 Welcome everybody to NEMO's first-ever Digital European Museum Conference. I'm really excited to see so many people joining from, well, everywhere in the world actually. This is one of the advantages that we have when we are organizing a digital conference. My name is Julia Pagel. I am the Secretary General of NEMO, the Network of European Museum Organizations. Over the next four days, we have organized panels, webinars, workshops, digital tours, and social events for you. But before we start the panel, I would like to give you a quick technical brief or, as we call it, the netiquette for the days to come. Your camera will always be turned off and only panelists are visible. During the questions and answer session, we ask you to please write your questions in the chat. You can also get our attention by raising your hand. The conference presentations and the Q&As are recorded. So without further ado, I will give the floor now to NEMO's Chairman, David Villano, to open this conference. David, the floor is yours. Dear colleagues, dear NEMO members, it's a pleasure to welcome you to this European Museum conference. I'm David Villon, Chair of NEMO, and have the honor of opening the 28th Annual Conference of the Network of European Museum Organizations. The 28th, but as Julia says, our first digital annual conference. We got close to 1,600 registration from more than 80 countries. So thank you very much to all of you dear participants to be an active part of this event. I'm currently in Berlin in the headquarter of the German Museum Association and you are at home or in your office, I guess, all over the world. But we would have loved to be in Rieke today. It is the place where we had been invited in the heart of the European capital of culture. And I want to thank Rieke 2020 for the invitation. So we are not in Rieke, but the spirit of Rieke will accompany us during this conference. We have indeed a lot of great content from Rieke in the program. The coronavirus situation is keeping us at home and many museums are closed the second time. We are, of course, very unhappy about this situation and we'll talk about the impact of COVID-19 on museums on Thursday. But our conference theme is expending beyond the current crisis under the title, Museums Making Sense. The conference will explore the important role museums play in making complex matters tangible and comprehensible. Museums are places where complex interrelations are displayed, are explained and discussed. Multi-perspective approaches help us appreciate different points of view and understand complexity. Museums can also work as innovative labs to test different scenarios, giving the opportunity to find answers to very important questions like how do we want to live, how could the future look like. So I believe and I hope you too that museums are highly needed and necessary because they are making sense. Today, and during four days, 50 speakers from 15 different countries are going to inspire us to tackle complex and difficult topics through technique, such storytelling, museum labs, change processes and multi-perspective thinking. And it's why I wish you and everybody a great conference. Now I'm very honored to give the words to Maria Gabrielle, our EU commissioner for culture and for innovation, research, education and youth. Thank you that you are here, dear Maria Gabrielle, your commitment for culture, your personal commitment for culture is very important to us. So the stage is yours. Thank you, thank you very much, dear David, dear minister, dear mayor of the city of Rieke, dear Irina, dear friends. It is a great pleasure for me to be together with you today to open this annual conference and allow me first to thank Nimel for the invitation, for your engagement and for your commitment. I would like to say at the beginning, dear David, museums have an essential role in our societies. They preserve history and culture, they educate, entertain and inspire. They are a source of unity since they act as spaces for social interaction and reflection. And this has always been my conviction. And thanks to Nimel, I recently had a unique experience which has reinforced it. Participating in a political internship at the Museikos Children's Museum in Sofia allowed me to discover a new, important phases of museums to have a firsthand experience of the behind the scenes operation of this museum. And it makes you realize how complex and at the same time comprehensive a museum is. Through well-planned exhibitions and education programs, museum address and raise awareness on key societal issues. They help visitors build their knowledge and understanding of complex matters. So yes, I believe museums make sense. And maybe this title that you have chosen for this conference, it's more timely than ever. We know that museums are facing unprecedented difficulties. And I would like to congratulate Nimel for their report on the impact of COVID-19 on museums and for maintaining a constant dialogue with the sector during the pandemic. We see throughout Europe that many museums are forced to close again following a resurgence of the virus. And this conference is therefore very timely as it brings together European Museum professionals to exchange information and good practices. I would like to thank the organizers of the conference and the team of Rijeka 2020. Rijeka 2020 is doing its best and showing its true strong spirit. As you know before the summer, we propose that the two European capital of cultures 2020 are given the possibility to prolong their cultural programs until April 21. Despite the difficulties, museums have also been part of the solution. The Nimel survey shows how museums strengthened and increased their online activities, offering virtual tours and exhibitions, and expanding their online collections, increasing their use of social media to maintain a connection with their audience. By doing so, you contributed to the mental health and well-being of all of us. Because the pandemic showed once more how relevant culture and cultural heritage are in our lives. For all these great services to society, museums need and deserve our support. On our side, this will continue notably via our instruments such as Erasmus Plus, Creative Euro program and Horizon Euro program. You certainly heard the good news of last week, thanks to the European Parliament and additional financial support will come for these three programs on top of their financial envelope. For me, it will be very important and I count on you, on your ideas, on your experience to create synergies among these three instruments. And museums, more than any other sector, are at the center of the tree, culture, education and research contributing to the Knowledge Square. Beyond these instruments, museums will continue to benefit from funding from the European Regional Development Fund. On the later, I would like to inform you of my current work with the Committee of the Regents. Following a meeting with its president, we decided to establish the joint action plan for the next two years. That will establish a list of 26 actions in four priority areas, including specific actions on