Cornwall Museums Partnership
Digital resource to help small museums promote diversity and inclusion
Promoting diversity and inclusion in small rural museums
Cornwall Museums Partnership (CMP) is an organisation that develops and manages collaborative programmes to support their museums create positive social change.
With six small Cornish museums and Exeter University’s Inclusivity Project, they collaborated on a research project to promote diversity and inclusion (D&I) within their museum workforce.
CMP wanted to share the process and outcomes as a resource that other museums could use as a guide. I organised and managed this creative process to produce an engaging illustrated digital resource for their website, linked with social media assets for use in other publications.
The challenge for me was to ensure I promoted D&I through the content, layout and presentation of the resource. This was a very important outcome to the success of the project for Jenna Marrion (CMP) and Lucy Szaboova (Exeter’s Inclusivity Project).
I selected a illustrator and copyeditor who were skilled and passionate about D&I to help me achieve this outcome. The talented illustrator Elly Jahnz (illustrator and graphic designer) and Karen Griffiths (copyeditor).
Click on the image to read the PFD in full.
“Kerri was a joy to work with on this project. For an illustrator, it's an absolute godsend to have someone lead a project who communicates the brief clearly, listens to your thoughts and works with you to produce the best results at every stage. "
ELLY JAHNZ | FOXCUB STUDIO
Digital resource project management
Content: It was important for CMP that the resource guided rather than told colleagues how to promote D&I in their own museums, adapting the resource to meet their individual needs. I worked with Jenna and Lucy to highlight the key text from the research report that explained the process and identified the five key aspirations for action. I coordinated with Karen to translate the text using language that reflected an inclusive, conversational and collaborative tone.
Layout: Envisaged originally as a four-page document, I worked with Jenna and Lucy to more effectively produce a two-page document. They could be used together or as stand alone to maximise their use. I explored with them how to achieve their vision of an illustrated rather than designed look. This enabled them to promote a diverse museum workforce visually to support the content of the text. I coordinated with Elly and Karen to draft the illustrations and copy in a way that would achieve this final blend.
Presentation: Accessibility was key to the presentation of this resource. This relied on the collaboration of skills I coordinated to blend copy and illustration with Elly and Karen. It considered: CMPs branding, the soft use of colour, and a specifically hyperlegible and sizing of font. The layout was also tried and tested to ensure that the eye flowed easily around the resource.
I worked with CPM throughout the process to ensure that the clear vision they had was made achievable: a diverse and inclusive resource to promote diversity and inclusion within their workforce. Images of the final resource will be uploaded on publication by CMP which has been delayed due to Covid 19.
If you would like help to effectively communicate diversity and inclusion through content, please contact me.