The Irish Museums Association (IMA) invites individual or session presentations proposals for the IMA Annual Conference 2020, to be held in Athlone on 21 and 22 February 2020. Proposals may be for 20-minute individual presentations or 50-minute sessions.

The IMA annual conference is the main gathering of the Irish museum sector. It aims to provide a platform for critical dialogue around the role and purpose of museums and inform sectoral agendas, while assisting museums with their thinking and planning as they realise their full potential.

Successful proposals will respond to the conference theme and offer innovative approaches that will inspire and encourage dynamic and constructive discussions.


CONFERENCE THEME:

‘The museum of the past must be set aside, reconstructed, transformed from a cemetery of bric-a-brac to a nursery of living thoughts. The museum of the future must stand side by side with the library and the laboratory.’ - Smithsonian curator George Brown Goode, 1889.

In recent decades there has been a major shift towards a user-led philosophy within museum practice. How can we encourage and drive this culture change from within our institutions, and also adapt to the changing cultural context in which our institutions exist? Is it time to reimagine the place of the museum and its functions? Who will shape that vision?

More than ever, museums are directly engaging with topics of social change. Does this signal a shift in museums’ identities and roles? Is it a nimble response to public demand? Or is it a strategic evolution toward a future concept of what museums could and should be?

From high-level strategy to on-the-ground implementation, this conference will seek to explore what are the attitudes, partnerships and collaborations that can drive development and redraw the museum’s boundaries. How we plan to navigate the accelerated levels of change around us while also maintaining our commitment to positive aspects of our historical legacy.

Goode’s call for museums to evolve into a more relevant, approachable, contemporary resource for the public are, to a certain extent, unrealised. By exploring what museums can be and what are the barriers to us achieving this, we pose the question: as we look towards ‘Ireland 2040’, what will museums of twenty years from now look like?



SUBMISSIONS

Please email your submission to office@irishmuseums.org by noon, 23 September 2019

Preferred format: Word Document
Include: Title of presentation
Presentation abstract (250 words max.)
Session format
Speaker(s) biography (150 words max.)
Contact details (email and telephone number)


If submitting a session proposal, indicate clearly in Session format whether it is a panel, interview, interjections, provocation, etc. Sessions should have no more than 5 participants including session chair.

Notification of selection will be within 14 days of the closing date for submissions.
Selected presentations must be delivered in person. The language of the conference is English.


FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information or if you wish to discuss your proposal, contact the conference convenor:

Gina O'Kelly | Irish Museums Association |11 Parnell Square East, Dublin D01 ND60
Tel: + 353 (0)1 873 4216 Mobile: + 353 (0)87 279 0518
Email: office@irishmuseums.org

Details of previous IMA conferences are online at http://www.irishmuseums.org/

The conference advisory panel is formed by members of the IMA board of directors: William Blair, National Museums Northern Ireland; Ian Brunswick, Science Gallery; Riann Coulter, FE McWilliam Gallery & Studio. External advisors are Brian Crowley, Kilmainham Gaol – OPW and Carmel Duffy, Athlone Arts & Tourism.


The Irish Museums Association gratefully acknowledges the core funding provided by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and The Heritage Council.

The 2020 conference is additionally supported by Athlone Arts & Tourism.