Sense of Place

The Sense of Place Programme explores how museums can form a crucial part of a place’s identity and wellbeing, and how creative practice can support audiences to enhance their sense of wellbeing by focusing on the community they are part of.

Our MDM programme, Sense of Place, is centred around the theme of place and place-making and will support you to identify place-based approaches to your community engagement work over a two year period.

The term Sense of Place looks at people’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions around a place or environment. The programme will focus on how museums can form a crucial part of a place’s identity and wellbeing, and how creative practice can support audiences to enhance their sense of wellbeing by focusing on the community they are part of. We will support museums to identify the benefits of engaging in this type of work and the opportunities to develop it further.

Year One took place over 2024/25 demonstrated what ‘place-making’ looks like in practice through shared learning and workshops. The programme was launched at Aurora Wellbeing in Worksop, a truly inspiring organisation putting sense of place at the heart of everything they do, and was followed by two online sessions facilitated by Culture Leicestershire.

Year Two involved an intensive support programme for a small cohort of six museums building on the work undertaken in Year One. It involved training workshops, 1:1 mentoring and peer networking.

Applications to be part of the next cohort and Year 3 of the programme are now open. To apply, please complete the Expression of Interest form by 31 July 2026.

The next year of the programme will be delivered from Autumn 2026 to April 2027

As an outcome of participating in the programme museums will:

• Develop understanding of sense of place work, and how they can approach and develop models to embed it within their organisation

• Create a plan to enable change and implement sense of place work in their museum

• Identify challenges and/ or barriers to embracing models and approaches within their organisation and work through ways to overcome these issues

• Develop new networks of contacts and expand their knowledge of good practice

• Understand better where they can seek further support and external funding, including how their plans relate to funder’s priorities and requirements

• Be supported to apply for programme-linked grant funding through Museum Development Midlands

• Have access to a peer network of museums for advice, support and collaboration

• Be encouraged to access other MDM training, funding and resources related to their specific plans and objectives.