MUSEUMS CHANGE LIVES Wa les At this time of continued uncertainty, For so many museums this is embedded Our shared alongside endemic inequalities and in their DNA and driven by a deep sense divisions, more museums, small and large, of purpose. What emerges from the with different audiences and governance, examples here for me is that museums commitment are stepping up to the plate, using their are becoming places with porous walls, fabulous collections and creativity to working with communities and partners to and passion build socially engaged practice. They of all shapes and sizes to harness our are supporting people with dementia, fabulous collections and amazing spaces, for Museums combatting loneliness by bringing people led by a crystal clear goal of changing together, offering training and learning lives for the better. What brilliant opportunities, engaging with children people. What inspiring stories. What Change Lives is and families, and celebrating Welsh incredible collections. more important culture, language and heritage. Please do share your own examples with us so that we can draw on them now than ever. too in order to inspire others. Maggie Appleton President (2018-21) Museums Association 02 MUSEUMS CHANGE LIVES WALES FOREWORD Powerful, innovative examples of Welsh museums creating positive change for individuals are a network of and communities through museum collections, projects, activities and important community programming are happening across Wales. Museums look after Wales’s resources and the cultural memory – the objects and stories that inspire us to learn from our past, case studies in this in order to understand our present and booklet demonstrate make a better future. Day in, day out, often with no great fanfare, Welsh how much value they museums support their communities, and help deliver key social and bring to Wales and government agendas in areas like community cohesion, the economy, how vital they are health and wellbeing, learning, and to their localities. skills development. Welsh museums certainly change lives – and we hope the case studies here demonstrate just how crucial they are to communities across the country. Victoria Rogers President (2016-21) Federation of Museums and Art Galleries of Wales 03 MUSEUMS CHANGE LIVES WALES MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION INSPIRING MUSEUMS TO CHANGE LIVES 01. 02. 03. Enhancing health Creating better places Inspiring engagement, and wellbeing to live and work reflection and debate • Museums enhance our quality of life and • Museums help us to value the places • Museums work with the public as active improve our mental and physical health. where we live, work and visit and help us and creative participants in the life of the • Museums work in partnership with to understand where we have come from. museum – using it as a space for exchanging health and wellbeing organisations to • Museums create a sense of belonging opinions, experiences, ideas and knowledge. support a range of people in society by engaging with communities and • Museums help us to understand and with different needs. encouraging active public participation negotiate the complex world around us, • Meaningful participation and volunteering in decision-making. encouraging us to reflect on contemporary promotes wellbeing and self-confidence • Museums use engagement, learning and challenges such as discrimination, conflict, and can broaden the horizons of collections to generate understanding poverty and climate change. participants, the museum and the public. within and between different groups • Museums use their research and collections and communities in society. to challenge assumptions, foster debate • Museums generate partnerships with and motivate people to contribute to community groups, charities and third-sector positive change in the world. They are organisations to create spaces that are not neutral spaces. open and accessible to all. • Museums inspire learning and creativity for children and adults and work actively to ensure that a broad and diverse audience can access these opportunities at any stage in life. 05 MUSEUMS CHANGE LIVES WALES 01. ENHANCING HEALTH AND WELLBEING By working in partnership with Arts The next stage of the project will be Council Wales, and with support from to bring poetry to the walls, and new the Welsh Government, Amgueddfa writing is being commissioned from Cymru devised Celf ar y Cyd, a series two Welsh poets, Hannan Issa and Elan of ambitious visual art projects that Grug. Inspired by the paintings, the challenge us to share the art collection poetry will be written to offer fresh across Wales during the crisis. By perspectives and new ways of thinking working with health boards across about art, the natural landscape, and Wales, our brief was to make people the importance it has to us all, feel at home, and to act quickly so particularly in hard times. that the spaces would be ready to Amgueddfa Cymru continues to hold receive their first patients. conversations with health boards across As the Covid-19 pandemic worsened Wales to find new approaches to ensure over the