The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has announced preliminary details for the ICOM UK 2027 Annual Conference, set to take place from 29 to 30 April 2027 at National Museum Cardiff in Wales.
The event will explore the theme Gwydnwch/Resilience: Museums Adapting to Change in a Complex World, asking how museums globally can deliver on their missions and maintain public trust while evolving and innovating in response to new, unpredictable challenges.
ICOM UK is co-producing the conference with Ngaire Blankenberg, founding director of the Institute for Creative Repair and the A42 brand, whose work uses new models for arts, heritage and cultural institutions to focus on repairing people, places, communities and organisations.
A deep dive into resilience
Arranged around four interrelated sub-themes, the conference will highlight museums' resilience, rooted in their ability to anticipate, absorb, recover from, and adapt to change.
These sub-themes include new models for financial and operational sustainability, supporting our communities, responding to external shocks, and safeguarding and transmitting culture and knowledge.
In considering new models for financial and operational sustainability, the conference will showcase innovative approaches to the museum institution that respond to increasing financial pressures and political landscapes without compromising their missions, staff wellbeing or public purpose.
Additionally, the community-focused sub-theme looks at how institutions are recognising and responding to the needs of changing, often fragmented communities that span generations and geographies.
Here, ICOM UK asks how the sector can help these communities to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world, exploring empowerment, solidarity as mutual responsibility, shared struggle, community cohesion and collective flourishing.
Building on the 2025 conference theme, Regenerative Museums for Sustainable Futures, the responding to external shocks focus asks what responsibilities museums hold during crisis.
This will consider how structural inequality shapes both people’s exposure to crisis and their capacity to recover, and museums' role in providing practical help and meaningful action.
The fourth sub-theme, safeguarding and transmitting culture and knowledge, discusses how museums produce knowledge and protect and transmit tangible and intangible heritage. This will offer new perspectives on whose knowledge is recognised as legitimate, and who has the authority and the means to produce and protect it.
Call for proposals
ICOM UK is now calling for proposals for presentations, workshops or poster sessions at the 2027 Annual Conference.
Proposals that draw on practical experience in response to the conference theme are of particular interest. ICOM UK welcomes submissions from those directly involved in developing, delivering, or evaluating work globally that shows how museums can build resilience and adapt to change.
Proposals should also connect with one or more of the four sub-themes.
In particular, those based on a specific project, initiative, partnership, or experience that offers practical approaches and lessons learned are encouraged. Projects do not need to be finished or wholly successful, and can instead explore learnings from challenges, failures, adaptation and unexpected outcomes.
Submissions close at 9 am BST on Monday 2 November. To find out more and apply, please visit the ICOM UK website.
Earlier this year, ICOM announced the findings, outcomes, and recommendations from its report, Museum Bridge, which proposes a new model for sustainable global museum partnerships.
Rebecca Hardy has over 10 years' experience in the culture and heritage sector. She studied Fine Art at university and has written for a broad range of creative organisations including artists, galleries, and retailers. When she's not writing, she spends her time getting lost in the woods and making mud pies with her young son.
