Diversity and Inclusion at the OMA

 

Overview

In 2016, the Ontario Museum Association (OMA) Annual Conference Towards the Future: Diversity and Inclusion presented the Ontario museum community with an opportunity to critically reflect on and discuss how best to create substantive and meaningful change leading to greater relevance of museums as institutions contributing to strong societies, economies, sense of well-being and belonging.
 
Informed by Ontario’s Museums 2025 and the need to “develop tools, strategies, and best practices for museums to increase capacity and effectiveness in addressing accessibility, diversity and inclusion,” and aligning with Ontario’s Culture Strategy, the OMA worked collaboratively on two (2) projects to support our collective vision of a strong, collaborative and inclusive museum sector. Working collaboratively with the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion (CCDI) as the Museum Accessibility, Inclusion and Engagement Collaborative (MAIEC), these OMA projects provided our museum membership with:
 
  • Access to an initial cohort of diverse emerging museum leaders with experience engaging with experimental ideas and innovative ways of working to address current challenges faced by museums and collecting institutions.
  • Training developed by the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion and delivered by webinar to support inclusive leadership and increase awareness around strategies for creating inclusion.
  • Resources identified during training delivered to support inclusive leadership and inclusion.
  • The results of a survey of Ontario’s museum workforce that establishes a demographic profile of museum workers, and a baseline of perspectives amongst these populations related to diversity and inclusion within the workplace.
  • Access to Inclusion 2025: A Practitioner's Guide to Inclusive Museums launched at the Inclusive Museum Leadership Symposium, and developed by 10 partner museums from across the province with feedback drawn from the experience of experts and innovators on our project Advisory Committee and from within their communities / Tourism regions. The toolkit includes the following areas:
    • Governance
    • Collections Development
    • Exhibitions and Curatorial Practice
    • Community Engagement
    • Volunteer and HR Policies
    • Events and Programming
    • Marketing and Communications
    • Interpretation and Education
    • Audience Insight
    • Facilities Management

The five (5) projects the OMA collaboratively completed with the ROM and CCDI are as follows:

Driving Inclusive Change: Youth Shape the Future of Peel Museums    2016-2017
Museum Inclusive Leadership Project 2016-2017
Inclusion 2025: A Practitioner's Guide to Inclusive Museum 2016-2017
Inclusive Museum Leadership Symposium     2018
Diversity Census Tool and Inclusion Survey  2017- 2018

***Diversity and Inclusion Webinars: Open to Members

 


For more information about these projects, please contact oma@museumsontario.com.