New Museum School Advanced Programme Phase 2

We are launching the third iteration of the New Museum School and its second Advanced Programme (NMSAP). We are implementing feedback from independent evaluation and the recommendations of the Art Fund report ‘It’s About Handing Over Power’ (Museum X and Culture&, 2022). Both reports say that bringing about sustained change in the museum workforce will take time and graduates will need carefully structured support as well as new skills and professional development.

We are seeking follow-on funding to enable us to launch Phase 2 of the New Museum School Advanced Programme to build on the significant traction that the Programme has gained in the heritage sector and the potential of the 45 students and graduates so far.

Culture& is ideally positioned in a unique partnership with the University of Leicester’s renowned Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, plus over twenty leading heritage organisations from across the UK, and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Marstine Family Foundation and the Art Fund. The partnerships combine a wide range of sector professionals, all of whom have an appetite for inclusive transformational change.

The enhanced New Museum School Advanced Programme Phase 2 is a bold, large-scale, sustained intervention to tackle systemic inequality in our museum sector and contribute to a fairer and more equitable future. New Museum School Advanced Programme Phase 2 will continue to nurture a critical mass of museum professionals (120 over both phases) alongside support for participating museums. We want to drive inclusive organisational change and provide structured mentoring and facilitation of peer-to-peer support networks to enable New Museum School Advanced Programme graduates to thrive over the lifetime of their careers. Independent longitudinal evaluation will gather data on graduates’ career trajectories to track the project’s impact over time.