The 2027 ICOM UK Conference, “Gwydnwch/Resilience: Museums Adapting to Change in a Complex World,” will take place on 29 and 30 April 2027 in Cardiff, Wales, UK.
This conference will explore how museums around the world are responding to the complex challenges of our time. How do museums deliver on our missions and retain public trust, while adapting and innovating to new, unpredictable realities?
Organised around 4x inter related sub-themes this conference will showcase resilience through the capacity of museums to anticipate, absorb, recover from and adapt to stressors through creative approaches, lessons learned and new models of practice.
We’re delighted to be co-producing this conference in partnership with Ngaire Blankenberg, Founding Director of the Institute for Creative Repair and the A42 brand whose work centres on repairing people, places, communities and institutions through new models of arts, heritage and cultural institutions.
The Call for Proposals is now Live!
ICOM UK is now looking for proposals for a presentation, workshop or poster session.
What are we looking for?
We are particularly interested in proposals that draw on practical experience in response to our theme. We want to hear from people who have been directly involved in developing, delivering or evaluating work that demonstrates how museums can build resilience and adapt to change.
Your proposal might explore, for example, how museums are:
- Developing new projects, partnerships or organisational structures that respond to social, political, environmental or economic change.
- Supporting people and communities through periods of disruption or change.
- Discovering organisational resilience through new ways of working.
- Forming new networks and partnerships to enable mutual support and benefit.
- Responding to new technologies and applying them to strengthen resilience.
- Surviving and thriving under new external macro pressures relating to conflict, climate change, and/or funding cuts.
We particularly welcome proposals based on a specific project, initiative, partnership or experience where there are practical approaches and lessons learned to share. You do not need to present a finished or wholly successful project: we are also interested in what museums can learn from challenges, failures, adaptation and unexpected outcomes.
Conference sub-themes
Proposals must clearly state how they connect with one or more of the following four sub-themes:
New Models for Financial and Operational Sustainability:
As museums face increasing financial pressures and changing funding and political landscapes, how are they rethinking governance, income generation and partnerships without compromising their missions, staff wellbeing or public purpose? This theme explores innovative approaches to the museum institution itself — from entrepreneurial earned-income strategies, diversified revenue streams and digitally enabled services, to new organisational models, programmes, and collaborative and community-led ways of working. We’re interested in practical examples of how museums are finding new ways to remain financially and operationally resilient while staying true to their purpose.
Supporting our Communities:
How can museums best support our communities?
This theme looks outward and examines how museums are recognising and responding to the needs of younger and older visitors, new audiences — both onsite and online — and changing, often fragmented communities, both near and far.
How are museums equipping others with the skills to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world?
Drawing on concepts of empowerment, solidarity as mutual responsibility, shared struggle, community cohesion and collective flourishing, this theme explores how museums can foster resilience through skill-building, accountability, connection, social action — and even fun.
We welcome examples of museums working collaboratively with communities and of approaches that build lasting relationships, confidence, skills and capacity.
Responding to External Shocks:
What responsibilities do museums carry when a crisis hits?
Building on the theme of the 2025 conference, Regenerative Museums for Sustainable Futures, this theme explores museum responses to the ethical and social consequences of the climate emergency, armed conflict, forced displacement, public-health emergencies and more.
It considers how structural inequality shapes both people’s exposure to crisis and their capacity to recover.
How can museums move beyond commentary to offer practical support and meaningful action?
We’re interested in examples of museums responding to emergencies and disruption, adapting their work in times of crisis, supporting affected communities, protecting collections and heritage, and considering what resilience looks like before, during and after a shock.
Safeguarding and Transmitting Culture and Knowledge:
Restitution, AI, shrinking budgets and political interference are all affecting how museums produce knowledge and safeguard and transmit tangible and intangible heritage.
From shared stewardship and digital repatriation, to participatory conservation and collections research, to multi-format open-access knowledge platforms, this theme explores projects and processes that take a fresh look at whose knowledge is recognised as legitimate, and who has the authority and the means to produce and protect it.
How can museums innovate to sustain the people, practices, relationships and systems through which heritage and knowledge is produced?
We welcome proposals exploring new approaches to collections, research, interpretation, technology, knowledge-sharing, repatriation, conservation and the transmission of cultural heritage.
About your Proposal
As part of the submission form, we will ask you to provide a short abstract alongside a few structured questions about your proposal.
These questions are intended to help us understand:
- The project, initiative or experience you are drawing on.
- The challenges or changes you were responding to.
- What you did, how you approached it and what happened as a result.
- What you learned — including from things that did not go as planned.
- How your experience connects with the conference theme and at least one of the four sub-themes.
- What others might take away from your experience.
You do not need to have all the answers. We are interested in honest reflections, practical learning and experiences that can help museums think differently about resilience and adaptation.
Whether your experience is large or small, local or international, successful or still evolving, we want to hear from you.
If you have a story, project, challenge, partnership or idea that could contribute to the conversation, we’d love to hear from you.
Deadline for applications is on 9 am BST on Monday 2 November.
