing at a time when they've never really been more needed.

So for us, it's really about thinking, how do we be that place

that people feel comfortable in?

I think it's also, I was talking about this recently

,it's the reduction in places where people can be together as well to

have those social experiences because habits have changed since COVID.

You know, we used to all go to the cinema together.

Now we can stream films at home or we get a takeaway, rather

than going out to dinner.

All those sorts of.

Social things that we might have done together are being replaced

by individualized moments.

So I think museums can, as you say, play this role in being the place where people

can create connections and hopefully.

with other people, those social interactions can happen as well.

Yeah and again, I'd go back to that idea of how important it's

that people can see themselves reflected.

I think, you know, if you take the example of our Vaisakhi celebration,

as I said, we deliver that with the Manchester sikh Foundation, who are just

a really incredibly generous community.

That just do so much for the city.

And since we've been doing that celebration every year our number

of Sikh visitors to the museum has just gone up massively.

You know, there's people who would probably never have come here because

they don't think it's for them.

They have their story in there.

You know, the Manchester Sikh Foundation has got a video that

plays in the South Asia Gallery.

We have a couple of events that we work with them on year round.

They do their volunteer celebration here, so.

It just feels like their place and it feels like something that

they own, that they're part of.

Absolutely.

I'd love to move on to talk a little bit about the top floor hub.

'cause it's, I haven't yet visited your museum.

It's on my list for the next time I come to Manchester, so don't worry.

But it seems like the type of place that I would really love to hang out.

So tell me about the top floor.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'd love to.

So a big part of our redevelopment was redeveloping an area of the

museum that we ingeniously called the Top floor, which is the top

floor of the old wing of the museum.

And again, this was an idea that had come from our director, Esme

(Ward), who actually visited India during the development

stage of the South Asia Gallery.

And she saw a sort of coworking space in a building, but it was a coworking space

for sort of social entrepreneurs or.

Social action group.

So she came back with that idea and we thought, well, why can't we

do that in the museum Now, we're a fairly well-resourced museum.

As I said, we're part of the University of Manchester.

We've got about 130 staff.

And I think at a time when a lot of civic museums and smaller local authority

owned museums in the UK are struggling for funding and are shutting down,

we are really aware of our privilege.

So one of the things that we wanted to do was think about how can we support action

around social justice and climate action.

In Manchester.

So we thought that one of the best ways we can do that is

actually to share our resource.

So why don't we open up that top floor and use it as a space for

charities, community groups, some kind of other smaller cultural

organizations to actually use as a home.

So we've got about 25 different organizations up there from

community groups, some smaller cultural organizations, charities

that are really focusing on either social justice or climate action.

An example of that is we've got a food bank up there.

We've got an organization called the Women's Environmental Network,

which is about engaging marginalized women in the climate agenda.

We also have a neurodivergent college up there.

So the idea behind that really was that we wanted to share our resource, but we

also wanted to use it to upskill some of these groups and help them dream.

And I think also importantly, take action.

So for us, that action piece is really important.

One of the groups we've worked with for a long time is called Wick Climate Action.

Wick is a it's a ward right next to the museum that has the

worst air pollution in the city.

So there they're only a small group of.

About four, four people.

But we've really supported them to think about actually,

how can they influence policy?

How can they work with the university?

And we've gone all the way through to, actually, we've got a temporary exhibition

in the museum now with that organization.

So those kind of pillars of dreaming and action are really important to us.

I think ingeniously named, but also an ingenious

use of space as well.

Like to have all of those different partnerships and different spaces

for people in the community that they can then use is absolutely ingenious.

And you're also home to Pinc College as well?

Yeah.

So Pinc College started in the museum a number of years ago and it's a

college for neurodivergent young people between the ages of 16 and 25.

And they started in the museum, but they're now in about 13 different

cultural organizations right across the uk and we are their full-time campus.

So those young people come to the museum every day during term time, and they

take an arts-based approach to learning.

So they create various different artworks throughout the year.

But they really are an amazing organization.

The growth that they've seen recently really speaks to how amazing they are.

But we are really fortunate to be working with them.

We've learned as much from working with them as I think we have

provided back to them in support.

So yeah, it's a really beautiful relationship.

So tell me about some of your decolonizing work through

this particular lens of belonging.

Absolutely.

So I think the word decolonization is really interesting.

I think it's a word that people are actually quite afraid of.

When we're talking about it, people will often compare it with

diversity or equality initiatives, but actually it's it very different.

At the heart of Manchester Museum, we know that we're a colonial institution.

