Discovering Volunteers as an Essential Community of Practice in Small Museums in the Netherlands

Abstract

Museum volunteers form a community of practice that potentially connects a museum to our ever-more diverse society, which includes newcomers and immigrants with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, who are often marginalised. This community of practice holds the means to inform proactive transformations of small museums to become cultural hubs for social contacts. This aligns with the Council of Europe’s Faro Convention which democratises the ownership, use and interpretation of cultural heritage. The Small Museums Change research project, which is reported in this chapter, developed a method to assist small museums to define transformation directions by facilitating volunteers to express their assessment of the museum, and express wishes and ambitions as guideline towards an integral transformation. The method proved successful in defining the core qualities and values and in identifying key ambitions for future planning for the seven small museums in the Netherlands that participated in the project. This chapter describes the method developed, highlights its outcomes and successes, and reflects on its value identifying hitherto undiscovered potentials. The method also proved to be valuable as tool to support volunteers as invaluable community to safeguard and further develop museum experiences for community engagement.