Warrington Museum and Art Gallery Set for National Museums Resilience Project

Future Proof Museums is a national programme developed by the AMA (Arts Marketing Association) funded by Arts Council England's Museums Resilience grant. The programme is designed to enable museums to become more resilient organisations, exploring how to change, adapt, influence and remain relevant to an ever-changing external environment.

Warrington Museum and Art Gallery is one of 20 organisations that have been selected to take part in this intensive strategic change programme. The Museum has already hosted popular and innovative exhibitions such as Cabinet of Curiosities, De Profundis: From the Depths and Museum of Gaming. Participation in the Future Proof Museums programme will support the museum to as it builds on this success.

The programme will enable the museum to create a compelling manifesto; develop the business model and explore how it delivers value in line with the museums purpose; innovate around this model and provide a clear toolkit to review how to benefit from change.

The 20 selected museums are a range of organisations located across various regions in England, housing an exciting variety of collections. Organisations taking part in Future Proof Museums include small independent museums like Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds, to Major Partner Museums like the Horniman; council-operated Southend-on-Sea Museums Service to university-run Museum of English Rural Life.

Director of Museums at Arts Council England, John Orna-Ornstein, comments "Future Proof Museums is an exciting new programme to help museums prosper at a time of challenge. I'm delighted to see such a strong and varied cohort of museums participating, and look forward to seeing the impact of the programme in the months to come."

Janice Hayes, Collections Heritage and Archives Manager at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, said 'It's extremely exciting that Warrington Museum and Art Gallery are part of the Future Proof Museums programme. The programme provides a fantastic opportunity for the Museum to work with a diverse range of organisations in sharing knowledge and experience that will aid the museum as it grows and develops.'

Stage One of the programme will involve trainer Andrew McIntyre (Morris Hargreaves McIntyre) working with the museum teams within their organisation in a diagnostic session; Andrew is then joined by fellow trainers Mark Wright (People Create), Susan Royce (Change Management Consultant) and Julie Aldridge (AMA) when the programme brings the leaders of the 20 organisations together for a three day intensive residential in Stage Two; and Stage Three provides on-going mentoring support, facilitation and leadership development with the museums' teams.

Executive Director at the AMA, Julie Aldridge, comments "Future Proof Museums provides a unique opportunity for both our member and non-member museum community to benefit from a programme tailored specifically to their needs now, and for the future. We're delighted at the amount of interest expressed in the programme that will result in more resilient museums being able to change, adapt, influence and remain relevant to an ever-changing external environment."