We are excited to announce that we have been successful in our application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for Growing Together: Embedding Inclusion and Collaboration in our Museums  

Growing Together will build on the work from Travelling Together, which ran from April 2023 to March 2024.  Travelling Together involved collective work to develop understanding and confidence around Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in museums – for workforces, programmes and audiences – and provided grants to museums to take tangible actions.  

Travelling Together participant museums will return to the project, providing opportunities for these museums to continue to learn from each other and take their next steps. Importantly, it will also fund a whole new cohort of up to eight museums.  

Thanks to this funding, we are able to support a new network of Champions too – individuals working or volunteering in museums who want to harness their interests or draw on lived experience. These Champions will use their insights to facilitate new peer networks which will explore what good practice in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion looks like.   

Eleanor Moore, Sustainable Volunteering Officer and project lead, said 

We know that museums want to make the progress needed to better reflect our society and our shared histories.  We look forward to working with museums and individuals across the South West on Growing Together and to seeing real changes in confidence, skills and perspectives. It’s a privilege to be entrusted with the means to carry out this work and we look forward to getting started – watch this space!

The project will run from October 2024 to April 2026 and will be led with the support of an experienced steering group, who will collectively provide challenge and steer to this work. The total value of the project is £230,000. The project benefits from aligned and cash match funding from Arts Council England and Local Authority support to MDSW, to a value of almost £50,000. 

To find out more, email [email protected] adding one of the following subject lines; museum participation, champion role, peer networks, introductory EDI training. Please copy into the email your local, place-based MDO. 

To encourage more museums in the learning and practice developed as part of Travelling Together and Growing Together, we have launched a free eLearning course for museums who want to build their understanding of EDI.  

The EDI Roadmap has been developed with expert consultants, a project steering group who bring lived experience and EDI expertise, while working alongside a group of museum user testers. Through six modules, learners will discover how good EDI practice can be implemented in all aspects of their museum, from leadership and recruitment through to front of house and collections.