Keynote lecture: Why is participation in museums so difficult?
- Date: Monday 29 June 2026, 17:00 – 18:00
- Location: Off-campus
- Cost: Free
The Collections Connections Communities Easter Term 2026 Keynote Lecture will be delivered by Helen Graham, Professor of Heritage and Participatory Praxis at the University of Leeds.
We’ve been facilitating participation in museums for decades now. Exhibitions have been co-produced. Collections have been co-developed by those with passionate interest and deep knowledge. Events have been co-designed and co-delivered. Community members have been invited to sit on trustee boards.
And yet, adding participation to museums has often generated conflict, disappointment and anger.
Drawing on her recently published book – Deconstituting Museums: Participation’s Affective Work (2025) – Professor Helen Graham will argue we can better understand why participation in museums has been difficult by identifying the distinct and contradictory underlying political logics of museums and of participation. In other words, that significant tensions are produced in combining institutions based in liberal approaches to decision-making ‘on behalf of’ the public and practices of participation based in collective action and decision-making.
Helen will then go onto develop an alternative set of political logics for museums focused on reimagining core museum ideas such as object, future, the constituencies of everyone/public and future generations, ideals of inclusion and representation and the line between use and access in conservation.
The talk will conclude by arguing that political groundwork of this type is necessary in enabling a shift in museums away from participation codified as engagement and towards participation as governance. And that it is through participation as governance that we can rework what museums are in, and for, our current moment.
To get a quick sense of what Helen will talk about read this blog on the Museum Association website, ‘Why is participation in museums so difficult?’.
About the speaker
Helen Graham is Professor of Heritage and Participatory Praxis in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies. Since joining the University of Leeds in 2011, Helen has led and been involved in a series of action research projects exploring the relationship between museums, heritage and participation.
Cover for Helen Graham's new book, Deconstituting Museums: Participation's affective work, published by UCL Press (September 2025). Cover artwork by Clifford Hayes.
Venue
Lucia Windsor Room
Newnham College
Sidgwick Avenue
University of Cambridge
Cambridge CB3 9DF
Book your place
The lecture is free to attend and all are welcome.
Find out more including how to register.
More information
This keynote lecture is hosted by Collections-Connections-Communities (CCC), a strategic research initiative at the University of Cambridge.
Image
Helen Graham. Image © University of Leeds.