Digital training

Image of the Digital Futures 'Interactive Stories' training session

Museum Development Officers run training programmes and provide one-to-one support for museums right across London

Covid-19 Update: Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, we will be making changes to our planned training programmes for 2020 - 2021. Where possible our training will be delivered online and, where appropriate, we will edit and refocus the content of our sessions to be relevant for the current situation. You will be able to find our upcoming training sessions below and advertised in our weekly E-Update, which you can find at the bottom of our News page. If we need to make any last minute announcements for London Museum Development events, about event changes or cancellations, we will try to do so via email, but you will also be able to find last minute announcements pinned to the top of our Twitter timeline.

Our current programme of Digital Training will focus on helping museums with their digital activities during the Covid-19 outbreak. You can find recordings of our past training sessions, as well as helpful tutorials, on our YouTube channel. We have so far delivered sessions on Social Media, including 'What can it do for your organisation in lockdown', 'Strategy' and 'Analytics', as well as a session on 'Assessing your Digital Activities'. You can find an up-to-date list of our upcoming sessions below and more training recordings and tutorials will be added to YouTube over the coming months.

As part of our response to the Covid-19 outbreak, we have also started weekly 'Digital Chats' where you can join in on an online conversation and discuss different digital topics with colleagues from the sector. Topics so far have covered 'Creating Digital Content' and 'Online Collaboration'. You can find more information about those Chats below.

All paid and unpaid staff working for non-National (and non-NPO), Accredited museums in the London region are eligible to apply for our training courses. This includes furloughed staff. For further governmental guidance on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and training implications, please click here.

In 2018 - 2022, the Digital Futures Programme will excite the London museum sector with the possibilities of digital technologies and digital engagement. Through the training programme, London Museum Development will deliver at least 12 courses each year aimed at developing the digital skills of London's museums. These courses have been designed and tailored for London's museums, based on the feedback from our 2018 Training Needs Analysis of the London non-national museum sector (PDF 690kb, opens in new tab). The programme has also been influenced by the findings of the Mendoza Review, Culture is Digital and Digital Culture 2017 reports. You can find our latest training sessions towards the bottom of this page and you can find recordings of some of our previous training sessions on our YouTube channel.

Digital Chats

With museums currently in lockdown, we want to create an opportunity for museum professionals to get together, once a month, for an informal chat to discuss all things digital. These chats are being organised to support the sector with digital on different topics each month. They will act as a chance for museum professionals to discuss their work / interests, ask for help and seek opportunities for collaboration. When they are live, you can find information on the month's chat topic below. So far, topics have included 'Creating Digital Content', Engaging Learning Audiences in Lockdown', 'Creating Accessible Content' and more.

Digital Futures Training Programme, 2020 - 2021

Making Digital Museum Tours
Tuesday 22 September, 11am - 2pm
Online, via Zoom

In this session, we will take you through two platforms, Google Slides and Google Tour Creator, and show you how you could make a free / low-budget digital tour of your museum. We will show you how the platforms work and how they can be utilized to create an interactive tour of your museum, for your online audiences. Download a full course outline (PDF 68kb, opens in new tab). Book your place through our online booking form.

Image Editing For Beginners
Thursday 08 October, 11am – 2pm
Online, Via Zoom

This session will introduce you to editing images using the free online platform Pixlr. Alec will take you through the basics of image editing using the platform and we will also take a look at how you might create a GIF using your collection items and the programme. If there is time, we will take a look at GIMP – a more powerful free image editing programme, similar to Photoshop. Download a full course outline (PDF 190kb, opens in new tab). Book your place through our online booking form.

Podcasting for museums: what, why, how
Thursday 05 November, 10:50am - 1pm
Online, via Zoom

Museums are slowly getting into the world of podcasting. But where should you start if you wanted to give it a try? Ana Baeza Ruiz and Zoe Hendon, from the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, will take you through how they started their museum’s podcast. What sort of podcast do you want? What equipment do you need? How should you edit it and where should you host it? Ana and Zoe will answer these questions and more in this session on podcasting for museums. Before the session, a short activity will take you through the key questions you’ll need to ask before stating your own podcast – who is it for? What will make it unique? What is your budget? During the session, Ana and Zoe will cover how you can develop the idea for your podcast and the content you will share. They will then move on to the equipment that you may need to create your podcast and cover the platforms that you can use for editing it. Finally, they will cover how you can share your podcast online and what platforms are best for your audience. After the course, you will be sent a list of useful resources to help you further develop your idea and start creating your podcast! We also plan on releasing a training tutorial video, on our YouTube channel, which will cover the basics of using Audacity (free audio editing platform) to edit audio files. Download a full course outline (PDF 182kb, opens in new tab). Book your place through our online booking form.