The Happy Museum Affiliate Scheme is a new peer learning network for the sector
The scheme:

• Is a supportive and collaborative peer network, sharing practice and building learning
• Works with a positive frame for practical action which puts societal wellbeing at its heart.
• Encourages exploration of the particular role of museums and culture in addressing the big issues – such as climate change and social justice.
• Connects with relevant thinkers in fields such as economics, ecology and psychology
• Provides the opportunity to experiment, innovate, reflect, connect and play.

Read all about our first group of Affiliates.

Each Affiliate will take part in a tailored introductory workshop and a peer developed programme of seminars, exhibitions, workshops, placements and other events.

To keep the scheme light touch and financially, organisationally and individually sustainable, it will take ideas from the sharing economy (for example food sharing, museum B&B – where host organisations offer accommodation to visiting peers – and open source learning).  It will be underpinned by principles of give and gain.

We hope to engage further Affiliates in 2017 and beyond.

For more information sign up to the Happy Museum newsletter.

• Cardiff Museum
  Cardiff Museum
• Chester Zoo – affiliate
  Involvement in a Happy Museum commission facilitated Charlotte’s move from IWM to the zoo sector, where the drive to change things for the better is perhaps more explicit Chester Zoo’s ...
• Culture24 – affiliate
  Becoming a Happy Museum Affiliate Partner allows us (Culture24) to help museums better understand how to embrace digital technologies to meet the principles advocated for by The Happy Museum. We want ...
• Design Museum, London – affiliate
  The Design Museum re-opened in Kensington in November 2016.  Its vision is to inspire everyone to understand the value of design. As part of the museum’s 10 year development journey, ...
• Encounters Arts – Museum of Now – affiliate
  In the midst of ecologically challenging times it feels vital for Encounters Arts to be amongst organisations with a shared ethos and principles. In a recent partnership with Torbay Museum ...
• Leeds Museums and Galleries – affiliate
  Museums are about stories. Stories can be comfortable bedtime tales or challenging moral fables. Stories are social, and they are better shared. We want to be openly active in our ...
• Mental Health Museum, Wakefield – affiliate
  At the Mental Health Museum (MHM) we believe that access to real, powerful and tangible human experiences inspires change; from the privately personal, to a collective revolution. Our extraordinary collection ...
• Monmouthshire Museum Service – affiliate
  Our 2013 Weaving Well Being project, inspired by the Happy Museum Principles, led us (Monmouthshire Museum Service) to embrace the need for change within our organisation and gave us a ...
• Museum of Homelessness – affiliate
  The Museum of Homelessness (MoH) is the first of its kind in the UK and is being developed by people from all walks of life, including those who have been ...
• National Trust Midlands – affiliate
  Through five themed innovation groups involving forty diverse properties National Trust Midlands are developing more innovative practice in how we interpret our stories and places. Themes include; personal engagement, outdoor ...
• Oriel Yns Mon
  Oriel Yns Mon
• Oxford University Museums Partnership – affiliate
  Our work and approach in the Oxford University Museums (Ashmolean, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Museum of the History of Science) chimes closely with values expressed ...
• People’s History Museum, Manchester – affiliate
  People’s History Museum‘s manifesto, created as part of the FutureProof museums project, helps us to re-iterate our deep commitment to fostering a sense of community around the museum, to being ...
• Reading Museum – affiliate
  Reading museum‘s strategy towards the environment and well-being has developed as a direct result of the Happy Museum project and represents our commitment to be a museum that places these ...
• Seven Stories – the National Centre for Children’s Books – affiliate
  Seven Stories is an accredited museum with National styling, dedicated to British children’s literature in the UK. Children’s books and our collection holdings are at the heart of all our ...
• The Atkinson, Southport – affiliate
  The Atkinson bring together a unique range of activities in one building – theatre, music, dance, cinema, exhibitions, museum displays, retail and catering; as well as literacy development, People’s Network ...
• Toynbee Hall, London – affiliate
  A new HLF supported restoration and regeneration project at Toynbee hall is enabling us to pioneer new solutions to social problems, to become increasingly creative in how we develop ideas, ...
• Wrexham Museum – affiliate
  Wrexham Museum

* For examples of activity framed by Happy Museum thinking have a look at our selection of case studies.