1. Why is this change needed? Identify the problem or opportunity, then provide context, vision and reason for introducing or proposing change. This could be in meetings, discussions, proposals or presentations.

2. Add a step into research, planning and development that looks at what is going on in the world or your community or region and identifies relevance or connections to the project.

   This could be as simple as asking:

   • What is happening in our community/region/world right now and how can we explore or connect with this?
   • Does this approach or project reflect or align with what’s important to community, or could it be perceived as outdated thinking?

3. In meetings, or when reviewing projects, ask questions such as:

   • Is this still working for us?
   • What value does it add?
   • Can we do this differently/better?
   • Does it align with community or visitor expectations?
   • What is the risk if we do/don’t do this?

4. Spend time ‘on the floor’ in your museum. You can simply observe, or (with a colleague or on your own) introduce yourself, welcome a visitor or group and ask a few short questions such as:

   • Why did you choose to visit today?
   • What do you hope to see, learn or do while here?

   Try doing this with colleagues from different teams and areas of work, to introduce new and different perspectives.

1. Identify opportunities for different teams to collaborate on a project. New ways of working, and with a range of people and perspectives creates space for fresh thinking, experimentation and innovation.

   TIP: A good way to identify opportunities for collaboration is to consider how the input of others might improve or enhance a project – and that good ideas can come from anyone.

   Remember that for any change to be embedded, it needs to be integrated into your museum’s business strategy or strategic objectives.

2. Seek to determine which projects (such as exhibitions, displays, programs, communications or resources) should or could be aligned with contemporary themes that resonate with the community.

3. Assess your department’s strategic goals, asking: Are they still relevant or do they need to change?

   If you don’t have strategic goals, work collaboratively to identify your unique purpose and what goals might enable you to achieve this – strategic goals provide purpose, guide decisions and support the argument for change. How can these goals also align with the museum’s overarching vision and mission?

4. Review anecdotal or formal feedback from audiences to consider where change should occur.

   Feedback might come in the form of surveys, comments on social media, or through the museum’s communication channels, conversations with visitors, or observing visitor patterns or behaviours in your museum. But keep in mind audiences don’t always like change, so it’s critical to bring them on the journey too.

• Projects regularly involve cross-departmental team members and advice.

• Projects are more innovative or experimental – evidenced through creative thinking, responsiveness and alignment with the museum’s needs and goals.

• People in your museum are open and responsive to change, or are confident to initiate/suggest new ideas.

• Projects have relevance or connection to your community or the world at large.

• Audiences feel content is relevant to or reflects the world around them.

• All new or ongoing projects align with your strategic goals.

• You see that project outcomes are helping to achieve your strategic goals.

• Team members show more awareness or knowledge about audiences and apply this in planning and review of projects.

• Audiences show positive response or satisfaction in relation to changes implemented.

• If the change or a project is in response to recurring negative audience feedback, an indicator of success might be a decrease in this feedback.

• Identify the reason for change (the problem or opportunity you are addressing) and what innovation and impact the change can achieve. This includes finding ways to encourage staff to have a deeper understanding of the world outside your museum.

• Motivate and engage others in your museum to embrace and support change, including making it clear that change is natural and necessary for any organisation. Communication is key in ensuring buy-in across your museum, particularly for major change, so ensure everyone understands what’s happening and why.

• Monitor the impact of the change you are driving, to document and celebrate, or to adapt as required.

1. At the beginning of a project identify valuable stakeholders from within or external to your museum, such as:

   • Audiences: especially particular communities or people you wish to engage, and why.

   • Staff who can add value through their ideas, skills or perspectives.

   • Contributors, such as artists, subject specialists, community collaborators or co- presenters.

   • Other organisations. To identify who to include in a project, consider:

   What skills, knowledge, or networks would the project benefit from?

   What audiences do you wish to engage and do you already have connections, trust or visibility in their communities?

2. Initiate a conversation with specific community leaders to introduce yourself and your museum, and learn about what they do.

3. If working with a community partner or collaborator, early in the project establish mutually agreed goals, objectives and desired outcomes. While you may have different goals, identifying and acknowledging these can avoid breakdowns in communication and trust.

   TIP: Consider defining roles and responsibilities and any limitations or ‘no-go’ areas.

4. Acknowledge contributors and collaborators, including staff and stakeholders and celebrate successes and wins.

1. Invest time learning about the people in your museum’s region – both the resident population and visitors. Consider:

   • Who makes up this community?

   • What are their priorities and interests?

   • Does your museum have visibility and trust among these groups?

   • Is the community reflected or represented in your museum’s collection?

   • Are there any key members of the community your museum is not reaching?

