ABSTRACT
The Derby Museums are affiliates of the Happy Museum Project, a UK-based global consortium of museums and institutions that conduct and support research and development initiatives focused on creating conditions for wellbeing in museums and communities, environmental stewardship, citizenship and social action, cross-disciplinary public and professional relationship building, and individual and societal resilience. The Derby Museums Trust is a leader in Happy Museum’s five-year study investigating the impact of wellbeing and sustainability on individual, organizational and community resilience, which explores how museums create wellbeing. Connection, as described by subjects in the Derby Museum interviews, included specific references to self, to family, to friends, to heritage, history, place, and to the museum. The need for connection–or, as Marcher calls it, mutual connection–is primary in humans, as is the role of objects in practitioners awareness of connectivity, the creation and preservation of connections, and our understanding of connectivity to other people, places, and times.
