Community engagement supports museums to develop relationships with audiences, generate visitors, become more relevant, build trust with audiences, and give audiences a sense of ownership over a museum and its collections. It also provides an invaluable opportunity to understand audience needs and desires, and design services and content that meet these needs.
This live training taking place over two sessions on Zoom:
Friday 21 November 2025, 10:00 – 12;00
Friday 28 November 2025, 10:00 – 12:00
Booking closes at 17:00 on Thursday 13 November 2025.
The training will help participants develop confidence and skills in leading and supporting community engagement in museums.
Participants will:
- Learn how to strategically plan community engagement work, so it aligns with the vision, mission, and objectives for your museum and exhibition programme
- Learn about different types of audiences and identify which audience(s) you’d like to engage
- Understand different types of community engagement and identify which type(s) work best for your museum and audiences
- Understand how to build community-focused museums and exhibition programmes
- Learn about ethics and community engagement
- Learn how to identify and approach partners who can support community engagement*
- Develop facilitation skills to support community engagement
- Learn about tools to support evaluation community engagement
* Please note, The Exhibitions Group delivers additional training on Working in Partnership & Writing an Agreement that provides further advice and guidance on working in partnership.
Taking place over two online sessions via Zoom, participants will have the opportunity to work as a whole group and in small groups in breakout rooms, with time for discussions and peer sharing and learning.Â
The number of participants is limited to facilitate online learning and participation. Each session is recorded and made available to participants (unedited and not available to download) for one week after the training finishes. The slides and training materials are sent to participants once week in advance of the training starting.
Automated closed captions are provided as standard on Zoom. Live closed captions and/or BSL can be provided if requested 3 weeks in advance of the first training session.Â
Please book one place per person, even if colleagues choose to join from the same computer.
We run each of our virtual trainings once a year. After this training in autumn 2025, we next anticipate running this training in autumn 2026.
The training will be delivered by Dr. Laura Crossley, a museums consultant and coach. Laura has 16 years’ experience in the museums and heritage sector, both in in-house and freelance consultancy roles. She specialises in engagement, consultation, co-creation, and audience development, as well as interpretation, evaluation, and workplace culture development. She is a strong advocate for audiences and champions practice that enables and empowers audiences to shape exhibitions and public programmes.
Laura has an AHRC-funded PhD in Museum Studies (2018) from the University of Leicester, in which she researched community engagement practice – including consultation and co-creation – in museums during the age of austerity, specifically focusing on how to create sustainable community engagement practice.
