Conferences of the Centre of Excellence for Museum Education
2023: Museums as Social Institutions – Trust and Communities
3rd International Conference of the Leibniz Centre of Excellence for Museum Education
November 30-December 1, 2023, at LEIZA in Mainz, Germany and online (hybrid event)
Museum practitioners and educational researchers from all over the world discussed two current topics in the museum world:
- The perception of museums and trust in museums as a source of information.
- How to build relationships with diverse local communities and engage them in museum work to make museums more relevant to the broader public.
The sessions were exchange-oriented, with a brief theoretical and practical introduction in the form of a keynote and several short presentations followed by an opportunity to exchange ideas in a plenary discussion. During a World Café on the second day of the conference, participants were able to exchange perspectives and experiences and develop common goals related to the conference topics.
Please click the links below for the press release and the video conference proceedings.
Press release 2023 conference
Video conference proceedings 2023
Conference booklet 2023 with programme, topics of the presentations and speaker profiles
2021: Audience Development – Theory and Practice
2nd International Conference of the Centre of Excellence for Museum Education
November 9 & 10, 2021, digital event
Building on the first international conference “Interdisciplinary Research on Museums as Informal Learning Spaces – New Ways and Concepts” in 2019 [link to info below] and based on the results of visitor studies in Leibniz research museums, two main themes were identified for the second international conference. The first focused on non-visitors to museums: who does not come to museums, and who from this target group can we still reach – and how? The second focused on socially disadvantaged and educationally disadvantaged groups and how museums can better reach and support them. The conference emphasized the interplay of theory and practice in both topics. Sessions were designed to provide theoretical input, e.g. through a keynote or short presentations, followed by case studies from museum practice presented in smaller breakout sessions.
2019: Interdisciplinary Research on Museums as Informal Learning Spaces – New Ways and Concepts
1st International Conference, December 18 & 19, 2019, Berlin, Germany
Museums are central places for the preservation of knowledge and for research. At the same time – and some would say primarily – museums are spaces where this knowledge can be passed on, communicated and shared. They have the potential to act as hubs of public dialogue, where a public that increasingly relies on fact-based and discursive knowledge has the opportunity to gain insights, develop its own ideas and opinions, and encounter people who challenge its fixed view of the world. Yet much is still unknown about why and what people learn in museums and how they interact with the exhibition space.
Our first international conference explicitly addressed the museum as an informal learning space. Researchers from around the world discussed questions such as: What skills do visitors bring with them to museums? Why do they choose to visit museums in the first place? And who doesn’t visit museums? All of these questions are intended to help develop the museum into a place where people are invited to participate in expanding our knowledge of the world.
