Who Cares? Museums, Health and Wellbeing Research Project

This study by the Psychosocial Research Unit at the University of Central Lancashire investigated a series of inventive Who Cares? projects across six museums, in order to discover how access to museum activities might affect health and wellbeing. The participating museums were part of the Renaissance in the Regions programme funded by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. A key conclusion is that the programme has revealed great potential. It has shown that collections can be made available to disadvantaged groups in ways that can improve wellbeing. The research took place over a period of two years (2009-2011) and followed the development and implementation of specific projects targeted at disadvantaged groups in each museum. A further key component was working with the Renaissance North West research manager and staff at participating museums on evaluation planning and feedback days at each museum. The purpose of this was to help develop the museums- self-evaluation capacity and to generate further data to feed into the research process. The research team analysed data collected by the museums as part of their evaluation. The thoughtful and self-reflective engagement of museum staff was vital in facilitating the research, and in seeing the individual projects through to their conclusion.div_PaSpub4726pu