We know that the UK museum sector in general, but specifically

Manchester Museum benefited from the expansion of the British Empire.

When we were off colonizing the world, that's when we collected a

substantial amount of the items that you will find in our museum today.

And we don't want to shy away from that.

So.

I've got a brilliant colleague called Chloe, who is our social

justice manager, and she recently launched a decolonized trail.

So it's a trail that you can pick up at the entrance when you walk through

the door, and it stops at different places through the museum, and it

provides a non-Western, non Eurocentric perspective on the collections.

But what it really does is it asks questions.

It's really asking visitors, what do you think about this?

How does it make you feel?

And we know, especially young people, they want that, you know, we will always

have a core visitor here at the museum that just wants to come in and see Stan

our huge, T-Rex, who is incredible.

But increasingly more people do want to ask questions.

They want to know how did this stuff get here?

You know who brought it here, whether it is possible to

return it, should we return it?

How would we do that?

And we want to bring them on that journey with us.

And I think that's a way of asking those questions through that lens

of belonging without being too pushy and I also think, not assuming what

our visitors are gonna tell us.

So a good example of that recently is where we've got a internationally

significant Egypt collection.

I know we've got a wonderful Egyptologist called Campbell who's

quite often on TV talking about Egypt.

And that gallery we've got our last remaining ancestor on display

which is a woman called Asru who is thousands of years old, and

you can actually see her body.

Now we've been thinking for a while about whether that's

still the right thing to do.

The perspectives and opinion on that has changed significantly,

especially in recent years.

But rather than just take her off display, we wanted to ask.

So next to the body of Asru, you'll see a plaque, which gives a bit of context

about who she is, who she was, and it ask visitors what do you think about this?

Do you think we should take this off display or do you think there's

a benefit to having it here?

And we're fairly early days of that, but we will, we'll look at that

feedback and then we will use that to make the decision on what we do.

I love that all your programs and initiatives, collectives,

projects, all the things that you're working on, seem to be this

kind of thoughtful consultation.

You know, that there's a two-way process here, that there's a conversation

happening, it's very much a conversation between the museum and its community.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I'm relatively new into museums compared to some of my

colleagues, but I think the role of our curators has changed slightly.

So they obviously, first and foremost, they look after this

incredible collection that we've got.

And there's people, a lot of people who've looked after it before them.

And there'll be lots of people who will look after it after them.

But actually those questions around context and conversations

with our community are really at the forefront of their role.

And they love it as well.

They enjoy it.

It's actually, just to go back to what you said at the very start it's

what makes Manton Museum special.

And I want to move on to talking about how you measure belonging.

Because it's a very intangible thing, isn't it?

Something that's very difficult to measure.

So how have you been implementing different metrics to measure how much

belonging people are sensing and feeling?

So I talked earlier about visitor numbers and visitor

numbers often are equated to the success.

You know, we know that in 2024 we were the most visited free attraction in

Manchester, which we are really proud of.

And the more people through the door, the more people spending money in our cafe,

the easier it is to receive funding.

You know, all those things they're really important, but

that doesn't tell the full story.

We want to know how our museum makes people feel.

So one of the things we've been doing over the last six months or so is

actually ask that in our visitor survey.

So some of the questions that you'll be asked after you visit the museum

are, did you feel welcome and included?

Did you feel like you could be yourself at the museum?

Did you feel a sense of community in the museum and overwhelmingly so far,

people are, say, people are saying yes, you know, we, as I said we've

prioritized that sense of belonging.

We think it's important.

We think those are the values that will drive us forward at a time that Manchester

and the world needs, that kind of thing.

But actually what does it feel like when you are in the museum?

So to be able to ask those questions and to get people coming back to us to say,

yeah, I did feel like I could be myself.

I did see myself represented for us, that's really important.

And have you got any examples to share of how visitors

have responded to your focus as well?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I've got this one quote, which I will have to caveat by saying it does

sound made up because it's so perfect.

But we did have one visitor who said to us, 'of all of the places I've

visited since I moved to Manchester, this is the first place where I

ever felt like I really belonged.'

So I think, you actually can't make up a quote that good, but

that really is what we try and do.

Again, I touched on the fact that we're a university museum, so we have

thousands of international students coming over to Manchester every year.

And again, through our Manchester Museum Celebrate Series, it

might be the first Diwali they've spent here since leaving home.

It might be the first time they've seen something or seen, their

culture, their community reflected back at them here in Manchester.

So if we can provide that place, we will continue to do that.

