ABSTRACT
The UCL Museum Wellbeing Measures toolkit was developed to address the need for robust measures to articulate museum and heritage sector contributions to wellbeing. Ten years after its inception, the toolkit has been used for some 60 UK and 12 overseas projects to evaluate the impact of cultural participation on psychological wellbeing by museum practitioners, archaeologists, researchers and therapists in museum, gallery, heritage and natural settings. Participants have included children and young adults, those with long-term physical and mental illness or learning disability, older and disadvantaged adults, and people with dementia. The chapter provides an introduction to the toolkit followed by reasons for its development. Section 1 documents first-hand experiences through case studies charting successes and challenges of each measure. Section 2 demonstrates the flexibility of the measures, illustrating novel text, colour, language and non-heritage adaptations. A discussion of the measures’ use with ideas for further development and conclusions complete the chapter.