culture. I will present it at the end of this month and I invite you to follow these closely, especially because I see the potential of local and regional museums. I would also like to invite you to work with us to turn our European Green Deal into a societal and cultural project, using this unique power that you have reaching everyone and engaging our citizens. So you understand it, I count on you for our European Bauhaus. So, in conclusion, there are many uncertainties linked to the impact of the pandemic, but allow me to finish with an inspirational quote from the famous Irish Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney. If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere. Thank you very much. Thank you, Maria Gabrielle. You said in this crisis, museums are part of the solution. Yes, we believe it and we do our best. Thank you very much for your support. I'd like now to invite Nina Obulien Korzynek, Croatian Minister of Culture. It's a great honor that you are here. Thank you very much and thank you for this invitation, Mr. Maria, the mayor, the participants of the MIMO conference. Of course, we all regret that we were unable to meet in the archives as it was planned, but this year the circumstances are as they are as we know and we have to live with it. And I think that museums have shown that they know how to live with it and how to contribute to their communities greatly in these circumstances by their activities, by creating a certain sense of security, as well as by their endeavors to enable the social and cultural life in their communities and broader to continue. We have witnessed that museum employees have strived to adapt the presentation of museum collections and design new communication channels to the public in creative and innovative way. In addition to their regular activities that include the protection preservation and of the museum material as well as the church. And all of this in these times has to a great extent been enabled, as we know by the use of new technologies which have significantly facilitated access to museum content, as well as the involvement of a wider audience, especially children and young people, which was particularly important in a situation of the lockdown where across the world, our children and young people were at home. And this opportunity exists to open direct communication between museums, such as museum experts and the public with the aim of making museums a type of knowledge, generating laboratories as based on theme principles of Florida. And in this way, creativity is encouraged, and the interest in cultural content is evoked, even during this difficult condition of a major health global crisis. Thereby, the message is sent that social and cultural life must not stop. And this is where museums and museum professionals have been very vocal in the past few months. Minister, may I interrupt you for a second? Would you be able to turn on your camera? We don't see you. Very sorry to interrupt. I'm sorry, I haven't turned on but I don't know for what reason it obviously doesn't work. It's on all the time. Okay, thanks. Aware of our responsibility, the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia has recognized its role both in the development of proactive policies, as well as in the development and implementation of a series of measures aimed at mitigating the negative consequences of the pandemic, and supporting the relaunch of cultural life. Given the situation, it is necessary, in my opinion, to continue the exchange of all forms of museums content, be it by organizing, visiting exhibitions between different museums, or rather, by developing alternative ways of presenting museum material and communicating with potential audience, either in the form of interactive online contact as virtual exhibitions or in other ways, to be adequate to the museum professions. I have to say that in Croatia, since the beginning of May, all museums are open and we intend to keep them open throughout the crisis because the measures that we are implementing have proven to be safe for the visitors of the museums. We are, of course, keeping a limited number of visitors, but we are managing to maintain all the programs and we continue with all the financing for exhibitions as well as for other museum programs. As I said at the beginning, we were supposed to be in Rijeka this week, the Irish city of Galway and the Croatian city of Rijeka have been particularly hit by this crisis and have faced the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic as well. The two cities were largely impeded from implementing their programs as planned and the epidemiological measures continuously affected active citizen participation in both cities. However, I'm particularly proud that we managed in spite of everything last Friday to open the new museum, the museum of the city of Rijeka in the former sugar factory, which was a great celebration for the European capital of culture project but also for the museum community in Rijeka and beyond. At the end, I would like to say that in the light of all these circumstances it seems necessary to emphasize the importance of strengthening risk management mechanisms, both in the field of cultural heritage as a whole and for museums specifically, while taking into account the challenges of both pandemics, as well as natural disasters such as earthquake, which in Croatia we have been witnessing recently, all in order to identify and apply new and innovative tools for fostered identification, preservation and mitigation of all types of risk. Together at all levels, we need to build towards an even higher level of public confidence in heritage institutions and create a more modern basis for their sustainability, as well as the future growth supportive of the purpose and meeting that museums have in our society. I sincerely hope that in the coming days you will have fruitful discussions and of course I would like once this epidemic is finished to invite you to visit Rijeka, I'm sure that our colleagues in Rijeka will facilitate not online but face to face gatherings that will make up for the time that we have lost in the past few months. Thank you very much and enjoy the conference. Thank you very much Nina Obuyen-Korsinek. Of course we want to visit Rijeka when it will be possible. Thank you. Even if your picture was not visible, your speech was very impressive. Thank you very much that you have highlighted that the museum professionals are agile and creative and that we are all ready to welcome visitors, even if the museum are not everywhere, open like in Croatia. Thank you very much. I'd like now to open the floor to the mayor of the city of Rijeka, Vojko Obersne. Dear Commissioner Gabriel, Dear Minister Obuyen-Korsinek, Mr Vjom, all other participants, first of all I would like to thank the entire NEMO network for organizing this conference, despite the difficult circumstances and challenging situation in Europe and the world caused by the pandemic. Also I would like to emphasize the fact that the title of European Capital of Culture is in Rijeka proudly holds this year, a challenging year to all