Successful NEMO training on self-evaluating and enhancing museum impact

On 17 and 23 March, NEMO hosted its first online capacity building activity of 2022. 20 museum colleagues from all over Europe participated in the training: “Enhancing your Museum's Impact: Self-evaluation & development”, facilitated by the MOI! Museums of Impact project.

NEMO was thrilled to offer some of its members an introduction to new self-evaluation framework that is being developed by MOI. They got a preview of how the framework can be used to assess and develop the impact of individual museums and improving their institution's impact. The final framework will be released to the public at the end of 2022.

The first speaker Agnes Aljas, researcher and curator who has been working with contemporary collecting and visitor studies at the Estonian National Museum, gave an introduction to the idea of impact in museums. 

She was followed by Pirjo Hamari who presented the MOI! project and the evaluation framework. She is an experienced heritage professional and has been working with heritage management and policy-related questions at the Finnish Heritage Agency and is the leader of the MOI! Museums of Impact project.

Afterward the presentations, smaller groups discussed the following topics and exchanged experience from their museum work: 

  • Societal relevance as an impact area 
  • Communities and shared heritage as an impact area 
  • Sustainable and Resilient Societies 
  • Relevant and Reliable Knowledge 

The European cooperation project MOI! Museum of Impact aims to develop a European self-evaluation framework for museums, with impact at its core, for the benefit of both museums and European citizens.  

The framework will help museums to develop their capacity to meet the demands of a changing, more diverse, increasingly digital and ageing society, by supporting them in evaluating and actively refocusing their work in line with their own strengths and strategies. Developing the framework is a joint effort of a partnership of 11 European museums, museum developers and public bodies, amongst them NEMO, led by the Finnish Heritage Agency.