ABSTRACT
When it opens in 2020, Derby Silk Mill – Museum of Making will be the UK’s first major museum to have been developed, in its entirety, through participatory processes. This chapter explores the conditions within which the project emerged, the way in which human-centred design was used as a process to disrupt established assumptions and practices within a long-established museum service, the importance of an agreed set of values and principles which would drive the project and anchor the human-centred design methodology, and the ways in which the learning from the process of co-producing the new museum with local people is now impacting the wider organisation. Providing an important case study of participatory and located museum making, the project also illustrates the need in museums for progressive professionals with diverse and complementary skill sets if they are to truly explore new forms of being civic and sustainable.