of us, resulted in significant changes and positive result in further development as well as the perception of Rijeka and its surrounding area, not only in Croatia but throughout Europe. Rijeka 2020 European Capital of Culture program continued despite the fact that we had to reduce it. There are many international conferences such as NEMO planned in our city this year, however we were not able to organize them in these conditions. Therefore I have to say I'm very glad that Rijeka is able to be at least online co-host of this year's NEMO conference. But that as it many in this challenging condition, the capital intervention of the Rijeka 2020 project continued. One of those important projects for Rijeka and the entire museum community is most centrally, certainly the opening of the new city museum in the ex-sugar refinery administration building, the so-called Sugar Palace, which was opened on Friday. Our minister said something about that before. The renovation of the Sugar Palace is a part of the future art district located in the close vicinity of the city center in the former industrial complex of the Benchage factory, which produced motor equipment during the 10th century in Rijeka. Earlier in that same location, the sugar refinery and Tobaker factory were active during 18th and 19th century in Rijeka. But it is not the first rehabilitated part of industrial heritage transformed in the place of culture and art. We began the works of the future art district in the Benchage complex in 2017 with the opening of museum of modern and contemporary art that was relocated in the building right next to the new city museum. Also in the same district, the construction of the children house, the first of its kind in Croatia, is almost finished. It will be a space for children that the cultural institution of the city of Rijeka will be used, using for various kinds of activities for children and young people in Rijeka. And the works on the fourth cultural institution, the future home of the new city library in the same complex are well underway as we speak. What I wish to say is that despite of challenges upon us, despite the reduced program, we continued with our mission to create a modern urban cultural legacy in our city, creating new programs, new activities, modern way of education and awareness. That is the aim of the European Capital of Culture project, as well it is one of the main strategic development line in the city of Rijeka. And I dare say that is most central in the aim of your network, NIMO, whatever the circumstances may be. In the end, I hope you will have chance to visit Rijeka next year, when the situation I hope will be more promising to all of us, and see the art district in Rijeka and much more what our Capital of Culture has to offer. Thank you once again for organizing this conference, even if it is online, and I wish you successful and productive conference. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much dear Mayor of the city of Rijeka, Vorko or Bersonell. Thank you to be co-host of this conference, even if it's only, it's an online conference, but of course we are going, if it's not done, to visit the art district at least in Rijeka. Now I give the last word of this introduction to Irena Kregar Segota, she is the CEO of Rijeka 2020 European Capital of Culture. Good morning and welcome to the NIMO conference. I really salute all of our participants and very happy to hear that there is more than 1000 people that has joined the conference from so many countries around the world. Good morning to, of course, Commissioner Gabrielle, Minister Oberlin Korczak, Mayor of Bersonell and the dear team of NIMO, David, Julia and other members who really made this conference possible in these difficult times. I started talking about this conference with Julia in 2017 and at that moment none of us could have dreamed that something like this would be happening around the world. We were planning a huge conference, a physical conference to happen in Rijeka, to show our city, to show what we have been doing, what we have been preparing for the year 2020. Unfortunately, we are here where we are. European Capital of Culture, of course, is a moment to present our wonderful work to arts and culture, infrastructural changes in the city, but I would also say that it's a very important moment for all of us to reflect about our cultural policies, local, regional and national, to think how we are connecting with our audiences, with our communities, how are we working with our volunteers, how are we reaching to cultural and creative sector, to capacity building, etc. The COVID situation proved that this is maybe more important than ever, and I am really thankful that NIMO helped us in this mission. It really helped us reflect on all of those things. As a very relevant and important European network, NIMO was always a lighthouse of new ideas, new trends, new reflections, new ties, not just around Europe but globally. We really profited from this connection, and as I said, it helped us, it helped us in this difficult time in this COVID situation. Of course, we regret that this conference is not physically happening in Rijeka. I would have loved to host all of you and to show you around the city with our wonderful team, to show you our museums, our programs, but nevertheless, I hope that this will be possible next year and the years beyond. Museums, of course, have been one of the backbones of our program. All of our museums in the city are involved in the Rijeka 2020 cultural and creative programs with the wonderful exhibitions. And one more time, it proved that museums are resilient, that museums can adapt quickly, that museums have special ties with their audiences and that they are always ready to adapt and to change even further. Of course, museums have a very special role and it will have a role after this year. And I'm sure that the lessons that we have learned during 2020, regardless of how difficult it has been, and it will serve us to better our work and to create even stronger ties with our audiences with our communities. We have also prepared activities that you will be able to visit online, namely, despite the fact that you will not be physically in Rijeka, you will be able to see, to have a sneak preview or just a taste of the two of the wonderful exhibitions that are on in Rijeka right now as part of the Rijeka 2020 program. The first exhibition is Fiuma Fantastika, who in a very special way talks about the last hundred and fifty years of the history of our city, also narrating about history of Europe through that. The other exhibition is something completely different. Its main star is a cartoon character, Professor Baltazar, whose main quality is solving problems in a nonviolent, creative, innovative way, exactly the qualities that we and the features that we all need and use nowadays in your professional and private life. I hope you will all join these two exhibitions and through them see at least a small part of what we have to offer in Rijeka. To close my speech one more time, I would like to thank the NIMA team, Julia in particular, they really helped us build