As Museum Study wraps up another year of delivering professional development to the cultural community, we look back at who we have met along the way. We are often asked who can participate in a Museum Study professional development course. The short answer is anyone who wants to, but let’s take a closer look at who has participated in the 150+ courses we have delivered so far.

More than 600 people from more than 30 countries have joined us over the last seven years. Our courses frequently have participants from 2 or more countries spanning multiple continents. In 2021 we averaged five people per course giving participants an opportunity to get a lot of personal feedback from our instructors. In fact, many of our courses limit the number of participants for this reason. We have one course running now that includes participants from Australia, Italy, Malta, and the United States of America. While this can make finding a chat time for live discussions challenging, we have had great success in finding times that work for almost all of our participants.

At Museum Study our mission is to help you build a better cultural institution and be a stronger member of the team that carries out the mission of your institution.

Institutions have included museums, historic houses, historical societies, botanic gardens, living history museums, libraries, archives, private collections (both individual and corporate), service centers, service companies, and product companies. These institutions range in size from zero paid employees to some of the largest cultural institutions in the world. Service providers and companies often participate in our courses to get a better understanding of who they serve, how their product/service is used, and how they can improve their products and services.

Types of organizations have included associations, international agencies, federal agencies, federal institutions, municipal institutions, university institutions, non-profits, and for profits.

Participants have included Volunteers, Students, Facility Managers, Educators, Exhibit Developers, Conservators, Collection Managers, Curators, Directors, Board Members, Consultants, Product Providers, Service Providers, and a whole lot of people who wear many of those hats. Students are often looking for a topic they need to gain knowledge about, but is not offered by their school. Volunteers are looking to gain knowledge and skills to aid them in their service to an institution. Many cultural institution workers are assigned new responsibilities that they want to learn how to carry out or they want to get up to speed on the latest practices, and formalize policies, programs, and procedures at their institution.

Add your name to the list of participants in one of our 2022 professional development courses.

We are always looking for content for our Blog so if you have any ideas for a blog post or would like to contribute a post, please contact us at blog@museumstudy.com