   • Who visits your city or town and are there opportunities to connect with visiting audiences as well as local? This may include tourists; international, interstate or regional students; or people visiting for business.

   • Is your community changing? How?

2. Review all projects and collaborations to identify:

   • Key learnings, including success stories and areas for improvement.

   • Do the projects or collaborations align with your strategic priorities?

   • Is this a ‘nice-to-do’ project or does it support an important goal or purpose?

   • Are there opportunities to expand or evolve? Is there anything missing?

3. Foster a culture of learning and respect in your museum, which values different perspectives and good ideas no matter where they come from. This might include:

   • Creating a shared online space for team members to share relevant research and ideas, and refer to this regularly.

   • Encouraging team members to seek ideas from a cross-section of colleagues and sources, and creating time to consider these ideas.

4. Allow time for new relationships with partners and collaborators to grow and find their rhythm.

Partnerships and collaborations have positive outcomes such as:

• New revenue streams as a result of the partnership (e.g. grants, ticket sales).

• New audiences/communities or higher visitation/ engagement.

• New opportunities/future projects.

• Increased visibility of your museum in community or parts of community.

• Increased trust from community stakeholders – shown through a willingness to engage, positive word of mouth or reviews.

• High satisfaction from partners as a result of working together and willingness for future collaborations.

Positive audience and stakeholder feedback as a result of the partnerships such as:

• Feeling welcome at your museum.

• Feeling your museum is a safe/trusted space.

• Feeling they or their community is represented or reflected in the museum’s programs or exhibitions.

• Recommending or advocating your museum to others (see NPS page 17).

• Feeling connected or a sense of belonging.

You observe a dynamic, creative and collaborative work environment:

• Staff are respectful, considerate and show empathy and awareness when discussing, planning or proposing projects.

• Through research, staff show awareness of current discourse and ideas in the public space.

• Staff are enthusiastic about learning and trying new things, including participation in new projects and welcoming other ideas and perspectives.

• Get to know individuals and organisations whose values and interests align with those of your museum, while also offering unique expertise and experiences. This includes understanding the motivations and any barriers to participation for prospective collaborators.

• Building trust, including fostering mutually beneficial relationships, can take time and requires empathy. This includes trust building among staff and departments in the museum.

• Identify realistic goals and outcomes that meet the needs of key stakeholders.

1. Be familiar with your museum’s vision, goals and strategic priorities. This might be for the museum as a whole as well as specific strategic plans for exhibitions, collections or departments. This is a good place to start when grappling with questions around purpose.

   For managers and leaders, schedule a session with your team to review your museum’s strategic priorities and goals together, brainstorm new ideas to support these goals, or identify ways you already are.

2. Review projects as they progress, ensuring they remain on track and aligned with their core purpose.

3. Review your own projects and ask:

   • Is this sustainable? Consider expenses to produce, funding needed or relied upon, time and resources, and if they can be replicated or repeated.

   • Who is this for and are you engaging the audience you wish to engage?

   • What has been successful and why?

   • Does this serve a meaningful or value-adding purpose? If so, what?

   • Are we doing this just because we have always done it, rather than assessing if it is still relevant or impactful?

   • Take an overall perspective of the range of projects you are producing – is there repetition? Is there an opportunity to make change?

4. Recognise and reward efforts that contribute to purposeful projects. Celebrate successes and learn from failures, reinforcing the importance of purpose. You might do this by:

   • Making time to talk about this in meetings.

   • Acknowledging contributions of staff.

   • Revisiting a project’s purpose when the project ends, to consider what worked and why, and any challenges.

1. Develop a strategic plan for your area of responsibility that supports your museum’s strategic direction. Your plan should include vision, objectives, analysis of past and current outputs, defined priorities and goals.

2. Establish the purpose and value of new projects before you begin, considering:

   • What do you want to achieve?

   • What impact do you wish to have?

   • Does the proposed project align with your department or museum’s strategic objectives?

   • If it brings in a new idea, what purpose is it serving and what value (if any) will it add?

3. Identify and support emerging leaders and champions to drive purposeful projects, equipping them with the skills to inspire teams and maintain focus on meaningful and impactful outcomes.

4. Foster a workplace culture where purpose and values are at the forefront of decision-making and project planning.

   This might be done by:

   • Ensuring project and team priorities are aligned with your museum’s values, priorities and vision.

   • Regularly referring to your museum’s vision and purpose to ensure the people you are working with are aware of and working towards the same goals.

• Staff can confidently articulate the purpose of their projects and can point to tangible outcomes.

• All new projects have a clear purpose, and outcomes reflect the intended purpose or mission of the project.

• Staff identify feeling motivated and fulfilled because they are aware of the vision for, and purpose of, the projects they are contributing to.