on the European dimension of our whole project, and this collaboration will remain one of the important legacies of Rijeka 2020 European Capital Culture, and I'm sure it will continue in the years to come. They wish you all a wonderful conference. Thank you very much Irina for your welcome speech. You said this crisis is a time, it's a great time actually to reflect policies and the connection to our audience. I think it's exactly what we are going to do in the next days. So once again, welcome to all of you dear participants on behalf of the board and of the office of NIMA, I wish you great conference days with fruitful discussions. I'm ready now to open the conference topic museums making sense with our keynote speaker Richard Sandel. My colleague Aida Vesic who is a fellow board member at NIMA and the secretary general of the Balkan Museum Network will introduce and moderate the session. Thank you David. Good afternoon everyone it's immense pleasure to have this role sitting only 500 kilometers away from the ECA. I was so happy that the NIMA conference the 28th conference is coming to my region, and I was so so happy to put a spotlight also on museum members and actors in this region. It's an immense pleasure to introduce the opening speech of Professor Richard Sandel and moderate the discussion that will follow the presentation titled museums in a role divided. Let me do a quick introduction of the speaker, even though I'm sure the majority of the participants have read Richard's books and are following his work closely. Richard Sandel is a professor on museum studies and director of the research center for museums and galleries at the University of Leicester. Through this research center he works collaboratively with cultural institutions on projects that generate new insights and advanced thinking and practice around their social roles, responsibilities and agency. His presentations have shaped major new gallery developments such as being human at the welcome collection in London and prejudice and pride with the National Trust. These are some of the examples that Richard will talk about in his presentation. Let me remind you all participants are dear participants from all over the world that you are invited to ask questions in the chat function of the zoom during the presentation. We have a conference team member from Nemo that will closely monitor the chat giving the opportunity for several of your questions to be answered during our questions and answers session that will follow the presentation. Richard, the zoom is on you. Thank you very much, Aida and Nemo and Riecker 2020 all the speakers this morning. I can't wait to get to Riecker and visit in person, but thanks for inviting me to speak with you today. It's really good to be here and good morning everyone. In recent years, many of us have found it increasingly difficult to come to terms with the seemingly polarized world we find ourselves in and to work out how to operate within it. On all sorts of issues that we each care deeply about, we encounter people with wholly opposing views, some of which we find morally repugnant, and we find it difficult sometimes impossible to open up dialogue with them to empathize or to understand why they think the way they do. We surround ourselves with like minded people and together we express our anger and our despair at a world divided. Increasingly polarized society has posed significant new challenges for many museums. Over the past 20 or 30 years, museums of all kinds have sought to become more audience focused. We ask communities what they want from museums. We listen to visitors and non visitors. We seek the views of our publics and we use the insights we glean from surveys from focus groups from participatory projects to shape our decisions. Audience centered work has become a cornerstone of progressive museum practice, and it's helped many organizations to become more inclusive, more relevant, and more attuned to changing community needs. But what happens when different groups ask us for very different things? Who do we listen to? How do we build and maintain trust with visitors and communities who see the world very, very differently? These questions couldn't be more pressing than they are in the UK right now. In the wake of the anti-racism and Black Lives Matter protests that spread across the globe this summer, following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May, some of our most prominent cultural institutions have found themselves at the center of a series of controversies. This work has been made even more difficult by sustained attempts by the right to frame these controversies as a culture war, a war in which the culture of the UK is somehow being stolen from the majority by liberal elites and devious minorities. In June, the British Museum's director, in common with many of the national cultural institutions, issued a statement in support of Black Lives Matter. The museum, he said, stands in solidarity with the British Black community, with the African American community, with the Black community throughout the world. We are aligned with the spirit and the soul of Black Lives Matter everywhere. The statement attracted thousands of negative responses on social media from supporters of Black Lives Matter, accusing the museum of hollow empty words and hypocrisy, pointing out, amongst other things, the diversity in the museum's curatorial staff and its sizable collection of looted artifacts from Africa. In August, the museum was back in the firing line, but this time from conservatives, angered by the decision to move a bust of Hans Sloan, whose holdings formed the basis of the museum when it was founded in 1753, a link in one of the museum's galleries where Sloan was celebrated as a collector and a giant of the Enlightenment, to a display case where his links to slavery were made clear. Whilst many welcome this as a small step towards greater openness in discussing the museum's history, right-wing commentators and conservative activists accused the museum of pandering to extremists and rewriting history. Most institutions often experience these controversies as intense but relatively short-lived flashpoints. The National Trust, Britain's largest heritage and museum body, has found itself under sustained scrutiny and often vicious targeted attacks in both mainstream and social media over the past six months. In June, they attracted attention and criticism for their decision to remove a statue of a kneeling black figure from outside Dunham Massey in Cheshire, acknowledging the upset and distress it has caused to many visitors. In September, building on the groundbreaking work of my colleague at Leicester, Professor Corinne Fowler, the National Trust released an interim report presenting the findings of research which detailed the links to colonialism and slavery of a significant number of its many properties. The report stated, the National Trust has made a commitment to research, interpret and share the histories of slavery and the legacies of colonialism at the places we care for. We believe that only by honestly and openly acknowledging and sharing