Aktionsplan I: Exploring change and shaping the future

Activities included:

• Leibniz Research Museums – preserving for the future.

  As part of the European Heritage Year in 2018, 20 “theme weeks” at different museums took place. These included conservation studio tours and lectures, workshops, and special exhibitions, as well as a joint brochure, a documentary short-film series, and a digital game, all of which that provided insights into conservation and restoration research.

• Research museums as places of dialogue.

  The eight Leibniz Research Museums held events for researchers, politicians and the public to discuss societally-relevant themes particular to each research museum – from mining and aviation technology to art and biodiversity. Approximately 30 audience-based programs took place from 2017 to 2019. Among the topics were: how to deal with natural and cultural heritage, climate change, the loss of biodiversity, energy transition, or structural change.

• Educational scholarship meets research museums.

  Leibniz Research Museums are informal places of learning and therefore fascinating test sites for educational research and theory. The museums worked with other non-museum-based Leibniz Association Institutes to develop theory-guided and research-based new standards and innovative formats for sustainable museum education and tested these through effectiveness studies. Two studies were designed and carried out to encourage visitors to reflect on their own actions and cultural context, i.e. to impart competencies and value orientations.

• Worldwide research museums network.

  The focus of international activities from 2017-19 was on research museums as mediators of scientific knowledge and the concept of the "Integrated Research Museum.” A staff delegation from the eight Leibniz Research Museums, led by Leibniz President Matthias Kleiner, visited Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2017. One of the outcomes of the meeting was the first Global Summit of Research Museums, which took place in November 2018 at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin under the auspices of Aktionsplan I.