Membership & Training Needs Survey 2026-27 Now Open
July 27, 2026You Talked, We Listened….now let’s go again!
2026-27 Membership and Training Needs Survey
The NI Museums Council is committed to supporting the museum sector in Northern Ireland and working for the benefit of our members. This survey focuses on your experiences as an individual member or as part of the team of an organisational member during the previous 12 months..
Your answers will help us to review what we have done and plan how we can go forward in the coming years to continue to serve the NI museums sector.
You can complete the 2026 – 27 Survey Online or fill in a Word document Members Survey 26-27 and return to info@nimc.co.uk
Deadline to complete: 23rd September 2026
What You Told Us Last Time
Last year we asked you to pick your top three priorities for NIMC to work on, these were:
- Advocacy.
- Collections Management Support.
- Professional Development
Additional requests:
- Peer sharing – you want to hear what other museums are doing.
- You wanted more opportunities for networking, especially themed around education, collections, redevelopment projects and site visits.
We asked what training you would like to receive next, the most common responses were:
- Collections Management.
- Dementia Awareness.
- Education
- Activism
- Mounting textiles and caring for costumes
- Online training and afternoon sessions
What We Did
Advocacy:
We have met with DfC officials to advocate on your behalf for the new Museums Policy and Programme for Government and have submitted a response to the policy consultation.
We are gathering your feedback on the proposed Education Policy and will be submitting a response before 30th September.
We represent you through Rep, Board, Trustee and Stakeholder positions within the Group for Education in Museums, the Museums Association, the Art Fund ‘Going Places’ Advisory Panel, IMA, Heritage Council and ICOM UK.
Collections Management Support
- Provided online and in person training events focused on collections.
- Provided grant programmes aimed at collecting for the future.
- Providing sector study day in disaster planning and emergency salvage
- partnered with Trident to provide 5 free tickets to IAASF conference for NIMC members.
Professional Development
- Sector study day delivered at Lisburn Museum.
- Sector dialogues event held with UU at Ulster Museum.
- Training programme delivered.
Additional Requests
- We now include networking time at our in person events.
- We worked with placement students from UU to develop a suite of case Studies from the NI museum sector. these now sit on our website and socials and can be used as a resource.
- We organised visits to two sites undergoing redevelopment projects as a sector study trip.
- We partnered with GEM NI to deliver a free online peer sharing event focusing on education, the proposed NI curriculum, online safety. work experience and forward planning.
- We partnered with IMA to deliver the Education and Outreach Forum featuring education and outreach case studies and offering opportunities for all Ireland networking.
Training:
- Collections – online events delivered/scheduled with Collections Trust. In person training event delivered in Disaster Planning and Emergency Salvage.
- Online training – 10 events delivered/scheduled.
- Afternoon sessions – provided
- Activism – NIMC partnered with UU to deliver in person sector event on EVAWG and museums. LET’S TALK online event EVAWG scheduled.
- Education – partnered with GEM and IMA to deliver events.
- Mounting textiles and costumes training – scheduled October 2026.
- Dementia Awareness – delivered May 2026.
- SEND training – delivered March 2026.
- Mastering the Art of Grant fundraising – scheduled.
Things we are still working on:
- Advocacy – we continue to meet officials and will use the information you provide us to say what the sector needs.
- Communication – last year some survey responses asked for things that we already provide indicating that communication was the real problem. We continue to explore how we communicate our opportunities the work we do.
- Professional Development – We are committed to helping emerging professional through placements at NI Museums Council and through promotion of opportunities and liaising with members. However, we understand that there is a gap in leadership training and succession planning that we would like to assist with.