those stories can we do justice to the true complexity of past, present and future. The report has prompted a fierce debate. On one side politicians, commentators, journalists expressing outrage and indignance, accusing the Trust of straying from its core purpose and besmirching the names of families who donated their houses and collections to the country. On the other side are more politicians, journalists, members of the public, supportive of the ongoing project to expand and enrich our understanding of the past. The report pointed out that this openness and honesty is not only welcome but long overdue and they have joined the National Trust as members to express their support for this work. In the remainder of my talk today, I want to share some thoughts on how museums can navigate this challenging terrain. And although of course there are many complex issues, many options and possible responses, I think in very broad terms we can identify three possible routes museums can use to address challenges presented by histories that engender strongly opposing views. The first option perhaps is evasion and self-censorship. We can try and avoid topics that provoke controversy. We can stay silent and we can persist in hiding aspects of our history that some people find uncomfortable. The second option is to present multiple viewpoints as equally legitimate possibilities. We can present them without judgment and we can invite visitors to make up their own minds. The third option is to take sides to make clear where the museum stands on issues that animate public debate. And I want to argue that today more than ever before it's necessary for museums to find creative ways to pursue this third option to take up explicitly articulate and follow through on ethically informed positions on contested issues. To unpack each of these options further, I want to turn now to another controversy that beset the National Trust back in 2017, when it joined numerous other cultural bodies in marking 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. This marked a moment when the trust was seeking to find ways to engage visitors more deeply in thinking about history and to play a more active role in contemporary public life. The trust reached out to our research centre at the University of Leicester and we worked together to take this work forward. We set about thinking how this could be done ethically and critically. And we researched connections at National Trust sites with stories of same sex love and desire and gender diversity. And we worked out we explored ways of presenting these in engaging and ethical ways. Prior to 2017, most of these stories, some of which were well documented in scholarly or popular publications had not been previously presented by the National Trust. So this marked a move away from a strategy of evasion or self censorship. We spent considerable time thinking through the trust's own position on the issues we were exploring. If the year long programme we were shaping was intended to mark 50 years of progress towards greater equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, where should the trust position itself on the topic of LGBTQ rights today, which despite changes in the law, is still a topic that can provoke fierce debate. One option might have been to avoid taking sides. To aim as far as possible for a neutral standpoint to present the facts and let visitors make up their own minds. Instead, after reflection on the ethical implications of our different options, we chose to make clear our position and to explicitly celebrate LGBTQ lives. To acknowledge and critique the discrimination and prejudice which had contributed to the concealment of these stories within and beyond the trust for many years. We were well aware that this position would prove challenging to some, but we were not prepared for the scale of the controversy that erupted. I don't have time to go into the details, but at one point partway through the year long programme of activities, we found ourselves on the front pages of almost every UK and some international newspapers for a period of close to two weeks. It was an enormously difficult time for the trust and for all of the people who were working closely on the programme, some of whom received vicious personal emails and attacks on social media. The pressure to pull back to cancel forthcoming plans to reassure complaining visitors that our work was largely temporary to turn a blind eye to homophobic comments from volunteers and staff at some of the properties we worked in was at times intense. However, we continued. We defended the work and the programme was delivered largely as planned. Our aim was to develop creative and engaging ways of presenting rigorously researched histories that would engage all visitors. We deployed techniques that were intended to prompt reflection in those visitors. In Lacy, for example, we developed an installation spread across the house that told the story of William John Banks, a traveler collector and draftsman who inherited this extraordinary property in 1834 and set about making dramatic changes to his home. Just seven years later, he was caught with a soldier in what was termed an indecent act. And at a time when intimate relationships between men could be punishable by death, William John felt he had no choice but to leave the home he loved for exile in France and later Italy. However, whilst abroad, he continued to commission and collect art and other treasures to send back to Kingston Lacy with precise instructions on how they were to be displayed with detailed designs for decorative schemes. The way the house looks today can only be understood if the story of William John's exile is shared openly with visitors. It simply doesn't make sense without it. But despite the centrality of this story to understanding the house, this was the first time the story had been shared consistently with visitors. The first installation featured 51 knotted ropes suspended from a wooden frame representing the 51 men who were hanged in the UK under laws that criminalized same sex acts during William John's lifetime. It seemed to communicate the brutality of the times and the context for William John's decision to leave the home he loved. In another installation we used film projection and sound to draw connections between William John's story and ongoing prejudice and intolerance today. We wanted to disrupt any sense of a neatly packaged history that began with intolerance and persecution and ended with equality and respect for all today. Here we drew on the experiences of LGBTQ people forced to leave their homes in the UK and abroad over the past three years to show that despite advances in the law that we were celebrating intolerance and stigma still shaped people's lives today. Finally towards the end of the visitor route, our third intervention set William John's story within a global history, examining how the law has shaped and continues to shape LGBTQ lives. A six meter long timeline gave us the opportunity to include stories that represented the full diversity of experiences of the law within LGBTQ communities. In