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Our thinking on the topics that matter.
Museums are moving beyond sustainability toward regeneration - restoring ecosystems, strengthening communities, and reimagining their role in a changing world. In this article, for the Museums Association, Eric Langham explores how shared resources, collaborative practice, and innovative projects across the UK are helping cultural institutions not just reduce harm, but actively create positive, lasting impact.
The Sensational Museum challenges the notion that sight is the most important sense in the museum. It uses the concept of disability gain – the idea that everyone can benefit from the ‘bolt-on’ access provision traditionally offered to disabled visitors. The project de-centres sight, instead foregrounding multifaceted sensorial experiences where all visitors can engage equitably using whichever senses work best for them.
In 2024, ICOM’s International Perspectives on Museum Management featured Eric Langham and Darren Barker’s chapter, The Alchemy of Museum Planning, offering a visionary and practical roadmap for shaping the museums of tomorrow.
In March 2021, Barker Langham produced three hour-long films for ICOM UK’s Working Internationally Conference. Addressing social justice, sustainability, and the future of museums, the films feature global museum leaders, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Museum of Qatar, MoMA, and the Museum of London. Available with a brochure, they support ongoing sector dialogue.
This presentation offers a visual journey through BLF projects exploring health and wellbeing. It shows how storytelling, empathy, and creative engagement connect audiences, inspire reflection, and encourage participation. Highlighting the role of arts, heritage, and culture in supporting personal and community wellbeing, it demonstrates the transformative power of cultural interpretation to foster healthier, more connected experiences.
The concept of the “exploded exhibition” moves beyond text labels that fix meaning to embed temporary interventions within permanent galleries. By creating unexpected juxtapositions and contrasts between ephemeral and permanent, it provokes visitors to look differently, and transforms static collections into dynamic, politically charged interpretive spaces.
The health of culture in the UK has always been central to our work - and the consistent erosion of funding in various ways has created huge financial pressures. This article was a call to think creatively about how we collectively ensure culture not just survives but thrives.
Eric Langham believes stories can do more than inform - they can inspire action, challenge prejudices, and help shape a better world. In this article for the AHi journal he explores how ideas, place, and experience can come together to create real, lasting impact.
Blink: The End is in Sight was an immersive exhibition created with Sightsavers to raise awareness of trachoma. Five renowned photographers each produced an image representing the last thing they would want to see before blindness. Using blink-tracking technology, the exhibition measured visitors’ eye movements and gradually eroded each photograph with every blink, distorting images pixel by pixel until they were permanently destroyed.
