‘Imagination, enthusiasm, understanding: all these have parts to play in stirring up again the ferment of creativity out of which our museums originally grew.’
In Priceless Heritage (1977), ex-museum Director Ian Finlay mused on the future of museums: how they would keep responding to (constant) change, and remain relevant to the audiences of ‘today’, without simply changing for change’s sake. Fifty years on, we face a whole host of new challenges. But if—as Finlay suggested—the answer might lie in creativity, the question remains: what should ‘creativity’ look like in university museums in 2025?
With such questions and challenges in mind, we invite you to join us for the UMG Annual Conference in Cambridge this May, for a day of discussions around practices of ‘Innovation and Renewal’ in university museums. The conference will feature plenaries, panel discussions, excursions to Cambridge Museums, and plenty of time to network and catch up with colleagues. We are all so busy with the day-to-day that we want to make some room for Finlay’s ‘imagination’ and ‘creativity’ to surface: to step back, engage with the challenges and opportunities we face, and imagine creative solutions together.
We are looking for papers on practices of ‘Innovation and Renewal’, broadly conceived. Papers will be short (10-minute) provocations, which will serve as starting points for wider group discussions. We encourage you to approach these central themes across any aspect of your work, from curation to research, teaching, community-building and/or community engagement, inclusivity, access, your museum’s civic role, etc. The following is a non-exhaustive list of possible topics:
- Strategic significance of innovation and renewal: what do these words mean for our work, and where might they take it in the future?
- Importance and/or challenges of developing innovative practices for university museums
- How can the idea of ‘renewal’ help us to rethink how we approach and use our collections?
- What are we doing in the digital realm? How are we managing to use AI in our work?
- Innovation and ethics: how do questions of ethical practice intersect with innovative strategies?
- Limits of innovation and renewal: is innovation an inherently worthwhile value or practice? Conversely, what might we have to give up, or stop doing, to enable new thinking and practices?
Overall, our aims for the Conference are to:
- Share examples of successful innovation and renewal in our institutions;
- Discuss whether innovation and renewal are useful concepts to organise future work around, and whether they could help us to make our cases to our stakeholders more effectively;
- Discuss upcoming or potential strategies for innovation and renewal;
- Consider partnerships within and outside the UMG;
- Create a portfolio of case-studies for publication on the UMG website.
The deadline for proposals is Monday 14th April, 12pm. Please send your paper title and abstract (of c. 150-200 words) to umg@fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk, along with your institution and position, contact details, and a short (50 word max.) biography of your speaker(s).
The conference will be held at Trinity College, Cambridge, with further details to follow in due course. Please note that there will not be any parking available, and that Trinity is either a 30-minute walk, 10-minute taxi ride, or 20-minute bus journey from Cambridge’s train station.
Tickets are limited, so please book yours here soon. Do spread the word among your colleagues, and we look forward to welcoming you in Cambridge!
