Welcome to All Shook Up! 

Join Jamie Everitt and Steve Miller officially welcome and provide the opening speech for the 2020 online festival. 

Jamie Everitt, Regional Manager, SHARE Museums East & Steve Miller, Norfolk County Council Director of Culture & Heritage, Head of Norfolk Museums Service & Head of Norfolk Arts Service. 

What has the Black Lives Matter movement got to do with museums?

In this talk Errol explores the impact of the movement on the UK museums sector, discusses why museums should pay attention, and introduces Culture&’s Black Lives Matter Charter for heritage organisations.

Dr Errol Francis, CEO, Culture& 

Errol was appointed CEO of Culture& in 2016. He has substantial experience of community engagement around mental health and the arts with minority groups and was formerly Joint Programme Lead at the Sainsbury Centre of Mental Health and Programme Manager at the Department of Health Race for Health programme. He was programme manager at Arts Council England’s Inspire Curatorial Fellowship Programme; Head of Arts at the Mental Health Foundation and artistic director of the highly acclaimed Anxiety Arts Festival London 2014, Acting Out Nottingham 2015 and Hysteria 2017-2018 public engagement programmes. He is Visiting Professor at the University of West London. Errol was awarded his PhD from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where his research focused on postcolonial artistic responses to museums. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of West London in 2017.

The ‘Emotional Turn’ in Museum Technology

Prof Ross Parry, University of Leicester 

This year something else happened with technology in museums …

As well as the institutional ‘pivoting’, the enlivened online provision, and the new confidence to experiment with digital, another thing changed. We started to think about ourselves. We found space and time to acknowledge that actually it’s people, not technology, that makes digital transformation happen in museums. We used that great capacity for empathy in our sector, that ability to centre people, to recognise that building digital confidence in museums requires us to think with emotional intelligence about leading change.

This was the affective side to our digital journey this year. This, is our ‘emotional turn’ in museum technology. And now it’s happened, we won’t (and we shouldn’t) go back.

If Walls Could Talk – What if they were to tell you some of the experiences of your disabled visitors?

Is it possible to design a fully accessible building?  How do you persuade people this is important to prioritise and fund?

Katherine has provided some digital goody bags:

• Women’s Equality Party, Venue Access Checklist
• UEA Universal design and access to all 2016
• Toilet Audit List

Dr Katherine Deane, Senior Lecturer & Access Ambassador, University of East Anglia 

I am a wheelchair user with a mild visual impairment. I shake sometimes and have to work around a lot of fatigue and brain fog. I am also a Senior Lecturer in Health Research where I investigate how best to support people with disabilities and long term conditions to maximise their wellbeing. And I am the Access Ambassador to the University of East Anglia. In the last five years I have transformed the campus from a concrete jungle to one of the most accessible campuses in the UK.

Motion Sickness? Museums and the Future

If not now, when will museums change and accelerate their thinking… and what might this look like?

Esme will reflect on recent experiences and aspirations at the Manchester Museum to embrace a civic mission and build a culture of creativity, inclusion and care.  

Esme Ward – Director, Manchester Museum

Esme Ward is Director of Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester, with a commitment to lead the world’s most inclusive, imaginative and caring museum. Esme is leading a leading a significant £14 million capital development transformative project, hello future to renew its creative and civic mission and transform the museum and into a larger and more extraordinary place to visit

Previously, as Head of Learning and Engagement at the Whitworth and Manchester Museum, Esme led the growth of learning and public programmes, embedding award-winning health and culture, early years and age-friendly work.  She remains the Strategic Lead for Culture for Greater Manchester Ageing Hub and is overseeing the creation of a new national agency, CADA to support the sector to become more age friendly and tackle ageism.