winter, and the pressure on that the art collection can be used by NHS staff increased, we continued to NHS teams and patients in a way that take the art collection into hospitals works for them, both online and in to provide inspiration and solace for the workplace. staff and patients. At the start of February 2021, a new Staff Haven facility opened at the UHW Health Hospital site in Cardiff, partly funded through a charity run by Welsh ART IN COVID-19 When the Covid-19 pandemic began in footballer Gareth Bale and his family, 2020, Public Health Wales announced to support NHS staff wellbeing. FIELD HOSPITALS that it would build field hospitals across We invited hospital staff to choose AMGUEDDFA CYMRU Wales to double NHS capacity. Unlike which artworks they would like to see permanent hospitals, these buildings – NATIONAL MUSEUM and overwhelmingly, the favourite theme were repurposed, sometimes temporary was nature. A selection of paintings was WALES spaces that have one thing in common, made which attempt to bring the magic the walls were bare. Amgueddfa Cymru of the outdoors, indoors, using huge – National Museum Wales’s challenge reproductions of the paintings which was to transform some of these stretch from floor to ceiling. spaces into art galleries. 07 MUSEUMS CHANGE LIVES WALES INTERGENERATIONAL Across the whole of the UK, the The Memory Café project has Makes those living number of people living with Dementia also resulted in an expansion of MEMORY CAFES is increasing. Monmouthshire Museums our programming for people living with dementia feel MONMOUTHSHIRE Service has been looking for new ways with dementia, including creative MUSEUMS SERVICE to include people living with Dementia workshops and partnerships with human again. in its programmes, building upon our local health authority. our successful volunteer-run Are we making a difference? Carer of participant on the reminiscence programme. We hope so. creative workshops course When we were approached by our local secondary school to help deliver the Welsh Baccalaureate Community Volunteering Challenge, it seemed an ideal opportunity to create a project that brought young people and people living with dementia together: The programme is an intergenerational memory cafes. Our first cohort of 10 young people were exceptional template for trained to use handling objects as other inter-generational conversation triggers and provided with Dementia Friends awareness sessions. projects to follow and The students worked together with will be used as an museum staff to research and organise a series of two hour themed memory example of such to other cafes that included music, handling Dementia Friends groups objects, costume and afternoon tea. throughout the UK. The cafes have been well attended and received, and have also benefited the students, some of whom received a Ian Thomas young volunteers award and stayed on Alzheimer’s Society to mentor the next cohort. 08 MUSEUMS CHANGE LIVES WALES BUILDING A In November 2019 Cynon Valley Museum It was launched following a period of unknown spaces and potential for in partnership with local charity, Cynon consultation and workshop sessions sensory overload. PARTNERSHIP Valley Pals, introduced the Sunflower with the charity, with Cynon Valley Pals Today the museum continues to work Lanyard Scheme to the museum. sharing their lived experiences and FOR CHANGE with Cynon Valley Pals as part of a Originally implemented across airports, answering questions about the scheme. CYNON VALLEY project funded by the People’s Health the scheme is a more discrete way for The success of this launch has created a Trust. The museum is working with local MUSEUM staff to acknowledge members of the successful relationship with the charity. families supported by the charity whose public who may need additional support The museum has built on the scheme voices will decide how the project on their visit. The scheme was introducing sensory information into its unfurls, while developing new skills and introduced to the museum by Cynon galleries. The signs are designed to give continuing to engage with the museum Valley Pals, who were advocating for its an expectation of what is to come in the and local community. use across the community. museum, reducing the anxiety of The partnership remains one of learning and exchange. Today we are continuing to learn and build upon best practices. Through this working partnership we have done more for the museum and the community than both could ever have done alone. 09 MUSEUMS CHANGE LIVES WALES I think by having a project generated 97 oral history recordings with 85 individuals – all person with a learning of which are now archived at St Fagans disability present it can – and nine temporary exhibitions in regional museums and public spaces help put people at ease, across Wales. not just the former Reflecting on her role as project officer and interviewer, Sara Pickard patients but the support from Mencap Cymru said: “We felt that staff because we have having someone like myself as part of the interview would help us get the best shared experiences as interview possible.