my experience of this project, especially witnessing its impact on visitors on LGBTQ communities on broader public opinion and debate. This experience has informed a number of other research collaborations around contested topics since then. I worked with the welcome collection in London to explore how the sometimes clashing views of medical professionals and disabled people in the way that physical and mental differences are understood could be addressed. The visual views are crystallized in the difficult relationship, many disabled people have with medical museums where physical and mental differences have often been presented as unwelcome, deviant, inherently problematic, always in need of fix or cure, a view entirely at odds with those of disability rights activists. As a team of disabled experts we explored how the welcome collection could address this. We developed an ethical position and an approach to interpretation through which different voices, different voices those of medics disabled people, scientists, artists and activists could be presented, but where the museum's commitment to disability equality, dignity and respect was explicitly stated and was shared with all visitors. The result in gallery being human opened just in September of last year. Thanks to perspectives, the carefully crafty curatorial voice means that visitors are never told what to think numerous questions are raised and visitors are encouraged to think to talk and reflect. But the entire gallery is framed by the museum's unequivocal support for disability equality. To conclude then, many organizations have been reluctant to tell more diverse and inclusive and honest histories. They have been too risk averse, too slow for too long. And they're finding that as they start to make meaningful progress in this area, they become embroiled in controversies that are deeply uncomfortable. The danger now is that we let these controversies and the divisive framing that accompanies them slow down this essential work. How then can we move forward and what role can cultural organizations play in these very challenging times. The answer I suggest potentially lies in looking beyond the newspaper headlines, beyond the divisive speeches by politicians and the angry rants on social media. Here we find evidence which suggests we are perhaps not as divided as we might think, and we find evidence that points towards a unique role that museums might play. For example, the Euro barometer, a series of large scale public opinion surveys carried out across Europe recently found that social acceptance of groups at risk of discrimination has increased significantly since 2015 in relation to disability, ethnic origin or skin color, religion or beliefs, Roma culture and history, sexual orientation, being transgender or being intersex. This broad public support for equality was certainly borne out in our experience of exploring LGBTQ histories in 2017. A large scale evaluation found a small but highly vocal minority at each end of a spectrum, one side tearing up their membership cards and the other vigorously championing the inclusion of LGBTQ lives. But in the middle of this spectrum, we found the vast majority of visitors. And whilst not all of these were enthusiastic or even comfortable with our sharing of LGBTQ histories, they were nevertheless prompted to reflect and demonstrated a degree of openness that was very often obscured by the controversies that played out in the media. So whilst taking up and articulating a position in support to the quality of fairness and inclusion is never straightforward or easy. There's enormous potential for museums to embrace the opportunity to build widespread support around common values that we should all be able to embrace. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Richard for sharing with us these inspiring examples. And I know we've talked about this when preparing for the presentation but my feeling is that the list of contested histories seems to be longer and not shorter in the complex world that we are living in. So I wonder how can we help and encourage museums to move from this invasion and self censorship to present multiple views. I'm primarily thinking about European museums in, you know, different parts of Europe, which do not perceive perceive themselves as powerful institutions that they are not capable to empower others. This is primarily due to their neglected status by decision makers in terms of funding but also, you know, unclear governance structures, other issues around museums mandate. This situation is coupled with the fear to get involved goes by the worry that museums actions will be politicized and seen as a part of the political side. What kind of support can we maybe offer to make museums more confident to proclaim values and take the role of agent or social change and particularly thinking about internationalism. Because maybe partnerships with other European colleagues through networks like Nemo and National Museum Associations can help museums be more vocal about protecting human rights of LGBT and other communities whose human rights are being violated. So maybe do you have any personal experience from your own involvement in the UK Museum Association or, I know there is no recipe, but you know what are the factors around that can stimulate and encourage and, you know, build frameworks. Yeah, thank you, Aida. I think you've identified, you've put many clues in your question for me. I think I don't underestimate the challenges of this work and the way in which many, many topics, as you've said, can become politicized. I think values are really helpful because values. I guess help us sidestep the very political character of some of those contested topics and finding values that we can all appeal to the values that we can all embrace, fairness, respect, dignity and so on. And finding ways to express support for those can be, I think, a powerful way of framing some of these very contested topics. And I think partnerships of all kinds that you also highlighted are helpful. Many of the projects I've been involved with involve a collaborative process of working. They might be with other organizations involved with advancing human rights but also with all sorts of communities so that the museum isn't doing this on its own, but is finding ways to draw in those perspectives and stitch support for that work into different communities and different stakeholders. Certainly, I think, of great help when museums experience some of the controversies that I've pointed to, to know that it's not a singular decision, it's not some kind of personal or individual view, but is one that's grounded in a broader ground swell of support towards more progressive, fair thinking. Yes, thank you. The question in line with this was sometimes the decision can cost the director his position that if they take sides that it's seen as a political decision. Also, in the example of the National Trust, you gave, you also were saying that they lost their members, but what about public funding? Did they lose some of the public funding as the result of that Exile exhibition in 2017? It's