I'm sure there's lots of people listening who are impressed

by everything that we've been talking about today, and I'm sure that you

could give them some practical advice of how they might be able to create

more inclusive spaces, where belonging is at the heart of what they do.

So what advice would you give to anyone listening?

I think my number one thing would, don't

be afraid to invite people in.

That's my number one rule.

I'll give you a quote that an engagement professional gave to me a long time ago.

And it was that they worked in quite high profile museum in New York and

they led the engagement team and they said that they are often seen

as the hat within their organization.

So they're something that.

People put on at the end after they've already got dressed and it looks nice.

But they said they wanted to be the underwear.

They wanted to be the thing that people put on first, and then it dries

all of those decisions afterwards.

And I think, you know, that was actually nearly 10 years ago.

That person said that to me.

But I think that's what the museum does.

It starts with the perspective of actually, what do people think about this?

How can we involve them?

How can we have those conversations?

And you touched on earlier, Claire, you said something around.

The way that calculation is often used on temporary exhibitions

and there's quite a lot of fear.

I think there's often a perceived disconnect between the idea of

something being coated and its quality.

And I think for anyone who is worried about that coming to the museum, go and

have a look at the South Asia Gallery.

It was calculated in every way you can possibly imagine, but it is beautiful.

It's won awards for being in the best new gallery in the uk.

So the proof is in the pudding, but I often think the fear of what

will happen when you open those doors stops people from doing it.

And don't get me wrong, things will come up.

People will ask things that you can't do.

You know, they'll ask for you to make changes that you can't make.

But I think as long as you are open and honest with people, they'll

engage you in a way that's really beneficial for your organization.

Wonderful, practical advice there.

And tell me what's next for the museum?

What's coming up,

yeah, so we've got an exhibition that's just opened,

has been really popular, called The Cat That's Slept for a thousand

Years, which is our exhibition hall.

Probably the final piece of the redevelopment that

I haven't mentioned so far.

We opened a brand new large scale exhibition hall.

We've had a touring exhibition, which was called Golden Mummies of Egypt.

It was the first thing to go in there.

Then we had something called Wild, which was the first exhibition of that scale

that our team curated from scratch.

And it was really about people's engagement with the natural world.

And then this time we've done something slightly more fun for the summer.

So it's a giant 10 meter cat, cosmic sleeping cat I might had.

That's that's made itself home in the museum.

And it's a bit about care and it's a bit about joy, but it's really just

it's just something that's quite fun.

And then I can't say what our next exhibition is, but

it's connected to dinosaurs.

But aside from our exhibitions.

The next big focus for us is about our Africa collection.

So we've got about 25,000 items from Africa, a significant amount

of those which are unprovenanced.

So we don't know where they are from or what they are.

And so we're at the beginning stages of doing substantial bit of work

to actually think that through.

One of the ways that we're planning to do that is for something

that's gonna be called Africa Lab.

So Africa Lab is an area of the museum where my colleague Lucy is going to

be bringing out large numbers of items and then we're gonna be working with

local diaspora community to actually invite them into the museum to have.

Get them to help us work out what they are.

Which I know is a practice which has been done in a couple of other locations,

but we are really excited about that.

And the idea really there is that we will work towards a gallery

or a collection somewhere in the museum, but we've got quite a lot

of work to do before we get there.

Exciting lots happening then in the future as well.

So perhaps you could share with people how they can find out

more about you and get in touch.

Yeah, so we're about to launch a brand new website.

So, if you Google Manchester Museum, our existing website will come up.

I would say one of the things that we're really proud of is our social media.

So we have a really strong tone of voice that we've developed

over the last couple of years.

So if you go onto our Instagram, which is MCR Museum, you'll see you'll see

a breadth of very, person focused, story focused content on there.

Which really gives you an idea of who we are or.

Or what we're about.

But yeah, I'd really encourage anybody to just get in touch if

you are interested in hearing more.

We're always really up for conversations around good practice and that theme

of belonging is something that I think museums are thinking about more and more.

And, you know, we like to think we're at the forefront of that.

So yeah.

Very much up for conversations.

Anybody who'd like to have a chat.

Thank you so much Ciaron for coming on the podcast and for

talking about all the wonderful work that's happening at Manchester Museum.

Oh, thank you for having me.

So a huge thank you to Ciaron for being on the show today.

You can find out more about Ciaron and about Manchester Museum in the show notes.

Go to the show notes for all the relevant links for today's episode.

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Thank you so much for joining us.

See you next time.

Thank you for listening to The Art Engager podcast with me, Claire Bown.

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