• Feedback or research shows an increase in audience understanding of a museum’s values – what it stands for.

• Ensuring projects reflect the museum’s core values strengthens the museum’s mission and enhances credibility, fostering trust and engagement.

• Prioritising purposeful projects allows museums to create positive, impactful experiences that resonate with audiences.

• Enhanced fulfilment and engagement will come when focusing on projects that matter. It will also cultivate passion and creativity among staff, leading to a more motivated workforce.

• Taking an audience-led approach helps guide purposeful projects.

1. Communicate with and listen to your audiences in order to understand their diverse needs, interests and preferences.

   This might include:

   • Reviewing visitor feedback regularly.

   • Introducing surveys for programs, exhibitions, general visitation or any specific outputs or projects; or updating existing surveys to align with what you want to know.

   • Respond to and acknowledge audience queries or feedback quickly and ideally, face-to-face or with a phone call rather than an email.

   • Reviewing social media interactions and prioritising audience engagement on social channels.

   • Initiating meetings to get to know community or industry leaders.

2. Trial small projects with partners, community members or staff within your museum, to test out new approaches and gather insights.

   This might include:

   • Simple new ideas that require minimal budget and resources. This might be a new format, topic or speaker for a program, a change of style or voice in written text in our labels, e-communications or website, or trialling new images or design.

   • ‘Opening your doors’ to welcome new communities, groups or individuals for a coffee, tea, or welcome talk and tour of your museum.

   • Seeking out new or diverse voices to write, speak, perform, facilitate, or participate in your projects in other ways.

3. Across teams or within projects, invite and listen to the ideas, opinions and perspectives of everyone. If you feel there are perspectives or skills missing in project or planning meetings then invite others to participate where appropriate to the task or project.

   TIP: Not everyone is confident speaking up in group meetings. Find ways to ensure all voices are heard by actively asking what a person thinks. You might also pre-plan an agenda that designates specific people to speak at different parts of the meeting – just make sure they know ahead of time what is expected and feel supported and prepared.

4. Regularly review your projects. This might be for diversity in voices, subject matter or perspectives offered in a program, exhibition or publication; diverse ideas and representation in project teams; ensuring language (written and spoken) is inclusive and accessible; or that the images you use are reflective of your diverse community or audience.

1. Create projects that reflect your community, ensuring representation of different cultures, perspectives, and voices in the development and delivery of the project.

2. Create structured opportunities for consultation and feedback from diverse community representatives, such as artists, community leaders and subject matter experts to provide input and guidance on museum initiatives.

   This might include:

   • Engaging an expert or leading community representative to collaborate on co-developing a program or resource and assessing its success.

   • Seeking feedback from community co-presenters or partners, creative talent or contributors involved in a project, via surveys or informal conversations.

   • Inviting trusted community peers and leaders to share their experiences with your museum.

   • Introducing evaluation and debrief sessions after projects, to invite feedback from key internal and external stakeholders.

3. Provide training for museum staff on current best practice across the areas you seek to engage. Train visitor-facing teams in professional communication and service, such as empathy and active listening.

4. Forge long-term partnerships with local organisations, schools and cultural institutions to co-create programs, share resources and discuss and brainstorm ideas for future programs, exhibitions and projects.

   TIP: When co-creating projects with partners, take time to sit down to workshop and establish shared goals and ensure you are on the same path.

• Your community is reflected in your audience as well as your programming.

• Increase in the number of first time or new visitors to the museum.

• More, new or varied voices in museum projects.

• Positive feedback from audiences around feelings of belonging, representation and relevance.

• Higher levels of visitor participation and engagement in museum programs and activities.

• Positive feedback from audiences, who feel the museum and its projects is relevant to and reflective of their experience.

• Positive feedback from community leaders and stakeholders shown via willingness to collaborate or work together again.

• Word of mouth and advocacy – community leaders and stakeholders trust and recommend your museum to others.

• Consistent positive feedback from audience or community consultations, surveys, or interactive feedback systems.

• Staff feel confident and equipped with the knowledge or resources they need to engage with a variety of audiences and needs.

• Establishment and maintenance of long- term, mutually beneficial partnerships with community organisations and stakeholders.

• Museum staff have a deeper knowledge of key communities, stakeholders and needs.

• Multidisciplinary teams are a great way to encourage collaboration among staff with diverse backgrounds and expertise to bring fresh perspectives and innovative solutions.

• Engage in co-creation by involving community members and stakeholders in the development of exhibitions and programs to ensure they resonate with audiences.

• Facilitate two-way communication between your museum and audiences by creating opportunities or space for audiences and visitors to share their ideas, feedback and experiences.