a very, very good question and I know that museums have to be very mindful of all of those pragmatic issues. What was kind of interesting for us during prejudice and pride is that if you read the headlines, they were sort of certain newspapers were claiming a mass exodus of volunteers, lots of resignations of members, and actually when you dig into the detail of that, it has a very large membership body anyway. The numbers he'll actually resigned were tiny, were very, very small, and during that period when, because it was on the front page of all the newspapers, it was very, very widespread understanding of what was happening. But even despite that controversy, membership continued to grow, in fact, grow faster at that time. And I'm not saying it was growing faster because of the more inclusive work we were doing, but it points to this broad public that is more comfortable with some of this work than we might think. The National Trust is a charity, it does receive public funding, and in the recent controversy, the government has raised questions about its role, its future, its place in securing public funding and it's a really uncomfortable position for the trust to be in. At the same time, in the face of this attack, they are getting an outpouring of expressions of support from other museums, from museums bodies like the Museums Association, from other heritage bodies around the world, from academics and so on. And I think that building of support and showing that it's necessary to hold a particular line around these matters is something that will help see them through that, but it is difficult, it's not straightforward at all, as you say, there's no, there's no recipe for all of this. We're receiving lots of questions and it's hard to pick, but I really like the one around optimism because I think in this global pandemic, we really need some hope and optimism and my own question was regarding maybe the external view. I mean, can museums construct and communicate the particular vision of a society to increase the level of optimism and hope for the future and primarily here I think about the future that will be fair to all life on Earth. So something around empowering regarding climate change. I mean, do you see already happening and then internal optimism in our own sector because here we are among our museum professional colleagues is you personally how optimistic you are about the impact of museum activism, especially now, as the global museum community did not reach a consensus to adopt a new, more value led and only function oriented museum definition so one is external optimism hope for the climate, you know, future and another for the sector. I mean, we do not agree among ourselves so is there, you know, any hope for the future. I mean, on the first point about museums really as places for optimism about our future. You know, I think we need to be as far as possible be kind of honest and open about some of those. Some of our pasts and about the future and some of that might be hard to for visitors to take but I also but I think optimism is important because I'm seeing here about museums as being places of change. And I see people an opportunity to make changes so through the understanding through the sense that they make a really complex issues to leave in power to do something about it to be part of a broader movement to make change so I think that optimism is important. I mean, how optimistic I am about the sector, I mean, I am naturally an optimistic person which helps, but I have to say, it's, it's a bit of a roller coaster, sometimes for for many of us isn't it worked in, you know, if I kind of look back. A few years ago, some of the work that I'm interested in I've been talking about today was there in museums but it was kind of on the margins of the organizations it was, it wasn't mainstream. And yet today we have seen a much more, you know, a growing interest in taking up moral and and social issues finding ways to empower people so that museums are parts of changing lives and changing society. And that optimism is why I kind of want to carry on working with you all and working with colleagues to think through how museums can take that forward. Yes, we have to keep feeling our well of optimism and keep regenerating on our energy. There was a question about inclusive museum. One of the participants wanted to know. You could give one or two sentences to explain what you imagine as ideal inclusive museum. How can you measure if a museum does or does not succeed in being inclusive where a museum stands within this process to become more inclusive. And if I may just add because the Bokeh Museum network has a lot of experience at 10 year process trying to be more inclusive as as much as I know that we are only improving and striving but there is no such thing as 100% inclusive museum. What are your thoughts Richard. I have a question. It's a real conundrum isn't it that continues to elude lots of museums I suppose inclusion is sometimes a shorthand for thinking. How can we create equal opportunities for people to participate in the making of culture to visit the things that the places that we have to have their stories told in museums I mean the welcome collection projects quite an interesting example for me just to briefly reflect on so our focus there was around disability. What we wanted to do was empower disabled people to play a part in shaping that gallery. We wanted to make it accessible so that people with all kinds of differences and needs could access it and enjoy it as fully as everybody else, but perhaps most fundamentally. We began with a puzzle which was disabled people very often don't visit medical museums they hate medical museums because they're made to feel less than human and they're made to feel like they're on display as objects of curiosity. So how could you take a medical museum and make it the go to place for disabled people where they would feel. Not only that they can get in and that it's accessible and that they can play a part in shaping it, but it's somewhere where their lives are celebrated and not held up for debate. And I think that's we got some way down the line with that project and the results show that numbers of disabled people visiting before they have to close down with with COVID 19 were on the rise were increasing. So I think it is possible to find to be more inclusive in all sorts of ways with all sorts of groups. And it might remain a fairly sort of idealistic big challenge but it's one we have to keep going with it is possible. I think to do that. Lots of questions coming in. One of the question is addressing financial independence is that maybe the key and that would choose freely without any concerns of losing sponsors. I know in the UK in the recent years there's been a lot of ethical conversations and debates around sponsorships in museums. But I would just add an element of financial independence also this programming independence because I think it's very important for cultural institutions and museums to always defend their constituency. You know, the needs that they are actually representing there so do you any