Museums and Well-being

<p><em>Museums and Well-being </em>outlines the historical development of well-being within museums and offers a critical engagement with this field from a museum studies perspective. The essential thesis of the book is that well-being is a collective action.</p><p>The book utilises the Five Ways to Well-being as a model: Connect Be Active Keep Learning Give and Take Notice. Each of these Ways are explored through a specific museum object illustrating the important role collections can play in museum well-being. The book considers how museum well-being and the austerity project became entwined and how the COVID-19 pandemic supercharged growth in this field. The book explores such diverse topics as walking slow art social capital Virginia Woolf body positivity collective joy identity art therapy yoga Squid Game Effective Altruism mindfulness gift exchange the Preston model the limits of data sketching photography inclusive spaces and workplace well-being. The book signposts a vast array of existing information and offers a critical engagement with current practices. </p><p><em>Museums and Well-being</em> is aimed initially to students of museum studies programmes it is also an ideal book for museum staff who need to add a well-being component to their existing programming; or to reconsider existing programming from the perspective of well-being.</p>