have any reflections regarding this see how do we become completely free of all the ties of the financiers. That's not likely or possible really we might get money from different sources I mean despite the controversies around sponsorship business sponsorship here in the UK most of our museums receive significant public funding and they have to be mindful. There's no money that doesn't come with some ties or other and you know there isn't any kind of magical part of money that means it's we're entirely free to do what we want so I think we always have to navigate that political terrain. But what I find is that even I think that's where it comes back to values because these you know the values that we want to take forward shouldn't be kind of party political there should be a set of common values that we can. We should all be able to subscribe to whichever part of the political spectrum that funding comes from. And so, you know, museums have to pick their issues they can't cover everything they can't they're not entirely free to jump in and express views when people's jobs and their public funding is under question but if you look across the work that museums have done. In recent years they have often found ways to navigate that with subtlety with building a groundswell of community support for those values so that even if they're perceived to be slightly at odds with the political. They manage to find some way through that it's subtle it's clever it's an it's an art not a science in moving that work forward and sometimes it's possible to do more and sometimes it's it's necessary to be more cautious and move more slowly, but I think that's what. Museums are capable of doing and if they focus on values and how they can kind of build support for those. It is one way through some of that political challenges that are caught up with doing this kind of work. We're already you know, using our time but Julia said it's okay that we take two more questions so finishing around 1110 that's okay with you. I would just like to ask two more questions before we finalize one participant is arguing that moving from showing multiple perspectives to actually taking sides might increase polarization in the society, because ultimately what we are striving to is behavior change, but that, you know, even this that you indicated broad openness among visitors does not necessarily mean it leads to the change in behavior. So, you know, why would you opt rather for taking sides then for just being a space for multiple perspectives in a sense of our impact being to reduce polarization in the society. I think it's a really brilliant question and of course, I've used the words taking sides I know it's very. It's very simple it's purposefully used it I suppose to be somewhat provocative there in reality, you know, there are many subjects we can't take sides on and we shouldn't take sides and we will alienate people around many many issues but I think when they're talking about human rights issues, we should be able to express. We should be able to frame those issues in ways which show we are standing in support of the protection of those human rights. And so it's often much more subtle than than taking sides. What we did with the National Trust, it's often was often done in in quite subtle ways saying that we're, you know, we're celebrating these stories, rather than we're just presenting them so it's often quite a subtle way to take sides but I think it's very very important. It's a very vivid memory of the letters that arrived after that project I shared with you at Kingston Lacy, and there was one man wrote to say he'd visited and he'd heard some homophobic comments from other visitors and quite unpleasant comments made to him, and he wrote to thank the National Trust for taking on that work and doing that, and I struggled for ages to think out, how would you why would you write someone and thank them for an experience you've had where you've been subject to abuse it's really quite confusing, but he thanked the National Trust because despite that experience, it was clear that the organisation was taking sides, was expressing support for people who had experienced prejudice and discrimination. And so that kind of subtle framing and taking of sides is sometimes where the, the change making happens. And yes, we did alienate some people, I have no doubt and a small mind and number of people resigned, but we did a major evaluation about of over 1,500 people across the UK, who visited different parts of that prejudice and pride programme. And some of them complained, they said they weren't happy with what they found they said they'd come for a nice day out said that the trust was politicising these lives, but the vast majority of those even those that complained, when we interviewed them express a degree of openness and a sense of movement towards a more understanding and empathetic position. And even those people that complained very often spent longer. They came back and they told the friends and family to visit. And it was a real revelation for me to see that if you just look at the headlines, or you just ask people what do you think of course, many of them will say no I don't want this but those same people were, because we worked hard to find a compelling way to tell stories to not be didactic to not push this issue down people's instead to engage them in very human stories that that's the art of brilliant museums that you know all of your members are doing is finding ways to help people make sense as David said right at the beginning to not deal with bite size headlines but in fact to unpack really complex issues to do that in a way that engages people and lets them make sense of a complex world, but hopefully move them one step more towards greater understanding and compassion and empathy. It's a perfect ending for this really inspiring opening presentation and speech, reminding us about the powers museum have in storytelling and good interpretation using art installation and methods they use for human stories all the topics we will discuss in the remainder of the conference in the following days. So thank you Richard very much for being with us this morning and today. Thank you very much indeed it's been great to join you. Thank you everyone. Before we close the morning session, I will hand the stage to Julia to give us guidance about our afternoon meetup Julia. Thank you, I either and Richard actually for this very inspiring first opening the canvas for the discussions to come as you were saying. I just want to give you a short overview of how the rest of the day is going to look like so we have long lunch break. We are looking forward to continuing the discussions with our first panel complexity comprehensibility and credibility at 2pm CT. We'll be starting on time so please join us a bit before. For those who have registered you have received a separate link for the panel in the afternoon. If you're interested in the panel and you haven't registered, you will find the link to join in this chat. So it will be posted here in this chat. And with this, I'll leave you and see you later for after the break.